What You Liked: The Top 10 Pan Posts of 2014

Robert Boyd

I'm always slightly perplexed by what gets read (or at least "viewed") on this blog. But I shouldn't be. It's pretty simple, really. There are a certain number of people who check in regularly on the blog, and a certain number that check in occasionally. These numbers don't change all that much over the course of a year. They are what I consider the natural readership of The Great God Pan Is Dead. That readership could be increased if I were a better writer; if I had more writers contributing; if I covered a broader range of arts; if I covered a broader geographic area; if I posted more frequently; etc. I'm not likely to do any of those things, so the baseline readership will probably remain about the same. And I thank all of you for spending a little time here.

So what distinguishes these top 10 posts from any other? I would like to say their inherent superiority, but mostly it's due to outside links. When some other blog or popular website links to The Great God Pan Is Dead, it sends a flood of new readers over. The sites that have contributed most this blog's "extra" page views this year have been Swamplot, The Comics Journal, Glasstire, The Comics Reporter and Hyperallergic. It almost goes without saying that these are some of my favorite online publications, and any time one of them deigns to notice The Great God Pan Is Dead, I feel honored.

The following are the top 10 posts of 2014, starting with the most popular.


1. Joseph Cohen's Use-Value. This was a studio visit with painter Joseph Cohen. A nice little post about a very interesting artist, but why did it get so many page views? It was mentioned on Swamplot and apparently captured the interest of a lot of Swamplot readers. Cohen built his unusual triangular house on an unusual triangle-shaped lot--a lot many have noticed over the years because it's right on the Heights bike trail. Cohen designed the house with the help of an architect, and built it himself. He's an interesting painter whose work is often quite beautiful, but I think it was the brilliance of the house itself that attracted many readers. Houses designed by artists are a special, eccentric genre of architecture, and this is a brilliant example of the genre.


2. Lonestar Explosion 2014 - Untitled by Nikki Thornton. This brief post by Dean Liscum is the only one that got its rank organically. No site linked to it--most of its page views were sent over by Google and Facebook; in other words, via the Internet version of word-of-mouth. I think the performance hit readers' OMG! buttons. It is a bit grisly, and the contrast of the horrible pig's head and the beautiful woman is striking. Thornton appears to be bottomless (she's not, actually), so it almost seems like a strange birth scene. It confirms the average person's idea of performance art as shock art. I assume that for all of those reasons, it ended up capturing the attention of readers. They should have come to the actual performance--it was part of a carnival of smallish performances happening simultaneously at Box 13 as part of the Houston International Performance Art Biennale.


3. Argument for the Elimination of Art Fairs in Houston: HFAF 2014, part 1. Every year I go to the art fairs in Houston, and every year I'm appalled. Most of the readers who wanted to share the hate found their way to this post on their own, but a bunch were helped over by a link from Glasstire (in which Bill Davenport outsourced the hate-viewing to me). There was too much horrible art for one post--I concluded with part 2.


4. Real Estate Art--Bert Long Edition. This long-running series ("Real Estate Art") usually involves me taking some photos published on the local real estate site HAR and trying to identify the art in them. I used to spend a lot of time on HAR, but since I moved this summer, I look at it less frequently. So most of the Real Estate Art posts in 2014 involve looking at houses that Swamplot has brought my attention to (and to which I always link back). Then Swamplot notices my posts and links back to them! It's logrolling at its finest, but I always get the better end of the deal since Swamplot sends so many readers my way.

This was a very special "Real Estate Art" post, since it dealt with the home of the late Bert Long, one of Houston's most important artists. Not only was Long's house full of incredible local art, it was designed by an important local architect, Brett Zamore. The post was enlivened with photos from Zamore's webpage showing the house--his first--in "before" and "after" stages.

After I posted this, I got the opportunity to tour the house in person, which resulted in another post here.


5. The Diminishing Returns of Being an Artist.  When cartoonist Mike Dawson wrote an essay on how poorly his latest graphic novel sold and what that meant for him as an artist, it ignited a firestorm. This post is one of many responses to it. Because the Comics Journal and the Comics Reporter linked back to it, this post got a lot of readers. These were readers mostly interested in comics, but to me the post applies to all artists.


