The Houston Fall Art Season, part II

 Robert Boyd

In my first installment, I visited four exhibitions. In this one I shall discuss seven! This was Saturday, September 11--an auspicious anniversary. 20 years ago, 2977 people died of a terrorist attack. Now we get 1400 or so dying every day of a mostly preventable disease. And it is this disease that kept most of us collectively from going out to see art for a year and a half. But now that many of us are vaccinated and masked in public, we can venture some public art viewing. On September 11, I first went to the UH Downtown faculty art exhibit, at the O'Kane Art Gallery on campus. I've seen dozens of great exhibits here over the years, but it has a low profile amongst Houston art spaces.

 

Floyd Newsum, Row Houses in Red, 2018, gouache on paper

It takes a second to see the row houses in Floyd Newsum's gouache drawing, Row Houses in Red.

 Patricia Hernandez, Pink Edge, 2021, acrylic and oil on clay board

 Patricia Hernandez got one of the worst reviews I ever wrote on this blog, back in 2011. But I love these paintings. Slashing and disturbing, with their toothy, partially open mouths.

Patricia Hernandez and I both studied art and art history at Rice, and she subsequently founded Studio One Archive Resource, devoted to preserving local art history, which is of great interest to me. Alas, Studio One Archive Resource is now defunct.

Patricia Hernandez, Untitled #3, 2021, Acrylic and oil on clay board

 

Mark Cervenka, Past Grievances Recede Before Immeasurable Distance, 2020, oil on canvas

I don't really know Mark Cervenka or his art, but he is the director of the O'Kane Gallery at UHD. I liked this picture because of the silent watcher standing in the ruins of a recently destroyed city. It reminded me of images of Stalingrad, but, alas, there are so many destroyed cities that Cervenka could
have used as a model. (I wonder if he is related to Exene Cervenka.) 

 

Mason Rankin, The Mint Open, 2021, found objects, automotive

Mason Rankin is another artist about whom I know nothing, but looking at his work online, this crushed car is very atypical. His website shows him to be a photographer and teacher of photography. But let artists work outside their comfort zones!. I am curious--did he crush the car himself (like John Chamberlain might have done), or did he find it this way?

 

Beth Secor, Exoduster, Kansas, (sometime in the 1870s), 2008, embroidery on textile

Last of all, let's look at one of the pieces Beth Secor exhibited in the show. It's an old piece from 2008, which struck me as a little odd. But one can see her new work now at a solo exhibit at Inman Gallery.

After UH Downtown, I went to a place that is in my neighborhood that I had never visited before (although I've walked by it many times). The African American Library at the Gregory School is part of the Houston Public Library System. What specifically interested me was a small exhibit they were having of artwork from the John L. Nau III Collection of Texas Art. One interesting thing they did here was to show self-taught artists alongside more academically trained artists. In other words, the insiders and the outsiders shared wall space for once. This seems especially necessary when showing the work of African-American artists since for so long, many of the greatest African-American artists were denied the training their white peers got. They weren't outsiders by choice.

Kermit Oliver, Sunday Morning, n.d., acrylic on board

Sunday Morning is one of two beautiful Kermit Oliver paintings in the show. 

 

John Biggers, Upper Room, 1984, lithograph

And there are several choice John Biggers pieces. A few more recent pieces are part of the collection, as well.

 

Bert Long, Chalice, 1975, lithograph

 

James Bettison, Domestic Bliss, 1988, lithograph

But as I mentioned earlier, what makes this exhibit really special is the inclusion of so-called "outsider" artists as the equals of the trained artists.

Rev. Johnnie Swearingen, Cotton Picking, 1976, oil on masonite

The Reverend Johnnie Swearingen was born in Brehnam. Texas, in 1908 and became interested in painting around 1950. The way these things work is that after some time working totally outside the knowledge of the "art world", and artist like Swearingen gets discovered. These discovery stories are often quite fascinating, but what they suggest is that many Johnnie Swearingens of the world never got discovered and their work remains unknown.

Frank Albert Jones, Grandpa's Devil House, 1952, colored pencil on paper

Frank Albert Jones was a prisoner in the Texas State Prison system. He saw ghost, devils and "haints" that he drew as confined in devil houses. I wonder if that reflected the circumstance he found himself in, where criminals were confined in their cells. Here is a detail from the drawing above:

Frank Albert Jones, Grandpa's Devil House detail, 1952, colored pencil on paper

Next I went over to the galleries on Colquitt, which seem to be slowly disappearing. Soon the beautiful Achitectonica building that has long housed art galleries will be the home of nothing but fancy marble floor-covering stores (which would be a case of replacing one type of high-end bourgeois retail establish with another, I guess.) First I went to Heidi Vaughan Fine Art for a solo show by Patrick McGrath Muniz. No one can deny his skill as a painter, but I was unmoved by them.

