Revisiting Old Favorites at the Museum of Fine Arts

 Robert Boyd

I went to the Kinder building at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston last Saturday--the first day it was open to the general public. For many viewers, what was exciting was that they pulled so much art out of storage. Some were things that had never been on permanent display before (and some piece may never have been displayed before). For me, that meant that a few old favorites that I had not seen in a long time finally got pulled out of the garden shed to be seen again. 

Claes Oldenburg, Giant Soft Fan -- Ghost Version, 1967, canvas, wood, polyurethane foam

 This sculpture by Claes Oldenburg used to be in the front lobby of the Caroline Wiess Law Building (the curved part that faces Bissonnet , designed by Mies van der Rohe). I saw it many times when I was was in high school and college. Ironically, it seemed like part of the furniture there. Always waiting for me to walk in and see it. But sometime in the past 25 years, the museum moved it into storage.

Claes Oldenburg, Giant Soft Fan -- Ghost Version, 1967, canvas, wood, polyurethane foam

 Aside from being an amusing and ironic piece of art, it reminds me of when I was a baby art-lover. The entryway to the Mies building is a spectacular space and seeing this classic piece of pop art made me feel at home. I know it's meant to be an oscillating fan, but the base always reminded me of a antique phone receiver. Because the blades of the fan are drooping, that conical shape is kind of the dominate shape. 

 Claes Oldenburg, Giant Soft Fan -- Ghost Version, 1967, canvas, wood, polyurethane foam

 I know Oldenburg was creating what to him seemed like ordinary household items, but many decades later, it feels like Oldenburg is depicting antiques. Who uses an oscillating fan anymore now in the age of air conditioning? And I am starting to feel like an antique, too. Perhaps that is why I was so moved to see this piece again.

Another piece that used to be displayed in the Caroline Wiess Law Building that was pulled out of storage is this huge Louise Nevelson wall. In the new Kinder building, they have it displayed in a hallway where it is impossible to back up far enough to fit it into a photo on my phone. That isn't really a criticism of how they are displaying it--just a comment on how big it is!

 

Louise Nevelson, Mirror Image 1, 1969, painted wood

I've always liked how Nevelson stacked up wooden boxes in a way that announced, "This is art." The materials seem so humble--literally wood scraps. According to the information card, she reused wooden boxes that had once been pedestals. A little band saw, a few nails, some black paint and you have an art! Even as a young guy I was impressed.

Louise Nevelson, Mirror Image 1, 1969, painted wood

My photos lighten the color of the piece. It is much more black than it appears in these images. 

 

Louise Nevelson, Mirror Image 1, 1969, painted wood

Looking at this piece after so many years reminds me of Nevelsons I have seen since. There is a huge public Louise Nevelson a few blocks away from my apartment (cast in metal). I am also reminded of a short story by comics artist Megan Kelso called "Queen of the Black Black" from 1997. When she did her first book collection, she titled it Queen of the Black Black. It was an entirely fictional story about Louise Nevelson as an older woman lording it over her servants whose job it is to clean her dusty sculptures and otherwise assist her--and listen to her stories about how she was a young, beautiful, promiscuous New York artist. In an afterward, Kelso admits "it is not in any way biographical." However, it works as a story, and keeping Nevelson's sculptures dust-free must be an on-going nightmare for museums.

Megan Kelso, Queen of the Black Black cover, 2011

This issue of keeping Nevelson's sculptures clean is the subject of Kelso's cover to her collection.

Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Tar, 2009, Latex, acrylic, and ink on paper

 

This one was hard to photograph because it was under glass. I've only seen it displayed in the MFAH once, and it was in a show of black art. But what they do in the Kindle building is to literally integrate the "black art" with the rest of the collection. It is no longer relegated to token status. 

Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Tar, 2009, Latex, acrylic, and ink on paper

 
This image is from the MFAH's website. It's not a great photo, but at least you don't get the glare of the glass.

Dawolu Jabari Anderson is, as far as I know, living in Houston, and I've seen his work several times over the years. But I haven't seen anything from him in the last few years. Has he moved away? Stopped making art? I don't know. I would love to see what he is working on. I love these pastiches of old comic book covers combined with African-American folk characters. He was a part of the collective Otabenga Jones & Company (which was in a Whitney Biennial a few years ago), and like a bunch of African American artists about his age from Houston, he's obsessed with comic books. But where is he now?