6.  Real Estate Art on Woodland Heights.  Nothing special about this post (in my opinion)--another art-filled house on HAR. But because Swamplot noticed, a lot of real estate fans came over to Pan to check it out.


7. Bill Davenport and his shop, Bill's Junk.  When Painting the Town Orange was published, I learned that there was a chapter dropped for length. I offered to publish that chapter for Pete Gershon, the author. Because it covered four artistic environments, we published it in four parts, of which this is one. Again I have Swamplot to thank for this post's popularity. Art environments like Bill's Junk are one place where the interests of The Great God Pan Is Dead and Swamplot happily overlap.


8. Real Estate Art: 2630 West Lane Pl. I love this Real Estate Art post because the homeowners have art by three of my favorite local artists--Dorothy Hood, Laura Lark and Mark Flood.


9. Real Estate Art: 2526 Bellmeade. This elegant house had a beautiful James Surls tucked under the stairs.


10. Creatives in a Post-Industrial Society. This post was prompted by a trip to an artspace in Brooklyn called Pioneer Works. Its readership was enhanced by linkbacks from Hyperallergic and the Comics Reporter. Like "The Diminishing Returns of Being an Artist," this one used its subject as a jumping off point to talk about bigger issues.


Which leads me to a final entry on this list. It's not in the top 10, but it's my personal favorite post of the year, a piece of writing that I'm proud of. "The Show Is So Over" was about Jamal Cyrus's temporary installation A Jackson in Your House, but it was really about the complexities of gentrification and art. In fact, four posts this year make up an unintentional quartet on the position (societally and economically) of the artist and art in this new millennium: "The Show Is So Over," "The Diminishing Returns of Being an Artist," "Creatives in a Post-Industrial Society" and "People Should Get Paid For Their Work." These issues have been on my mind, and I expect that to continue in 2015. I hope you all return to read them.

Joseph Cohen's Use-Value

Robert Boyd

When one looks at Joseph Cohen's elegant paintings which occasionally are made with gold or diamond dust suspended in the paint, the last thing one thinks of is "use value." It's a Marxist term about which Marx wrote, "The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-value, something useful." Cohen was using the term to distinguish his own work from that of artists who produce "zombie abstractions." Zombie abstractions were called out earlier this summer in an article by Jerry Saltz. He wrote

This work is decorator-friendly, especially in a contemporary apartment or house. It feels “cerebral” and looks hip in ways that flatter collectors even as it offers no insight into anything at all. It’s all done in haggard shades of pale, deployed in uninventive arrangements that ape digital media, or something homespun or dilapidated. Replete with self-conscious comments on art, recycling, sustainability, appropriation, processes of abstraction, or nature, all this painting employs a similar vocabulary of smudges, stains, spray paint, flecks, spills, splotches, almost-monochromatic fields, silk-screening, or stenciling. Edge-to-edge, geometric, or biomorphic composition is de rigueur, as are irregular grids, lattice and moiré patterns, ovular shapes, and stripes, with maybe some collage. 

It certainly sounds familiar.


Joseph Cohen, Zombie Painting #1

I saw the painting above on the wall of his studio. It was, Cohen said, a deliberate attempt to create a work of zombie formalism. He said it took him several minutes to create this art-fair ready masterpiece. This is the kind of work that he describes as having no use-value. We could quibble about this--after all, if it is useful for decorating one's living room, that surely counts, no? But for Cohen, the use value of art has to do something with the need by people for art-qua-art as distinct from decoration.

I met with Cohen at the house which he built himself and shares with his girlfriend, Lindsay Davis. An architect friend helped him design it, and the electrical work and plumbing were done by professionals. But beyond that it was him and some hired hands. He built it on a small triangular lot and turned this complication into an advantage. It's a beautiful dwelling.



