Auction Night

by Robert Boyd

I went to the Lewis & Maese auction last night. It was a big auction for them--270 lots. I got there just as it was starting. I picked up my catalog and my number (with which I would bid). The place was packed and there was no seating room. My friend David McClain was there. We laughed about some of the pieces--pieces that were claimed to be by Picasso or Renoir or Soutine or Degas. Lewis & Maese is not a major auction house. They handle mostly the sales of estates. But one good reason to go is that art by local Houston artists often shows up for sale there. For instance, there was  huge 155 x 72 inch Earl Staley painting, Noche en Oaxaca. According to the catalog, it belonged to the "Corpus Christi Art Museum." Did they mean the Art Museum of South Texas? Was it being deaccessioned? In any case, the bidding didn't meet the reserve, so it didn't sell.

Earl Staley, Noche en Oaxaca, 1977, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 72 x 155 inches

Pablo Picasso, Bonne Fête Monsieur Picasso, 1931, tempera,20 x 26 inches

The craziest piece for auction was a painting attributed to Picasso. It's probably best to let Lewis & Maese describe it:

A still life painting with a silver-screen connection. The work from 1931 — a scene depicting a classical bust, wine bottle, fruit, and a window surrounded by a flourish of ironwork is signed Picasso in the upper right. The back bears a faded label from its last exhibition: “‘Bonne Fête’ Monsieur Picasso,” at the UCLA Art Galleries, 1961, on the occasion of the modern master’s 80th birthday. It appears in the exhibition catalog which featured loans from Hollywood notables Kirk Douglas, Vincent Price, and Mrs. Gary Cooper, as well as the Los Angeles Museum of Art, as number 95. The painting, a tempera (gouache) on paper, measures 19 5/8 x 25 ¾ ", and its original owner was Alfred Hitchcock, who lent it to the UCLA exhibition. It came to Houston via the late director’s only child, daughter Pat Hitchcock O’Connell, who gifted it to her best friend, Georgia Waller, and her husband, Gerard Waller. It was bestowed upon them in 1982, after Hitchcock and his wife Alma had both passed on. Mrs. Waller died in 2008, and Mr. Waller is now sending the painting with the Hollywood provenance to auction. (Hitchcock worked with Picasso and Dali and is known for employing artwork throughout his films to great effect; he also commissioned Dalí to create a dream sequence for his 1945 film Spellbound.) This artwork has been looked at by Christies and Claude Picasso.

The estimate was $300,000 to $500,000, which is far more than the average thing at Lewis & Maese goes for. In the end it only went for $150,000. My question at the time was why was it being sold by Lewis & Maese? Surely a larger auction house like Bonhams, Phillips, Sothebys or Christies could get a lot more money for it. Houston painter Pat Colville, who was there last night,  came up with a convincing explanation. If one of these auction houses looked at the piece and had any doubts about its provenance, they might have passed on it. Is there any paperwork that says who Hitchcock bought it from, for example? So if they pass, your only other choice it to sell it through a second or third tier auction house like Lewis & Maese. (And I can assure you that Lewis & Maese do not have an art historian on staff, given the dubious attributions encountered in this auction.) What was interesting was that some bidders were willing to roll the dice and bet $150,000 that it might be real. If the buyers can prove its authenticity, they can make a big profit.


David Adickes, Japan, 1959, watercolor, 8 x 7 inches

The watercolor Japan by David Adickes was an interesting piece. There was an actual bidding war for it, and on one side of the bidding war was Adickes himself! He often sells pieces in these auctions, but here he was trying to buy his own work. He won the piece. I was perplexed by this and asked on Facebook why he would be doing this. Some of the answers seemed plausible, but the one that made the most sense to me was from Margaret Bott, who wrote, "He bought it for his museum in Huntsville, I would think." And I can see why--it's a great piece. I think a lot of his work, especially his early paintings, tends to be very corny. But Japan is lovely.


Dorothy Hood, Comet Tangled in the Sun, 1975, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8 feet

The star of the night was an enormous Dorothy Hood painting, Comet Tangled in the Sun. I liked the colors, but I didn't like the paint handling. There weren't the watery areas of color which give so many of her canvases a cosmic sense of depth, nor did the edges between colors have that Clyfford Still-like serration that gives her best work a sense of danger. Without prompting from me, Pat Colville criticized Comet Tangles in the Sun as not one of Hood's best. I was happy that we agreed! The estimate was for it to sell between $22,000 and $26,000. The bidding was vigorous and the hammer price was $40,000. The room burst into applause.