 The next few images are not artworks that have been in storage for decades, like the Nevelson and the Oldernberg. They were, until a few weeks ago, over in the Beck Building with other 20th century artworks--many of which have moved to the Kinder Building now.

Lyonel Feininger, Self-Portrait, 1915, oil on canvas

Feininger was apparently living in Berlin when he painted this bilious, cubist self-portrait. The wall card describes him as being an "enemy alien" at the outbreak of World War I, but I think that is an error. Feininger was born in the U.S.A., and the U.S.A. didn't enter the war until April 1917, long after this painting was done. But it does raise the question--what did Feininger do between April 1917 and November 1918, during which time he really was an enemy alien? I don't know, but as soon as the war was over, he became one of the first teachers hired by the Bauhaus.

I became a fan of Feininger because of his short-lived comic strip, The Kin-der-kids, which was exceptionally well-written and beautifully drawn. Feininger had been working as a cartoonist in Germany and France since 1894, and his studies of avant garde art leaked into his cartooning. The Kin-der-kids was the first cubist comic strip. It was collected into a book, The Comic Strip Art of Lyonel Feininger: The Kin-Der-Kids and Wee Willie Winkie's World,  by the defunct Kitchen Sink Press, and apparently reprinted by Fatagraphics. But what hasn't been collected (in English, at least) are his German and French cartoons. I would buy that book, if some publisher wanted to publish it.

 Elie Nadelman, Tango, c. 1918-24, cherrywood and gesso

I don't really know much about Elie Nadelman. This sculpture was always kept in a gallery of 20th century American art in the Beck building, but now it lives in the Kinder building. It looks like a piece of folk art, but it's not. Nadelman had studied art in Europe and knew avant garde artists there, but moved to the U.S. and became interested in folk art. His own work melds his training and his interest in folk art.

 Elie Nadelman, Tango, c. 1918-24, cherrywood and gesso

This sculpture has long charmed me. The thing about an educated artist like Nadelman imitating a folk style is that he can never be truly naive. But so what? It works and is lovely--what else do we need?

Art That Moved Me in 2016

Robert Boyd

I included three art things that I saw in 2016 in Houston and vicinity in Glasstire's "Best of 2016" list. To narrow it down to those three, I had to start from a larger list. It was hard to choose the final three--indeed, my top three changed several times.

In the Glasstire list, I included

Various works by JooYoung Choi in various Houston venues
Pat Palermo's Galveston Drawing Diary by Pat Palermo
The Color of Being/ El Color del Ser: Dorothy Hood (1918-2000) at the Art Museum of South Texas

The Glasstire list has a lot of good exhibits that made my long list. I don't want to repeat their work, so here is a brief list of events I liked that Glasstire included in their long list:
Andy Campbell, PoMo Houston Bus Tour
Jamal Cyrus, Untitled, 2010 
Joey Fauerso, A Soft Opening at David Shelton, Houston
As Essential as Dreams: Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Stephanie and John Smither, The Menil Collection

And here are the some more that I liked that did not make the Glasstire list:

Holy Barbarians: Beat Culture on the West Coast at the Menil featuring John Altoon, Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, George Herms and Edward Keinholz.

Part of the reason I was so intrigued by this inventory exhibit was because I recently read Welcome to Painterland: Bruce Conner and the Rat Bastard Protective Association by Anastasia Aukeman. This book dealt with most of the artists in the exhibit--a group of San Francisco artists who mostly lived in the same apartment building, along with beat poet Michael McClure. We don't think of the beat movement has having a visual arts component mainly because for a long time, artists like Jay DeFeo and George Herms were ignored by art history. They were out of the mainstream art-historical narrative that was built up in the 60s and 70s, plus they didn't particularly want to be lumped into the beat category. Connor actively resisted it because in his view, "beat" had become a derogatory term used by the mass media to exploit their thing. Furthermore, few of these artists tried very hard to get noticed. They didn't care about being in museums or high-end galleries. All the galleries in San Francisco where they showed their work were small-scale artist-run spaces that lasted a few years at most then disappeared.


