Top 10 Posts of 2013: You People Have Dirty Minds

Robert Boyd

What posts got lots of page views this past year? Dirty ones. It makes me want to put "NSFW" in all my post titles. To be honest, it's a little depressing. I want great posts like "Continuum's Live Art Series - Night 4 (NSFW)" to be popular because they're good, not because they have photos of peen in them. But it is what it is. Here are the 10 most popular posts of 2013 based on page views.

1) Go Get the Butter (NSFW). This was a review of Staring at the Wall: The Art of Boredom curated by Katia Zavistovski at Lawndale. What made it NSFW (and presumably popular) were the penis-based artworks by Clayton Porter.


Clayton Porter, untitled (casts of melted butter), 2012, plaster of paris

2) Continuum's Live Art Series - Night 4 (NSFW). Dean Liscum's performance art posts have been some of the most popular, partly because he is a witty and sensitive writer and partly because people seem to love naked performance artists. This one had an edge over all the others. If you go to Google Images and enter the search term "ball sack", the second image you see is Jonatan Lopez nude painting his dick blue. Click the photo, and you come to this post.


Jonathan Lopez moments before the dick painting (photo by Dean Liscum)

3) A NSFW Pan Art Fair--Dallas Memoir. So the NSFW-nature of the popular posts is starting to wear me down. In this case, it was a post about holding a one-day micro-art fair in Dallas. The NSFW part was a photo of legendary stripper Candy Barr topless (it was related to a vinyl 45 by Michael A. Morris of his granddad reading Barr's poem, "A Gentle Mind Confused"). The post was fun, and gave me a chance to reflect on two parts of Dallas--the uptight establishment part and the outlaw part--and the post got a lot of readers from Dallas. As well as a lot of readers who like boobs.


Michael A. Morris, A Gentle Mind Confused

4) POLL: Where Do You Houston Artists Live?. This is just what the title implies. I think this was popular for two reasons--people love polls, and Swamplot linked to it.

5) "I Am" Is a Vain Thought: Thomas McEvilley 1939-2013. Houston lost Bert Long, Lee Littlefield, Cleveland Turner and others this year. I'll miss Thomas McEvilley the most. This post was my attempt to summarize his thinking about art as reflected in six of the books he wrote.


Marina Abramovic, Thomas McEvilly and Ulay from Art, Love, Friendship

6) An Open Letter to Homeowners in the Memorial Villages. This post wasn't a piece of criticism--it was just an excuse to run some photos of sculpture by Meredith Jack. But somehow Swamplot picked it up and therefore it got a lot of page views.


A Meredith Jack sculpture on the lawn at AMSET

7) Big Five Oh, part 2: Frieze. My nephew Ford and I share a birthday. In 2013,  he turned 21 and I turned 50, so I decided to give him (and myself) a birthday gift of a trip to New York, where we saw a bunch of art fairs. We saw the fairs with a couple of my friends, identified by the pseudonyms LM and DC. I wrote several posts about the trip, including this lengthy post about Frieze.


LM and I discuss Gursky (photo by DC)

8) Reasons to Go the the Houston Fine Art Fair. The Houston Fine Art Fair get a lot of criticism this year, including some from me. But it also featured some interesting art, including a lot of art from Latin America, ranging from older art like the mini-exhibit of Xul Solar pieces to contemporary art like the excellent showing from the art space LOCAL in Chile.


Xul Solar, Proyecto fachada para ciudad, 1954, watercolor on paper, 25.5 x 36.6 cm

9) Picasso Black and White. What can I say? Picasso is always popular.


Pablo Picasso, Head of a Horse, Sketch for Guernica (Tête de cheval, étude pour Guernica), 1937, 65 cm x 92 cm

10) Where the Artists Are. This post was where I crunched the numbers from the respondents to the poll in the fourth most popular post above. Not only did it get a lot of pageviews, it also generated a healthy dialogue in the comments section, which I always love. The surprise in these results were the unexpected popularity of Glenbrook Valley, Eastwood and Greenspoint for artists.


A really pretty mod in Glenbrook Valley

Beyond that, Google Analytics tells me that 72% of the page views came from the U.S. (followed by the U.K., Canada, France and Germany). Houston produced 25% of the page views (followed by New York, undefined, Austin and Dallas). Most referrals (as they are called in the online world) came from Facebook, followed by Reddit, Google and Swamplot.

Thanks for reading The Great God Pan Is Dead in 2013!