Patrick McGrath Muniz, Diasporamus, 2018, oil on canvas

Diasporamus, painted soon after Hurricane Harvey, may stir a few terrifying memories for Houstonians. 

Across the alleyway from Heidi Vaughn Fine Art is Gray Contemporary, which was showing two exhibits; a solo exhibit by Matthew Woodward and a small group exhibit in the back gallery. Matthew Woodward's work was some of my favorite that I saw this weekend.

 

Matthew Woodward, Edgecomb Boulevard, 2018, pencil, paint on paper

His work has a kind of simple idea. Find some attractive, old-fashioned architectural detail and draw it very large on paper. But because he'd drawing it white on slashing black-painted underpainting, on rough brown paper that is often torn, it makes the idea of a ruin stand out. As artworks, they remind me a little of English "Follies", gardens from the 17th and 18th century that were designed to look like ruins. I can't say exactly what I liked so much about these, but I was moved by them.

 

 Jen Rose, Tiny Monster Under Your Bed, 2021, porcelain and nylon cord

 

Monique Lacey, Hyperbole Unus, 2021, bronze

The back gallery at Gray was filled with tiny sculptures, each one a only a few inches in any dimension. It was a nice little collection. 

A quick stroll down the street and I was at Moody Gallery, where one of their best known artists James Drake was exhibiting a huge drawing (along with a lot of preparatory drawings).

James Drake, Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness, 2021, charcoal on paper mounted on canvas

I've greatly enjoyed James Drake's artwork for years, but this one doesn't really move me.

In the back room, they had a small group show up. 

Terry Allen, Rage, 1995, etching, aquatint, collage

Melissa Miller, Forest Fire, 2019, oil on canvas

I couldn't photograph either of these pictures head on because gallerist Betty Moody was in the middle of the room on a ladder adjusting the track lighting.

I next went to Hooks-Epstein Gallery. One of the biggest changes of the COVID times was the death of Geri Hooks. She cofounded the gallery in 1969, making it one of the longest lived galleries in Houston. (Texas Gallery and Moody Gallery are both up there in longevity, but I don't know which of the three is the oldest)> Hooks died in June, and I have been wondering what the future holds for the gallery. I don't know who owns it now. But it is still in business. 

The currently have a small group show up. A bunch of old favorites of mine have their work on display.

 

Mark Greenwalt, I Spot Eye Spot, 2021, graphite, acrylic on panel

Mark Greenwalt was the subject of a post in the first year of The Great God Pan Is Dead, just over 12 years ago.

Mayuko Ono Gray, Pulsating Still Life--Composition in Green, 2021, graphite on paper

I appreciate the irony of naming a graphite drawing "Composition in Green." It was also intersting to see a Mayuko Ono Gray piece without Japanese characters woven into the composition. Here she goes for a Dutch still-life with bubbles added.

Clara Hoag, Sailor, 2021, ceramic

Clara Hoag was in the gallery that day. I asked her about the black coloring on the feet, whether it was a glaze applied before firing or paint applied afterwards. The answer was neither. The piece was apparently fired more than once and the pigment around the toes was applied between firings. (All of which is to say that I am ignorant of the techniques of ceramics.)

 

Ann Johnson, Buck, 2021, transfer print, embossing, found objects

I've always loved Ann Johnson's practice of printing photographic images on surfaces that normall aren't used to print photographs.

From there, I went over to McClain Gallery where Shane Tolbert was having an opening. I haven't seen Tolbert in years, because he moved away. He currently lives in New Mexico. But he was in Houston for his opening.

 

Shane Tolbert discussing his work, standing in front of Blood Harmony, 2021, acrylic on canvas

My memory of Tolbert's work when he was still in Houston was that is was much more pale than the work on display at McClain. This show was full of bold, brightly colored work.

Shane Tolbert, Rope Thrower, 2021, acrylic on canvas

 

Shane Tolbert, Electric Netting, 2021, acrylic on canvas

It was great to talk to Tolbert, and I was happy to see, for the second time that weekend, Tudor Mitroi.

 

Tudor Mitroi (left) and Shane Tolbert (right)

My last stop of the day was the concrete cube at 4411 Montrose, which houses several galleries. Two of the galleries there have been there as long as I have been writing about at in Houston. One location, David Shelton, has been there for a few years, and the other two locations are like cursed restaurant locations. No gallery seems to last long in them. One of these is currently vacant, the other is the location of Foto Relevance. Foto Relevance is a bizarre name for a gallery--the word "relevance" seems particularly out-of-place, all the moreso for the surreal exhibition on display now. 

Pelle Cass, Volleyball at Northwestern University, Close, 2018, inkjet print on heavy matte rag paper

Pelle Cass sets up his camera over a playing field of one kind or another, takes 100s of fotos, then layers the figures and balls over one another using Photoshop. 

