In the midst of the most volatile economy in 75 years, larger than ever crowds consistently turned out for art openings and not just for free wine and cheese. The Des Moines Art Center oversold its wildest expectations for a tent party at the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden (PSG) at $500 per couple. One observer compared that gala to the most famous ball in history, that of the Duchess of Richmond on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. Painter Shawn Colvin debuted his first art exhibition at another gala, in the Hotel Kirkwood Ballroom. Bachata, a Dominican dance that electrifies the sexual tension of tango, stormed our nightclub culture.
Artist of the year — Matthew J. Clark
This 35-year-old sculptor burst upon the art world like Barack Obama taking the White House. Clark’s “Simulation of the Triumphal Entry of the Christ,” performed on the eve of the Presidential inauguration, was a prelude to his stunning sense of artistic relevance and the unrealistic expectations of these times. http://www.matthewjclark.com/index.php?showimage=6Consider that the day Clark’s Obama/Christ simulated the coming of the new Messiah, the Dow Jones Industrial Average completed its largest ever dive (1,400 points) between a president’s election and inauguration. And yet, most newspapers characterized the country, and economy, that day as “surging with optimism,” even as the Dow began to dive another 1,400 points.
Clark began to visualize his 2009 works while reading Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation.” That philosophical treatise is popularly known as the inspiration for “The Matrix” films (though Baudrillard claims it was completely misapplied). “I started thinking about the hyperreal and how it relates to reality and to the existence of objects of hope,” Clark explained. His summer studio show revealed hyperrealist, silicone sculptures further reflecting on displaced faith. “Our Little Jimmy Can Do Anything If He Puts His Mind To It,” “Took $1.37 from the Offering Plate,” and “No You May Not Borrow a Cup of Sugar” all dared to reveal that prevailing, empirical wisdom was dressed in invisible clothes.
Person of the year — Jeff Fleming
The Des Moines Art Center Director edged out John & Mary Pappajohn by shepherding that couple’s largess into the PSG. Fleming’s big year also included bringing to Des Moines both the largest ever retrospective of American Regionalism (including Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”) and also the most cutting edge retrospective (“Tara Donovan”) in America. Fleming had astutely signed Donovan four years ago, anticipating her leap to fame.
Exhibition of the Year
Museum — “Tara Donovan” at the Des Moines Art Center; “Molecules That Changed the World” at the Faulconer.
Gallery — “New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen,” currently at Moberg
Non-traditional venue — Mathew J. Clark’s “Twisted Words”Design of the year — Kyle and Sharon Krause house by Thomas Phifer, and Henning Construction
The “architect of light” brought visually spectacular, state of the engineering science, environmental vision to central Iowa, much like the Chipperfield library was supposed to do. Runner-up — Simonson & Associates Headquarters by Simonson & Associates.
New artist of the year — M. Shawn Crahan
New artist of the year — M. Shawn Crahan
Slipknot’s Clown debuted paintings and manipulated Polaroid art that took a Bosch-inspired view of Dante’s hell from the point of view accessed with a rock star’s backstage pass.
Story of the year — The PSG
Story of the year — The PSG
The PSG became a downtown tourist attraction the moment it came online, greeting eastbound traffic with a contemporary, cosmopolitan first impression of Des Moines. Runners-up — Steven Vail reopens his gallery; Des Moines Social Club opens.
Worst design — Ingersoll Dahl’s
Worst design — Ingersoll Dahl’s
The design for the new Ingersoll Dahl’s brought displaced suburban aesthetics to the inner city, emphasizing wasted space and customer inconveniences in parking, entrances and displays.
Leeks, dahlias and wild coneflowers star in a heartbreaking evocation of the ephemeral quality of life. 
Luchsinger added “cancer survivor” to his résumé last year, and the couple is debuting a collection of cemetery angels they have been working on for decades. Street scenes, beach scenes and 8 foot tall slices of prairie life also feature in this year’s show. In some instances, 360-degree vertical shots are compressed into singular flat prints. “New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen” opens Friday, Nov. 20 and runs through the rest of 2009.
