The Best of Pan: Dallas Is a Jewel

[In 2012, I took a big road trip across Texas, visiting museums and srt spaces in San Antonio, Marfa, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin. The upshot was a series of posts, including this three-part post on Dallas (here are part 2 and part 3). The post comes off as quite critical of Dallas, but the fact is that I loved Dallas and its art, and have been back several times and encountered more of the vibrant alternative scene there.]

Robert Boyd

Did you ever see Dallas from a DC 9 at night

Well Dallas is a jewel oh Dallas is a beautiful sight

But Dallas is a jungle but Dallas gives a beautiful light

Did you ever see Dallas from a DC 9 at night

Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down

But when you are up she's the kind you want to take around

And Dallas ain't a woman who will help you get your feet on the ground

Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down

(bridge)

I came into Dallas with the bright lights on my mind

I came into Dallas with a dollar and a dime

Well Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes

A steel and concrete soul in a warm heart and love disguise

A rich man who tends to believe in his own lies

Yeah Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes

"Dallas" by Jimmie Dale Gilmore

I arrived in Dallas not by DC-9 but after a non-stop drive from Odessa. My hotel, The Belmont, was on top of a hill overlooking some warehouses, a dollar store, and, off in the distance, downtown Dallas. The Belmont is an old moderne-style hotel built in the 40s and rehabbed fairly recently into hipness. And the neighborhood it's in, Oak Cliff, has undergone a similar transformation. When I arrived in Dallas, I went to a superb restaurant in Oak Cliff called Gloria's with my friend, Todd Ramsell. Todd gave me a tour of the Bishop Street Arts District, a part of Oak Cliff. From what I can tell, Oak Cliff's story is similar to that of the Heights in Houston. A charming neighborhood that became a slum, which made it cheap enough for some artists to movie in, which gave it some hip cache, which caused it to gentrify. The Belmont Hotel is an example of this and is a beautiful reuse of already existing architecture. Driving around, Oak Cliff felt a little like South Congress in Austin. Hip but commercial.

Ramsell told me that some Oak Cliff residents are so loyal to their hood that they try to get the city on their drivers licenses to be shown as "Oak Cliff" instead of "Dallas." (Oak Cliff tried and failed to secede from Dallas in 1990.) But trying to put Oak Cliff on your driver's license is not just an expression of Oak Cliff pride--it's an expression of being ashamed to be from Dallas. As hard as it is to believe about a city that swaggers and wears its self-importance on its sleeve, there are people who cringe at being from Dallas. And for good reason--people from other places really dislike Dallas. Ramsell related to me that occasionally when he tells someone he's from Dallas--especially someone from Austin--their first response will be to say with false solicitousness, "Oh, I'm sorry." I mentioned this to my sister who lives in Austin, and she sent me the phone photo below, which proves Ramsell right.

 
How Austin views Dallas

So what is Dallas? A self-confident art colossus with huge museums (and malls and football stadiums) housing fantastic art collections? Or a place of meek, embarrassed artists who might prefer to be from somewhere else, even if that somewhere else is only Oak Cliff? I think it's both. Dallas has a bit of an inferiority complex, and this manifests itself simultaneously in grandiosity and "cultural cringe." (And look, lest anyone think I am picking on Dallas, I think this is a common complex for provincial art towns, including Houston. I have an artist friend here who is constantly comparing Houston's art scene unfavorably to San Francisco's, for example.)

I was in Dallas for a few days. This was my first extended trip to the city since I was in college. Recognizing that there is something dubious about a critic parachuting in for a few days and then pronouncing judgment, I offer the following disclaimer: this post represents my first impression of the Dallas art scene, but hopefully not my last.

One thing that struck me as weird about Dallas was the way that everything is a "district." The city (or someone) seemed desperate to brand any given part of Dallas as this or that "district". There is the Arts District downtown, the Design District west of downtown, and in Oak Cliff, the Bishop Arts District. (Never could find the Hobo District, though.) In terms of visual arts, the Bishop Arts District seems largely aspirational. According to this gallery map created by Douglas D. Martin, there are only four galleries in this district, compared to a bunch over in the Design District and a large number scattered in other neighborhoods like Deep Ellum. (BAP offers plenty of places to shop, though.)