Pelle Cass, Dartmouth Softball, 2019, inkjet print on heavy matte rag paper

Next was Anna Mavromatis at Barbara Davis Gallery. I don't know Mavromatis, even though she is based in Houston, as far as I can determine. For this show, she made monoprints of dresses or even made dresses themselves that were hung from the ceiling.

Anna Mavromatis, Daybreak, 2021, old dictionary pages folded and stitched to form the bodice of a young girl's dress, cyanotypes on coffee filters

The blue and grey come from the means of making this object. The images have to do with the early 20th century struggle to gain the right to vote for women.

Benjamin Edmiston had a solo exhibit at David Shelton Gallery. 

Benjamin Edmiston, Sundown, 2021, oil, flashe and wax on linen

What I liked about Benjamin Edmiston's paintings of crooked groups of parallel lines was the way they reminded me of badly stacked books--because that is the environment I live in. These would be good paintings for book-lovers. The paintings are completely abstract, but we humans like to find patterns in randomness. It's why we see images when we look at clouds.

The last gallery I'll mention is Anya Tish, and the show she had was perhaps my favorite of the weekend. It was an exhibit of new pieces by Gabriel Martinez.

Gabriel Martinez, Untitled, 2019, found fabric

As you can see, this is a piece made of fabric scraps assembled and quilted. I have to confess that I own one of Martinez's quilted fabric pieces--the most recent piece of art that I've acquired. Back in January, he sent out an email that he was raffling off a piece of art to raise money for the Houston Food Bank. I decided to take a chance and bought my $50 raffle ticket. And I won! It's a small piece, hanging on my wall right now. And it was nice to see the body of work that this small piece was a part of.

Gabriel Martinez, Channel, 2021, found fabric

This was the second rug-like piece I saw that weekend (the other being Snake by Matt Messinger). If I had either one of them, I would never walk on them.

 

 

Gabriel Martinez, Untitled, 2019, found fabric

Martinez was at the opening and we were able to have a good discussion about this body of work. When they are described at "found fabric", that is a literal description of Martinez' process. All the pieces of cloth he used were from pieces of clothing he found discarded on the street. It's weird, but if you walk around inside the city, you are almost certain to find a variety of discarded clothes. And every piece has a story that you will never know. Martinez would pick them up, bring them home, and launder them. Then he cuts them up into scraps and produces these quilts.

We talked at first about assemblage art: Robert Rauschenberg, Wallace Berman, and George Herms. Martinez had been at a residency with Herms and the two bonded. Herms is 86 years old now, and his assemblage work was produced using detritus. So Martinez is a contemporary exemplar of assemblage. But Martinez made a point to emphasize the quilting part of the work. He told me that there is a tradition of quilting in his family. Martinez is not just continuing a hundred year old artistic tradition, he is also continuing a family craft tradition. 

I found these works beautiful and moving. I like them because of how they look, but also because they have a good story.

That was my Fall 2021 art season weekend.

Been Doing This Kind of Thing Since Before Christ: A Talk with Gus Kopriva

Virginia Billeaud Anderson

As juror of Archway Gallery’s Seventh Annual Juried Art Exhibition, Gus Kopriva discussed the process by which he selected 39 out of the 194 artworks submitted, and while he addressed the gallery crowd I wondered how long it would take him to realize he wouldn’t be able to hold his bottle of Shiner and the microphone at the same time that he handed out the awards. Not long—beer on floor. “Ah been doing this kind of thing since before Christ,” Kopriva said, “and if space had allowed, I would have chosen all of them.” But it was his job to choose, so he chose what “connected with him in that time and place.”

From years of paying attention, I can say unequivocally that Kopriva is the only Houston gallery guru who doesn’t look tense. So when I learned he would serve as Archway’s juror, I suggested we do an interview that would touch on his role as judge, and also inform readers about his other art-related “interests” - his collection, gallery, curatorial projects and lectures. “Let’s do it,” Gus said, which led to several visits during which we discussed the juries, art prizes, curating, dealing, collecting and more.


Gus Kopriva, Juror - Archway Gallery’s Seventh Annual Juried Art Exhibition (through July 29)

Virginia Billeaud Anderson: You awarded the jury prizes at Archway Gallery exactly one day after Lawndale Art Center’s guest juror broke tradition and divided their annual juried Big Show’s $3000 prize evenly among all of the participating artists, so that none of the kiddies would feel rejection and all would know how precious they are. But I’m not the only one to feel skeptical about the Lawndale juror’s decision, I saw an artist to whom you’ve given multiple exhibitions roll her eyes and say, “How democratic.”

Gus Kopriva: I agree with what that juror was doing, with his social concept. The jurying process is soooo subjective, it’s impossible for one’s choices not to be affected by what’s in one’s mind at that time and place, so if I could choose I would accept all, give everyone honorable mentions, and no prizes. But since Archway honored me with the invitation to judge, I followed the rules. There are millions of different criteria for selecting and hanging a show.

