Some Art I've Seen Lately
I spent this weekend driving around and looking at art openings. I missed one that I really wanted to check out at Box 13. I’ll try to check it out again later. This post is not a review of any exhibit. Just a few random thoughts about some of what I saw this weekend. (I have at least one full-on review to write.)
Miguel Ángel Madrigal is a Mexican artist currently on view at Barbara Davis Gallery. As far as I can tell from a cursory internet search, carved wooden dogs are his thing. This art is pretty cute, but I wonder why one would have such a piece. If you are a dog-lover, get a real dog.
Photographer Karen Navarro has a solo exhibit at Foto Relevance. I know nothing about her, beyond what was on the press release for this exhibit. “Karen Navarro is an Argentinian-born multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Houston.” I liked her photo collages fine, but I liked her text-based installations best.
The piece leading to the sign “Somos Mllones” had a rectangle of stones on the floor with an invitation for the viewer to walk across it barefoot. I briefly considered it, but demurred.
Adela Andea is a Houston artist who has been making glowing blobs out of LEDs and other glowing electronic stuff for years. I think I first saw her work in 2010 or 2011. The piece above is unusual for Andea because it uses white light instead of multicolored electronics.
Sea Star is a little more colorful, and the floor portion changes color continuously. This exhibit is up currently at Anya Tish Gallery.
I saw other new art this weekend, but I want to give it it’s own post. Meanwhile, I went to the Museum of Fine Arts yesterday because I wanted to see the Philip Guston exhibit one more time before it closed. (It closes today, January 16.) So the rest of this post is stuff I saw at the MFAH.
One thing that I loved about the exhibit was that it included his very earliest mature work, and one sees how even his earliest visual ideas carried through to the end of his painting life. The idea of boys play-acting ancient warriors with wooden swords and trashcan lid shields comes back into his paintings towards the end of his life, except at the end, it’s an old guy in bed dreaming about make-believe battle.
I wonder how Guston’s wife. Musa McKim, felt about him wearing shoes to bed. Or how he would clutch fully loaded paintbrushes even as he slept.
Guston had spent about a decade being an abstract expressionist, but worked his way back into depicting recognizable things. This was one of the transistional works.
Here is a selection of other work I saw yestrday at the MFAH.
Corneille and Pierre Alechinsky were both members of the early ‘60s painting movement call COBRA. I’ve always thought COBRA was kind of underrated. Alechinsky’s tribute to his fellow Belgian James Ensor pays excellent tribute to a weird old master, who feels a little left behind by art history, like COBRA itself.
This photocollage by André Ramos-Woodard is a wall-sized installation it the MFAH. The basketball court pictureed here is in Beaumont, Texas. I think Ramos-Woodard has some Texas roots, but that about all I know about him.
On the left is a detail from Heavenly Jerusalem showing just how much stuff is on this canvas. On one hand, it is easy to see Anselm Kiefer’s art as a heavy handed attempt to express German guilt over the attempted destruction of the Jews in Europe, but I feel drawn to the images he creates.
I like Barkley Hendricks a lot, and have a fond memory of his large solo exhibiton at CAMH in 2010.
Because of the lacation of the MFAH, they connect the buildings of its campus with tunnels. After they put in the James Turrell tunnel, they seem to have concluded that commisioning artists to decorate the tunnels was the way to go. The MFAH is leading the world in the genre of tunnel art. In fact, I can’t think of any other art tunnels in the world, although my gut says they must exist. Any art historian/spelunkers care to weigh in?
Damascus Gate is 50 feet wide. I wonder what alkyd paint is, and can you get it at your local art supply store? Maybe it had its moment in the 1960s and 70s.
I have always loved John Chamberlain, and especially pieces like Old Anson Impact. These look like a crumpled up piece of paper tossed onto the floor by a frustrated writer, back when writers used typewriters.
Josef Koudelka seems to specialize in down-home images from Eastern Europe, by I loved this acheological photograph. There is something about ruins that appeals to me.
I love Lee Bontecou, but I noticed that the MFAH’s wall information is not up-to-date. Bontecou died in 2022.
I wonder if John Deere’s new “memorandum of understanding” permitting farmers to make their own repairs of John Deere farm equipment allows for farmers to make art out of their tractors? Somehow I think Cabrera’s Arbol de la Vida tractor is way too old to be covered by whatever contract John Deere had.
1992 was the year of the Rodney King riots, and the phrase “Build South Central without liquor stores” was apparently posted after the riots by church groups. It makes me wonder if Bradford was feeling nostagic for that moment.
I know Salle Werner Vaughn is a Houston-based artist, and this mysteriour painting Night was a spooky presence in a gallery full of minimalist artworks. Her house is, I believe, just across the street from Josh Pazda Hiram Butler Gallery. I have always been fascinated by that house because of the huge platonic solid sculptures in its yard.
I have hitherto avoided Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms because they seemed a little gimmicky. But I’m glad I waited in the short line yesterday to check it out. It is a fantastically disorienting experience to be inside this room. They wanted to keep the line moving, so one was only allowed a minute or so before you had to move on. I would like to spend a longer period of time there.
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