I started off in Deep Ellum. I wanted to see Kirk Hopper's gallery in particular because I had corresponded  with him briefly about Forest Bess (he runs the big Forrest Bess website, an invaluable resource). He wasn't at the gallery, but I was pretty impressed by the space itself. It was late sumer and late summer is a time for more eccentric art shows. Kirk Hopper was showing Amerwarpornica, a two-person show featuring the work of Kara Maria and Eurydice (yes, she has a one-word name, just like Cher or Sting). Both of them incorporated pin-up/porn images in their work. Eurydice's was notable because it was embroidered.


Eurydice, George (Washington) Gets Hot, 2010, hand-stitched with silk thread on hand-dyed silk, 52: x 43"

The centerpiece of the exhibit was a massive embroidery by Eurydice called Bathers. Here, she provides her take on a classical erotic subject. The bathers are, as far as I can tell, taken from pornographic sources and "collaged" together. They don't quite seem to be occupying the same space as one another, even though they are layered and recede n the distance. This strange "collage" effect may remind viewers of another artist who copied mass-produced female images to create vast populated landscapes--Henry Darger. Even the color of the underlying canvas recalls the somewhat yellowed paper of Darger's original art.


Eurydice, Bathers, 2012, hand stitched embroidery on unprimed canvas and vintage silks, 8' x 28'

I'm interested in the work, but when I walk into a gallery like this, I often wonder who the theoretical buyer is? (Assuming there is one, of course.) Who would hang a 28-foot wide tapestry of porn girls in their home? I'm almost more interested in the potential owner of this work than the work itself. Given the time of year, Hopper may have been assuming that no one would spend $60,000 for Bathers, but that it might draw attention to his gallery. And that seems like a pretty reasonable late-summer strategy.

Barry Whistler Gallery is right around the corner from Kirk Hopper Fine Art, but it was closed when I went by. But I did find something that was to characterize my Dallas trip.



I saw this sign for Health Care Art Consulting and felt instant cognitive dissonance. How do these words go together? But apparently, this is a company that supplies hospitals and other health care facilities with art. And thinking about it, I am not surprised such a business exists. But think about the art you see in hospitals and doctors offices. It is so unmemorable, so staggeringly banal, that it barely exists. And yet here is a business devoted to providing it. I'm sure this service is available in Houston and elsewhere. But until I came to Dallas, I never saw someone advertising this service. And in Dallas, it turns out, such advertisements are common.

 
Art for every occasion

In fact, Dallas has a whole part of town devoted to this kind of thing. It's called the Design District, and it's where you go to buy furniture, decor and art. As you can see in the gallery window above, you can buy art for your corporate offices, your medical clinics, your hotels, and for your home--one-stop shopping! This whole district was confusing to me. There's nothing like it in Houston. No doubt we have retailers of business furniture and interior designers who work to fill hotels and corporate offices with eye-pleasing decor. We just don't have a neighborhood devoted to it.

The Design District has its own sign

I spoke to Danette Dufilho at the Conduit Gallery (a very good gallery in the heart of the Design District), and she told me that at one time, this had been a strictly B2B area. Interior designers, acting on behalf of corporate and individual clients, would buy the furniture and decor they needed here. Apparently, vendors here realized there was money to be made by opening up to the public.

 
Corporate decoration or art? You decide!

The problem I see is that there's no clear demarcation between the galleries that sell corporate decorations by the square yard and the galleries that sell art qua art. Indeed, having such a district where these distinctions are blurred helps remind one that all art in art galleries, no matter how cutting edge it is, is merchandise.

Still, as I noted, there are galleries in the Design District selling interesting work which would be unlikely to be bought by an interior decorator for a corporate office. Conduit Gallery is one of those, and when I visited them, their front gallery was full of beautiful, dangerous-looking objects by Gabriel Dawe (who had a very cool installation last year at Peel).

 
Gabriel Dawe, Pain Series no. 23, 2012, deconstructed shirts and pins, 22" x 11" x 9"

 
Gabriel Dawe, Pain Series no. 28, 2012, shirt collars, sequins and pins, 11" x 8" x 6"

These sculptures, made of pins and fabric, make one think of iron maidens and other medeival torture devices. Or dangerous S&M devices, or things used by the bad guys in a horror movie. Pain Series No. 28 made me also think of primitive carnivorous creatures with maws filled with razor-sharp teeth, waiting for you to swim too close. In short, there is no way someone would put one of these elegant, deadly things in a hospital or corporate office. And in this way, Coduit Gallery separates itself from some of its peers in the Design District.


piece by Rex Ray, oil, acrylic and mixed media on linen

On the other hand, they were also showing colorful, pretty work by Rex Ray in the back, so perhaps they hedge their bets.

