Today I talked about Goethe's Faust: Part One, translated by poet Randall Jarrell. I've read a bunch of translations of Faust over the years, starting with the Walter Kaufmann translation, then the version in The Essential Goethe, and the Faust translated by Philip Wayne, which are briefly discussed in this video. Also mentioned are the drawings and prints of Faust by Eugène Delacroix, music based on Goethe's poetry by Gounod, Mendelssohn, and Schubert (also mentioning Houston painter Earl Staley's designs for Gounod's opera Faust.) I'm hoping YouTube will let me keep the video up given that I used copyrighted music in it--we'll see, I guess!
Showing posts with label Earl Staley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earl Staley. Show all posts
Friday, June 18, 2021
Robert Boyd's Book Report: Faust part one, translated by Randall Jerrell
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Friday, December 30, 2016
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.
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.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
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:
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).
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.
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).
Sunday, May 18, 2014
You! Yes, you! You can be an art collector!
Robert Boyd
When we think about art collectors, we are likely to think about people like Eli Broad.
Eli Broad (right)
People who, unlike me and probably you, are very rich. Not that I have anything against rich people. The Menils were also loaded, and we Houstonians benefit from their willingness to share their art collection and to fund the Menil Foundation. (Or maybe when we think about collectors, we think about people like the Vogels, who armed with a good eye and a very tight budget managed to gather a huge, significant collection of contemporary art.) But there is something discouraging when one reads about Christie's auctioning off $745 million worth of art (at an average of $11 million for each piece sold). Or when you stroll through the Frieze art fair. It makes you feel that collecting art is only for the very rich.
But you don't have to be as rich as Eli Broad or as fanatical as the Vogels to acquire art. In the past two months, without exactly intending to, I have acquired 16 pieces of art. They are pieces by long established Houston artists as well as very young local artists. Pieces from Houston, from other parts of Texas, from around the country and even one from France. They are sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints. The ways I got them varied, but what's relevant here is that they were all pretty inexpensive while also being work that really interested and appealed to me.
Earl Staley is a long-time Houston painter and teacher. He came to Houston in the 60s to teach painting at Rice University, had a great deal of success as a painter in the 70s and 80s, moved away for a while and now is back, still teaching, still painting. He went to live at the American Academy in Rome for a couple of months last year, and came back with lots of ideas for new paintings.
Earl Staley, Pavement 8, 2014, acrylic, 22 x 31 inches
Staley had an open studio event and showed some of these new paintings, based on pavement designs in Rome. In addition to his paintings, he also had a slew of new watercolors (in addition to his extensive selection of older pieces). I found this beautiful Grotesquery 2 from his Rome watercolors.
Earl Staley, Grotesquery 2, 2013, watercolor on paper, 12 x 9 inches
Machine Project Documentary Portrait by David Fenster from machine project on Vimeo.
Allen was also a Core fellow back in 1993 to 1995. He came to Houston recently with two shows--one a bunch of eye-popping posters for various Machine Project events at the Brandon.
Machine Project posters
Machine Project poster
His show at Front Gallery was quite different--a bunch of little drawings that I would characterize as almost cute. I liked the little furry fellow below, so I bought it.
Mark Allen, One Friend, color pencil on paper, 2013
BlueOrange gallery was approached by the family of the late Charlie Carper about selling some of his art collection. Disposing of art for estates is a common practice for art galleries. In this case, Carper had collected a lot of silkscreen prints by the Hancock Brothers, and his estate was selling them to benefit ArtBridge, a local non-profit organization that provides opportunities for homeless children to make art.
I didn't know Charlie Carper all that well, but we were Facebook friends and chatted occasionally when we ran into one another at openings. I was sorry to hear that he had died early last year. But I'm glad that his collection was being used to help fund a really great cause. So I bought a print.
John Hancock, Prince Randian, screen print 5/10, 16 x 20 inches
Prince Randian was a famous sideshow freak who appeared in the movie Freaks
. I wonder if by portraying him in blackface, John Hancock is suggesting that freakshows were to people with disabilities what minstrelsy was to African-Americans. Or maybe he was just being provocative.