I suspect the big exhibit opening soon at the Museum of South Texas, the new monograph, The Color of Being/El Color del Ser: Dorothy Hood by Susie Kalil and the great article in Texas Monthly have put Hood in people's minds. There is certainly a feeling that she has been an unjustly neglected (and perhaps undervalued) artist.


Pat Colville with her newly purchased David Alfaro Siqueireos lithograph, Moisés Sáenz.

One of the cool things that came up for auction was a lithograph by David Alfaro Siqueiros, the great Mexican muralist. It was a portrait of Mexican educational reformer Moisés Sáenz. It was purchased by Pat Colville, who knew what she was getting into. She asked me if I knew a conservator in town who might be able to clean up some of the foxing on the piece. I didn't even know what "foxing" was (it's discoloration that sometimes occurs on old paper). The image gives Sáenz a stoic, stone-like presence. And it wasn't all that expensive--I think Colville got her money's worth. I like the idea of it going into the hands of an artist, who is someone who will truly appreciate it.


Malinda Beeman, Protection from Demons, 18 x 11 inches

I only bid on one item, a strange painting by Malinda Beeman called Protection from Demons. The auction catalog did not list a date for it. It had a retablo-like feeling to it. I had heard Beeman's name before, but knew nothing about her. I showed it to Colville and she said that Beeman had lived in Houston and had produced eccentric art (which this piece certainly confirms). She lives in Marfa now and runs an artisanal goat cheese business. You can see a short documentary about her farm here.

I had a maximum bid in mind based on some money I'm getting from some freelance writing. The bidding started and quickly reached my limit. It finally sold for just a hundred dollars more than my limit, so I kind of regret that. But I feel good about having a budget and sticking to it. I hope whoever got Protection from Demons likes it as much as I did.

At that point, there were 70 more lots to go and I had been there for several hours. The room had thinned out considerably from the beginning of the night. I was bored by all the furniture and jewelry for sale, so I left. Even though I left empty-handed, I was happy with the results. It's nice to see artists like Dorothy Hood get the prices she deserved in life, and I was happy to be introduced to the art of Malinda Beeman. (If you have a Dorothy Hood gathering dust in your closet, Lewis & Maese proved last night that they can get a lot of money for it.) It was nice to chat with Pat Colville, an artist whose work I love and whose opinions were valuable (at least insofar as they confirmed my own prejudices).

Political Projections of Our Puerile Politicos

Dean Liscum

Presidential Head Projections by Jonatan Lopez and Hilary Scullane had a limited run (Friday, June 28th, 9:30 p.m. to may be 11 p.m.) and played to a very exclusive crowd, those riding in June's Critical Mass. Nevertheless, it was (and is) extremely timely.



The piece consisted of Lopez and Scullane projecting looping video of their faces onto one of David Adickes' two-story tall presidential busts. The artists' expressions ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, dallying in somber-smile stares and then expanding into tongue-wagging, toothy grins.

The images alternated evenly between the two artists (gender equity with their political polemics) and were projected on to only one of the presidential busts, which appeared to be more of a matter of logistics rather than opprobrium for that particular president. A soundscape accompanied the projections. Although, I couldn't quite follow the content (too much echoing and reverb both intentional and not), the dissonance conveyed was disturbing enough.

Except for Wendy Davis doing an Abramovic tribute, I can't think of any more politically au courant art.  (Don't get me wrong, Coming Through the Gap in the Mountain on an Elephant at TSU's University Museum is politically timeless, and runs through August 25, 2013.)



Lopez and Scullane's snarky, tongue-wagging is pitch perfect with the Obama administration's defense of the NSA surveillance program. Their denial-justification plays out like an adolescence who's been caught.

We're only kind of spying on you. 

Everyone else is doing it. 

It's OK when I do it. Really! It's for your own good. Because I'm a good guy. I'm special and that makes it different. 

No really, just because I ignored and\or persecuted all the other whistle blowers doesn't mean I will you. That's just not fair to me. You're not giving me a chance to change."

The administration's disclaimers matched up with the artists' alternately wry and ridiculous facial expressions punch through the political pablum. (A mash-up with press conference sound bites would have been really cool, but perhaps a little too explicit...after all, the eyes and ears of the NSA are upon them and you and me.)

This video of the President Head Projections doesn't do the performance justice, but it's better than nothing.



For me, PHP was a poignant, political-artistic moment in the midst of a party. I wasn't expecting it; I was momentarily captivated by it, and then I moved on. I headed over to the food trucks, the drink lines, and the homemade slip-n-slide, because I'd just been on a 2-hour bike ride and the high temperature had been 100 F.



But it was memorable enough to stick with me through the party and the bike ride home.