The living quarters are on the first two floors and the studio on the third. I was glad to be able to see where he lived as well as his studio. It meant getting a peek at the art on his walls. It's my experience that artists have the best art collections.


Joseph Cohen's living room

For instance, that's a Robert Goodnough to the left of the television in the photo above.


A David Reed in the kitchen

And he had several pieces by David Reed. Interestingly enough, both Reed and Goodnough are known for their art writing as well as their visual art. Our conversation made me wonder why Cohen doesn't write about art. He had a lot of thoughtful things to say about contemporary art and artists. For example, he spoke about how he had been looking at Wade Guyton, and how the idea of using something printed as a basis or substrate for a painting might work for himself. That such a practice have a purpose is important to Cohen. That was part of his beef with the zombie painters. Their techniques weren't aesthetically required; they were just the easiest way to get the work done.


Joseph Cohen, Proposition 369

For many painters, this might not be an issue. They're creating an image and how one gets there is not that important. But boy howdy, not with Cohen. He is deeply concerned with what he calls the "aboutness" of the work. Everything has a reason. The way he talks about it, he seems very concerned with process. But that would be the wrong conclusion. "Aboutness" is, as I understood it, the thing itself. All the steps and materials to get to the thing itself are important because of the thing itself.

Cohen is articulate when talking about art, whether his own or other people's. This isn't all that common. Many of the best artists I know seem reluctant to speak about their work or other people's. They are often self-deprecating or aloof, which I read as strategies of avoidance. I don't hold that against them, but I appreciate artists who can express something about their art. Cohen, who studied English lit and philosophy in college, seems to feel comfortable discussing these issues. It made for a mentally invigorating studio visit.


Cohen's studio

Of course, the main reason I was there wasn't to have a conversation. It was to look at work. Cohen's work is well-known in Houston. The earliest work of his that I saw was made with some of the cheapest materials possible--surplus house paint and cheap wood paneling. The thing that drew my attention to these works were the carefully "sculpted" drips. I described them at the time as being like stalactites, but in the studio this time, they appeared to me as like rows of sharp teeth. Of course, paint is semi-liquid and drips are a natural part of the process--an inherent quality of painting. But Cohen isn't allowing accidental drips into his work--he turns the drip into a very deliberate, controlled effect.


Joseph Cohen, Proposition 401


Joseph Cohen, Proposition 401 (detail)

Because dripping is a long-time practice of Cohen, he has developed a repertoire of drips, many of which were on display in his studio.


Joseph Cohen, Axiom 2


Joseph Cohen, Oak proposition

As random as the drips can seem, they are in fact purposeful, as is everything else in Cohen's work. The switch from house paint to varnish mixed with pigment and various substances (crushed diamond, gold, iron oxide, etc.), the inwardly sloping backsides of the paintings, painted so that the wall glows faintly with the reflection of the color--these are carefully considered strategies to create the final objects.


Murray Goldfarb relaxing in the studio

The result are objects of great beauty. I still have a hard time applying the term "use value" to them. I guess I'm too cynical about things like this. If I'm lucky, I don't think about economics at all when I look at a ravishing painting, but if I do, it's Veblen that comes to mind, not Marx.

But it appeals to me that Cohen thinks in those terms. I said artists are often reluctant to speak about their own work, preferring for it to speak for itself. Or so they say. But I think they are reluctant because someone like me will end up fixating on a phrase or word--"use value," "aboutness"--and lose sight of the work before our eyes. But Cohen's words about his art didn't affect my appreciation of the work except to give it a deeper context.


Joseph Cohen and his playful dog Murray Goldfarb

Hunting Prize Nominees

Robert Boyd

Every Year, the Hunting Art Prize is given to some lucky painter from Texas. The prize is $50,000. Needless to say, tons of folks enter. The Hunting Prize people have just sent out letters telling artists whether they have been selected to be finalists. The winner will be announced May 3 at a gala hosted by Hunting PLC, an oil and gas service company.