George Herms, Greet the Circus with a Smile, 1961,  mannequin torso, salvaged wood, feathers, tar, cement, cloth, plant material, paint, crayon, ink, paper, photographs, metal, plastic, glass, cord, mirror, electrical light fixture, and phonograph tone-arm, 68 × 28 1/2 × 20 in.

The odd men out in this collection are Kienholz--who really was a beatnik of sorts but much more ambitious than DeFeo or Berman--and Altoon, who lived like a beatnik but never was, as far as I can determine, associated with the movement.

In addition to showing a bunch of extremely choice artworks, it also shows several issues of Wallace Berman's early poetry and art publication Semina. Each issue was printed with letterpress on unbound slips of paper. It was truly a 'zine avant la lettre. 

The exhibit will be up until March 12, 2017.


Jay DeFeo, Untitled (cross), 1953, wood, cloth, plaster, synthetic resin, and nails, 28 1/2 × 16 1/2 × 4 in. 

Earl Staley designs for Faust at the Houston Grand Opera. These designs (sets, backdrops and costumes) were originally created by Staley in 1985. He was traveling in Italy and Greece at the time when the HGO contacted him. All his work for it was done abroad. The painted scrims are done in Staley's expressionist style which works wonderfully for this old warhorse. Every few years these costumes and sets are pulled out of storage and performed somewhere--for example, they were used for an Atlanta production in 2014.

The photo below is of the scrim you see before the opening and between acts. It looks a bit washed out compared to the real thing--it's hard to photograph, apparently. The sets had intense color and deep shadows. This infernal scrim was a remarkable depiction of hell and Satan.


Earl Staley, scrim in the original 1985 production of Faust (courtesy of Earl Staley)

Sharp by Havel+Ruck in Sharpstown.

I wrote about this work in Glasstire. If you haven't seen it, they're tearing it down January 1. (Might be worth a trip to Sharpstown to see it town down.)


Sharp by Havel+Ruck

Faith Wilding at UHCL.

I wrote about this exhibit in Glasstire. Nice show in an unexpected location.


Faith Wilding, Flow, 2010-2016, chemistry vessels, cheesecloth, water, ink

Statements at MFAH featuring Mequitta Ahuja, Nick Cave, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, Melvin Edwards, Loretta Pettway, Louise Ozell Martin, Gordon Parks, Ernest C. Withers, Lonnie Holley, Jean Lacy, Thornton Dial, Sr., Jesse Lott, Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Michael Ray Charles, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Robert Pruitt, Mark Bradford,  and Tierney Malone. This inventory exhibit got a certain amount of criticism for not having a very interesting curatorial idea. The only thing the artists necessarily had in common was that they were African American. Sure, you'd like an exhibition to have a stronger theme than "here's a bunch of stuff we had in storage by African American artists", but the pieces they displayed were really exciting. The show might not have been greater than the sum of its parts, but did it need to be when the parts were this good?


Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Twinkle Twinkle Little Tar, 2009, 72 x 48 inches, latex, acrylic, pen and ink on paper

What I especially liked was the inclusion of Houston area artists, like Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Robert Pruitt, Trenton Doyle Hancock and Tierney Malone. In a show like this, you expect a clever Glenn Ligon, a striking Nick Cave, a powerful Thornton Dial, etc. But when it makes me feel good to see the local guys work side by side with such giants.


ILYB, Head

I Love You Baby at GalleryHOMELAND, Gspot and Cardoza Gallery.

I Love You Baby (ILYB) was an artist collective started officially in 2002 but unofficially in 1992. It consisted of Paul Kremer, Rodney Chinelliot, Will Bentsen, Chris Olivier and Dale Stewart and included occasional collaborators. They had a three-venue retrospective called We’ve Made a Huge Mistake at Gallery Homeland, Gspot and Cardoza Gallery. I reviewed it and interviewed the surviving members for Glasstire.


ILYB, Boot Face


Michael Tracy, August #2, 2013-2015, Acrylic on cavas over wood, 54 x 48 

Michael Tracy at Hiram Butler

This was a very small exhibit--four almost monochromatic canvases--two mostly black and two (like the one above) mostly orange. My knowledge of Michael Tracy's work is quite limited--I've seen a catalog from a P.S. 1 show, Terminal Privileges, and a book from 1992 showing images and writings about a 1990 performance, The River Pierce: Sacrifice II. I'd never seen work of his in person until I saw this show. Tracy had done monochromatic canvases before (as seen in Terminal Privileges), so that part wasn't a surprise. And his performances seem ritualistic and shamanistic, not unlike Yves Klein's, so the existence of monochromatic paintings has perhaps a connection to the void or the infinite.

