A Video Made at Galerie Lareuse

Picasso, Miró, Calder, Matisse, Chagall, Kandinsky, Dufy, all together in the cozy room of Galerie Lareuse, in Georgetown, on the M Street. Kreg Kelley is the curator of the gallery. He is young, enthusiastic and very capable.

Each visit at the gallery is an exciting adventure: you'll discover each time lithographs you didn't know they were there.

I discovered on the web another gallery of prints and lithographs, this time in England, it's Idbury Prints, and it's managed by Neil Philip, a poet, a folklorist, and a great art lover. Each time I am on the web on one of the two galleries, I also dream at the other. Each one is a fabulous place.

(Galerie Lareuse)

(Joan Miró)

Autumn in Georgetown

(Cycle the Ghost Round: Scenes from a Daily Commute)

(Washington, District of Columbia)

An Etching by James McNeill Whistler

James McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903) - La Vieille aux Louques, c. 1858
etching, plate signed (edition 1000, final state)

I passed again by the Galerie Lareuse in Georgetown on the M Street, again it was closed, I saw this etching on display at the window. It's a nice piece of art, with all that stuff gathered in the background, making the old woman the queen of the space.

(Galerie Lareuse)

Joseph Lorusso - Two Ladies at the Opera

(Joseph Lorusso - Two Ladies at the Opera)

(P&C Art)

The Christmas Tree from Key Park

(Stories from Key Bridge)

The Goddess from Georgetown

Guan-Yin is the Chinese Bodhisattva of Compassion. The statue is quite impressive. It is in a new adornment house, Bobbie Medlin, on the M Street in Georgetown.

Well, it's more than an adornment house. Or, to be more precise, it is of a special kind. You enter the house, and start a magic journey to faraway places. Bobbie Medlin discovered, years ago, an antique Tibetan flint case and realized the honest beauty of this object, intended for lighting fires high in the Himalayas.





(Washington, District of Columbia)

The Art of Joseph Lorusso

Joseph Lorusso at P&C Art Gallery in Georgetown

The power of a Lorusso painting lies in its ability to make the viewer an emotional voyeur. You feel drawn to his subjects. You want to know what moves them. I believe truly great art serves as a trigger into something deeper within all of us, explains Lorusso. The greatest gift an artist can provide is to move the viewer in a way that is personal and undefinable and touches the soulful core within us. The mood and emotion conveyed in Lorusso's paintings evokes a deep sense of beauty found in the quiet times of daily living. His people are mysterious, lonely, romantic and yet familiar, placed in settings we often see ourselves. The mood he provokes is pensive, serene and timeless (from Howard/Mandville gallery catalog).

(P&C Art)

J.B. Berkow

Inspired by the beauty of Tuscany and Venice and the quiet solitude of the English and French countryside, J.B. Berkow analyzes hundreds of photographs in her Florida studio before piecing each part together. When she is finished she comes up with the perfect composition, where each work conveys a special feeling to the viewer (Knottywood Treasures).

close up

My work evolves into realism. But before it reaches this final realistic state, it is painted in a continuous series of abstractions. Therefore, realism, for me, is a simple stringing together of abstractions (J.B. Berkow).

(Ed Chasen Fine Art in Georgetown)

N-77
acrylic on canvas

Kurt Larisch was born in Vienna in 1913 and life carried him all over the world. He left Austria in 1938 for England, later he settled in India, where he became the art director of an advertising agency, dealing with 25 different languages. He would come later to the States, to move again in 1970, to Mexico.

For his artistic career each new country brought new experiences, new perspectives. However one can always recognize in his works the place where he started: Kurt Larisch belongs hundred percent to the Avant Garde of the Twenties, you can see in his canvases the aspiration for geometrical purity, the fingerprint of Constructivism and Bauhaus, I think.


(Ed Chasen Fine Art in Georgetown)

(Suprematism and Constructivism)

Jonathon Kimbrell

Wonder Woman Revolt, 2007
acrylic on canvas

Jonathon Kimbrell likes recycling bits of paper or printed materials into his paintings and enjoys anything that looks like it’s been run through the printing press a few times. So he tries to catch this look and feel in his work, sometimes manually. This gives to his pop-art some kind of strange delicacy: there are two universes in any of his paintings; both universes seem very shy and fragile (though sending energetic signals to each other) and you don't know any more which is the real world. The foreground seems a fairy tale floating in the background, or is the background immersed in the foreground? Is this what makes Kimbrell distinct from obvious models (like Warhol or Lichtenstein)?

And a sudden connection to a great naive: Pirosmani!

Shake Well, 2008
ink jet transfer on acrylic on canvas

Thank God for Sophia Loren, 2008
ink jet transfer on acrylic on canvas

(Fine Art & Artists Gallery in Georgetown)

Tackle Box in Georgetown

Georgetown, M Street: a tackle box at the entrance of a very small restaurant. I know what such stuff is good for as I saw some while visiting my friend Jay in Maine.

Tackle Box in Georgetown. Inside no-frills tables and benches; the clients are mostly young guys, so the atmosphere is great.

