Goya

Goya, by Robert Hughes. Knopf. 448 pages. $28. The portrait of Francisco Goya y Lucientes that emerges from Robert Hughes' lively biography is that of an ambitious, tormented genius whose hard work and extraordinary longevity (he lived to the, for his time, unusually old age of 82) enabled him to create works that rank among art's supreme expressions of the tragic vision of life. In Hughes' telling, the Goya of legend is largely an invention of 19th-century biographers who tailored the facts of his career to suit their own agendas.

The photograph of the Washington-based artist Mary Coble, clad only in a pair of plain white underwear, is, quite literally, blood-draining. Etched into her back and legs and arms with a dry tattoo needle are "Martha", "Patrick", "Jorge" and 435 other names — each one indicating someone with a nontraditional sexual orientation who was murdered as the result of a hate crime. The names cover nearly every inch of Coble's flesh, from her neck to her feet. The artist pressed a rectangle of white paper over each tattoo, and the reverse images, traced in the iron-rich brown of Coble blood, cover a nearby wall.

The fantastic wire-and-bead sculptures of Joyce Scott, on view at Goya Contemporary (aka Goya Girl Press), are miniature dissertations on politics and society, served up with an utterly outrageous sense of humor. Invariably, it's the humor that people respond to first, if for no other reason than that most of Scott's topics are almost too painful to contemplate without the therapeutic agency of laughter. What, after all, can one say about race, class and gender in America that doesn't sound like either the proverbial "litany of complaint" the country seems so eager to avoid, or the smug rationalizations of a nation in denial?

What do Josephine Baker, Amelie Matisse and Lili Marlene have in common? Aside from their aura of European sophistication and glamour, they're all featured subjects in New Paintings, a lively exhibition of recent work by Baltimore master Grace Hartigan at C. Grimaldis Gallery. Over the years, Hartigan has repeatedly returned for inspiration to famous women from history, legend and the history of art. She was a leading member of the New York School of Abstract-Expressionist painters during the 1950s, and her subsequent work remains an inventive mix of delightful human forms and pure abstraction.

A striped woolen scarf, a pair of oversized hush puppies and some beat-up trousers, each drawn in the deliberately crude style of an underground comic strip, are all stand-ins for the artist in Phillip Guston's confessional self-portrait Studio Corner, on view at Goya Contemporary gallery's summer group show, called Shine On. During the 1950s, Guston (1913-1980) was a leading abstract-expressionist painter. But earlier in his career, he had aspired to be a cartoonist, and after he become disillusioned with abstraction in the late 1960s, he began to portray himself as the truncated, ineffectual stumblebums who wander aimlessly through his late works.

Goya is a painter for the ages, so each era has had to have its own Goya to admire for its own reasons. The Philadelphia Museum of Art's "Goya: Another Look," gives us a Goya for the '90s, which is to say Goya as decorative artist, entrepreneur, relentless social climber, media celebrity and (surprise!) art collector. This is not the whole Goya, of course. But perhaps it is, alas, the Goya we deserve.Other ages have admired Goya for different (and better) reasons. He has been recruited as a proto-Romantic, proto-Realist, proto-Modernist and -- given the triviality of the present moment -- no doubt will be tagged shortly as a proto-postmodernist, as if gypsies, bullfighting and flamenco ever could be encompassed by so vapid a formula.

Sensing a need for a print workshop where artists could work alone or with master printmakers, artist Martha Macks opened Goya Girl Press last summer.Since then, by her estimate, about 100 artists have worked at the press' headquarters at Mill Centre in Hampden. The press now has a staff of four plus an intern, and there are facilities for several types of printmaking, including etching, lithography, screen printing and monotype.The workshop's spaces include a gallery, now having an inaugural exhibition.

Martha Macks had every intention of using her artistic skills for something more commercial. "I was going to be an interior designer," she says.Then, in 1972, Macks took one class in printmaking, and that was that."

The Spanish painter Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) refuses to be put into any neat intellectual box because his art transcends any single idea. Whether his nominal subject is women or bullfighting or the horror of war, his art always speaks to the whole of the human condition and that is why it moves us. So I may as well say at the outset that my initial reaction to Goya: Images of Women, the beautiful exhibition at Washington's National Gallery of Art, was tempered by skepticism at what at first seemed to be another attempt to make the art of the past more accessible by tying it to contemporary fashion -- in this case the great interest in feminist re-examinations of art history.

The reports of the death of abstract art have been greatly exaggerated. It is alive and kicking, and lives (among other places) in the Baltimore-Washington area. Two concurrent, complementary shows playing Baltimore just now under the umbrella title "Chance & Necessity" offer distinguished proof.At Maryland Art Place, the show curated by abstract painter Power Boothe, contains 22 paintings by 20 artists, all living in this area. And at Goya Girl Press there's a show of 20 prints by the same artists.