Go Get the Butter (NSFW)

Robert Boyd


Clayton Porter, Trying Hard, 2012, multiple videos on three 32 in. TVs, time variable

Let's get the dick out of the way right up front. In the big downstairs gallery at Lawndale where the exhibit Staring at the Wall: The Art of Boredom is, you hear the words "work" and "hard" being repeated over and over, with slightly varying rhythms. Three 32-inch TVs are facing each other, so that their screens are mostly hidden from the viewer. That's where the sound is coming from.


Clayton Porter, Trying Hard, 2012, multiple videos on three 32 in. TVs, time variable

 Only when you get close and peek through the narrow slits between the TVs do you see erect penises (presumably artist Clayton Porter's penis) being pressed into soft sticks of butter. There are many things one could say to describe this, but "boring" is not one of them. That's the first clue that the title of the exhibit is not really about your boredom. It's more about what boredom unlocks. Being bored is an inducement to do something. For example, masturbation. And if mere masturbation isn't cutting it, why not press your dick into some soft butter? As The Waitresses sang, "It might not be better but I'll settle for different."

 
Clayton Porter, untitled (casts of melted butter), 2012, eight plaster of paris sculptures

Boredom here seems to be the inspiration for new work, a video installation called Trying Hard. And this apparently resulted in a series of little sculptures.

  
Clayton Porter, untitled (casts of melted butter), 2012, plaster of paris


Clayton Porter, untitled (casts of melted butter), 2012, plaster of paris

I had a discussion about these sculptures with a friend last night. He had two thoughts--first, as casts they seemed too perfect. He didn't believe that these were actual casts of butter that had been smushed by Porter's erect penis. He thought the technical challenges of creating such a cast might be too great. And there is nothing in the exhibit that states that what they are casts of the penis-smushed butter sticks--but everyone who sees them jumps to that conclusion. The other thing was that the sculptures were a way to turn this activity--pressing his penis into butter--into a salable object. He felt that detracted from the video installation, that the sculptures were unnecessary adjuncts. Perhaps so, but the fact that he could take this seemingly boredom-born activity and turn it into discreet sculptures is kind of impressive.

The thing about Staring at the Wall: The Art of Boredom is that Clayton Porter is everywhere. His work comes close to overwhelming the show. In addition to the loud dick piece and eight sculptures that seem to be associated with it, he has two more pieces in the exhibit.


Clayton Porter, Anal Patina, 2012, bronze, displayed with stationary bike and photograph, 11.5" x 12" x 2.75" (seat)

With Anal Patina, Porter made a bronze cast of his stationary bicycle seat and rode it naked for 650 miles. The patina (which I couldn't really see) was formed by his butt sweat. Boredom may have played a part (riding a stationary bike isn't exactly exciting). The piece is meant to "focus on the body," according to the notes. But mostly it elicits a laugh. In fact, one thing conspicuously absent in the show's notes (presumably written by curator Katia Zavistovski) about Anal Patina and Trying Hard is that they're funny. Porter is described as being preoccupied "with identity, sexuality and power relations." But the most obvious aspect of these two pieces, humor, is not mentioned.


Clayton Porter, Untitled (Sunlight Across My Face), 2012, video


Clayton Porter, Untitled Drawing (Self-Portrait), 2011, graphite and wax on paper, 9" x 11.5"

His last two pieces in the show are linked to each other. First is a pencil self-portrait--nothing special but well-executed. This is mounted on a freestanding bulletin-board-like structure. On the other side from the portrait is a projection, Untitled (Sunlight on My Face). This one is where Porter brings the boredom to us. This is, apparently, a video of sunlight slowly creeping across this portrait. It's only 19 minutes long, but I suspect no one watches the whole thing--too boring. I was reminded of Michael Snow's Wavelength, another film that few people watch all the way through unless they have to.

The boredom of the artist comes through in Chris Akin's work. Akin is a guard at the Menil Museum and apparently spends a whole lot of time looking at the floor. I can understand why. Standing in one place waiting for the occasional person to illicitly whip out a camera so you can actually do something must be excruciatingly boring. And the worn wood floors at the Menil are admittedly pretty interesting--I notice them every time I'm there.


Chris Akin, from the Menil Floor Drawing series, 2004-2006, metallic paint pen and pencil on paper, 2 5/8" x 4 1/4" each

Akin has taken his boredom and spun it into a body of work--drawings from 2004 to 2006, then collages from 2010 to 2012. Staring at the floors of the Menil has kept him artistically busy for years.


Chris Akin, from the Menil Floor Drawing series, 2010-2012, mixed media on paper, imensions variable

The pieces feel nostalgic, recalling cubist drawings and paintings as well as abstractions from the late 50s and 60s. In this way, they have a secondary relationship to the Menil through the content of its collection.

