Real Estate Art #2

Robert Boyd

It's time for another voyeuristic look at other people's art collections, courtesy of the fine people at HAR.com. This time, we have a condo on Shepherd in River Oaks. I recognize a lot of the art, but I'm not going to spoil it (at least, not right away). If you can name the artists who made any of these pieces, let me know in the comments. After a while, I'll pipe up with what I know. But I will give one clue--this collector likes to buy local--many of the pieces here are by Houston area artists. Nice to see!

If you see a piece you think you recognize but can't quite tell, I suggest checking out the HAR listing--there are a lot more interior photos there. Oh, and if you like the condo, it's yours for a mere $2.475 million.

Because there are so many photos, I'm going to number them. If you want to identify one in the comments, please refer to the photo number.


photo 1

I think this is an entryway. Behind the gate, we have a mural. Then the gate itself is pretty interesting. And inside the gate there is a sculpture on a pedestal and a bunch of paintings of cats.


photo 2

Then there is this huge room with multiple artworks. From left to right is a colorful grid on the wall to the left, a colorful ladder-like piece, a pair of paintings and a sculpture, and four colorful bowl-like wall sculptures.


photo 3

The room keeps on going. Again from left to right, the bowl-like sculptures, another colorful transparent ladder, and two large corner pieces. We can see a little bit of what appears to be three paintings cut off on the right edge, and there is a glass object on the table.


photo 4

The room keeps on going though. There is a red and grey column/sculpture in the middle and what appears to be a boxy sculpture on the floor on the right.


photo 5

I won't try to address the things on the balcony, which we will see more clearly in the next photo. But again left to right, there is a pink sculpture under the TV, then three paintings that are two hard to really see, a sculpture of a dog, three chrome-plated wall pieces, a couple more paintings that are too hard to see, four round paintings and a red mobile.


photo 6

Then up in the balcony, there is a very large painting and a set of five colorful sculptures that look sort of like jacks.


photo 7

I can't tell much about the paintings on the staircase. Above them is another dog statue and two colorful dog-cows.


photo 8

The dog artist shows up again here, along with a glass sculpture on a pedestal in the corner.


photo 9

This is a bedroom, I suppose. At least it has a bed in it. Left to right, there is a very large, very colorful painting, then a stack of six paintings. To the left of the bed is an interesting grey abstract floor sculpture, then another fucking dog painting, and another mobile, consisting of cursive letters.


photo 10

And here are a couple of sculptures outside on a balcony.

And the astonishing thing is this is not by any stretch all the art in this condo. This homeowner's taste is not exactly mine--by a longshot--but there are definitely some pieces here that I like, and I like the way they have filled their home with a wide variety of artworks. And unlike a lot of collectors, therse don't seem to shy away from sculpture. Given the number of the pieces and the size of many of them, the owners must be prominent local collectors. According to HCAD, their names are Don and Christine Sanders. These names mean nothing to me though. However, I will hazard a guess that they buy a lot of art from McClain Gallery.

Like I said, I recognize some of this art. Do you? Let us know your guesses!

UPDATE:  We got some great guesses here and even more over on Facebook. Based on the collective knowledge of everyone, here's the art I can identify:

photo 1 - The mural is by Aaron Parazette, but no one had guesses for the other pieces.
photo 2 - The ladder piece is by Stephen Dean. The blue dog paintings and dog sculpture are by Rodrigue, and the discs are by Christian Eckart.
photo 3 - Another ladder piece by Stephen Dean and the corner pieces are also by Christain Eckhart.
photo 4 - It was suggested that the crinkly grey thing on the red column is by Nancy Rubins, and the big ring in the forground on the right is another Christian Eckart.
photo 5 - The silver pieces on the wall are by Christian Eckart, but no clue on the rest.
photo 6 - Of course, the large painting on the left is a James Rosenquist. The jacks-like sculptures on the right are by Ed Hendricks.
photo 7 - The two cows are by Rodrigue.
photo 8 - The painting in the foreground is by Rodrigue.
photo 9 - That's a big Peter Halley on the left, another Rodrigue above the bed, and a Joseph Havel hanging from the ceiling.
photo 10 - A pair of Ed Hendricks sculptures.

