Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Hot White Linen Nights in New Orleans Art Center

There is yet again a new slam against our most revered master, Dale Chihuly. The famous art walk titled: "Hot White Linen Nights" got off to a swelter this week in ole Nawlins. Here is what the art reviewer Doug McCash in The Times Picayune had to say.
"Many Julia Street galleries had apparently saved their most banal exhibits for the big night. The enormous crowd -- the envy of any art district in the nation -- was treated to forgettable decorative paintings, one or two heavy-handed political statements, amateurish pop culture photographs, and been-there-seen-that glass sculpture."
The theme was sweaty elegance, he also said and the fashions including paper dresses outshown the risk-taking in the artistic offerings. There was no artistic risk-taking unless you consider the shattering of a Chihuly glass work was his last backhand to the Seattle maestro.
Yee ouch! Will it become so commonplace to slam Chihuly work that it will no longer be notable? Tell that to the throngs in line at San Francisco's de Young were the tickets allow you in for a short period of time and that's it.
Making lots of money for the museum is no little deal. Other museums and art centers in the Bay Area should take note and put together another glass show soon that will please this art loving San Francisco public. Yes, perhaps even a retrospective of Nourot Glass works!
Beginning in 1974 Nourot has made all types of blown, cast and fabricated works and they are all on display in the "vault" at their gallery. Jobs for other artists, commissions for the Pope, and weird experiments like Glassmadness with James Erickson are all in there for curators to pick from. Wouldn't the public like to know that their own native sons and daughters who were trained and infulenced by Mr. Chihuly have been creating interesting and original works for the last three or four decades right under their noses? Many other Bay Area studio glass artists have much that would fit for a show like that and many have content more complex than anything at the Chihuly level.
Like Yogi Bera, the famous ballplayer said, "Could happen."

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