Other work I saw in the Design District that struck me as more than mere corporate decoration were the paintings of Benjamin Terry and painting/photos of Bonny Leibowitz at Cohn Drennan Contemporary.

 
Bonny Leibowitz, Streaming Consciousness, 2011, photography, encaustic, monotype on kozo and and pigment on cradled board, 30" x 30"

The two artists seem strikingly dissimilar, and I wonder why they were paired for this show, Blurr. But I liked Leibowitz's quasi abstract pieces, and while it took me a few minutes to get past my feelings of "ugh--paintings of hipsters," I warmed to Benjamin Terry's paintings as well.

 
Benjamin Terry, Over and Over Again, 2012, mixed media on panel, 75" x 74.5"

And over at Holly Johnson Gallery, there was a very likable show of Al Held-like abstractions by Tommy Fitzpatrick.


Tommy Fitzpatrick, Close-up (left) and Structural Components (right), 2012, acrylic on canvas, 13" x 17" each

 
Tommy Fitzpatrick, Techtonic, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 40"

 
Tommy Fitzpatrick, Unbuild, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 45"

So while there is something bizarre about having these high-quality galleries crowded in among the generic corporate art galleries, it's no surprise that there are plenty of good galleries in Dallas. (And let's face it--corporate decoration art galleries exist in Houston--they just don't advertise themselves so nakedly. Dallas's corporate galleries should be given points for their honesty.)

But what about more alternative offerings? I saw none and I attribute this primarily to my unfamiliarity with the scene and briefness of my visit. I plan to search that stuff out the next time I'm in Dallas, and I invite any Dallasites to school me about what I missed. But one problem I can see for the grass roots is that the best art school in the area is in Denton. The University of North Texas, like many colleges with large, high quality art departments, spins off a lot of artistic energy. It's like the University of Houston in that regard. The big difference is that UH is inside the Loop--it's near where artists live and work and exhibit. UNT is 40 miles from Dallas and about the same from Fort Worth. Does this inhibit the artistic interaction between Denton and Dallas? It must.

Christina Rees recently wrote an article for Glasstire that dared young Dallas artists to use their very marginality as a license to go crazy without worrying about what anyone thinks. She wrote:

[...]There is no real economy for your art being made here in DFW. Almost none. Not enough to make a living. And there isn’t a mainstream press, like there is in NYC and London, to cover your career if you made a commercial leap anyway. And that’s okay. Because this kind of vacuum is when it’s time to fuck things up. This is a magic hour, a once-in-a-lifetime chance when you have nothing to lose, and the place that you’re in—your neighborhood, your city, your region—if you get busy, can get really interesting.

I’m picking on you lot because you aren’t painters (another breed entirely), and you aren’t makers of pretty things and decorative objects. Your brains are wired the right way to fuck shit up. And I’m not writing about Houston or Brooklyn or Silver Lake either. I’m writing about here. ["Dear Young DFW Whippersnapper Artists," Christina Rees, Glasstire, July 27, 2012]

This got a huge number of responses, many defensive or dismissive (or both at the same time). The article and the responses suggested that there was something wrong with the local scene as far as young and/or cutting edge artists go. The comments were very interesting. I especially liked one by Douglas Martin, who provided a capsule view of the art scene (nice to have for an outsider like me):

What is made obvious in this passionate tirade is that our art scene is currently segmented: You’ve got your old artists that did not go to art school that are either bitter or not, depending on their interpretation of their own status in the scene they are still passionate about being included in (yes, I sometimes take the time to Google the names of commenters I don’t recognize). You’ve got your old artists that went to art school here and maybe got their MFA’s. Of these, some of them stuck around to teach and some left Dallas and maybe returned disenfranchised by the uninviting art scenes of NYC, LA, Chicago, etc. You’ve got the new generation of art students (the whippersnappers) who are blessed with a seemingly unequaled set of passionate and educated teachers who either cut their teeth locally or brought their MFA’s or PhD’s here. There’re the (gutter)punks that think they can make art, the street artists, and the life-time art students who befriend these whippersnappers. Professionally, there’re the gallerists that somehow survived the passage of time selling their abstract glass and brass sculptures and 2-inch thick oil paintings and the gallerists who encourage challenging, often local contemporary artists. And then there’re the staff of the local art institutions, the independent curators, and the journalists and art critics–all of which most people don’t know. What remains are the collectors, the casual buyers, and the simple fans of art (and/or free wine). Maybe I missed some subgroup, but that seems to be the scene. [comment by Douglas D. Martin, "Dear Young DFW Whippersnapper Artists," Christina Rees, Glasstire, July 27, 2012]

And he followed this Dallas taxonomy with a diagnosis of the problem that Rees was addressing.