As the equinox passed, haute and low culture in Des Moines celebrated shining moments on three successive nights. Pappajohn Sculpture Garden (PSG) opened with dignitaries present but the Governor and Mayor conspicuously absent. Shawn Crahan and Frank Hansen opened two nights of joint shows and celebrations with indignities present and bodyguards active.
She burned that art at the end of that show, on camera, flames ironically engulfing a frightened image in the mug shot art. “Flutter,” her show at Fitch Gallery, opens October 23 and includes the charred remains of that previous creation.
In just its third year, artstop has developed into the major cultural event of the central Iowa fall while honoring the memory of an art pioneer.
“Bubble Gum Cowards” morph into piles of amputated limbs and the Statue of Liberty’s torch changes into Medusa’s severed head.
An out of state museum director once told me that this most stylized of Iowa’s landscape artists possesses “astonishing vision that would dominate an exhibition, if the nature of his vision was not so peaceful.” Om to that. Abstractions from Jeanine Coupe Ryding and animal prints from Paula Schuette Kraemer complement McNamara’s serenity in this current show.
July
Donovan also confessed that everyday materials assist another motivation.
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(Jason Scott Hoffman). At DMSC they hang their hats on the same rack as more traditional artists like Vanja Borcic and Jamie Fales, who contributed a meticulous triptych of Keane-like girls modeling living hat wear.
New York painter returns to Iowa.
Ignatius Widiapradja’s home and studio shelter shards of shattered histories — skulls, taxidermy freaks, body organ models, religious relics, ancient books, Salvation Army dolls and mutilated mannequins. That’s not too unusual for a contemporary painter. After Damien Hirst institutionalized morbid realism (and became the richest living artist in history), young painters began hooking up with existentialism and accessorizing their lives with gothic props. Widiapradja is anything but a poseur in this territory. Like the reptiles and Bible stories that dramatize his paintings, he is himself transformational. Even his name is an adaptation.
“The Year of Living Dangerously” is an Oscar-winning Peter Weir film about 1965 in Indonesia. Made in 1982, it identified the CIA, not the Chinese, as masterminds of the 1965 coup. In America, it’s known as probably the best work ever by actors Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt. For a 5-year-old ethnic Chinese boy in West Java, “The Year of Living Dangerously” was an ironic understatement. It lasted much longer than a year, abruptly ended childhood and began shaping a worldview that would desperately clawed its way into artistic visions.
Widiapradja attended a strict Roman Catholic school and was trained for 12 years in the dogmatic Old Dutch school of drawing and painting. Yet ethnic Chinese students were admitted to Indonesian universities in such limited quotas that art school was impossible. He moved to America in 1979 to attend the University of Texas in El Paso. Widiapradja didn’t think he could learn much there about drawing and painting, but the jewelry department impressed him. His grandfather had been a master goldsmith, so he took up a family tradition.
“The crucifixion is the most potent image of all time. Imagine, at the moment of his apotheosis, Jesus asks, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken me?’ What a moment,” he mused. Ignatius Widiapradja‘s new paintings comprise “Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity” opening Friday, June 19 (running through Aug. 1) at Moberg Gallery.
Frank Hansen named the group Paintpushers.
John Phillip Davis joined a year later. About the same time, destinies of those three painters were being forged by a young sculptor who felt that his art was rut-stuck by his own success.
Today, this gang of four under age forty forms the core of the new artist community here. Recent and current shows demonstrate new directions for them all. Vance has moved from abstraction to figurative, narrative paintings and is using more non traditional media on which to paint.
The only one of the group who still shows at street fests, Vance has won best in show, or best in class at every major festival he’s entered. He had his first museum show last year at the South Dakota Art Museum.
The Des Moines Social Club (DMSC) opened this month with ribbon-cutting fanfare and a revival of Karel Capek’s “R.U.R.” That futuristic play premiered in 1919, the same year that Kruidenier Cadillac cut the ribbon on the Jack Hatch building that now houses DMSC. Coincidences like that are not accidental with this not-for-profit organization. From its conception, DMSC distinguished itself from other want-to-be scene makers by composing dissonant noises into contrapuntal harmony. It now represents the holy grail of civic aspirations -- a place for the elusive “creative class” to hang its beret.