Another artist whose work references other older artwork is Jenny Schlief. She specifically references a well-known video by John Baldessari called I Am Making Art.


Jenny Schlief, I Am Making Art: After Baldessari, 2010, iPhone video, 29 seconds looped

The show catalog acknowledges that Schlief has humorous intentions. Taking Baldessari's dryly humorous video and replacing it with a baby with ants in her pants is funny. Apparently the link to boredom here has to do with the struggle of a parent to keep her child from being bored. But it could also relate to John Baldessari's ironic artistic statement, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art.

Jeremy DePrez evidently kills time doodling on a scratch pad. One of his paintings in the show is based on this material.


Jeremy DePrez, untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 52" x 78"

Boredom is not all that far from obsession. The need to fill the vacuum of time leads us to pointlessly repetitive acts like the careful filling of blank space on this scratch pad that DePrez has expanded and immortalized. Horror vacui also comes hand in hand with boredom. We clutter up our environments to stave off boredom.


Uta Barth, ...and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.1) (left side), 2011, inkjet prints face-mounted against matte acrylic, framed in painted aluminum frames, diptych--each panel 37 1/2" x 55 3/4"


Uta Barth, ...and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.1) (right side), 2011, inkjet prints face-mounted against matte acrylic, framed in painted aluminum frames, diptych--each panel 37 1/2" x 55 3/4"

Uta Barth and Seth Alverson both depict interior scenes (curtains and a chair respectively) which are related to the theme of the show via the idea that loneliness is related to boredom. I think this connection is weaker than what we see in the other works. At least it is for me. Sitting in a chair staring at the light as it plays across the curtains, catching dust particles in the air, and zoning out is not boredom. Being bored is feeling each second pass. Barth and Alverson's pieces make me think of those moments when time ceases to exist. I suppose the question is whether satori comes out of boredom or if it is a banishment of boredom. In any case, I feel these two pieces are closer to depicting a kind of satori than mere boredom. They have a gorgeous emptiness.


Seth Alverson, Chair, 2012, oil on canvas, 30" x 30"

Staring at the Wall: The Art of Boredom runs through January 12 at Lawndale Art Center.

Pan Recommends for the week of November 29 to December 5

Robert Boyd

Another Thanksgiving has passed, and that means we are on the home-stretch for the year and that galleries and art-spaces are putting up their final shows of the season. And that means there's a lot happening this week. Here are just some of the shows and performances we're looking forward to.

THURSDAY

Jamal Cyrus performing "Texas Fried Tenor" at the CAMH at 6:30 pm. Part of a series of performances at CAMH for Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, this one was  inspired by Steely Dan's song "Deacon Blues" which may be the only time the oblique-but-smooth jazz-rock stylings of Steely Dan have ever inspired a piece of performance art (although I'd be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong).

FRIDAY

A bunch of shows at Lawndale Art Center, tonight at 6:30 and running through January 12. It's the usual grab bag of shows at Lawndale, but I'm looking especially forward to Staring at the Wall: The Art of Boredom curated by Katia Zavistovski because ever since I heard Thomas McEvilley described L'Avventura as "exquisitely boring" in film history class, boredom has been one of my favorite subjects. It includes art by Chris Akin, Seth Alverson, Uta Barth, Jeremy DePrez, Clayton Porter and Jenny Schlief. Also, James Ciosek's HUMAN HAMSTER WHEEL!

SATURDAY 


Theaster Gates performing See, Sit, Sup, Sing:Holding Court at CAMH at 2 pm. Another of the performances for Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art. Theaster Gates is one of the best-known social practice artists around, so this performance is a "must-see".


Situation Sculpture #1 by the Art Guys at 4400 block of Airline Drive (at East Whitney Street) at 3 pm. This sculpture (which as far as I can tell is a bunch of sewer hook-ups in an empty lot) is part of the Art Guys' 30-year anniversary celebration. This conflicts somewhat with Theaster Gates--tough choice. If you can't decide, let the weather decide for you. If it's nasty, see Theaster Gates. If it's nice, see the Art Guys. (Although if you are willing to discard accepted safe-driving standards, you may be able to see both.)

Demiak at Redbud Gallery, opening at 6 pm [on view through December 30]. Martin Demmink, aka Demiak, is coming back to Houston after participating last year in a pair of group shows at Williams Tower and Box 13. His work in those shows involved photographing dioramas of Louisiana swamp scenes. I wonder if Dutch guys developing an affinity for Louisiana is a thing (I'm thinking of the character "Sonny" from Treme). Anyway, those pieces from last year were great so I have high hopes for this new exhibit.

What are you looking forward to seeing this weekend? Let us know in the comments section.