The prize has garnered some controversy in the past, but it has also given prizes to some excellent artists who probably really appreciated the cash! Previous winners are Francesca Fuchs (2006), Michael Tole (2007), Wendy Wagner (2008), Robin O'Neil (2009), Lane Hagood (2010), Leigh Ann Hester (2011), Michael Bise (2012) and Marshall K. Harris (2013). 

Several of the finalists this year have shared their work on Facebook. I thought the pieces looked pretty good; I suspect the judges will have a tough time deciding. Here are a few of them.


Cary Reeder, High Noon,acrylic on canvas, 30 x 38 inches

Cary Reeder's minimalist clapboard houses are always appealing to me. She recently had a great solo show at Lawndale.


Catherine Colangelo, Giant Quilt Square #10, gouache and graphite on paper, 28" x 28"

I have seen nice work by Catherine Colangelo at the late, lamented Darke Gallery. This piece looks excellent.


David Smith, Tropical Storm, Veracruz, Gulf of Mexico

David Smith's Tropical Storm, Veracruz, Gulf of Mexico is an unexpectedly 19th-century-style entry. It's refreshing to see it included.


Hannah Celeste Dean, Re-Veiled

Hannah Celeste Dean calls her work "haunting but not ghostly," but I think "ghostly" is an excellent word to describe Re-veiled.


Hogan Kimbrell, Conjure, oil on canvas, 54 x 54 inches

I've seen a couple of excellent paintings by Hogan Kimbrell at past Lawndale Big Shows. The double image here is a bit different from what I've seen before. But his subject matter--beautiful women--seems constant.


John Adelman, 61,988,ink on panel, 38 x 30 inches

John Adelman premiered these architectural process drawings at a recent show at Nicole Longnecker Gallery. I've long admired his rigorous, obsessive work.


Joseph Cohen, Proposition 360, Pigment, diamond dust, and varnish on birch 29" x 24"

You can see another piece by Joseph Cohen (quite different from Proposition 360) at the CAMH through March 23. Cohen has been one of my favorite Houston painters for a while.


Lee E. Wright, The Captain of Industry, oil and ink on prepared paper, 32 x 44

I don't really know anything about Lee E. Wright, but based on his website, he appears to be a portraitist--an honorable specialization.


Saralene Tapley, Flourish, acrylic on watercolor paper, 29 x 41 inches

I saw this piece by Saralene Tapley in last year's Big Show. I believe it's a portrait of her fellow artist, Bryan Keith Gardner.

According to various sources, there are typically between 100 and 150 finalists. Out of that crowded field there can be only one winner. Any bets on who it will be?

The Lithium Art Fair, part 1

Robert Boyd

It's been a week since the Texas Contemporary Art Fair happened, and it already seems like a distant memory. If I hadn't taken so many photos, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell you what art I saw. Sometimes the most memorable things have nothing to do with the art, unless it's art's destruction. On Friday at TCAF, I was chatting when I heard a loud bang. Sports Car on Earth, In Space by Debra Barrera, one of the featured installations at the show, had fallen over. It looked pretty bad. This piece, under a different name, had appeared as one of the Blaffer Art Museum's Windows on Houston projects. It was a piece I really liked. Apparently someone taking a photo had backed into it. And it was pretty seriously damaged. TCAF wasn't all bad news for Barrera, though. She sold a great drawing, Sno-cat.

 
Debra Barrera, Sno-cat, 2013, graphite and stabilo pencil on paper, adhesive, 33 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches at Moody Gallery

It isn't always art that sticks in your mind. It might be the gallerist from Charest-Weinberg with the big fro.



Or big crowd on opening night--almost all of whom were complete strangers. It's like there is another art world about which I know nothing. Houstonia and Culture Map both had photo features of the opening night and I counted the people I recognized in them. I knew who 12 of the 61 people featured were.

Or the walk from the entrance to the selling floor.


Ann Wood (left) and Sharon Engelstein (center and right)

The Ann Wood house and two giant beautiful inflatable blobs by Sharon Engelstein made a big impression, as did the Clayton Brothers' antic Wishy Washy.