ART SOLEDAD SALAME / / 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; noon-5 p.m. Saturday by appointment. Goya Contemporary, 3000 Chestnut Ave., Suite 214. Free. 410-366-2001 or goyacontemporary .com. ....................... Salame's art is a celebration of the beauty and diversity of the natural environment and humanity's collective responsibility for its stewardship. At Goya Contemporary, her recent mixed-media paintings reflect her continuing fascination with the world's watery places and the flora and fauna that inhabit them.

Joyce Scott, whose trademark beaded sculptures often address painful issues of race, class and gender served up with a dollop of wry wit, is known for the uninhibited inventiveness of her art. Her new show at Goya Contemporary extends her beadwork ideas into the glass medium, marking a significant evolution in this prolific artist's career. Scott recently spent time at the Pilchuck Glass School in Tacoma, Wash., founded by celebrated glass artist Dale Chihuly. Working with master glassmakers, Scott created an entirely new body of work in blown, lampworked, painted and pressed glass that exploits the whimsical, fanciful qualities of the medium while challenging traditional distinctions between art and craft.

Wait, wait, don't tell me! Isn't that a thingamabob? No, I mean a whatchamacallit? A gizmo? Kay Hwang's obsessively controlled drawings of what look like rows of mechanical gadgets or electronics parts, on view at Goya Girl Contemporary, leave you with the strange feeling that somewhere - though, come to think of it, you can't quite remember where - you've seen these things before, whatever they are. They have the deeply familiar look of ordinary things...

Spotlighters' one-act plays The lowdown -- In keeping with its commitment to nurture developing theater artists, the Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre is presenting two one-act plays staged by young directors. Ian Bonds, an actor with experience directing film, will make his local stage directorial debut with Cherie Vogelstein's Date With a Stranger. The short play concerns an intense, 15-minute relationship that develops between two strangers. And, Kelly Cavanaugh, also a local actor, directs David Campton's The Cagebirds, an allegory about a group of self-absorbed women who are kept under lock and key. If you go -- Showtimes at the Spotlighters, 817 St. Paul St., are 8 p.m. today and Aug. 24, and 2 p.m. Aug. 20 and 27. Tickets are $15. Call 410-752-1225 or visit www.spotlighters.

A striped woolen scarf, a pair of oversized hush puppies and some beat-up trousers, each drawn in the deliberately crude style of an underground comic strip, are all stand-ins for the artist in Phillip Guston's confessional self-portrait Studio Corner, on view at Goya Contemporary gallery's summer group show, called Shine On. During the 1950s, Guston (1913-1980) was a leading abstract-expressionist painter. But earlier in his career, he had aspired to be a cartoonist, and after he become disillusioned with abstraction in the late 1960s, he began to portray himself as the truncated, ineffectual stumblebums who wander aimlessly through his late works.

Liliana Porter's charming but philosophically fraught visual fantasies, on view at Goya Contemporary gallery, come wrapped in the glittery, bright primary colors one associates with all the good things about childhood, like boxes of chocolates covered in foil or cunningly wrapped Christmas presents under the tree. Indeed, the nominal subjects of Porter's large-format color photographs are mostly children's playthings: tiny figures of princesses, clowns, ballerinas and circus acrobats; stuffed dogs and carved wooden reindeer; porcelain-skinned dolls and other adorable personages that look as if they just emerged from some youngster's toy chest.

A few weeks ago, artist-publisher Martha Macks and her Goya-Girl Press packed up their best fine arts prints and headed off to New York for the annual Armory Show, one of the world's premier venues for contemporary art. But this weekend, Macks and Co. won't have to go anywhere - because the art world is coming right here to Baltimore. The Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints and New Editions opens today at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The two-day event will bring to town nearly two dozen galleries, dealers and publishers from across the country that specialize in the fine art of printmaking.

"Workshop Prints," the latest show at Goya Girl Press (Baltimore's print workshop), has its ups and downs. For starters, it lacks the unifying theme of a previous show of prints by sculptors and a future one of prints by abstract artists. Prints by artists who have worked at Goya Girl over the past year amounts to a somewhat less than electrifying exhibit description.Then there's a wide variation in the number of prints shown by these eleven artists, from six to one. But the greatest variation is in the quality of the work, which runs from arrestingly good through mundane to, in one case, an amateurish-looking jumble.

On May 11, 2006, ANNA STROUMBIS (nee Mavrides); beloved wife of James Stroumbis; devoted mother of Mimi Burch and her husband Charles, Angela/Lisa Mitsos and her husband James and Telly Stroumbis; loving grandmother of George and Anna Demetrides and Jeffrey and Joshua Mitsos; dear sister of Tasso Mavrides and Katherine Maistros. She was active in the founding of St. Demetrios Church, in the Choirs of the Church of the Annunciation and St. Demetrios, in the EONA, she was twice president of the Philoptochos Society and she helped start the GOYA at St. Demitrios.