With maybe the exception of visits during the Art Fair, upper level staff and trustees of the art institutions and collectors rarely make it to see any emerging art shows. And, as I mentioned in my comments on The State of the Arts and on the “research results” of Creative Time, neither do the competing gallerists. This disconnect from the scene is important to note. Older teachers and writers may hang with whippersnappers and wax philosophically over drinks at Amsterdam or Meridian, but because of their institutional ties, they are afraid, as Jenn Gooch mentioned above, to criticize in print, and often they miss shows.  [comment by Douglas D. Martin, "Dear Young DFW Whippersnapper Artists," Christina Rees, Glasstire, July 27, 2012]

Rees's article, in light of Martin's comment, seems almost nihilistic. It's as if she's saying, "Since no one cares anyway, do whatever you want." Is it any better in Houston? I think a lot of big time collectors are very hesitant to buy from local artists (unless they have the sufficient cultural capital, as bestowed by museum shows, blue chip gallery representation, and out-of-town critical recognition) or even to slum in the scene. But some young Houston collectors I know are willing to engage with the work of younger or more difficult artists. It's far from perfect, but if what Rees and Martin are saying is true, it's a lot better in Houston than in Dallas for young whippersnappers.

Indeed, it's not artists one thinks of at all when one thinks of Dallas and art. (And this despite having an interesting art history that goes back at least to the 30s, including two of my favorite Texas artists, Alexandre Hogue and Jerry Bywaters.) One thinks of big institutions and big collectors. I can't remember where I read it, but the statement "In Dallas, the man who owns the art is more highly regarded than the artist" is something that has always stuck with me.

That's the next part of my Dallas trip--viewing the mega-collections.

DFW to Houston: We're #1!

Robert Boyd


Our art is better than your art

"RR," a blogger from the DFW area, writes a very succinct post about a trip to Houston he made to check out the Forrest Bess show at the Menil. He made 14 stops altogether to check out art--a crowded day of art viewing. Here are a few highlights:

• #1 stop at Bill Davenport's "Bill's Junk" in the Heights. Always a priority when I go to Houston. 
• #5 stop - Paul Fleming at the most unfriendly gallery in Texas Barbara Davis Gallery followed closely by Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas. I should have skipped this one. I will never step inside this place again.
• #6 stop at one of my favorite galleries, Inman Gallery. You can't go wrong here. Robert Ruello was a pleasant surprise and the first time to see Jim Richard's work in person. Not disappointed.
•  #9 stop - Devin Borden Gallery, we didn't even bother ringing the bell.
• #11 stop - A long time favorite gallery of mine - Betty Moody, the friendlist gallery in Texas representing important artists. Helen Altman (wall) and Lisa Ludwig (table) in the back gallery.

(Note to gallerists: don't be rude. Someone might blog about you.)

The kicker after these 14 stops? RR's conclusion: "This trip proved to me that the best art coming out of Texas right now is from North Texas. But I will try again in the fall."

My first thought was outrage. How dare RR draw such a conclusion after visiting two museums, 11 commercial galleries and Bill Davenport? Maybe the art on view in those places at this time doesn't represent Houston very well. One needs to see what's happening in artist-run spaces, in the smaller, funkier galleries, in the schools, etc.

But then I checked myself--I am totally guilty of the same behavior. Every time I go to Dallas/Fort Worth, I find myself drawing big conclusions about the area based on my brief visit. There is something about DFW that brings this out in me. But the fact is that a brief visit to a place can provide a suggestion of what the place is all about at best.

RR might be right. I was mighty impressed the last time I was in Dallas. And even if he is not right, I like the fact that the age-old rivalry between DFW and Houston continues to be played out even in the arena of art. But I don't think that visiting 14 galleries and museums over the course of a weekend (a day?) gave RR an accurate picture of Houston's art scene.

So RR, here is my proposition. The next time you come down for a visit, contact me. I'll be happy to show you the best of whatever happens to be up.

