Manon Cleary, "The Body In Question," MAP, 218 W. Saratoga, Baltimore, 410 962-8565, until November 8, 1997. Is there anyone in this universe or any alternate ones who can draw or paint in the true realist manner better than Manon Cleary? Hell no! This artist has won KOAN's Best Washington Artist title two years in a row and this exhibit proves why she'll win again next year. Cleary first traps you with her "Man in Plastic Bag" series, which are so damned perfect that the crazy woman next to me asked me if I thought the model had problems breathing while posing for Cleary. She then offers her incredible painting skills via the "Mystery Series," which are mostly self-portraits with a sort of Kahloeske feeling to them. And when you thought that it couldn't get any better she wields her painting skills like a wet weapon with her "Rape Series," which is the most horrifying set of artworks I have seen since Goya's black paintings. This most recent series of works are truly astounding in their delivery of this most profound of violations. This set should not be separated and should be acquired as a whole by a local museum, where they can teach a caustic lesson in rape - I run short of adjectives to describe the profound effect these works will have on you - go see them.

Joe Shannon, "The Big Picture," MAP, 218 W. Saratoga, Baltimore, 410 962-8565, until November 8, 1997. When you take an artist with the superb painting skills which Shannon has in abundance, and marry them with a deep knowledge of mythology, an unabashed respect for the Spanish masters, and the sharpest satirical mind in the Washington art world, the result is not only an art show which is a lesson in painting ability and creativity, but also a lesson in the classics coupled with a well honed blade which exposes the cabal of false people which often make-up the bulk of local art curators, collectors, museum directors and other such juicy targets for Shannon's unerring aim. There is also a fascinating frieze which details how Shannon arrives at the composition and final delivery of a painting. These are life-sized, muscular paintings which deserve grand homes and which will entertain and baffle and amuse and excite viewers for years to come. Together with the Cleary show downstairs, this is the one show not to miss this year and if you haven't visited MAP, this is the time to do so! Is this guy good or what!

Jinchul Kim, "New Paintings," Perry House gallery, 1017 Duke Street, Alexandria 703/836-5148 until Nov. 24, 1997. If these pieces were unsigned, and placed in the walls of some austere museum in New England, 9 out of 10 viewers would swear that they are looking at new works by Andrew Wyeth (the 10^th viewer might be Andrew or Jamie). Kim has deceptively brilliant painting skills, but once we look at his texture closely, we discover thousands of tiny strokes of a mad brush which builds skill, color, eroticism in nearly every piece, including some mundane landscapes! These are Helga-like women, who sport that pouty, dark inner beauty striving to break through the Nordic boundaries of the models. My favorites were "Many Times Over" and "Miss Michaela," among the portraits (all of which seem to produce a special treatment of the eyes which deliver a sad inner look to the finished pieces) and "Fog" among the landscapes. In the latter, an abandoned shoe by the side of a slushy automobile is disturbing and chilling. Kim is at the vanguard of the new "Get Real" movement which is sweeping the art world (I wish); don't miss this show.

Craig Kraft, "New Neon Sculpture," Perry House Gallery, 1017 Duke Street, Alexandria 703/836-5148 until Nov. 2, 1997. When I visited this show, I expected to see the kind of neon art which seems to be popular as airport art these days (airportism?) - you know the type…. Unintelligible ribbons of bright colored neon strips in random patterns striving to look modern and not like a Budweiser ad in a bar window. What I found instead was a tremendous display by a talented sculptor who has married the art of neon light with remarkable sculpting and casting skills. The results deliver the best sculpture show I've seen in Perry House in a long time (and Perry House continues to be the best 3-D art gallery in this capital area) and a total re-education on this often maligned art form. My favorites were "Dialog Inside/Out" where reversible body castings are married in a wall piece with neon light, "Bound Diver" which is a ingenious use of a full female body cast and "She Devil" which is the best piece in the show and certainly the scariest!!

Although the July show at Washington's Touchstone Gallery features the work of painter Jerry Scott and sculptor David Peirick, it is Scott who steals the show not just with the substance of his paintings, but the subject matter and his elevation of various Latin American figures to nearly iconic status via the paintings.

Scott borrows heavily from his many years spent in Latin America (I've always wondered how the Romans would have felt at the use of the adjective "Latin" to describe our southern neighbors).

His realistic paintings, done in that iconic style sometimes favored by Communists and other dictators, depict a variety of Latin "superstars" (to borrow that highly abused word) to present such people as Argentineans Che Guevara (who seems to be enjoying a huge revival in a trendy way a-la-Frida Kahlo) and Evita Peron, Maria Montez, and others.