People Keep on Painting in Houston

Robert Boyd

Twenty-seven years ago, the Houston Museum of Fine Art mounted an exhibit called Fresh Paint. It featured work by 44 painters and attempted (unsuccessfully) to define a Houston school of painting. Aaron Parazette's goal with In Plain Sight (on view at McClain Gallery) is more modest. In the catalog for the exhibit, Parazette wrote, "While there has been no shortage of opportunities to see paintings created by Houston artists, the opportunity to consider a large group of such work has been missing." That is one thing In Plain Sight accomplishes. Another, perhaps, is to introduce collectors to the work of local painters they may not have yet seen. McClain is a blue chip gallery, and being shown there potentially provides entrée for artists who have mainly shown in alternative art spaces or smaller galleries.

Parazette adds that "the exhibit is non-thematic and multi-generational by design, with the work selected to represent a full range of painting being made in Houston." The word "multi-generational" jumped out. Many of the Fresh Paint painters are still around and painting. Were any of them were included in In Plain Sight? Just two as far as I can see, Gael Stack and Perry House.

Unlike Fresh Paint, In Plain Sight makes no claims for its content except that it is broadly representative of work in Houston. However, choosing to do a painting show implies that painting is really important in Houston. And let's acknowledge that painting is the most economically viable fine art in town. It's easy for galleries and art fairs to show and easy for collectors to acquire. It doesn't require a lot of floor space to display it. It lasts a long time. It's highly optical. And this show certainly demonstrates that there is painting being done for all tastes. (But I'd like to see similar shows for other genres of contemporary art in Houston--as well as shows for those liminal works that don't easily fit into one genre or another.)

Here are a few--but just a few--of the paintings in In Plain Sight that I liked. The show is up through October 13, and I highly recommend stopping in and checking it out.


Bill Davenport, It's hard to be hip over 30, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 27" x 29"

It was nice to see a Bill Davenport painting if only to remind us that Bill Davenport can paint very well. I don't think of Davenport as a painter per se--Bill's Junk is sort of a social sculpture, and a lot of his other work is sculptural, participatory or both. But painting is a part of his work as well.


Christian Eckart, 3 Unit Superimposed Circuit Painting 2006, 2006, acrylic urethane on 1/2" aluminum plate, 115" x 84"

This sleek beautiful piece by Christian Eckart makes me think of old-timey slot-car race tracks.


Jeremy DePrez, Totem, 2012, acrylic, oil and wax on canvas over shaped support, 77" x 44"

It's hard for me to imagine Jeremy DePrez making a work titled Totem, much less a colorful Sean Scully-like painting like this. But he did and it's great.


Lane Hagood, Hand Painting, 2012, oil on canvas, 64" x 48"

So much of what Lane Hagood does are dumb paintings of smart things. Hand is kind of a dumb painting of a dumb thing that you can't stop looking at. That, in essence, is the mysterious power of Lane Hagood.


Mark Flood, The Things, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 87" x 83"

Mark Flood has split his painting into two streams--cynical dyspeptic misanthropic paintings on one hand and beautiful abstractions incorporating lace on the other. With The Things, he seems to have achieved a synthesis of the two.


Pat Colville, Gray Form, 2011, acrylic on canvas on panel, 36" x 36"

Pat Colville is someone who should have been in Fresh Paint but wasn't for some reason. She's a Houston art treasure. She does paintings that make me think of biological or mineralogical  forms seen under a microscope. I love the way the forms float.


Ryan Geiger, the deeper i dig, the deeper i get (right panel), 2012m acrylic on paper, each panel 30" x 22"

I wasn't really aware of Ryan Geiger's work when I saw this piece. The text and the fine rendering give it a hint of Wayne White. I certainly want to see more of his work after seeing this piece.