Houston Kickstarter Projects for August (plus one non-Kickstarter project)

Robert Boyd

So what new crowd-funded art projects are happening this month? Here are a three that caught my attention.



Beyond the Bayou is a documentary by Pavel Petrov and Ken Woodall about the Houston bayou system. The project has its own website, and is in line with other documentaries the pair have produced in the past. Their funding request is pretty ambitious ($20,000), but they are giving themselves plenty of time to reach it. So far, though, they have only gotten a few hundred dollars.



Making Art After War is a sculpture project that sends up a bunch of red flags.

• First, he is asking for $130,000.
• Second, the person behind the project is named "Shannon W." You know, if you're going to ask strangers for $130,000, you should at least give them your full name--and a bunch of other information about who you are.
• Third, Shannon W. won't even tell you what the project is. It's a sculpture, but beyond that, it is "classified." It is "a sculpture made by veterans that will be revealed and completed if the project is funded."
• Fourth, there is no sculptor (unless it's Shannon W) named. Instead, it will be created by "veterans" working with "NASA engineers" and "industrial designers," which suggests it may be designed collectively. OK, I can imagine a bunch of folks getting together and brainstorming a project--that seems like a reasonable piece of participatory art. But frankly, you shouldn't ask for money until some of this work has already been done! And you should identify some of the participants--what expertise or experience are they bringing to this project? Otherwise, why should anyone trust you with their donation?
• Fifth, "proudly." Shannon W. won't tell you what the project is, but he'll remind you over and over that it will be one done "proudly." It reminds me of the great Austin Lounge Lizards song, "Another Stupid Song About Texas," with the lines "By God we're so darn proud to be from Texas - yahoo! / Even of our pride we're proud and we're proud of that pride, too / Our pride about our home state is the proudest pride indeed"
• Sixth, related to "proudly", the mindless appeal to patriotism. The "Thank you America!" at the end of the proposal, the big American flag. We're given no reason to trust that Shannin W., whoever he is, is capable or even willing to actually execute this project--but look! An American flag! You know what the say about patriotism being the last refuge of scoundrels. I don't know if Shannon W. is a scoundrel or just terribly naive. And presumably, others have the same reservations. As I write this, he has raised precisely zero dollars.

A Statue of Bill Hicks by David Adickes. I saw this on Reddit and followed the link to this page. Here's the project:

Houston sculptor David Adickes has agreed to build the statue of Bill.  If you've ever seen his work, you know he is the best man for the job and that the statue will be nothing short of amazing.  A Houston legend sculpting a Houston legend - It doesn't get better than that. The family and estate of Bill Hicks has given their blessing to this project and will be on hand at the statue's unveiling.

This is where you come in.

You can directly support the building and placement of the statue to honor a hometown hero by clicking the PayPal link below and donating money to the cause.

This made me even more suspicious than Shannon W.'s project. They were asking for $70,000, and yet the page gave no indication of who was behind this request. Who was getting that Paypal donation? A con man? Or someone who was sincere and competent? So I wrote to them and asked. The response came from Omar Afra, who some of you may be familiar with. If not, let the man introduce himself.

My name is Omar Afra and I am the publisher of Free Press Houston ( publishing 10 years now) , where this idea was initially hatched. I am also president of Greater Houston Entertainment PAC, advisory board member of HPFF, producer of FPSF ( Houston's largest outdoor music festival, 2012 was our fourth year ) and a managing partner at Fitzgerald's since 2010. But most importantly, I am someone who feels strongly about this project. We have begun the process to become a 501c3 yet have also partnered with the Hicks family and the Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife, who will receive any donation beyond cost.

So that's comforting. And the Free Press has already given $10,000 to the project. It's easier to give to something if you know the people behind it have already committed some of their own money. And we know they can put something like this together--the Free Press Summer Press is a complex, expensive undertaking that they have successfully done for several years. You can read more about this project here and here.

But David Adickes? I kind of like the gargantuan busts he makes just for the sheer out-of-scale-ness of them, and he has some counter-culture cred for running Love Street, but really? My friend Scott Gilbert suggested that Mel Chin would be a better choice, and I agree! Plus, OK, Bill Hicks has his Houston connection and everything, but where are our monuments to Lightnin' Hopkins and Donald Barthelme? Well, maybe honoring one artist with Houston ties will encourage us to honor the rest. I hope so. Therefore, I'll give them a few bux.

How did last month's Kickstarter projects fare? The Postcard Story clearly captured people's imaginations. Asking only for $400, they got $3,206. The Wild Mural still has 10 more days to go but is a long way from its $7000 goal. And Help Texas Hobbits easily reached its $18 goal and got $366.