Brock Caron installation (photo courtesy of BlueOrange Gallery)
This is Brock Caron's installation in a big gallery space. In BlueOrange's tiny gallery, it is so large it takes up an entire room with not enough extra space to step back and take a photo.
I liked Caron's art a lot, and it was priced to move. So I got a piece called Mama Tried (named after the classic Merle Haggard song, natch).
Brock Caron, Mama Tried, 2014, mixed media on panel, 12 x 16.5 inches
You wouldn't think so, but selling art at auction to benefit non-profits is controversial. For one thing, if you give $500 to a non-profit, you can deduct that from your income for tax purposes, but if you give a $500 painting you made, you can only deduct the cost of the materials. For another thing, people often go to these auctions looking for bargains, which may depress the market price for an artist's work. I'm not sure that there is an easy solution for the former issue, but for the latter, there are ways around it. For example, the Box 13 silent auction allows the donors (i.e., artists) to set minimum bids on their work. Diverse Works dispenses with individual bidding all together--you just buy an opportunity to be in a raffle and then buy raffle tickets. When your number is chosen, you get to choose any of the artwork you want, unless it has already been chosen by someone else. Diverse Works also has a regulation size, 7 by 9 inches. These are tiny pieces that probably won't be mistaken for an artist's main work.
I attended both of these fund raisers and walked away with several pieces. Here's what I got at Box 13's Empty Box fundraiser.
Kathryn Kelley and Anila Agha, Cohesive Discord (1 of 2), 2008, tires, dyed papers and thread
This is my second Kathy Kelley piece I've gotten from Box 13. She is an artist whose fascinating work I have been following for quite a while.
Paul Middendorf, Jog My Memory Again, ax, wood
Artist/curator Paul Middendorf is also someone whose practice I've followed for a while now, mostly through his curatorial activities.
Maggie Fuller, The Heart with No Companion, 2011, porcelain
On the other hand, I know nothing about Maggie Fuller and can't even find much about her online, except that she is a Galveston artist. But as soon as I saw this disturbing but beautiful creature, I knew I wanted it!
Dennis Harper, Offering, 2013, metal, fabric and wood
Dennis Harper is a former underground cartoonist and current sculptor, now living in Austin. I've written about his work before, included a large sculpture of his in a show I curated, and finally ended up with another sculpture of his at last year's Box 13 fundraiser. I was happy to get this small but elegant object.
Guillaume Gelot, Louise Bourgeois, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 6 inches
I was critical of Guillaume Gelot's "panty shot" paintings in a recent review, but I also liked them (for all the wrong reasons). This one seems especially offensive while being simultaneously cute, sexy and lovable. I couldn't resist. Damn you, Gelot! (Check out that insane thigh gap!)
Hillaree Hamblin, A Glimmer & a Rustle, 2013, acrylic and water-based oil on panel, 14 x 11 inches
Hillaree Hamblin was part of a group show at Gallery HOMELAND! that was the subject of an unusually controversial Glasstire review. I liked her work in that show and I liked this piece here.
And here's what I got at Diverse Work's Luck of the Draw fundraiser.
David Reed, Color Study #32, 9 x 7 inches
David Reed is a writer/painter from New York. Looking at his website, I realized I had seen his paintings before and liked them, but had forgotten his name! Choosing this work at the Luck of the Draw was a happy coincidence.
K.M. Mullins, DWI, 7 x 9 inches
Kevin Mullins is an artist based in Kansas City. Beyond that I know nothing, except that I was hypnotized by this pattern. It would be nice to stare at while listening to György Ligeti's "Volumina" on headphones real loud.
Ryan S. Humphrey, untitled, 7 x 9 inches
I saw a Ryan Humphrey show in New York last year and it made me laugh (which I think was the intent). It's hard to look at watercolors of breaking waves and not think of Raymond Pettibon, which may be what Humphrey wants.
Tatiana Istomina, Alissa Blumenthal, untitled, date unknown, 9 x 7 inches
Tatiana Istomina was another Core fellow whose studio I visited last year.The title of this piece indicates that it is meant to be seen as the work of her fictional alter-ego, Alissa Blumenthal, a Russian modernist who immigrated to the US in 1925.