But these paintings, as well as a series of painted drawings that Mr. Butler showed me, feel like very specific objects instead of representations of abstract ideas. It was ultimately that specificity that appealed to me.


Katie Mulholland, Mad Rad, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches

Kate Mulholland, Apocalypse Dreams at Scott Charmin.

Kate Mulholland's paintings are created by building paint up then sanding it down, over and over, to create images similar to topographic maps.  I saw her show at the Scott Charmin gallery early this year and was so taken by these paintings that I bought the one shown above, Mad Rad. The red and blue parts are so close in value that they vibrate slightly (an effect impossible to capture in a photo). The title made me think of rads as a measure of doses of absorbed radiation. I don't know if that occurred to Mulholland when she titled it Mad Rad, but when I see it, it feels like I am looking at dangerous, radioactive chemicals.


Emily Peacock, Your Middle Class is Showing, 2016, archival inkjet print mounted on aluminum

Emily Peacock, User's Guide to Family Business at Beefhaus.

I was up in Dallas to see Jim Nolan's show Welcome Stranger (which was quite enjoyable), and Beefhaus across the street was showing Peacock's User's Guide to Family Business. The pieces in the show, which were made from a variety of media above and beyond Peacock's signature photography, all dealt with death and mortality--specifically with the death of Peacock's mother.

I you had (as I have) been following her work for years (since at least 2011, when I saw work by her in the UH MFA show), you would have seen Peacock's mother and other family members guest-starring in her photos. Whether recreating Diane Arbus pictures or posing as Mary with Peacock as Jesus in Pieta poses, her mother has been a major subject of Peacock's work, and a major collaborator.

But then she died. This show touches on that in various ways. For the Groundbreaking Ceremony is a very black shovel leaning against a wall. Its blackness is achieved by flocking (I suspect that if she could have gotten her hands on some Vantablack, she would have used that instead). In her photo Your Middle Class is Showing, Peacock has taken a picture of her own belly sunburned so that the words "Middle Class" are spelled out in un-sunburned skin. On one hand it's witty--it plays with skin color and by using old English style letters, recalls low-rider lettering. But as I looked at it, I also thought of mortification of the flesh, practices of early Christians to subjugate their sinful flesh. Could deliberately burning herself be a sign of guilt? Whatever the motive, the image is one that stays with you.

Open Season

Robert Boyd

This weekend was the beginning of the "new season" for art. I'm not sure what that means--there were plenty of gallery shows this summer. I know in New York, well-to-do collectors head out to their summer homes, so the art industry, which is a consumer luxury item industry after all, slows down. For example, there is usually only one issue each of Art in America and Artforum in the summer. But why this should apply to Houston, I don't know.

Be that as it may, tons of shows opened in Houston last week. I only went to one opening (opening parties are not a good way to look at art). But I went to a few galleries after opening nights, however.

Diverse Works season opening show '"Now that I'm by myself," she says, "I'm not by myself, which is good."' is almost all video. I have no problem with video or film as an art-form. But I hate seeing video in a gallery. It is just not an environment conducive to watching video or film. Video (generally) demands your time. If you are going to get anything useful out of a video, you need to sit still and watch it unfold for whatever its length is. And that can be a challenge, especially if the video is perplexing, hermetic, outside your comfort zone--which is what art video mostly is.

There's a reason movie theaters are the way they are. You sit in a comfortable seat--that helps a lot while you watch two hours of film (or eight hours, if you are watching Our Hitler). The theater is dark, so it concentrates your attention on the projected image. And, perhaps most importantly, you can only see one movie at a time at a movie theater. You don't have two movies showing simultaneously, their blaring soundtracks competing in your ears for attention.

So Diverse Works for this show was the exact opposite of a movie theater--no comfy chairs, no darkened room, multiple videos (and soundtracks!) playing all at once.