Depressing Airport Art

By Robert Boyd


David Adickes, Winds of Change, 1990, bronze, 8'

This is the last piece of art I see before leaving Houston.

Richard Stout's History of Art in Houston

by Robert Boyd

For the past few weeks, I've had the privilege of working on a video featuring artist Richard Stout talking about the history of Houston's art scene in the 1950s and '60s. The YouTube videos below are the fruit of that work. This talk by Stout is an expansion of a short lecture he gave at the CASETA convention a few years ago. CASETA is the Center for the Advancement of Early Texas Art, which they define as "art produced by artists who were born in and/or lived and worked in Texas through 40 years prior to the present date." Stout had 30 minutes to talk about 60 artists and decided later to expand the talk.

In addition to discussing specific artists, Stout talks about the founding, growth and evolution of key Houston institutions like the Contemporary Art Association/Contemporary Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the art departments at Rice, the University of Houston, St. Thomas, and TSU as well as the gradual proliferation of galleries during those two decades. Underlying all of this is the growth of Houston itself. In 1950, Houston had a population of 596 thousand. By 1960, that was 938 thousand, and by 1970 it was 1.2 million. Given this, it is hardly surprising that the number of artists increased and that the institutions grew and expanded their scope.

But enough of that. Watch the videos. Stout was a witness to much of this and is an erudite, scholarly man. I found this history--almost all of which was unknown to me--utterly fascinating, and I hope you will as well.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6


Part 7

Lonesome Prison Links

by Robert Boyd


A painting by Ray Warmsley (Abilene ReporterNews)

My Favorite Art Story this Week: Ray Warmsley was a career criminal in the Ellis Unit about 30 years ago. Jackie Morris was the daughter of the president of Abilene Christian University. She was doing ministry and social work when she met Ray in 1978. They fell in love and got married after he was paroled in 1984. It was a scandal in Abilene--a prim and proper white lady from a prominent local family marrying a paroled African-American criminal 18 years her junior. Then in 1986, Ray got sent back to jail on old warrants. And started painting. Then last year, in October, Ray was paroled again. Amazingly, Jackie stuck with him all this time. He's in his 60s, wearing an ankle bracelet to keep him in house arrest, and she is in her 80s. And they both paint. And they got a two-person show at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene. ("From opposite sides of prison bars, Abilene artist couple creates unlikely love story," Jeremy Goldmeier, Abilene ReporterNews, February 25, 2012)


Daniel Johnston, Space Ducks, graphic novel cover, 2012

My Second Favorite Art Story this Week: I'm just going to quote from the press release on this one.

BOOM! Town and Wieden + Kennedy Entertainment bring world-famous underground musician and artist Daniel Johnston to comics this April with his new graphic novel SPACE DUCKS: AN INFINITE COMIC BOOK OF MUSICAL GREATNESS. [...]
SPACE DUCKS is more than just a graphic novel, it’s a one-of-a-kind interactive comic book experience, complimented by the Space Ducks album and iOS App. The companion app will virtually take readers through Daniel’s Outer-Space world of Ducks and Devils, with games to play, surprising voices from different talents, animations and videos from the comic book, links to exciting new Space Ducks merchandise, and a slew of Easter eggs, including contributions from some of the critically-acclaimed musicians who number amongst Daniel’s biggest fans. The app will also debut Daniel Johnston’s first new album since 2009.

Waller's greatest artist appears ready to bring it once again. They're launching this nutty thing at SXSW, but I'm sure you'll be able to get it at Domy. ("Daniel Johnston Brings SPACE DUCKS to Boom!," The Beat, February 27, 2012)

My Third Favorite Art Story this Week: Did you know that the Whitney Museum had broken off their sponsorship agreements with Sotheby's and Deutsche Bank respectively to protest Sotheby's lockout of union art handlers (in a year of record-breaking profits for the auction house) and to protest Deutsche Bank's involvement in the mortgage crisis? Well, they didn't but some clever person put up an imitation Whitney Biennial website that indicated that they had. It is an exact duplicate of the actual Whitney Biennial website (except for the apologies). Art Fag City links it to the Occupy-related group Arts & Labor, but it is unknown who actually made the faux Whitney webpage. Love it, though. (Fake Whitney Biennial page, "Arts & Labor Calls For an End to Whitney Biennial, Pranking Follow," Whitney Kimball, Art Fag City, February 2, 2012)


David Adickes, Teddy Roosevelt, 21 feet high

Do You Have $28,000 Burning a Hole in Your Pocket? If so, You can go on eBay right now and buy an 21' high bust of Teddy Roosevelt by David Adickes. And if you have $48,000, you can get Lincoln, too.