Tooling Around Dallas in a Rental Thinking About Art

Robert Boyd

I was in Dallas last weekend to see the Ken Price retrospective at the Nasher Sculpture Center. The last time I was in Dallas, I had promised myself that the next time, I'd make a point of checking out some alternative galleries and artist run spaces. And I didn't do that. I was even planning to go to an opening at 500X, but by the time it rolled around I was tired and just wanted to stay in my hotel room and write. Next time, I promise.

So I saw some museums and nice art spaces and wandered around a bit. Last time I wrote about Dallas and Fort Worth, I had a thesis and I pushed it hard. This time around, things may be a bit more discursive, and are unlikely to gel around any solid idea. This post is more about wandering the streets of Dallas than about making a grand statement.

My first stop was the MAC--the McKinney Avenue Contemporary. Last time around I mentioned that the big institutions in Dallas and Fort Worth mostly ignored local artists. In contrast, the MAC, a medium-sized non-collecting venue, explicit includes featuring work by regional artists as part of its mission. It was established in 1994 and is located in the Uptown neighborhood. My impression is that the Uptown neighborhood is that it is pretty high-end and very urban (i.e., mostly apartments and condos, very few lawns). It feels like a neighborhood for young yuppies. There are lots of mid-rise and highrise residential towers, including a lot of mixed use buildings. And there is a free trolley that runs along McKinney that goes from the arts district 4 miles north along McKinney. This seems like the very definition of a "toy train" (down to the cutesy old-fashioned trolley cars), but it does connect a residential area to a business area, which is what you want mass transit to do.


The MAC is extremely blue

The current show is Out of Commerce, which features Texas A&M-Commerce professor Michael Miller and a group of his former students and other alumni of Texas A&M-Commerce. I had never heard of Texas A&M-Commerce before this show. I didn't even know where Commerce was (it's about 67 miles northeast of Dallas). Now the justification for this show is that a surprising number of excellent artists have come out of this program. So many that it makes me kind of embarrassed not to have heard of it. Given the people in this show, if I were a gallerist, I'd make a road trip out to see the student exhibits every year. Because you could discover the next Trenton Doyle Hancock, Robin O'Neil or Lawrence Lee.

Michael Miller creates collaged works where the elements come out of pop culture. He blows up  images (usually drawn images) so they end up having a ragged feeling to them. The work derives in a way from street art, and perhaps also from Mimmo Rotella--the ragged nature of these pieces recall decollage even though they are collages. There is some political comment--Miller seems to be mocking the kind of capitalist effusions one might hear from advocates of the "prosperity gospel." It's a message worth satirizing in Texas, where this kind of thing is quite popular on Sunday morning.

(I failed to get the titles of all the pieces in this show--my apologies!)


Michael Miller, Happiness, 2010, acrylic and fabric on paper, 72 x 72 inches


Michael Miller, Conway Heart Loretta, 2009, acrylic and fabric on paper, 44 x 35 inches


Michael Miller


Michael Miller



Michael Miller

What was most interesting about this show was seeing Miller's work in conjunction with Trenton Doyle Hancock's. Knowing now that Hancock went to Texas A&M-Commerce (BFA, 1997) and Miller has taught there since 1982, we can guess that Miller taught--or at least knew--Hancock. And given how important collage is to Hancock's work, is this something he was encouraged to do by Miller? (Or did the influence run the other way?) There are strong stylistic similarities in the work.


Trenton Doyle Hancock


Trenton Doyle Hancock


Trenton Doyle Hancock

The other artists don't have an obvious stylistic relationship with Miller. Their inclusion is justified because of the Texas A&M-Commerce connection and because they're interesting artists in their own right.


Jeff Parrott, Composition Cloth, 2012


Robyn O'Neil, A Birth in Grief and Ashes, 2008 


Lawrence Lee, Luche!, 2011 


Lawrence Lee

And remember when I said that galleries should prowl the student shows at Texas A&M-Commerce? I'm guessing that's already a thing--Trenton Doyle Hancock was reportedly "discovered" at his BFA student show, and these artists have relationships with such galleries as Moody Gallery and Barry Whistler Gallery, which is the show's sponsor. (Does this seem a little off that a comercial gallery is "sponsoring" a show at a non-profit space?)

One thing I like about the MAC is that they have a little bookstore which they stock with small catalogs of the artists they show--even if the catalogs are from other shows. I was able to pick up a Trenton Doyle Hancock catalog from a show at the University of South Florida, a Michael Miller Catalog from a Barry Whistler show, and two catalogs from recently departed Houston artists, Daniel-Kayne and Bert Long.

