What You Liked: The Top 10 Pan Posts of 2014

Robert Boyd

I'm always slightly perplexed by what gets read (or at least "viewed") on this blog. But I shouldn't be. It's pretty simple, really. There are a certain number of people who check in regularly on the blog, and a certain number that check in occasionally. These numbers don't change all that much over the course of a year. They are what I consider the natural readership of The Great God Pan Is Dead. That readership could be increased if I were a better writer; if I had more writers contributing; if I covered a broader range of arts; if I covered a broader geographic area; if I posted more frequently; etc. I'm not likely to do any of those things, so the baseline readership will probably remain about the same. And I thank all of you for spending a little time here.

So what distinguishes these top 10 posts from any other? I would like to say their inherent superiority, but mostly it's due to outside links. When some other blog or popular website links to The Great God Pan Is Dead, it sends a flood of new readers over. The sites that have contributed most this blog's "extra" page views this year have been Swamplot, The Comics Journal, Glasstire, The Comics Reporter and Hyperallergic. It almost goes without saying that these are some of my favorite online publications, and any time one of them deigns to notice The Great God Pan Is Dead, I feel honored.

The following are the top 10 posts of 2014, starting with the most popular.


1. Joseph Cohen's Use-Value. This was a studio visit with painter Joseph Cohen. A nice little post about a very interesting artist, but why did it get so many page views? It was mentioned on Swamplot and apparently captured the interest of a lot of Swamplot readers. Cohen built his unusual triangular house on an unusual triangle-shaped lot--a lot many have noticed over the years because it's right on the Heights bike trail. Cohen designed the house with the help of an architect, and built it himself. He's an interesting painter whose work is often quite beautiful, but I think it was the brilliance of the house itself that attracted many readers. Houses designed by artists are a special, eccentric genre of architecture, and this is a brilliant example of the genre.


2. Lonestar Explosion 2014 - Untitled by Nikki Thornton. This brief post by Dean Liscum is the only one that got its rank organically. No site linked to it--most of its page views were sent over by Google and Facebook; in other words, via the Internet version of word-of-mouth. I think the performance hit readers' OMG! buttons. It is a bit grisly, and the contrast of the horrible pig's head and the beautiful woman is striking. Thornton appears to be bottomless (she's not, actually), so it almost seems like a strange birth scene. It confirms the average person's idea of performance art as shock art. I assume that for all of those reasons, it ended up capturing the attention of readers. They should have come to the actual performance--it was part of a carnival of smallish performances happening simultaneously at Box 13 as part of the Houston International Performance Art Biennale.


3. Argument for the Elimination of Art Fairs in Houston: HFAF 2014, part 1. Every year I go to the art fairs in Houston, and every year I'm appalled. Most of the readers who wanted to share the hate found their way to this post on their own, but a bunch were helped over by a link from Glasstire (in which Bill Davenport outsourced the hate-viewing to me). There was too much horrible art for one post--I concluded with part 2.


4. Real Estate Art--Bert Long Edition. This long-running series ("Real Estate Art") usually involves me taking some photos published on the local real estate site HAR and trying to identify the art in them. I used to spend a lot of time on HAR, but since I moved this summer, I look at it less frequently. So most of the Real Estate Art posts in 2014 involve looking at houses that Swamplot has brought my attention to (and to which I always link back). Then Swamplot notices my posts and links back to them! It's logrolling at its finest, but I always get the better end of the deal since Swamplot sends so many readers my way.

This was a very special "Real Estate Art" post, since it dealt with the home of the late Bert Long, one of Houston's most important artists. Not only was Long's house full of incredible local art, it was designed by an important local architect, Brett Zamore. The post was enlivened with photos from Zamore's webpage showing the house--his first--in "before" and "after" stages.

After I posted this, I got the opportunity to tour the house in person, which resulted in another post here.


5. The Diminishing Returns of Being an Artist.  When cartoonist Mike Dawson wrote an essay on how poorly his latest graphic novel sold and what that meant for him as an artist, it ignited a firestorm. This post is one of many responses to it. Because the Comics Journal and the Comics Reporter linked back to it, this post got a lot of readers. These were readers mostly interested in comics, but to me the post applies to all artists.


6.  Real Estate Art on Woodland Heights.  Nothing special about this post (in my opinion)--another art-filled house on HAR. But because Swamplot noticed, a lot of real estate fans came over to Pan to check it out.


7. Bill Davenport and his shop, Bill's Junk.  When Painting the Town Orange was published, I learned that there was a chapter dropped for length. I offered to publish that chapter for Pete Gershon, the author. Because it covered four artistic environments, we published it in four parts, of which this is one. Again I have Swamplot to thank for this post's popularity. Art environments like Bill's Junk are one place where the interests of The Great God Pan Is Dead and Swamplot happily overlap.