Clayton Brothers, Wishy Washy, 2006


Clayton Brothers, Wishy Washy, 2006

In fact, if those four pieces had been grouped together, they would have formed a surreal diorama--two buildings in front and two "mountains" in the distance.


Clayton Brothers, Wishy Washy, 2006

The fair attendee saw some of the coolest pieces in the show before she saw a single booth.

This is not to say the art in the booths was bad. Far from it; I was very pleased by the overall level of quality. But people kept asking me if I had seen something that really impressed me, and I couldn't think of anything. This is in sharp contrast with the Houston Fine Art Fair, where there were several booths and individual artworks that really blew my mind. But the HFAF also had a lot of really terrible art. You would see some beautiful, unearthly Xul Solar paintings, then turn around to see your seventh Marylin Monroe portrait of the day--it had very high highs and very low lows. TCAF, by contrast, hewed to the middle. Sure there were a few really nice pieces and a few really horrible ones, but the level of its extremes was a lot less than HFAF. In the language of statistics, we would say that TCAF had a small standard deviation while HFAF had a large one. In terms of psychology, HFAF was bipolar, TCAF a little more stable. But leaving behind metaphor, what I think we see is that TCAF was better curated in terms of its exhibitors. And that makes a lot of difference in terms of the experience one has at an art fair.

So let's take a look at some of the art at TCAF, going more-or-less alphabetically by gallery.


left, Mike Beradino piece and right, me wearing a Jim Nolan-designed temporary tattoo.

At Art Palace, Mike Beradino had a piece that took the Cremaster films and ran facial recognition software on them. The piece was composed of two physical parts--the computer on the bottom and the monitor above. The monitor had an image of Cremaster playing inset in the upper center, and you could see red facial recognition squares pop up anytime a face appeared. Surrounding this inset image were free-floating faces (presumably captured by the facial recognition software).

I found it pretty perplexing, and gallerist Arturo Palacio's explanation comparing Beradino's solo (but high-tech) craft work with the collective high-budget Hollywood-like production of Cremaster didn't help me to understand it better. But as I thought about it, I was reminded of what Ben Davis wrote about the middle-class aspirations of art in 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (recently reviewed on this site by Paul Mullan). Comparing visual art to the art of a Pixar movie (in which the awesomely talented skilled laborers subsume their individuality to operate within a framework of total teamwork--as presumably the film personnel in the Cremaster films did), Davis writes, "the uniquely middle-class nature of creative labor in the visual arts would seem to explain its alternative emphasis on the individual, that is, on the virtues of personality and small production." Beradino is therefore quite specifically positioning himself in opposition to large-scale productions requiring talented but anonymous cultural laborers.

The other piece of art in this photo is on my neck. It's a temporary tattoo by Jim Nolan that reads "Le Va," as in Barry Le Va, the pioneering process artist. Nolan had two such tattoos--one for Le Va and one for Beuys.


Joseph Cohen at Avis Frank

It like new piece by Joseph Cohen at Avis Frank. It gets away from the shimmery perfection of his monochrome paintings. The asymmetric canvas, the hanging flaps of paint--it feels like a Rauschenberg except with Cohen's typically intense, glittery color. It combines glamor and grunge in one piece. Lovely.



Willie Cole, Downtown Goddess, 2012-13, bronze, edition of seven, 36 x 9 x 9 inches at Beta Pictoris Gallery

Even since Picasso made a bull's head out of a bicycle seat and handlebars, artists have been taking manufactured things and making more-or-less realistic sculptures out of them. Willie Cole took women's shoes and made these faux-tribal sculptures out of them. It's a witty appropriation.



Norman Bluhm, untitled, 1961, oil on paper on canvas, 50 x 36 inches

Birnam Wood Galleries has some of my least favorite art in the show (several flags by David Datuna). But they also had some handsome high-modernist pieces--one of the only galleries that had such work at TCAF. I loved this Norman Bluhm painting.