When I was last in Dallas, they were still working on Klyde Warren Park. This is a park that was built over a sunken section of the Woodall Rogers Freeway. The idea here is that a freeway forms a kind of barrier between two areas of a town that keeps them for interacting organically. So Uptown, where lots of people live, wasn't really connected to downtown, where lots of people work, even though the two areas are adjacent. That damned freeway was a psychic barrier between the two, despite the many bridges across the freeway.


Klyde Warren Park with the Woodall Rogers Freeway emerging from under it

It seems overly hopeful that this little park will change things all that much. We won't know for a while, I suppose. It takes a long time for people to change their habits. But while I was there, it was obviously well-used, and the presence of multiple food trucks helped to make up for the paucity of dining options in the Art District.


Klyde Warren Park

In any case, it's sure to benefit the arts district by virtue of just being there. You can go to the museum then have a little picnic in the park. The park is right across the street from the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Garden.

But when I got out of the downtown/Uptown area, things got weird. Like, what does this sign mean?



This was on Commerce west of downtown. Is it saying that art is a con? Or advertising in some very subtle way an upcoming art convention?

And I found an awesome place to buy some statues over in the design district. Say you're a fifty-five year old Dallas man. You've made a lot of money and you have a hellacious mansion out in some rich suburb. You've ditched your wife (she was old!) and got yourself hitched to a blonde 28-year-old sorority girl--hell, you deserve it, right? So how are you going to decorate the grounds of your new mansion? Well, you'll leave the details to Amber or Missy or whatever her name is. But you want to have a statue that reflects who you are. Successful. Manly. Potent. So here's the statue for you.



You can buy this bronze stallion at ASI Art. They have a huge selection of bronze decor and statues--they claim to offer "the most extensive collection of bronze statuary and fountains in the world." It's an amazing yard, well worth checking out. And if our Dallas success story doesn't find that a rearing stallion quite captures the massiveness of his prowess, he can get exotic with his erectile symbolism.



Yes, you can buy a life-size bronze rhinoceros at ASI Art.



I was in the Bishop Arts District when I saw these two refugees from the Great Gatsby, and they weren't the only ones I saw. Was Sunday "Dress Like a Flapper" day? If so, I approve! I'll take it over Go Texan Day for sartorial flair.



Finally, I want to mention Lucky Dog Books, also in the Bishop Arts District (I think--I'm not sure where the precise boundaries are). I was able to find a bunch of interested art-related publications here, including some ancient issues of ARTLies (useful for my project to reread the as much of the original run as possible) and a relic from 1986 called Fifty Texas Artists: by Annette Carlozzi.



This well-produced survey is fantastically interesting from a vantage of 27 years later. Without knowing anything about the selection criteria, it's fascinating to see what someone then, right around the time of the Fresh Paint show, thought represented the best of Texas. A lot of names are very familiar (James Surls, James Drake, Dorothy Hood, Luis Jiménez, Bert Long, Jim Love, Melissa Miller, Nic Nicosia, etc.) and a bunch are totally unfamiliar to me. And while the art is quite varied, there is this trend of neoexpressionist painting combined with Mexican/border colors that seems to have utterly died since the mid-80s. A perfect exemplar is a Dallas painter named Martin Delabano, who had a piece called Flaming Ladder Stele in the book. Did it have lots of purple, orange and red? Check. A flaming corazon? Check. Expressive faux-naif brushwork? Check.


Martin Delbano, Flaming Ladder Stele, 1984, acrylic on wood, 82" x 36.5" x 16"

This kind of art seemed kind of funky and cool back then. Now? Oy. Delabano is still around, and you can see from his website that his art has evolved quite a long way from its faux magical Mexican neoexpressionist beginnings.

I saw a few other things in Dallas and Fort Worth, and I'll probably write about them. But the conclusion I draw from this trip is no conclusion at all--just a series of mostly random encounters. Perhaps that's the best way to see a city.

Leviathan in Arlington

Robert Boyd

(continued from Dallas if a rich man with a death wish in his eyes)


Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, TX, holds 80,000 people on most game days, but that can go up to 100,000 for special events. Most of the seats are not only reserved for season ticket holders, but have multi-decade leases. And that's not even counting the numerous luxury boxes. The stadium features a retractable roof and end doors, so if the weathers nice, the Cowboys can play in fresh air.

 
Why even bother looking at the field?

