Artist

There are only a handful of photographers whose names are instantly recognizable, and fewer still whose images are indelibly imprinted in the public mind. Ansel Adams belongs to that small minority of artists who not only enjoy the highest critical acclaim but whose works are beloved by millions of ordinary people who find reflected in them an image of their own spiritual strivings. Now Adams is the subject of a luminous retrospective that opens Saturday at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

"The horrors of the material are such that I have to go slow or I shall go mad!" wrote artist Judy Chicago soon after beginning the research for the emotionally wrenching series of mixed-media artworks titled Holocaust Project: From Darkness Into Light, which she embarked on in the mid-1980s. By then, the Chicago native, who was born Judith Sylvia Cohen in 1939, had already won worldwide renown as a pioneering feminist artist and creator of The Dinner Party (1979), a monumental installation honoring great women throughout history that has since become an icon of the women's movement.

Brandi Carlile doesn't mind that Columbia, her record label, isn't making a big fuss over her. Her latest album, The Story, is her second for the mighty company, and it isn't the center of a splashy, expensive promotional campaign. No glitzy videos on MTV or high-profile appearances on TRL. Besides, none of that would suit Carlile's profile, anyway. Sure, she's 26 with camera-friendly looks. But her ponderous lyrics, roots-rock sound and hold-back-nothing vocal delivery don't exactly fit into pop's current climate of beat-driven vapidity.

"Rembrandt's Eyes," by Simon Schama. Alfred A. Knopf. 640 pages. $50.The problem with Rembrandt has always been that precious little is known for sure about the artist's life. This has left scholarly biographers with a dilemma: Either paint the life in broad strokes while concentrating mainly on the work (not so easy, actually, since the authenticity of so many Rembrandts remains in dispute), or indulge in massive, albeit informed, speculation about the life and risk blurring the line between history and historical fiction.

A federal judge has denied a request by the Ravens to throw out a jury's finding that the team copied its helmet logo from a design by an amateur Baltimore artist.At the same time, U.S. District Court Judge Marvin J. Garbis gave the artist's attorneys permission to seek employment records related to the claim of a former Ravens employee. The woman has come forward since the trial to say she saw the artist's submission at the team's offices last year.The jury ruled Nov. 3 in favor of Frederick E. Bouchat, the amateur artist and security guard who worked at a state office building.

Well, of course, New York installation artist Fred Wilson is delighted to be one of the 32 recipients of this year's John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants.You could even say thrilled, stunned, happy, excited and profoundly and forever grateful. "The whole thing is a blur," he says, still sounding shocked even though the announcement came in late June.Wilson, 44, is the artist whose 1992 exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society played a catalytic role in how museums view themselves.

What is the difference between sight and vision?For 40 years, Sophia Libman has taken great joy in creating paintings in oils and acrylics, collages from found objects and drawings in pencil and ink. But since 1992, a disease called macular degeneration has been stealing her ability to see.She hasn't stopped creating art. As the 83-year-old's visual acuity has diminished, her ability to capture the essence of her subjects seems to have increased. Her brush strokes have become looser, simpler, more expressive.

"The Artist of the Missing," by Paul LaFarge. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 241 pages. $13.Some novels are absolutely engrossing even if one is never quite sure what they are about. Sentences, pages and finally whole chapters go by in patient anticipation that the mystery will dissolve and everything will become clear.Most authors sooner or later oblige readers' desire for resolution. Paul LaFarge, whose "Artist of the Missing" tantalizes without ever quite allowing itself to be pinned down, is an exception.

Visitors to the American Visionary Art Museum know Joe Coleman: He is the painter of morbid images of human suffering, whose work combines the observant humor of R. Crumb and the detailed genius of Hieronymous Bosch.Coleman is the provocative center of an engrossing documentary about his life and work, "R.I.P. Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman," in which filmmaker Robert-Adrian Pejo wisely allows the artist to speak for himself.And speak he does, on subjects as far-ranging as global ecology, the population explosion, Catholicism, sexuality and his own troubled inner life.

If the Artist Formerly Known as Prince really wanted to be honest about why he's releasing a "New Master" version of his 1982 hit, "1999," he wouldn't just change the song's backing track. He'd also change the chorus:Two-thousand-zero-zero, party over, oops, out of timeSo this year I'm gonna profit off of "1999."As has been widely reported, the Artist is peeved by the fact that his original recording of "1999" is owned by Warner Bros. Records. That means that every time a fan buys a copy of the oldie, Warner gets the majority of the money.