Stéphane Blanquet painting
That's what happened when I went up to New York earlier in May to check out the big art fairs. I never go to these things with the intent to buy art because 99.9% of it is out of my league. (I usually get some books at DAP and Printed Matter, who exhibit at Frieze and NADA respectively. And this year Raw Vision exhibited at the Outsider Art Fair; I got two books and the latest issue of Raw Vision there.) But as I mentioned in this post, I happened on a Stéphane Blanquet painting that was within my price range. I wasn't expecting it and indeed hesitated at first. I left the Fuman Art booth and walked around the fair looking at other stuff, but ultimately I returned and pulled the trigger. The opportunity presented itself and I took it.
H.J. Bott's studio on July 1, 1979 (photo by H.J. Bott)
The craziest art acquisition this past month was But Still First, a piece made of wood and cast aluminum by H.J. Bott in 1966. Bott had a massive studio space that had morphed over the years into a cluttered storage space.
H.J. Bott's former studio on April 6, 2014 (photo by H.J. Bott)
But the land under the enormous metal shed became too valuable to remain a warehouse space, and Bott had to move years of accumulated stuff out. Some he carefully put into climate controlled storage. Some was certainly going to be thrown away. But there was some stuff he was giving away, so he invited a group of us to come over and take what we wanted.
A public comment on the building's future (photo by H.J. Bott)
H.J. Bott and But Still First
H.J. Bott, But Still First, 1966, sand-cast aluminum, wood, 14 3/4 x 22 inches
That's how I got this early Bott, created long before he came up with his DoV system. It obviously comments on the then current space race and the unspoken violence that lay behind it. (The space race, like much of the Cold War, was war by other means.) I feel extremely privileged and grateful to have it. And that leads me to my final tip.
For these 16 pieces of art, I paid a total of $3264, which is by no means a trivial amount of money. But it comes out to a mere $204 each, which is pretty damn affordable. You don't have to be Eli Broad. You, too, can collect art.
When we think about art collectors, we are likely to think about people like Eli Broad.
Eli Broad (right)
People who, unlike me and probably you, are very rich. Not that I have anything against rich people. The Menils were also loaded, and we Houstonians benefit from their willingness to share their art collection and to fund the Menil Foundation. (Or maybe when we think about collectors, we think about people like the Vogels, who armed with a good eye and a very tight budget managed to gather a huge, significant collection of contemporary art.) But there is something discouraging when one reads about Christie's auctioning off $745 million worth of art (at an average of $11 million for each piece sold). Or when you stroll through the Frieze art fair. It makes you feel that collecting art is only for the very rich.
But you don't have to be as rich as Eli Broad or as fanatical as the Vogels to acquire art. In the past two months, without exactly intending to, I have acquired 16 pieces of art. They are pieces by long established Houston artists as well as very young local artists. Pieces from Houston, from other parts of Texas, from around the country and even one from France. They are sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints. The ways I got them varied, but what's relevant here is that they were all pretty inexpensive while also being work that really interested and appealed to me.
Earl Staley is a long-time Houston painter and teacher. He came to Houston in the 60s to teach painting at Rice University, had a great deal of success as a painter in the 70s and 80s, moved away for a while and now is back, still teaching, still painting. He went to live at the American Academy in Rome for a couple of months last year, and came back with lots of ideas for new paintings.
Earl Staley, Pavement 8, 2014, acrylic, 22 x 31 inches
Staley had an open studio event and showed some of these new paintings, based on pavement designs in Rome. In addition to his paintings, he also had a slew of new watercolors (in addition to his extensive selection of older pieces). I found this beautiful Grotesquery 2 from his Rome watercolors.
Earl Staley, Grotesquery 2, 2013, watercolor on paper, 12 x 9 inches
- COLLECTING ON A BUDGET TIP #1: Buy directly from the artist. When you can avoid a middle-man, you save money.
- COLLECTING ON A BUDGET TIP #2: Works on paper are often less expensive than larger works. Drawings and water-colors can make accessible the work of an artist whose paintings, sculptures, installations, etc., might be out of reach.