8. Real Estate Art: 2630 West Lane Pl. I love this Real Estate Art post because the homeowners have art by three of my favorite local artists--Dorothy Hood, Laura Lark and Mark Flood.


9. Real Estate Art: 2526 Bellmeade. This elegant house had a beautiful James Surls tucked under the stairs.


10. Creatives in a Post-Industrial Society. This post was prompted by a trip to an artspace in Brooklyn called Pioneer Works. Its readership was enhanced by linkbacks from Hyperallergic and the Comics Reporter. Like "The Diminishing Returns of Being an Artist," this one used its subject as a jumping off point to talk about bigger issues.


Which leads me to a final entry on this list. It's not in the top 10, but it's my personal favorite post of the year, a piece of writing that I'm proud of. "The Show Is So Over" was about Jamal Cyrus's temporary installation A Jackson in Your House, but it was really about the complexities of gentrification and art. In fact, four posts this year make up an unintentional quartet on the position (societally and economically) of the artist and art in this new millennium: "The Show Is So Over," "The Diminishing Returns of Being an Artist," "Creatives in a Post-Industrial Society" and "People Should Get Paid For Their Work." These issues have been on my mind, and I expect that to continue in 2015. I hope you all return to read them.

Real Estate Art--Bert Long Edition

Robert Boyd

Swamplot alerted us to the fact that Bert Long, Jr.'s house is for sale. Long, one of Houston's most important artists for the past few decades, died in February of last year. The house is in the Fifth Ward on Buck St., a few blocks south of I-10 and east of Waco St. The block on which it sits has some nice looking houses as well as a few that appear to be in serious disrepair. I guess that's one way to define a transitional neighborhood.


Bert Long, Jr.'s house

The Fifth Ward is the kind of neighborhood that West Side anglos are afraid of. But like I said, it's in transition. The Fifth Ward may have been called the the "Bloody Nickel" for decades, but in 2013, there were no murders in the Fifth Ward. This might not seem like something to really brag about, but it's more than the Heights or Montrose can say!

The neighborhood is very gradually gentrifying. And Long's house is a part of this. Before 1999, it was a dilapidated duplex, a double-barrel shotgun house.


Long's house before being remodeled



Long's house before being remodeled

But young Houston architect Brett Zamore decided to rehab it. This became his masters thesis project at Rice University. Now it's identified as "House 00" on his website.  You can see how this project was the seed of so much of what he has done subsequently, such as the Shot Trot house and the Zamore Homes kit houses. To me, what makes a city is not its grand architectural statements--skyscrapers, museums, etc.--but people's dwellings. So even though he doesn't have any big public commissions here in Houston, Zamore is my favorite local architect.

Here's what House 00 looked like after Zamore got done with it.









The door you see is original but repurposed. I love that Zamore carefully preserved the signs of wear on the door. The wall there is original shiplap which has been coated in varnish.

But these photos (taken from Zamore's website) show it in 2000, I think, before anyone was living in it. Fourteen years or so of Bert Long have changed the place. Here are some photos from HAR.



In 14 years, a lot of plants can sprout. Now the house is well-shaded, which probably helps on the electric bills.



And of course, like all artists' homes I've ever seen, Long's house is packed with art. Some I can identify as his, but there appears to be art by others there as well. (As usual, I'd like to ask readers for help identifying pieces shown in these photos.)



The blue relief portrait of Long was created by Margaret Losinski. It is part of a series of portraits she has made of Houston artists.



The wooden object to the right of the American flag is, of course, a small sculpture by James Surls.

The house is fairly small--960 square feet. It's hard to imagine that it was once a duplex, but shotgun houses were built for poor people and tend to be tiny.

At some point a studio building/garage was added to the property.





This studio/garage is quite large--it's actually as big as the house! Part of it is for the car, but the left-over part has central air and plumbing and could be used as an apartment.

The asking price is $200,000, which seems pretty high for this subdivision. (There are houses within a few blocks going for $70K and $60K.) But there are two buildings on this lot, and this is obviously a special house. You wouldn't just be buying a piece of cookie-cutter shelter--you would be buying art history. Brett Zamore's first house! Bert Long, Jr.'s home! I realize that these facts won't mean much to the average Houston house hunter, but they mean a lot to me.

The house has one more interesting art connection--the realtor is Star Massing--wife of Art Guy Jack Massing. I hope she sells it to someone who can appreciate its unique history.