Linda Matalon, untitled (four parts), 2013, wax and graphite on paper, 27 x 22.5 inches overall

I saw these fairly subtle pieces (and more by Linda Matalon) at Blackston. I liked them a lot, but what really made me think was how atypical they were for an art fair. They are small and feature relatively few black and grey marks. They don't jump off the wall. Considering the visual cacophony of the art fair, one wonders whether bringing art like this--even if it's beautiful like this art is--makes sense. On the other hand, maybe the way it stands apart from the typical art fair bombast is its virtue in this environment.


Peter Halley at Carl Solway

Even though I'm going in alphabetical order, this Peter Halley piece at Carl Solway Gallery illustrates my point above about art fair art. With its intense fluorescent colors and textured paint surface, it practically burns itself into your brain. You can't not see it as you stroll down the aisle.


Fernando Mastrangelo,  37 inch medallion, 2013, sugar, sprinkles. 37 inch diameter x 2 inches


Fernando Mastrangelo mediallions

Charest-Weinberg only showed work by one artist, these groovy medallions by Fernando Mastrangelo (who had a striking show in Houston last year). I'm not sure what the sales calculus is here. It makes for a fantastic-looking booth, but it also means all of your eggs are in one basket. Plus, it also means bringing no work by your other artists (Charest-Weinberg lists 10 artists in their stable), which they might resent. A tricky business, I imagine.


a bunch of paintings by Cheryl Donegan

David Shelton Gallery had a really nice "walk-through" booth (quite a few of the booths had two entrances, which allowed you to use them as short cuts to other aisles). He packed it full of some of the best work his gallery has, and it showed. I liked the flannel-shirt-style patterns of Cheryl Donegan as well as Kelly O'Connor's colorful "cover song" versions of Brancusi's Endless Column. (They remind me of when Bananarama covered "No Future.")


Kelly O'Connor sculpture


Keegan McHargue, Nymph of Lo, 2013, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

Painter Keegan McHargue won the best in show prize of $10,000, which caused some griping among the commentariat at Glasstire. I liked McHargue's paintings a lot, but I would have rather that Fredericks & Frieser had brought down some Gary Panters instead, as they had in the past.


Brad Tucker, Ham Shack, 2013, acrylic and enamel on wood, 32 1/2 x 21 x 4 inches (below) and Butter Dish, 2013, acrylic on wood, 16 x 12 x 3/4 inches (above)


Brad Tucker, Hashmack Tray, 2013, acrylic and enamel on wood, 31 x 25 x 2 1/2 inches


Brad Tucker, Generator, 2013, acrylic on wood, 4 1/2 x 4 x 7 inches and Regenerator, 2013, acrylic on wood, 4 1/2 x 4 x 7

Inman Gallery had a large booth, but still it was surprising (and pleasing) that they devoted one separate enclosed space to a single artist, Brad Tucker. His colorful sculptures depict actual things in a more-or-less abstract way. Some are familiar (TV trays) while some are less so, but they all were delightful and played around with the notion that you could be confused about what you were seeing. Were they sculpture or just colorful found objects? Until you read the label, it wasn't clear. The ordinariness of the subject matter and the colors made me think a bit of Jessica Stockholder.


Dan Douke, Gunk, acrylic on canvas, 10 3/4 x 8 x 8 3/4 inches

The Dan Douke trompe-l'oeil boxes at Jerald Melberg Gallery were amazing but struck me as "stunt art." They were designed to make you say "wow."


Dan Douke, Meguiar's, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 10 1/2 x 11 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches




Dan Douke, Meguiar's, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 10 1/2 x 11 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches

In fact, the artist seems so proud of his ability to fool the viewer that he shows us how the trick was done by making the canvas stretching apparatus visible. After all, he could have easily made that part the bottom of the sculpture. (I'm blaming the artist, but it could be the gallery. Maybe the hole is meant to be on the bottom, but the gallery wanted no one to mistake these for actual boxes.)

I visited Jayne Baum's apartment gallery (JHB Gallery) in New York last spring and was delighted to see her here. She had several Ellen Carey photos, as well as a lot of pieces by other artists. Carey is a photographer from Connecticut who specializes in photography not using a camera.