Hanging from the ceiling is a 160 foot by 72 foot two-sides high-definition video screen. The main supports for the stadium are two parallel arches, a quarter mile long. As a piece of engineering, Cowboys Stadium is remarkable.

As architecture? Eh, not so exciting. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones should be commended for resisting the lure of nostalgia of Camden Yards in Baltimore or Rangers Ballpark a few blocks away in Arlington. But compared to other modern stadiums--the amazing Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing, or the BBVA Compass Stadium in Houston, it doesn't have much style beyond a general sense of sleekness. But it has something else that makes it truly unique. Jerry Jones, a former oilman from Arkansas, decided that the stadium should have art in it. It was actually Gene, his wife, who came up with the idea. Now if the Nashers had owned the Cowboys, this decision would have been unexpected but logical. The Nasher family is a clan of art collectors, after all. But the Jones' family didn't really collect art at all. So their decision to put art into Cowboys Stadium must have seemed completely out of the blue. The rationale was that they were building a gigantic contemporary building open to the public, so it should be decorated with contemporary art.

Given his lack of art knowledge,  Jones outsourced the commissioning and purchase of the art to an art advisory firm, Mary Zlot and Associates from San Francisco. The whole process was highly technocratic. You half expect NFL team owners to be a bit eccentric in the way they run their business. But the entire experience of building Cowboys Stadium reads like a Harvard Business School case study--including the art purchases. And while Dallas was at one time home to really eccentric (if not out-and-out insane) capitalist tycoons like the Hunt family, it now projects the confident but calm facade of skilled MBAs taking care of business. Jones, a somewhat polarizing figure in Dallas (he fired Tom Landry!), nonetheless managed to evolve into a new-age Dallas technocrat, and Cowboys Stadium--and its art collection--are an expression of this. The upside is that the stadium is full of interesting artworks. But unlike other personal collections, the Menil, the Nasher, etc., you don't get any sense that this work expresses anything about Jones himself. It's just marketing.

I signed up for a tour of the art at Cowboys Stadium. You have to buy the tickets for this tour through Ticket Master and it's more expensive than any museum that I've ever been to. I was the only one on the tour, though. A nice little old lady showed me each piece (except for those in the Owner's Box, alas). She knew the spiel about each one, but she didn't know much about contemporary art. That was to be expected, and the tour was more than just the art--over the course of two hours, I saw virtually every nook and cranny of the stadium, including the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders locker room. (It's kind of a 12-year-old boy's dream space.)


Mel Bochner, Win!, 2009, acrylic on wall, 38' 2" by 33' 3"

So this project is so eccentric that in the end, you end up with something rather surprising. I mean, if you had told me that Cowboys Stadium was putting in contemporary art and didn't tell who the artists were, I would never have guessed most of the choices. I certainly wouldn't have guessed that they would pick conceptual word-based artists like Mel Bochner or Lawrence Weiner. Bochner did a thesaurus based word painting, and it turned out that the Cowboys organization thought it might have some appeal beyond wall-decoration.


Mel Bochner, Win!, 2009, reproduced on a drink cup

So Bochner's piece Win! is reproduced on drink cups, t-shirts and baseball caps. Interestingly, each piece of Bochner merchandise says "© Mel Bochner" on it. In the Cowboys gift shop, you could buy Spider-Man or Hulk Cowboys T-shirts, and no doubt some royalty is paid to Disney for them. So it's logical to assume that Bochner earns a small royalty on every cup, cap or t-shirt sold with Win! on it. Not bad for a conceptual artist.

 
Terry Haggerty, Two Minds, 2009, acrylic on wall, 21" by 126"

The general genre was "enormous wall piece." There were a few sculptures, but mostly the artwork made use of the large curvilinear walls inside the stadium. The artists don't tend to find new solutions for this unusual space. Instead, they create works that fit into the continuity of their oeuvre--Terry Haggerty's quasi-Op Art ribbons, for example, or Daniel Buren's trademarked blue and white stripes.


Daniel Buren, Unexpected Variable Configurations: A Work in Situ, 1998, wall painted yellow with hand-drawn grid and 25 screen-printed aluminum plates, edition 10 of 15 and 11 of 15, 21' by 118'

In the context of a stadium, where viewing art is not the reason people are there, and where the art is viewed either while finding your way to your seat or waiting in line at the concession stand, it becomes purely decorative. Given the 80,000 people that show up on any given Sunday, there may be a small number who end up stopping and contemplating the work. But I can't imagine very many do.