You read the menus on a chalkboard: seafood of all kind; lobster on a roll seems to be the best choice. To be frank, I tried once, I was kind'o disappointed, as I had the kind memory of another lobster on a roll that I had eaten in Maine some years ago. Jay and I were on his boat on a huge lake surrounded by endless woods. We stopped by a very small island; it was as small as to carry just a seafood shack and nothing else!

I tried then several times the lobster on a roll in Quincey Market in Boston, and it was also very good.

Only this was some time ago, so memories can show stuff much better than it really was; maybe the lobster on a roll in Maine was exactly as it is on the M Street in Georgetown, plus the aura of the endless woods surrounding the huge lake, plus the small island offering room just for the seafood shack!

I tried then the wood-grilled trout: this time I felt it as marvelous! Add to this a clam chowder.

I came then several times in this place: and in some weekends when I was in other places I missed it, this Tackle Box restaurant on the M Street in Georgetown!

• The Old Flag at Tackle Box
  

(Washington, District of Columbia)

Georgetown: Houses between Bridge and Prospect Streets

(Stories from Key Bridge)

Balance of the Soul

close up

(Ed Chasen Fine Art in Georgetown)

Ed Chasen Fine Art in Georgetown

• Balance of the Soul
• Kurt Larisch
• J.B. Berkow
  

(Washington, District of Columbia)

From Millet to Dali: Galerie Lareuse in Georgetown

Jean-Francois Millet

Galerie Lareuse is in Georgetown, where Pennsylvania Avenue joins M Street. It is amazing how many art treasures are in a such a tiny room. You enter the small gallery, suddenly you are in a totally another world as the one you left on the street. You look around: enchanted discoveries surround you and you found yourself under a charming spell.

The curator of the gallery, Creg D. Kelley, is young and passionate, dedicated to his work. It is a pleasure to talk to him and to listen to his explanations about each art work there: 19th and 20th century European prints, contemporary American art, illustrated books, works on paper by original masters.

For the beginning, two photos that I tried to make there: Millet and Dali. Enjoy!

Salvador Dali

• A Drawing by Joan Miró
• Toulouse versus Lautrec
• Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon
• Rembrandt and Kandinsky
• Ceramic by Picasso - Visage, c. 1955
• Dali's Leonardo
• The Joyous Wondrous Magic of Marc Chagall
• Chagall - L'Automobiliste
• Kleine Welten
• Picasso: La Nana
• Kennedy by Dali
• An Etching by James McNeill Whistler
• Vlaminck at Galerie Lareuse
• Joan Miró - La Naissance du Jour
• Marc Chagall - Clown
• Pissarro at Galerie Lareuse
• Picasso: Picador
• Joan Miró: Japonaise
• Picasso, Chagall
• Henri Matisse: La Femme
• Magritte, inspired by Joseph Conrad
• Marc Chagall, Woman Juggler
• A Video Made at Galerie Lareuse
• Euterpe, the Muse of Music

(Washington, District of Columbia)

Fine Art & Artists Gallery in Georgetown

Fine Art & Artists Gallery

The curator is sometimes moody, but always very professional. And the exhibits are always first class. It is a must for one who wants to keep with the on-going of the Contemporary Art.

• Jason Wright
• Jonathon Kimbrell
  

(Washington, District of Columbia)

(Contemporary Art)

The Guy Who Was Looking Like Lou

I was in the P&C Art Gallery in Georgetown and a guy who was looking like Lou was smiling at me as he was hanged on the wall.

Okay, let's take it one by one. Firstly who is Lou and secondly what about the guy who was looking like Lou?

Lou is a fine fellow, sometimes moody (not as moody as me, though): an architect with great achievements in Jerusalem and some other places in the world. If you can read Romanian, here is an essay of him. If you don't know Romanian, believe my word: he's fine.

As for the guy who was looking like Lou, that's Frederick Hart, a very well-known sculptor here in Washington. The bas relief on the portal of the Washington National Cathedral is created by Hart. The bronze sculpture at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Three Servicemen) is also by him.

It's an interesting case-study: in a world dominated in art by the non-figurative, Hart remained firmly representational.

The P&C Art Galleries host many of his bronze and acrylic sculptures. I like to stroll without any rush among them: the triumph of light over the material.

So the charade is now solved. A great sculptor was smiling from the wall mirroring in my mind a great architect.






(P&C Art)

Arvid at P&C Art in Georgetown

I like good friends and great wines rather than great friends and good wines (Arvid)

Drinking wine is much more than mere liquid. It's a whole universe of bottles and labels, corks and cork-screws, glasses, either full or empty or half (whatever that means). All paintings of Thomas Arvid are about this universe.
There was an Arvid show at the P&C Art Gallery in Georgetown and Arvid was there. I tried to record a video. I started with the photo of Frederick Hart (somehow the spiritus rector of the gallery; for me Hart is The-Guy-Who-Was-Looking-Like-Lou, for reasons I'd explain perhaps later), then I passed to Les Bouchons, one of Arvid's trademarks, then I moved my camera freely among paintings by Arvid and sculptures by Hart.

I remember I saw two years ago a painting by Arvid in Manhattan, in SoHo. It was a coquette gallery on the Spring Street. I smiled as I was meeting an old dear friend: I was already familiar with his works for the P&C Art Galleries here in DC and in Alexandria.

(P&C Art)