VBA: Patrick Palmer who preceded you as an Archway juror told me he selected works that appealed to him aesthetically, but also worked well collectively to make a strong show. Remember Patrick is a teacher. Should skill count for something?

GK: I believe skill is very important, but consider Outsider art where untrained artists assemble found objects into sculptural pieces that are pleasing to viewers. As you know, Lawndale’s guest curator did no different from the late Walter Hopps, who when he was invited to judge a San Francisco exhibition, insisted all the artists be included, and because Walter was a highly respected curator, the organizers reluctantly went along with his decision and were forced to show thousands of pieces of art. Of course Walter was never again asked to judge a show. In principal I agree with Walter, but there are practical considerations - space limitations, organization rules, and importantly the artists’ expectations. Artists entered the Lawndale show expecting certain protocol related to first, second and third place prizes, and I imagine some were annoyed by the outcome.

VBA: There’s irony in the fact that it was Walter Hopps’ directorial and curatorial decisiveness that was responsible for your wife Sharon’s solo exhibition at the Menil, which was a pivotal moment in her career. Did Sharon buy you that dancing Shiva t-shirt on one of her trips to India?

GK: Yea, when she had her Mumbai show. I have a large collection of t-shirts.

VBA: I’ve often wondered how actively you participate in helping Sharon manage her career.

GK: It would be a conflict of interest for me to represent Sharon, other dealers do that.

VBA: Sugar, that’s a half-baked answer, because I know you understand my question. You’re hardly ignorant of the benefits of expert strategy on commercial success, and my question takes nothing away from Sharon’s astounding skill and creativity. Do you guide Sharon in her decisions, give advice, unofficially, on such things as gallery negotiations, or pricing, or media interaction, or which essay to include in a catalog?

GP: I’m an unofficial advisor.

VBA: I saw a full page ad in Vogue that announced Sharon’s Monterrey museum exhibition. Did you do that?

GK: Uh, I did the logistics. Lynet and I went to Mexico to try to arrange a traveling show, and we visited three museums where I showed them what I had done with other shows, like Shanghai, and I also showed them some of Sharon’s work which resulted in the Museo Metropolitana de Monterrey wanting to do Sharon’s Gothic Exposure exhibition, but it was their idea. So yes I advise. But I didn’t have anything to do with the New Orleans Ogden Museum show, it was all Sharon.

VBA: Pop didn’t raise a fool, did he Gus? You have been having a blast playing the role of curator, and by now must have organized several hundred exhibitions, many of which put you in collaboration with leading curators and scholars. Your shows have been critically noted, and in fact President George Bush wrote a complimentary letter in praise of the show you brought to the Shanghai Art Museum. I’ll never forget Still Crazy after All These Years, the 2005 exhibition you did for Lawndale Art Center’s 25th anniversary. That crowd was nostalgic and drunk.

GP: Lawndale gave me full curatorial freedom.

VBA: Still Crazy at Lawndale must have been logistically simple compared to exhibits in other countries where there have been complications, such as the people in Athens disobligingly deciding to riot in the streets at the time you were trying to show them some art.

GK: That 2012 Athens show Western Sequels: Art from the Lone Star State was scheduled to open at the National Painting School, but the opening was delayed a couple of days by a transportation strike. Then riots broke out on the plaza by the capital building, near our hotel, with tear gas and flying pieces of marble, surprisingly when we finally opened there were a few hundred people who attended. You know we finance these shows ourselves with little sponsorship from the government. When we showed in Havana, we were not only unsponsored, but fairly illegal, because of the embargo. Unable to get passports stamped, we had to travel to Cuba by way of Mexico, and I shipped the art via Frankfurt, and when we arrived at the Museo de Humboldt in Havana we found the city had no nails and wires so we had to use fishing line to hang the art. Things got worse when Wayne Gilbert got himself interviewed by CNN because that made us conspicuous, so we made Wayne fly home on a separate flight. Then our non-sponsored, illegal group encountered a prestigious MFA Museum-sponsored group in the plaza, and that made things more uncomfortable. I have so many stories. Keep in mind I did the Leipzig show in the former German Democratic Republic, what used to be East Germany. For one of the shows in Peru the container arrived only one day before the show opened. Talk about stress! When we brought Western Sequels to Istanbul there were riots there too.

VBA: It seems Cuba wasn’t the only western-embargoed location you decided couldn’t do without seeing Texas art. Last year I met an Iranian-born artist who told me you asked her to help you arrange an exhibition in Tehran. I can just imagine those mullahs hissing that your art is Satanic.

GK: I wanted a show in Tehran. I like Persian, and Iranian contemporary art. The theme could be “Art by Republican Artists,” with horses, cowboys and Indians. What a show. The choice of art would not matter, what would be significant is that we would be the first to do such a thing since the time of the Shah. But the permits and government hassles would be unbearable. It needs to be done though. Maybe Israel could sponsor us. We actually had an exhibition planned for Cairo, but the new government installed by the Muslim brotherhood fired our museum director and curators, and then there were the Egyptian riots, and no one wanted to travel so we cancelled.