There are also some interesting landscapes of the Andes, old Havana and other Latin landscapes, but it is the portraits which steal the show. My favorite was the portrait of Guevara, in which the famous Argentinean doctor and revolutionary, a stogie in his hand, looks into the future. The likeness is a bit distracting, as Guevara looks a bit like Camilo Cienfuegos, the romantic true warrior of the Cuban revolution, who was murdered by Castro's brother soon after the Cuban revolution won its guerrilla war against Batista. Guevara, who was once an icon during the sixties, is making a huge comeback and perhaps that is the reason why I liked his likeness the best.

"Impressions from Latin America 1967-1997" by Jerry Scott is on display at Touchstone Gallery, 406 7^th Street, N.W. (202) 347-2787.

While in Washington this month, do not miss the "20^th Century Still Life Paintings" from The Phillips Collection. This is a terrific selection of still lifes from those which were the heart of the founders of the Phillips. Most of the paintings have been cleaned for the show, and are thus presented in the vibrant way in which they were originally made. There are works by Picasso, Rufino Tamayo, Rousseau, Milton Avery, Georgia O'Keefe and Man Ray. The Phillips is located at 1600 21^st. Street, N.W. (202) 387-2151.

Something interesting is happening in the hallowed halls of the National Gallery - its curators and its selection committee are finally facing reality: Realism brings the crowds in!

The huge successes of Vermeer and the early works of Picasso with their relative realistic approach to art, and the dismal failure of Mondrian with its gimmicky delivery of its multicolored squares seems to have been noticed by the powers that be at the gallery and this winter's exhibit of the wonderful works of M.C. Escher is perhaps the vanguard in the "Get Real" art movement which seems to be gathering momentum around the world!

This winter's choice of M.C. Escher is ironic (and surely to get in the claw of the arts intelligentsia cabal); its irony stems from the fact that Escher delights in playing with our reality via meticulous craftsmanship and Teutonic attention to detail; precisely what the arts powers have been trying to destroy and eradicate from our art schools for the last 40 years!

But the public likes Escher! And commerce likes Escher! Witness the dozens of posters of the famous hand holding the crystal ball, or the two hands drawing each other; and the reformed hippies from the 60's like Escher - where birds turn into fish, a city scene is but a chessboard and the art plays with the mind of the love generation, and computer geeks like Escher and his hidden mathematical formulas in his prints and his remorseless precision in his prints and I like Escher because he doesn't need me or any other critic to explain his works!

Maurits Cornelis Escher (is that a terrific artist name or what?) was born in Holland in 1898 and attended the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts where he wanted to become an architect. Escher claims that he changed his mind after meeting a printmaker named Mesquita, who forever entangled the Dutch master with the beauty of the various forms of printmaking.

Art critics often try to use jargon to thicken the soup of what an artist is trying to deliver via his works. Although most modern critics have ignored Escher to a certain degree (after all - if he is SO popular with the public - he can't be that good uh?), the critics nonetheless attempt to describe Escher's work as "claustrophobic and challenging of sanity and bourgeois standards" - Escher himself said that his prints testify that "we live in a beautiful and orderly world... [but] I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties."

Escher belongs to that same group of artists who reshaped our visual world - masters such as Dali and Magritte - and his ability to fascinate us by the way that his craft becomes art and by the manner in which his skill astounds our admiration is what makes him one of the most important and least recognized masters of the 20^th century. That Escher became a master in the midst of the Abstract revolution and the Pop Movement, and this movement and that movement, and that he survived and buried the competition says something about the true nature of 20^th century art and about what will be remembered 100 years from now and what will be treated as a curious aside to art history.

I'd put my money in that the Escher prints from the 60's will be pulling in some big bucks in the art auction rooms of the 22^nd century!

"M.C. Escher" at the National Gallery is on exhibition until April 26, 1998.

The Alexandria art scene, already one of the most vibrant art communities in the nation, is about to receive yet another powerful art infusion of diversity, interest and choice.

Starting with an open house on September 13-14, the Russian Academy of Visual Arts will open its faculty doors and commence what is certain to be the beginning of a major new influence upon the arts scene of not only Alexandria, but also the Greater Washington area.

The idea to launch an art school was conceived by several Russian artists who already possess teaching experiences from various Russian schools. These artists bring a long history of an art system deeply rooted in classical training and techniques. These roots owe their birth to Peter the Great, who envisioned a Russian Academy of Fine Arts early in the 18^th century whose aim was to develop a distinct Russian identity via an unique combination of classical European and native Russian influences.