Machine Project Documentary Portrait by David Fenster from machine project on Vimeo.
Allen was also a Core fellow back in 1993 to 1995. He came to Houston recently with two shows--one a bunch of eye-popping posters for various Machine Project events at the Brandon.
Machine Project posters
Machine Project poster
His show at Front Gallery was quite different--a bunch of little drawings that I would characterize as almost cute. I liked the little furry fellow below, so I bought it.
Mark Allen, One Friend, color pencil on paper, 2013
BlueOrange gallery was approached by the family of the late Charlie Carper about selling some of his art collection. Disposing of art for estates is a common practice for art galleries. In this case, Carper had collected a lot of silkscreen prints by the Hancock Brothers, and his estate was selling them to benefit ArtBridge, a local non-profit organization that provides opportunities for homeless children to make art.
I didn't know Charlie Carper all that well, but we were Facebook friends and chatted occasionally when we ran into one another at openings. I was sorry to hear that he had died early last year. But I'm glad that his collection was being used to help fund a really great cause. So I bought a print.
John Hancock, Prince Randian, screen print 5/10, 16 x 20 inches
Prince Randian was a famous sideshow freak who appeared in the movie Freaks
. I wonder if by portraying him in blackface, John Hancock is suggesting that freakshows were to people with disabilities what minstrelsy was to African-Americans. Or maybe he was just being provocative.- COLLECTING ON A BUDGET TIP #3: Prints/multiples are cheaper than unique items, on average. And a lot of really good artists make limited edition prints.
Brock Caron installation (photo courtesy of BlueOrange Gallery)
This is Brock Caron's installation in a big gallery space. In BlueOrange's tiny gallery, it is so large it takes up an entire room with not enough extra space to step back and take a photo.
I liked Caron's art a lot, and it was priced to move. So I got a piece called Mama Tried (named after the classic Merle Haggard song, natch).
Brock Caron, Mama Tried, 2014, mixed media on panel, 12 x 16.5 inches
- COLLECTING ON A BUDGET TIP #4: Buy art by young, emerging artists. Nothing against art by older artists, obviously. But the more established an artist is, on average, the more expensive the work.
You wouldn't think so, but selling art at auction to benefit non-profits is controversial. For one thing, if you give $500 to a non-profit, you can deduct that from your income for tax purposes, but if you give a $500 painting you made, you can only deduct the cost of the materials. For another thing, people often go to these auctions looking for bargains, which may depress the market price for an artist's work. I'm not sure that there is an easy solution for the former issue, but for the latter, there are ways around it. For example, the Box 13 silent auction allows the donors (i.e., artists) to set minimum bids on their work. Diverse Works dispenses with individual bidding all together--you just buy an opportunity to be in a raffle and then buy raffle tickets. When your number is chosen, you get to choose any of the artwork you want, unless it has already been chosen by someone else. Diverse Works also has a regulation size, 7 by 9 inches. These are tiny pieces that probably won't be mistaken for an artist's main work.
I attended both of these fund raisers and walked away with several pieces. Here's what I got at Box 13's Empty Box fundraiser.
Kathryn Kelley and Anila Agha, Cohesive Discord (1 of 2), 2008, tires, dyed papers and thread
This is my second Kathy Kelley piece I've gotten from Box 13. She is an artist whose fascinating work I have been following for quite a while.
Paul Middendorf, Jog My Memory Again, ax, wood
Artist/curator Paul Middendorf is also someone whose practice I've followed for a while now, mostly through his curatorial activities.
Maggie Fuller, The Heart with No Companion, 2011, porcelain
On the other hand, I know nothing about Maggie Fuller and can't even find much about her online, except that she is a Galveston artist. But as soon as I saw this disturbing but beautiful creature, I knew I wanted it!
Dennis Harper, Offering, 2013, metal, fabric and wood
Dennis Harper is a former underground cartoonist and current sculptor, now living in Austin. I've written about his work before, included a large sculpture of his in a show I curated, and finally ended up with another sculpture of his at last year's Box 13 fundraiser. I was happy to get this small but elegant object.