VBA: Gustav, you have a charming way of using the imperial “We” like the papacy and the queen of England when describing your projects.

GK: This is so fun. I still want to do the show in Egypt.

VBA: You opened Redbud Gallery in 1999, which is known for giving upstarts a chance, and taking less than the standard commission.

GK: We opened in 1999 and we’ve survived vice squad raids, censorship, and condescending critics. We show dead, live and just starting artists, all mediums, whatever I like and want to show. In the early years I only took 10% of the sale, but after about eight years I was losing too much money, so now it’s a 50-50 split. We don’t concentrate on sales, my goal is to show art, but the art sells itself. I keep the prices low, and there have been many times the shows sold out.

VBA: When you were working on the recent John Biggers exhibition you told me you thought it was one of Redbud Gallery’s most significant.

GK: Because it was a survey show with works that spanned from the beginning of his career in the 1940s to his death, and as far as I could tell, no Houston commercial gallery had done a solo Biggers show in twenty five years. I worked with curators and local collectors and researched him thoroughly, actually read six illustrated books to pull it together. I’m equally proud of some of my early shows like the inaugural exhibition that showed the 84 year old unknown sculptor Gladys Gostick. Gladys showed a collection of three dimensional birds in stone, wood and copper, and we sold out. That was one of my most satisfying shows. Know what that woman did? Sat on her welding torch and burned her ass. Another really satisfying show was the West Coast assemblage artist George Herms. He had showed at MOMA and done things in the early sixties, but had not had a show in years. We sold out, and a Philadelphia gallery picked him up. He’s big again.

VBA: Do you think your out-going personality helps with commercial gallery success? You are gracious to everyone, even non-art buying nobodies, unlike a few out there who won’t even bother to speak, not even to those of us who wrote newspaper or magazine articles about their stuff. I don’t understand how those people ever manage to sell a piece of art behaving like that.

GK: I’ve seen it. It’s possible they’re trying to act like art should be some elitist status, trying to emulate how things are in New York and Paris, playing that role. Being friendly is important. I’m nice to everyone. Look, I grew up in a trailer house. Virginia let me show you my beginning. You see these burned up buildings in this photograph. This is where I was born. It was destroyed by American bombs in the war, I played in that rubble. My grandmother was killed in this building, here near the church. She drowned trying to take sanctuary in the basement, the water pipes broke. My mother watched while they carried out the bodies, my grandmother was wearing a camel hair coat and opal jewelry. For years my mother hated camel coats and opals. My mother married my step father, Frank Kopriva, Pop, who she met after the Americans occupied Pirmasens in 1945. We left there in 1955.

VBA: There’s nothing elitist about your art collection. Nothing pretentious, you’ll purchase from artists nobody ever heard of if the art pleases you, and I’ve often admired the fact that you collect Durer, Rembrandt and other Old Master prints, even if some contemporary art-biased snobs sniff at that. Your prints are lovely and it shows you have taste.

GK: I’ve been collecting for 30 years, have over 1,850 pieces. The collection also includes German Expressionism, French Symbolism, American WPA, and of course contemporary. They are mostly works on paper. Basically I buy art that I believe is different, or extremely well crafted, and art history plays a large part in what I buy, but the collection is not heavy in abstraction, except for a few art historical abstract pieces. It includes Miro, de Kooning, and Guston. I purchase from individuals, auctions, galleries, estates, and also from the artists who show in my Redbud Gallery. Our German Expressionist works formed the exhibition Broken Brushes, and it has traveled to small museums and universities around the U.S. and to Berlin.

I want to talk about the museum in Germany. We are about to begin a ten year loan of eighty-seven of the German Expressionist pieces to a regional museum in Salzwedel. The collection will be housed in a renovated turn of the century school house, a magnificent building in a medieval town in the old East Germany, called Art House Salzwedel. I’m loaning works on paper by Otto Dix, George Grosz, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Paul Klee, Kokoschka, Kollwitz, Franz Marc, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, and many others, and the collection will form the core of the museum’s holdings. I partnered with Salzwedel’s mayor as a consultant, an idea guy, to help her promote tourism, and suggested she start the art museum. I helped her chose the building, it had been empty for 10 years, and she got it back from the city for back taxes. The site will include a restaurant, and archives and a tourist bureau. And it’s well funded. The German government gave us a million Euros and local banks contributed, so we began the nonprofit Foundation for Art House Salzwedel to handle renovation funding and operations funding. Kunsthaus Salzwedel opens this fall.

VBA: You lecture frequently about your collection.

GP: I lecture specifically on the business of collecting art, and I do it at universities. The business part is crucial, and it’s not being taught. Artists must deal in entirely different ways with collectors, curators, and galleries, and they need to know how, they need to know the business, public relations and marketing, the protocols and practices, and unwritten expectations. MFA should create courses on this.