Taking its origins from 17th-century Paris salons, the summer salon show tradition flourishes every July at Annapolis galleries, which hold invitational exhibits to showcase artists' new works. Last weekend this event was celebrated at McBride Gallery on Main Street, where for the past 29 years gallery owner Cynthia McBride has introduced a growing number of first-rate representational artists to local admirers. The shows encourage artists and viewers to get acquainted through an understanding of the artist's work.

Bromst Dan Deacon [Carpark Records] *** (3 STARS) Rolling in the dirt, his enormous glasses slipping off his face, his shirt wet with sweat, Dan Deacon led what felt like an electro-pop revival inside a packed sweltering tent at the Virgin festival at Pimlico. That was two summers ago, and he had just released Spiderman of the Rings, his national critical breakthrough. The Baltimore artist had long built his reputation in and around the city and beyond on shows like the one at the Virgin festival.

The red, white and blue "Hope" posters bearing the image of Barack Obama brought worldwide fame to the Los Angeles street artist who created them and arguably helped their subject win the White House. But Shepard Fairey, a guerrilla artist willing to go to jail for his distinctive graffiti, hasn't gone entirely mainstream. Fairey was arrested Friday night in Boston on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition, Supply and Demand. Two warrants had been issued for Fairey on Jan. 24 after police determined he had tagged property in two locations with his street art campaign featuring Andre the Giant and the word "Obey," said Boston police officer James Kenneally.

Andrew Wyeth, whose durable and realistic paintings of rural Pennsylvania and Maine made him one of America's best-loved artists, and made his paintings some of the priciest in the world, died yesterday. He was 91. Mr. Wyeth, who divided his time between Chadds Ford, Pa., and Cushing, Maine, died in his sleep at his home in Pennsylvania, the Brandywine River Museum told the Associated Press. Hundreds of Mr. Wyeth's paintings are displayed at the museum. In 2006, a retrospective of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art attracted more than 175,000 visitors in about four months.

Sunshine enters the back windows of Viki Keating's Riva home and penetrates an assemblage of colored glass. As light is refracted from every angle, Keating thinks back to her childhood. She wanted to be an artist for as long as she can remember. In high school, she used her artistic flair as a floral arranger, and after graduating from an Indiana art institute, she worked mostly with paints and ceramics. But it was an art class in 1980 that introduced Keating to her true calling: glass.

Lalah Hathaway wanted crab cakes. So while the Los Angeles-based soul singer was in town recently doing promotional work, we got together for dinner at a friendly, down-home joint in Linthicum. The artist -- dressed casually in jeans and a clover-green top, dreadlocks framing her inviting smile -- was excited about Self Portrait, her new album in stores this week. The CD, Hathaway's debut on the revamped Stax label, is her most fully realized set to date. With her alluring amber tone and lyrical sensitivity, the daughter of tragic soul genius Donny Hathaway is one of the most distinctive vocalists of her generation.

At card parties that my family and neighbors threw during the Arkansas summers nights of my childhood, there was one artist whose music always solicited shouts throughout the room: Bobby Womack. Sometimes, the loud card game - which always became heated as expletives flew through the smoky air - stopped completely. "Turn that Bobby Womack record up!" my aunt Phyl would command. "I gotta hear this. Stop the game, y'all." The participants didn't seem to mind as everybody sang along to the record on the old hi-fi: If you get anything out of life/You got to put up with the toils and strife ... Eventually, the bid whist game and loud cussing would resume.

Can exclusion be a form of art? The artist who came up with the idea of closing off Mount Vernon Place to make citizens appreciate the park more fully is guilty of extreme arrogance ("Artist's trial by ire," March 23). Following his line of thinking, perhaps we should starve ourselves so that we will enjoy eating more? Or beat our heads against the wall so that we'll understand how much better it feels when we stop? The fence around that beautiful park is ugly. Why would any city official agree to the closure of a park for the purpose of an artistic statement that suggests we don't appreciate the park until we're fenced out of it?

The daughter of the late A. Aubrey Bodine, who became one of the country's best-known pictorial journalists during his 50-year career at The Sun, is protesting an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art that fails to include her father among photography's pioneering figures. Jennifer B. Bodine, of Denton on the Eastern Shore, where the photographer snapped many of his most famous images, appealed to BMA trustees last week to overrule a curator's decision not to show her father's work, arguing that "Bodine has earned his rightful place alongside [Alfred]

When you first look at the early work of artist David Charles, it can be a bit off-putting. Like many artists, Charles drew and painted what was around him. That often meant blistering, emotional, colorful portraits of life and death in the Park Heights community where he grew up. Some of his first pieces told tales of violence, gunplay and lives lost too soon. He saw much of this as a child growing up near Hayward and Cordelia avenues. "I can't say I didn't have nobody to push me in the right direction because my father's always been there.