The current exhibition by the school's faculty is a perfect example of can be achieved via this marriage of skill and creativity. The works of painters Natasha Mokina and Victor Pakhomkin as well as sculptor Leonid Brener show a mastery of their respective medium rarely seen these days in academia as well as that spark of creativity which differentiates the merely skilled from the true artist.

Pakhomkin has chosen a very Russian subject (decorated eggs) for several large paintings, but he brings them to a blunt contemporary state by the overlaying of broad bands of plain color, which at first seem obtrusive, yet become an integral part of these massive canvasses on a more studious look.

Brener's sculptures seem to leap from a powerful classical realism, as depicted in a voluptuous female torso, which twists in sensual eroticism, to several contemporary pieces which are nonetheless anchored in strong skills rather than gimmick.

It is Mokina, currently a drawing teacher at the Corcoran School of Art, who in my opinion dominates the show with one single painting. Her portrait of a beautiful, immortal Russian woman is not just striking by its obvious delivery of pure painting skills, but more importantly by that elusive ability to capture a "look" or a mood in the piece. This is a very brooding beauty we face, with ancient blue eyes which tell Slavic stories by the score, and in an homage to its European cousins, is framed by mini renditions of Renaissance scenes reminiscent of the goals of Peter to force Old Russia into Europe.

The new paintings by Joe Shannon which open on September 5 at Gallery K in Washington can be described in two simple and yet powerful words: satire and sensuality. Sensuality is a warm word, and it fits snugly as the running theme behind most of these works, which manage to deliver a visual aphrodisiac as well as a powerful lesson in what can be accomplished when creativity and technical skill marry in a left-handed artist. Satire is a powerful word and a sharp tool, and quite a few of the Shannon pieces will leave an indelible mark upon the viewer by the entertaining ferocity with which they bite your senses.

In "Leslie Byles as Carmen" we are faced with a doubly erotic image of a female nude, hands arrogantly perched on perfect hips (although a truly bohemian Carmen would have had her hands on her hips the gypsy way: with wrists exposed to the front), facing the artist as she stands in front of another Shannon painting of a Minotaur. The erotic images multiply themselves on the canvas; the Minotaur's penis is juxtaposed with the model's backside, and as the beast lunges within its own canvas, its right hand appears to reach for Leslie's shoulders. This was my favorite piece in the whole show. A series of superb nude paintings in what Shannon calls the Moonscape series add to sense of raw sensuality in the show.

In "Dance Life: Family," Shannon (using his immediate family as models) has managed to create eight figures as well as a variety of props (in a 74"x 84" canvas) into a strange dance of movements, looks and static contemplations. All these elements stand (or rather slide) on a wooden floor, the forced perspective of which (like many of Cezanne's still lifes) make the figures appear as they will slide out of the canvas at any time. Three of the figures stare back at the viewer in three different ways; the man gives a passing glance, the woman (Shannon's daughter, a well known rock musician) in blue shorts is frozen in a static pose, and the pregnant woman in the background has a funny smirk on her smiling face; a fourth figure (Shannon self portrait) ignores the viewer. Sensuality is carried onto this strange tableau by the seated woman (Shannon's wife), whose right hand sends the viewer a one digit sign common to many Shannon pieces, while her dreamy look hints of confidence. Sensuality is accentuated by a second woman (another daughter), dressed in black, caught in frozen movement, moist red mouth slightly open and clear eyes looking over the viewer's shoulders. On the wall, there is a canvas; this painting has a naked self-portrait of Shannon; he looks through a window located behind a nude model and finishes the strange arena of this piece.

Shannon, who is also publishing a satirical coloring book concurrent with the show opening, bites deep with the strong satire in a separate series of paintings which look with an unerring eye at (as he says) "the unintentionally corrupt art world". In Dance Life: Curators and Collectors, and also in Dance Life: Young Curators he uses his experience as artist, art professor, and as a past curator for the Hirshhorn Museum to strike a comical and yet serious chord by creating a stereotypical series of fictional and real characters which any visitor to art galleries and museums will recognize. My favorite piece from this series was Curator Trying to be Art, where a naked old curator and a scandalized woman, both wearing Hirshhorn Museum I.D. badges physically attempt to interpret a sculptural pose.

Throughout many of his pieces, Shannon pays homage to many of his art heroes; there is an abundance of Picasso and Velazquez imagery, as well as Utamaro and others. Finally, it was brought to my attention that Shannon, who was born in Puerto Rico, populates his canvasses with an interesting cross section of people of various minority backgrounds; to me this was refreshing and (since I hadn't personally noticed this fact), successfully accomplished.

This is a magnificent show and a spectacular beginning of the gallery fall season in Washington. I am not sure how the Washington art world cabal will react to it, but I strongly recommend it as a show which delivers in many ways.