VBA: Do you miss being an engineer?

GK: Well, not really. I’m still consulting some, very part time, for my Middle East clients.

VBA: A few years back I tried to pick your brain about energy stocks, wondered if you had held on to your Dow Chemical stock, and you told me you were only buying art.

GK: Art has a proven history. I’m buying art and real estate. It lets me control it. With real estate I’ve never gone wrong. If you can afford it, buy it.

VBA: The media reported you’re selling the 1923 Houston Heights Theater building for $1.9 million.

GK: After 30 years Sharon and I are hoping to sell the theater. If all goes well the new buyers will turn it into a top notch cultural center, with theater and music, and a bar. We’re passing the torch. When we bought it in the 80s it had been fire bombed, was a burned out hulk, sat vacant for 10 years. We renovated and saved it, and made it a historical landmark. We have a feasibility contract signed for it to be a regional art venue. Sharon and I went to school in the Heights. We started out with nothing. We had $500 between us when we got married, I thought she had money, but it turned out I was mistaken. We lived in run down areas in the Heights, and it all came back. We’ve made some wise decisions.

VBA: One of your tenants recently confirmed the rumor that he is exiting your 11th street building which holds Redbud Gallery and Sharon’s studio, which will leave you with a significant amount of additional space. When I asked you three weeks ago what you intended to do with that space you gave me a baloney answer that it would relate to art. Not talking! Are you ready to announce your plans for the space in your 11th street building?

GK: Can’t talk about, it will be related to the arts.

VBA: Last year when I wrote an article about Sharon she invited me to your home in Idaho.

GK: You should fly up with me on Thursday. Sharon told me to be there for my birthday.

The Pan Review of Books: Midcentury Modern Art in Texas

Robert Boyd



I remember reading Robert Hughes on how when he was a young man in Australia, he and his friends would have passionate discussions about the latest developments in modern art based on two inch tall black and white photos in Art News. It wasn't quite as bad in Texas--one could take a trip to New York from Texas more easily than you could from Australia, after all, but let's face it: Texas was far, culturally and physically, from the cultural capitals of the world where modernism was forged. Of course, you can't keep a thing like modernism secret. Word leaks out to the provinces and artists get inspired to try their hands at it. Midcentury Modern Art in Texas by Katie Robinson Edwards tells the story of how modern art came to Texas.

She tells the story in two ways. First, she describes "scenes"--groups of artists in one location who knew each other and had similar interests and influences. While art in Texas could be seen as a continuity, especially as artists get teaching jobs and teach subsequent generations, and that wouldn't be a wrong way to view it. But the thing was, until about the 1960s or so, it was hard for modernist art to sustain itself in Texas. So these scenes popped up, flourished for a while, and died away. Beyond looking at scenes, she looks at individual artists, particularly those who transcended any scene or who were otherwise so singular, they couldn't be slotted in one place or another.


Forrest Bess, untitled (No. 5), 1949, oil on canvas, 10 x 12 7/8 inches

Forrest Bess (1911-1977) seems like the obvious example of the lone artist, not part of any scene. After all, he painted his best-known work while living in a shack at the mouth of Chinquapin Bayou accessible only by boat and miles from the nearest paved road. But he spent some time in Houston and knew other young modernists there. Ola McNeill Davidson (1884-1976) started a gallery in 1938 called Our Little Gallery, where she taught young artists, including Forrest Bess, Robert Preusser, Frank Delejska, Gene Charlton and Carden Bailey--some of the earliest modernist painters in Houston.

But the astonishing thing is that Davidson wasn't Houston's first modernist painter--that distinction belongs to a woman born in 1859 (!) named Emma Richardson Cherry. Based on the reproductions of her work I've seen, she wasn't a very good painter, but she wasn't completely dire. But she is important because she was always eager to know what was new in the world of art and to bring it to wherever she happened to be living. She moved to Houston in 1896, but frequently visited Europe. She saw the Salon d'Automne exhibit twice, but the book doesn't specify which years. However, she did see very early works of cubism there, which gives one an idea of the time frame. Cherry became a member of the Société Anonyme, Inc., the organization formed by Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray for the purpose of propagating modern art in America. It was a perfect organization for Cherry as that had been her mission for years. And Davidson was a protégé of Cherry.


Robert O. Preusser, untitled (Stars and Circles), 1937-38, oil on Masonite, 20 x 30 inches

Of Davidson's students, Forrest Bess is the one most likely to be remembered in the art history textbooks. But perhaps the most successful in life was Robert O. Preusser (1919-1992). He saw an early exhibit of abstract art at the MFAH in 1938 and it was a life-changing experience. He studied at the MFAH's school (now the Glassell School) and continued his education in Chicago and Los Angeles, before returning to teach at the MFAH school. But Preusser's story reflects what happened with many Texas artists over the years. In 1954, he took a teaching job at MIT, where he remained for over 30 years. There simply were more opportunities for Texas artists outside of Texas than in Texas. So artists like Gene Charlton, Carden Bailey, Bill Bomar, Myron Stout, whose untitled (number 3, 1954) is on the cover of Midcentury Modern Art in Texas, and other artists felt they had to leave Texas. With this book, Edwards demonstrates that Texas was not a lifeless desert of art in the first half of the 20th century. But it was still pretty dry.