Franz Ackermann, Coming Home and (Meet Me) At the Waterfall, 2009, acrylic on wall, dimensions variable

One of my favorite pieces was Franz Ackermann's Coming Home and (Meet Me) At the Waterfall. According to the description of the work on the Cowboys Stadium website, it is a "mental map" of his trip from Berlin to Dallas and his time sightseeing around North Texas. Elements of it look slightly map-like, but what I liked about it was that it wasn't just on a wall--it practically surrounds you. More than most of the pieces in the stadium,you have to confront Coming Home and (Meet Me) At the Waterfall, because for a moment, at least, it is your environment. And I liked the colors--many of the pieces at Dallas Cowboys Stadium are very brightly colored. I suspect the artists sensed they would be competing against a lot of distracting noise and movement. Color helps even the playing field.


Jim Isermann, Untitled, 2009, vacuum-formed styrene wall, 40' by 96'

An exception to this rule was Jim Isermann. His white, high-tech geometric wall relief makes its impression in a completely different way. (Ironically, Isermann has done very colorful work before.) But this piece feels so right for Cowboys Stadium--high tech, impersonal, lacking in any indication of the hand or the soul of the artist, machine-fabricated.

 
Matthew Ritchie, Line of Play, 2009, powder coated aluminum, vinyl and acrylic, approximately 30' 6" by 20' 5"

Matthew Ritchie also uses high-tech means to create his artwork, but the result ends up feeling a lot more personal than Isermann's. According to the website, the figure on the left is tossing something to the figure on the right. But one thing that is really cool about this piece is that it is the only one to incorporate the native graphic art of football--play diagrams. The X's, O's and arrows of a football play are jumbled together at the bottom of each figure.


Matthew Ritchie, Line of Play (detail), 2009, powder coated aluminum, vinyl and acrylic, approximately 30' 6" by 20' 5"

Most the artists at Cowboys Stadium are from somewhere else. The only piece by a local artist is Coin Toss by Annette Lawrence. This seems very much in line with how elite institutions in Dallas do it. As A.C. Greene said, Dallas prefers to rent culture. In this case, too many Dallas/North Texas artists would have sent the wrong message. It would have said "provincial," not "world class."

 
Trenton Doyle Hancock, From a Legend to a Choir, 2009, vinyl print, approximately 41 feet by 108 feet

When I saw this utterly demented (but fairly typical) Trenton Doyle Hancock piece, I thought, "Nice, here's another Texas artist they are using." To put a piece so eccentric up on the wall felt quite brave. But while Hancock is from Texas and is completely eccentric, he has one thing going for him that made it possible for his inclusion at Dallas Stadium--New York's approval. Consequently, Cowboys fans, if they stop for a few minutes, have the opportunity to have their minds blown by Hancock's maximalist tour de force, From a Legend to a Choir.


Jacqueline Humphries, Blondnoir, 2008, oil and enamel on linen, 90" by 96"

The one part of the stadium I wasn't permitted to see was Jerry Jones' private box. Too bad, because it apparently has some nice pieces, including the lovely Jacqueline Humphries painting above.

Cowboys Stadium represents the apotheosis of the aspects of Dallas I discussed in my previous two posts. It mainly ignores local artists and their art--it looks for validation elsewhere. It exhibits works by famous contemporary artists--the choices at first seem unexpected, but given the high profiles of of the artists, the logic of the choices is undeniable. Cowboys Stadium is a piece of marketing, a part of an entertainment product. It is no different (except for the scale) from Leon Harris, Jr. hiring George Grosz to make paintings for his department store in 1952. Among the many messages Cowboys Stadium is meant to convey to the world, sophistication is one of them, and art is the means it communicates this. Just as the art in NorthPark Center says, "This is a sophisticated place and you are sophisticated for choosing to shop here," Cowboys Stadium says, "Forget about Big Tex and the Hunt Brothers--Dallas is a place of taste and class." This is a deeply insecure message hidden inside puffed-up boastful grandiosity.

But Cowboys Stadium also brings some fairly challenging contemporary art to tens of thousands of football fans who rarely go to a museum and never to an alternative space or commercial gallery. The art is forced to compete for their attention in a way that it ordinarily never has to do. And the viewers are forced to confront art in a way that they rarely have to do, too. In this regard, it's an interesting experiment. And it is one that is likely to be imitated--already, the Kansas City Chiefs are moving to commission art for Arrowhead Stadium.