I will mention the work of Laurel Nakadate. Her videos got my attention for all the wrong reasons: she is beautiful and gets naked in many of them. But they were definitely uncomfortable--she seemed to star with a bunch of weird older men, some who pretended to brutalize her or murder her, some on whom she held toy guns, instructing them to beg for mercy. The men were good sports--acting ability wasn't at a premium, and there was a lot of giggling as the dudes said things like, "Please don't kill me!"

 
Laurel Nakadate, "Beg for Your Life" still,  video, 2006

But for the most part, I just couldn't connect with the material I was seeing. That, if anything, is my main complaint about a lot of the new shows I saw this weekend. Peel Gallery, new art from Mexico City--it was just a jumble of brightly-colored faux-naif stuff. None of it felt particularly original (not a sin by any means), engaging, or memorable. The flower art up at the Barbara Davis Gallery were so forgettable that I had to look the show up to remember what I had seen there. (Still, flowers--they'll probably sell and for a commercial gallery, that's what counts.)

I had never been to CNTRL Gallery before--they had three artists up. One who was doing some kind of intervention on newspapers, making them hazy, washed-out, and unreadable; one who made rather unexciting 3-D fabric sculptures; and one who did what appeared to be severe, early-Frank-Stella-like abstractions made from carpet remnants.


Sasha Pierce, grey red pink, oil on canvas, 2009

But I took a closer look at Sasha Pierce's work--a lot closer.


Sasha Pierce, grey red pink detail, oil on canvas, 2009

This is not carpet--it's paint. How the hell did she do that?! Still, her paintings look like they were made with industrial no-stain carpet. She has accomplished something amazing in her technique, and used it to make some pretty boring paintings.

At least good old Dawolu Jabari Anderson came through. He had a show at Joan Wich of his giant comic book cover paintings and his drawings. His drawings are weak tea, obviously copied from other drawings or photographs, without any indication of drawing mastery. But his paintings are fun, pastiches of Jack Kirby comics covers but starring an "Aunt Jemima"-style character called Mam-E.


Dawolu Jaban Anderson, "Pig knuckles served with a punch?", latex, acrylic and ink on paper, 2009

Amazing that I saw two pieces of art featuring the Kool-Aid man this weekend. One more and it'll be a trend.

 
Dawolu Jaban Anderson, "The Jig's Up", latex, acrylic and ink on paper, 2009

In the end, I think these paintings are sort of trivial, and I think riffing on Kirby creates a kind of incoherence and is a substitute for having an original idea. But even as I write those words, they seem too harsh for these humorous, likable works. (Sorry for the lameness of my photos. They always look pretty sharp when I take them. Consider it an inducement to go see the pieces in the flesh--or at least check them out on the Joan Wich website.)

One show I liked a lot even though I had low expectations was the "Collected Works" show at Inman Gallery.  The gallery is celebrating its 20th anniversary, so it put on a show of various pieces by a bunch of different artists that had been borrowed from collectors who originally bought them from Inman. I could see how this would be a way for a gallery to pat itself on the back, but it also seemed a little contrary to mission of a contempary art gallery--to bring new work to a public of potential and existing buyers. My objection was a bit abstract, I'll admit. And it went away as soon as I saw the work. It was a jumble--too many different pieces in different styles. But there was so much there that was really good that you can safely dismiss my initial reservations.


Wayne White, "They're All Like What Does It mean and I'm All Like I Don't Know," acrylic on framed lithographs, 2003

For one thing, I got to see a Wayne White word painting up close. This two-part painting is quite small and has a totally different presence than "Big Lectric Fan to Keep Me Cool While I Sleep." It's nice to be able to see this side of his work while the other big installation is up just a few blocks south.


Beth Secor, "Girl, Around 1938," embroidery on textile, 2008

I only really know Secor from her snarky, funny Glasstire columns. But I love this art! This is a piece that like Sasha Pierce's rewards looking close. Obviously Secor labored mightily to make this--embroidery is not a fast art. And yet it looks so expressive, so sketchy, so spontaneous. The colors are great, and it's great to see how she achieves her color effects by layering different colored threads.


Beth Secor, "Girl, Around 1938" detail,  embroidery on textile, 2008


Beth Secor, "Girl, Around 1938" detail,  embroidery on textile, 2008

I also liked this extremely detailed realistic domestic painting (below), especially trying to figure out what that thing in the middle of the room is. It feels vaguely menacing.