Alexandre Hogue, Erosion No. 2--Mother Earth Laid Bare, 1936, oil on canvas, 44 x 56 inches

While Houston was an outpost of modernism, Dallas belonged mostly to the American Scene painters, who were doing mostly realist work. The two leaders of the Dallas scene were Alexandre Hogue and Jerry Bywaters, both uneven painters capable of greatness. Bywaters went on to become director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and Dallas never became a center for modernism in Texas in the way Houston and, surprisingly enough, Fort Worth were. Still, if your city's two greatest 20th century artists are Bywaters and Hogue, you aren't doing too bad.


Bror Utter, untitled, July 1952, oil on canvas, 30 x 18 inches

Fort Worth is the site of two separate artistic scenes or groupings. A group of artists that came to be called the Fort Worth Circle rejected the regionalism of Bywaters and Hogue for modernism and abstraction. They were painters and printmakers; the core group included Bill Bomar (1919-1990) and Bror Utter (1913-1993). But after a bright moment in the 50s, the Fort Worth Circle was disbanded in 1958 and its artists dispersed. Some of the artists were gay, and I suspect that that motivated some of them to move to slightly friendlier climes than Texas. The next scene grew up around sculptor Charles Williams' (1918-1966) studio. Edwards writes:

If late-1940s Fort Worth modernism was marked by sophisticated, occasionally cross-dressing soirées at Flora and Dickson Reeder's house, the mid-1950s and 1960s revolved around the martini-drinking macho "salon" at the sculptor Charles Williams's home and studio.

I wish she had written more about this--what were the social scenes like? Where did artists meet and hang out? A lot of this kind of information is mentioned in passing, and Edwards understandably wants to spend more space talking about the art. But I get the feeling that these gathering places were critical in sustaining these scenes in various cities. In any case, this newer Forth Worth scene attracted younger artists like Roy Fridge, Jack Boynton and Jim Love (the last two more commonly associated with Houston).


Toni LaSelle, Study for Puritan, 1947, oil on canvas, 12 x 14 inches

Edwards discusses other scenes that popped up in places like Austin and Denton, where Toni LaSelle (1902-2002) taught. These scenes were fed by the fact that there were universities there that needed art teachers as post-high school education in Texas expanded. Higher education was (and still is) an important was for artists to make a living as well as a site for them to congregate and trade ideas.

The last chapter on Houston was especially meaningful because some of the artists discussed are people I know who are still alive and productive, including Richard Stout (b. 1934), Henri Gadbois (b. 1930), Leila McConnel (b. 1927) and the woman who taught me to paint, Stella Sullivan (b. 1924). But I was disappointed in the section on John Biggers (1924-2001) and the TSU scene. It's hard to slot Biggers' work in because it is figurative in a time of abstraction, but his work is informed by modernism, as is Carroll Simms. And given the amount of attention given to the Dallas Regionalists, Biggers and the TSU scene seems shortchanged. I would have liked to see more of his art and read more about his career. This all seems ironic since Edwards complains elsewhere in the book that early Texas modernism was almost exclusively produced by white artists.Biggers is a major exception to this depressing rule.

The book closes with a long section of artists biographies and selected exhibitions, making it a useful reference book in addition to being an important history.

I have a feeling a book like this could be written about any region of the country. Modernism was obviously centered in major metropolitan centers like New York and Paris, but it captured the imaginations of a few pioneering spirits like Emma Richardson Cherry, who took it back to wherever they came from. I think it's unfortunate that we don't generally value these regional art histories, particularly when regional scenes occasionally toss up uncategorizable geniuses like Forrest Bess who are hard to slot into canonical art history. But I also feel it's important for art students from a particular location to get some idea of the art history beneath their feet. We need to reclaim "provincial" as a badge of honor--particularly as we now live in a connected, networked world where the art world no longer has a center.

The Formalists at Project Row Houses

Robert Boyd


Jürgen Tarrasch, Vines and Leaves, 2013, painted installation

We don't think of Project Row Houses as a site for formalism. We don't imagine that artists are going into these small reclaimed houses and using them to investigate the plastic visual qualities inherent in the medium. We aren't accustomed to thinking about installations in those terms at all (although certainly minimalists did so in their own fashion), but more importantly, we aren't used to thinking about Project Row Houses that way. The project as a whole is explicitly about community engagement, and many of the projects are political or polemical, or have social practice dimensions (for example, John Plueker's Antena Books: Pop-Up Bookstore and Literary Experimentation Lab or Darin Forehand's Printproject).