Susie Rosmarin, (title unknown), 2003, acrylic on canvas 72" x 84"

Susie Rosmarin's optical effect paintings are hypnotic. But it's difficult to get their colors right in a photo--which is my way of apologizing for getting them wrong here. Just go see the exhibit!


William Betts, Frigate, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 72"

William Betts is best known for his paintings based on images from CCTV surveillance. This image of a warship seems to be filtered through some digital imaging system, which gives it a curiously in-the-moment feeling.



Cheyane Ramos, Item, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 36" x 24"

Cheyanne Ramos has incredible painting skills, but she isn't showing it off in Item and an earlier similar painting, Kerri Green and the Living Unicorn. She seems to be playing with the concept of "fan art," including the awkward painting (those bizarre highlights, for example) and the weird couplings. The funny thing (for me, at least) is that the pop culture references fly right over my head. I think these figures exist in some pop culture property, but I have no idea which. I also love her snazzy new signature.

Invisible Curator: Nearly Monochrome Paintings

By Robert Boyd

I went to the art gallery at HCC Northeast at Northline for the first time this week to see the Robert McShan/Michella Fanini exhibit Rose Colored Glass. It's an awkward space.



It's a glass box, which makes it pretty hard to hang art. But curator Jonathan Lopez explained that it had one big advantage. Because it's a glass box, students (and anyone else) can see the art whenever the building is open--and the building is open until 10 pm most nights. This is a semi-exception to the rule that community college galleries must have the most inconvenient hours possible. It's a nice show--see it if you have a chance.


Robert McShan, not sure what the title is or the media!, 2010 (Photo by Robert Boyd.)

This piece by Robert McShan woke up the invisible curator. It's almost monochromatic, but if you look close you can see more than one color--it appears to have colored powder or sand in the surface. I saw similar pieces this weekend. So that's the theme of this week's Invisible Curator show--almost monochrome paintings. It has a little to do with the gallery talk by Christian Eckart that I wrote about, who spoke at length about monochrome paintings and the sublime.

The other nearly monochrome works I saw were at Labotanica. The exhibit, Painting as Performance, was curated by Ayanna Jolivet McCloud and it is her paintings I want to call attention to.


Ayanna Jolivet McCloud, untitled,acrylic on canvas, 2009. (Photo by Robert Boyd.)


Ayanna Jolivet McCloud, untitled,acrylic on canvas, 2003-2010. (Photo by Robert Boyd.)

These obviously refer Robert Ryman.  But perhaps what makes these "performances" are the deliberate damage to the picture plan--the dents and gouges. But if we count that as performance, can't we count the act of putting painting on the surface as an act of performance, too? That was the idea behind "Action Painting."


Ayanna Jolivet McCloud, untitled (Diptych),acrylic on canvas, 2011. (Photo by Robert Boyd.)

This pair more directly references performance by virtue of recalling Yves Klien--an artist deeply involved in the metaphysical qualities of monochrome paintings but also deeply involved in performance--including performative aspects of painting (painting using nude women as "brushes", painting with fire, etc.)

So a small two person imaginary exhibit. Monochromatic work--or nearly monochromatic works--can be thought-provoking and even quite emotional. McCloud and McShan have produced excellent, interesting works.

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Christian Eckart and the Sublime

By Robert Boyd

A couple of weeks ago, I went over to the McClain Gallery to hear Christian Eckart speak. He is an extremely articulate describer and defender of his art, which is a bit unusual. After all, artists are no more required to be articulate than engineers are. Talking about their own work is not their main thing. In this room ful of fans, collectors and at least one other artist, Jonathan Leach. Eckart indicated that he had given this talk before, but it sounded casual and off the cuff.



Christian Eckart standing next to the Absurd Vehicle. (photo by Robert Boyd)

Eckart got his start as an artist in the late 80s and was sort of lumped in with that movement of artists that includes Jeff Koons and Peter Halley. But he's lived in Houston for the past eight years. (Naturally I am curious why he moved to Houston, even though it's none of my business. While he has taught here and there around town, he is not a full-time tenure-track professor. So I can only imagine he moved here for his wife's job, whatever that may be. Correction: Eckart emailed me and said that he moved to Houston because he believed it to be a first class art town. Amazing! Pat yourself on the back, Houston. Perhaps my incorrect guesses are a reflection of my inferiority complex about Houston, an example of "cultural cringe."