Jim Richard, "Blinds," oil on linen, 2009

There were many other interesting pieces at the Inman--definitely worth checking out.

Finally, I went to The Joanna for their secret Saturday sale. I met Cody Ledvina who showed me around and told me a little about their evolving philosophy of pricing the art. Almost everything was under $200--apparently this approach was decided on after they drastically overpriced the art at the I Love You Baby show in July.The big exception were two huge canvases by Cheyenne Ramos (who normally shows at Joan Wich).


Cheyenne Ramos, don't know what this one is called...

Her paintings were definitely my favorites of the show there. The Joanna is a house where Mr. Ledvina lives that he rents from The Menil Foundation. They clear out the living room for the occasional exhibit. The Joanna can't put a sign out front (part of the lease agreement), but they are pretty sure that the Menil knows what they are doing.

That is all for this past weekend--but there are still plenty of shows that have just opened that I haven't seen yet. So look for more next week...

$timulus and I Love You Baby Bullets

Two art shows opened Friday so I decided to check them out after work. First was $timulus at Diverse Works, a group show of 2009 recipients of grants from Artadia, a grant-making outfit that supports selected artists in selected cities, including Houston. So like any group show, you have some winners and losers. Usually I only like to talk about the art I like, but I have to complain about El Franco Lee II (or Junior, for short).

• He is the son of Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee.

not sure what the title is, El Franco Lee II

• Junior's art looks inept and adolescent.

Blaqsheep vs Marvel, El Franco Lee II

• It troubles me to look at it--is Junior being ironic or is this work just plain dumb?
• You are meant to wonder this when you look at some of the work of, say, Mike Kelley or Lisa Yuskavage. But, y'know, really it's obvious that these two are clever postmodernists producing double-coded art.
• The only hints that he might be an ironist are his elite education (Yale, UH MFA) and where his art is shown.
• But for me, that just doesn't make up for the bad drawing and general stupidity of the work.

Blaqsheep vs. DC, El Franco Lee II

• If he were 16 years old and drawing this, I'd feel slightly embarrassed for him.

from "The Young Manhood of Dan Pussey," by Dan Clowes

• I'm reminded of the Dan Clowes story where Dan Pussey shows his art to Gummo Bubbleman.

• But I like to think I'm less naive than "Bubbleman"--I don't care if Junior is being postmodern. This art is horrible.

Blaqsheep vs. Triad

• I mean "Blaqsheep vs. Triad"--Jesus.
  
• But some of the art in the show was good.

Self-Portrait, Stephanie Toppin

• Like this.

La Llorona in Lilith's Garden, Delilah Montoya with Tina Hernandez, 2004

• And this.

La Llorona in Lilith's Garden, Delilah Montoya with Tina Hernandez, 2004, detail

• Here's a detail of that last one.

Mam E, Dawolu Jabari Anderson

• This one made me laugh. (Laugh with it, not at it.) Dude digs Kirby, eh?
  

I left Diverse Works with mixed feelings. I was worrying over whether ineptitude as a strategy, as a way of questioning certain artistic meta-narratives, butts up against ineptitude that happens because an artist doesn't know any better. With Junior, like with so much postmodern art, context is everything. If you saw one of those "Blaqsheep" drawings in a teenager's notebook, you might be encouraged that he is being creative, but you certainly wouldn't encourage him to pursue an art career. My question is, does this really change just because the work in on the pristine white walls of Diverse Works?

These questions didn't get easier at my next stop for the night. An art group, I Love You Baby (ILYB for short), was showing at The Joanna.

• The Joanna is just an ordinary house on Graustark across from the University of St. Thomas.
• Its shows last one night only--on Friday, that was from 6 pm til 2 am.
• The group I Love You Baby is a collective of anarchic art punks.
• They were among the exiles from the Commerce Street Artist Warehouse who were in the movie by Skeezer Stinkfist. (They were ones who had the office Christmas party that degenerated into an orgy of destruction.)
• Their paintings seem a bit cleverer and more knowing than Junior's.

unknown title, ILYB

• I liked this one.

unknown title, ILYB

• And this one made me laugh.
• But even though they were basically exhibiting in someone's living room, context was everything.

unknown title, ILYB

• The work would seem ridiculously crude and inexplicable outside a gallery.

unknown title, ILYB

• One last I Love You Baby painting.