Jürgen Tarrasch, Vines and Leaves, 2013, painted installation

Nonetheless, when an artist is given a row house for an installation, it has certain formal qualities as an architectural space, and all the artists use this to a certain extent. In Vines and Leaves by Jürgen Tarrasch and Salt House at Sean Shim-Boyle, formal effects dominate. The houses are small boxes--a single room with windows on all walls and doors at either end and a column--the brick chimney--in the center. But they aren't all the same. The house used for Vines and Leaves has a flat ceiling while the one used for Salt House has a vaulted ceiling with dark brown wooden cross-beams. I'm not sure if these are permanent or if the artists specified them for their respective works. In either case, the type of ceiling is important for the work each artist did.

Tarrasch has painted the entire interior of his project various bright, intense glossy shades of green. On a sunny afternoon, with light pouring in, you end up with green reflected light bouncing around inside the boxy shape.


Jürgen Tarrasch, Vines and Leaves, 2013, painted installation

The pattern of light coming in through the window and crawling across the speckled green walls is part of the piece, a use of the inherent qualities of the structure for a dazzling visual effect. The yellow and green "speckles" are short staccato brush-strokes which could be seen as leaves being caught by sunlight. Up close, they look a little like Howard Hodgkin's brush-strokes. And like Hodgkin, Tarrasch is depicting something real (leaves and vines) through almost total abstraction.


Jürgen Tarrasch, Vines and Leaves, 2013, painted installation

The low ceiling is important for a couple of reasons. One is that as light enters the windows and doors, Tarrasch has made sure that it doesn't have to go far to be reflected. You are inclosed by a confining green, both in terms of local color and reflected color. Green photons are bouncing around all over Vines and Leaves, pouring onto your retina. The work is fundamentally retinal. Tarrasch is using the interior of the row house in a way no different from the way a painter uses a canvas, as a surface or support for the painterly visual effect he hopes to achieve. And it works.


Jürgen Tarrasch, Vines and Leaves, 2013, painted installation

This is not to say that there are not other meanings and possible interpretations embedded in the work. It would be impossible to imagine otherwise. I've never believed Frank Stella's dictum "What you see is what you see." On the contrary, I feel that what Borges wrote in the introduction to Doctor Brodie's Report applies as well to visual art as to literature: "There is not a simple page, a simple word, on earth--for all pages, all words, predicate the universe, whose most notorious attribute is its complexity." But for this post, it is the formal visual qualities that concern us.


Sean Shim-Boyle, Salt House, 2013, installation

Rather than taking the row house as a surface for paint, Sean Shim-Boyle uses the inherent qualities of the house as formal elements. Salt House's row house has a vaulted ceiling with cross-beams. The ceiling and walls are white, the floor grey, and the crossbeams a stained wood-color. The brick chimney in the center of the house is left uncovered, and because of the vaulted ceiling, it seems especially tall. The windows and doors let light pour in.


Sean Shim-Boyle, Salt House, 2013, installation

Shim-Boyle has done two seemingly simple additions. The most prominent is that he has added a second chimney, slanted at a shallow angle extending from a rear corner to near the front of the house. This second chimney is astonishingly realistic--it looks and feels like brick and mortar. The second element is a long thin hole in the floor into which are set bright fluorescent lights, creating, as it were, a new "window" for allowing light into the house.


Sean Shim-Boyle, Salt House, 2013, installation

What made me think of formalism when I saw this house was the diagonal of both the second chimney and the hole in the floor. When I see an element perpendicular to the ground next to a leaning element, I think of sculpture, specifically the geometric metal sculpture of artists like Mark di Suvero. We have here a sculptural form, one which uses the material of the setting and the elements of the setting. Even the angles of the light and chimney can be said to be reflecting the angles of the vaulted ceiling. And the play of light and dark (chimneys and beams against the white painted walls) gives the viewer the feeling of being within a geometric abstract painting.


Sean Shim-Boyle, Salt House, 2013, installation

Both Salt House and Vines and Leaves depend on visual fascination and--dare I say it?--beauty. Most artists who do installations in a PRH row house rely on the structures' humble grunginess and mutability as a ground for the work, and they are perfect for that. But Shim-Boyle and Tarrasch are operating under the assumption that these places are beautiful and that their installations should reflect that. In this regard, they go back to one of the original inspirations for Project Row Houses. When PRH founder Rick Lowe first saw these row houses on a bus tour sponsored by SHAPE, where they were held up as dangerous places, blighted houses that needed to be torn down and replaced. But they made Lowe think of certain paintings by John Biggers of this kind of house, and they inspired him to think of preserving them instead of tearing them down. (See What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation by Tom Finkelpearl for Lowe's first-hand account of this.) Biggers's paintings find a kind of geometric beauty in the houses--a beauty that Tarrasch and Shim-Boyle have rediscovered.


John Biggers, Shotguns, 1987