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MFA (Maryland Federation of Art) invites all artists residing in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico to enter its 4th annual Water Works competition. Any original 2-D or 3-D work in which water is depicted as the primary force, object, or consequence is eligible. Works selected will be on exhibit online in MFA’s Curve Gallery from October 15 through November 30, 2018. The exhibition chairs are Richard Neiwerth and Wil Scott.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Eric Denker is a senior lecturer at the National Gallery of Art. From 1998 to 2006, Eric also served jointly as the Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, overseeing the permanent collection and coordinating an active exhibition schedule that included the catalogue and show of Whistler and his Circle in Venice. Eric attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he is now a trustee as well as the president of the Friends of the Trout Gallery. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. In addition to serving as an adjunct professor at Cornell University’s Washington Semester, Eric frequently lectures in Italy for the Smithsonian Institution and for the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice. He is the co-author, with Judith Martin, of the 2007 No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice, exploring the contemporary visitor’s passions for the unique lagoon city. Eric is the author of seven books and catalogues, his most recent work is Reflections and Undercurrents: Ernest Roth and Printmaking in Venice, 1900-1940. He is the author of numerous articles for guidebooks about Venice and Italy.
Three elements coincide in any good art—a transcendent subject, technical virtuosity, and an original approach. Lacking any of these factors will sabotage the quality of the work. Leonardo’s image of the Last Supper moves us because of the combination of these three components—if he had drawn stick figures around the table, no matter how original, the work would be forgotten today. Likewise, no matter how well Margaret Keane painted her big-eyed puppies they will never go beyond being kitsch. The subject, the content, and the skill of the artist will always play major roles in our judgment of a work. With this in mind, we began this exhibition with an interesting subject, water, giving artists free rein in realizing their vision. Some of the entries had nothing to do with water, others explored water in the most microscopic way. I sought to identify original images that captured characteristic or unique qualities of water in interesting ways. Although I chose a variety of media, photographers who submitted their works were the most successful in achieving these qualities. Some images are straightforward representations of the natural world, others border on the abstract. Reflections are a major undercurrent of most of the works I selected for the show.