Guillaume Gelot, Louise Bourgeois, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 6 inches
I was critical of Guillaume Gelot's "panty shot" paintings in a recent review, but I also liked them (for all the wrong reasons). This one seems especially offensive while being simultaneously cute, sexy and lovable. I couldn't resist. Damn you, Gelot! (Check out that insane thigh gap!)
Hillaree Hamblin, A Glimmer & a Rustle, 2013, acrylic and water-based oil on panel, 14 x 11 inches
Hillaree Hamblin was part of a group show at Gallery HOMELAND! that was the subject of an unusually controversial Glasstire review. I liked her work in that show and I liked this piece here.
And here's what I got at Diverse Work's Luck of the Draw fundraiser.
David Reed, Color Study #32, 9 x 7 inches
David Reed is a writer/painter from New York. Looking at his website, I realized I had seen his paintings before and liked them, but had forgotten his name! Choosing this work at the Luck of the Draw was a happy coincidence.
K.M. Mullins, DWI, 7 x 9 inches
Kevin Mullins is an artist based in Kansas City. Beyond that I know nothing, except that I was hypnotized by this pattern. It would be nice to stare at while listening to György Ligeti's "Volumina" on headphones real loud.
Ryan S. Humphrey, untitled, 7 x 9 inches
I saw a Ryan Humphrey show in New York last year and it made me laugh (which I think was the intent). It's hard to look at watercolors of breaking waves and not think of Raymond Pettibon, which may be what Humphrey wants.
Tatiana Istomina, Alissa Blumenthal, untitled, date unknown, 9 x 7 inches
Tatiana Istomina was another Core fellow whose studio I visited last year.The title of this piece indicates that it is meant to be seen as the work of her fictional alter-ego, Alissa Blumenthal, a Russian modernist who immigrated to the US in 1925.
- COLLECTING ON A BUDGET TIP #5: Buy art at fundraisers for non-profits (particularly those that are run on a ethical basis vis-a-vis the participating artists).
- COLLECTING ON A BUDGET TIP #6: Be prepared to acquire art on a moment's notice because you never know when the opportunity will arise.
Stéphane Blanquet painting
That's what happened when I went up to New York earlier in May to check out the big art fairs. I never go to these things with the intent to buy art because 99.9% of it is out of my league. (I usually get some books at DAP and Printed Matter, who exhibit at Frieze and NADA respectively. And this year Raw Vision exhibited at the Outsider Art Fair; I got two books and the latest issue of Raw Vision there.) But as I mentioned in this post, I happened on a Stéphane Blanquet painting that was within my price range. I wasn't expecting it and indeed hesitated at first. I left the Fuman Art booth and walked around the fair looking at other stuff, but ultimately I returned and pulled the trigger. The opportunity presented itself and I took it.
H.J. Bott's studio on July 1, 1979 (photo by H.J. Bott)
The craziest art acquisition this past month was But Still First, a piece made of wood and cast aluminum by H.J. Bott in 1966. Bott had a massive studio space that had morphed over the years into a cluttered storage space.
H.J. Bott's former studio on April 6, 2014 (photo by H.J. Bott)
But the land under the enormous metal shed became too valuable to remain a warehouse space, and Bott had to move years of accumulated stuff out. Some he carefully put into climate controlled storage. Some was certainly going to be thrown away. But there was some stuff he was giving away, so he invited a group of us to come over and take what we wanted.
A public comment on the building's future (photo by H.J. Bott)
H.J. Bott and But Still First
H.J. Bott, But Still First, 1966, sand-cast aluminum, wood, 14 3/4 x 22 inches
That's how I got this early Bott, created long before he came up with his DoV system. It obviously comments on the then current space race and the unspoken violence that lay behind it. (The space race, like much of the Cold War, was war by other means.) I feel extremely privileged and grateful to have it. And that leads me to my final tip.
- COLLECTING ON A BUDGET TIP #7: Become friends with someone who may someday, when you least expect it, give you a piece of art for free.
For these 16 pieces of art, I paid a total of $3264, which is by no means a trivial amount of money. But it comes out to a mere $204 each, which is pretty damn affordable. You don't have to be Eli Broad. You, too, can collect art.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
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