He spoke up about what New York was like in the late 70s going into the 80s--he called Neoexpressionism "pretty retrograde." He places himself with the "Neo-Conceptual" artists. At this point he was asking himself "What is a painting?" and his work reflected it.

"I found myself being very attracted to the work of [Mark] Rothko and [Barnett] Newman." In short, he was attracted to painters whose work dealt with the sublime. He refers to the sublime as "a first principle." He describes the sublime as being related in some way to "one's finitude in relation to infinity or of nature." He locates the sublime as a kind of post-enlightenment artistic goal, where artists who were able to express those feelings of the infinite by painting God had to turn in this new rational, scientific age to new conceptions of infinity. So in the 19th century, it was landscapes--breathtaking, terrifying landscapes and seascapes. J.M.W. Turner, for example.

Then it takes a turn in the 20th century with Malevich. Eckart calls his paintings empty gestures, and says Malevich is "super-interesting" because with his work, you  "could consume the painting, but you had to earn the art." That statement struck me as a good description of much art in the 20th century and beyond.

Eckart spoke of this kind of a work as a "zero project." "To me, the void is the twentieth century version of trying to identify the sublime. Ultimately, the white monochrome [painting] is the single most important artistic artifact of the 20th century. The white monochrome could only have emerged in the 20th century as an important artifact."

"My work has always been about locating the intersection where a painting may become an artwork. Paintings are paintings. Rothko paintings are art. One of my theories [when you take] all the words I came up with for the sublime, those are all words you could use to describe the experience of a fetus in the womb. In fact, when people break down and cry in front of a Rothko, different psychologists have suggested that the reason why people have that very emotional thing is that the light in the Rothko paintings might be reminding people of the prenatal experience. The kind of light you see through your eyelids when you close them tight."

"There is a drive in the human organism towards metaphysics [and] spirituality which is really important. The only thing we can quantify as a metaphysical experience might be that prenatal experience."



Christian Eckart, The Absurd Vehicle, wheels, metal, fiberglass, autopaint, lacquer, chrome, 2010

So much of Eckart's work is about paintings (without actually being painting), which makes this nutty construct stands out as, well, absurd--both on the face of it but also within his oeuvre. But in his mind, it all fits. "This started out as a painting that became a sculpture that became a time machine that became and oracle." But he can step back from the sublime when talking about it. "Anyway, it's just a crazy machine. It's really the first time that the impact of moving to Texas sort of asserted itself in my work." He speaks specifically of the influence of choppers and hot rods and air travel. (The doubled wheels are meant to recall a jet's landing gear.)



Christian Eckart, The Absurd Vehicle detail, wheels, metal, fiberglass, autopaint, lacquer, chrome, 2010. (Photo by Robert Boyd)

His ideas about the history and lineage of the sublime, and his place in it, put him at direct odds with Thomas McEvilley, whose critical work has been largely about repudiating the sublime in art. Yes to Duchamp, no to Malevich. I plan to write at greater length about McEvilley one of these days, but it was fascinating to hear an artist take a position that, as articulated, both describes his own work pretty well and stands in opposition to McEvilley. I'd love to hear a debate between Eckart and McEvilley.



Action shot of Christian Eckart and a bystander. (Photo by Robert Boyd.)

Eckart didn't just talk about theory. He talked about how the works were made and the high-tech fabrication methods used in producing them, which were fascinating. Artists are always using the latest technologies, whether it is the Impressionists using paint in tubes to do plein air paintings of Christian Eckart using a computer controlled lathe to fabricate a metal wall sculpture.

 
Eckart showing the back of a computer-designed and fabricated piece. (Photo by Robert Boyd.)

You can see a lot more photographs of the art in this exhibit at the McClain Gallery webpage--it's worth a look if you didn't get a chance to see the work in person.

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