Ellen Carey, Pull with Flares and Rollback #7, 2006, polaroid color positive print, 72 x 22 inches


Guy Laramee at JHB Gallery

This canyon carved out of books by Guy Laramee at JHB also verged on being stunt art, but I was really drawn to it. It's clever and beautiful. But when I see work like this (or work by Cara Barer or Brian Dettmer, who also had work at TCAF at Toomey Tourell Fine Art--sorry I didn't get a photo of it), I feel a pang for the books that were destroyed. These pieces, though beautiful, represent a culture that doesn't value books at physical objects. For Laramee, books are just another piece of modern detritus from which he can fashion a work of art.


Guy Laramee at JHB Gallery

Why do collectors collect art? Thorstein Veblen had some pretty convincing ideas about it, and Pierre Bourdieu's notion of "cultural capital" is probably right, too. But for some collectors, particularly those who establish "egoseums" with their names on them to house their collections--Frick, Barnes, Menil, Broad, etc.--there is a quest for immortality.


Tim Etchells, Live Forever, 2010, neon sign, 6 x 78 inches

Tim Etchells' You Will Live Forever at Jenkins Johnson Gallery cuts to the chase and panders directly to collectors' desire for immortality. This is less a work of art than an ironic fetish with fake magical powers. I can't tell whether to be appalled or amused.


Kris Kurski at Joshua Liner

Kris Kurski's detailed and beautiful pieces at Joshua Liner Gallery just look wrong on a white wall. They need a more "goth" setting. If Miss Havisham had art on her walls, you might expect it to look a little like this. Although obviously it is carefully designed and constructed, it has the feeling of being the result of some quasi-natural entropic process. Creepily beautiful.


Allison Schulnik, Lace Curtains, 2012, oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches

Even though I'm going in alphabetical order by gallery (this is from Mark Moore Gallery), Allison Schulnik's Lace Curtains work well with the Kris Kurski above. They both have a feeling of neglect. Schulnik's bilious colors and thick impasto give this piece an unnerving feeling.


Yoram Wolberger, Blue Cowboy #3 (Double Gun Slinger), 2008-2013, reinforced cast fiberglass composite with pigment, 75 x 75 x 22 inches

Changing the vibe completely (but still in the Mark Moore Gallery) is Yoram Wolberger's Blue Cowboy. The scale of this sculpture is what makes it--it's your basic "take something really small and trivial and make a huge sculpture out of it" move that has been a part of contemporary art since Claes Oldenburg. And it sure does look cool. Apparently it was purchased at the show for $100,000! I'd love to know who bought it. I wonder if a sale that size signals to blue chip galleries that TCAF might be worth a try.


John Chamberlain at McClain Gallery

The thing about Houston galleries like McClain Gallery being at the fair is that I've often seen the work they're showing before. But I had never seen this festive John Chamberlain, looking like a tumbleweed at a birthday party. I love it.


Marc Burkhardt, Bridle, 2011, acrylic on wood, 30 x 21 7/8 inches

I included this painting by Marc Burckhardt (from Mindy Solomon Gallery) not just because I like it (which I do) but also because it's in a genre that is kind of a small minority here--realistic painting. Burkhardt engages in some deliberately antique classicizing, and the rope adds a surreal (which is to say modern) touch to it. Still, it's fundamentally a nice painting of a horse.

Mixed Greens had several pieces by Joan Linder, including a bunch of drawings of her sink. It seems like a rather banal subject to draw over and over, but then some of the greatest art of all time involved artists returning to the same banal subject over and over (Cezanne and Morandi, for example).


Joan Linder, Sink (Kiss My Face), 2012, ink on paper, 32 x 58 1/2 inches


Joan Linder, (clockwise from upper left) Green Sink, Yellow Sink, Pink Sink, Purple Sink, 2011 and 2012, colored maker on paper


Joan Linder, Counter, Sink, 2013, accordion book, ink on paper, 31 x 26 3/4 inches closed, 31 x 156 1/2 inches open


Joan Linder, Counter, Sink (detail), 2013, accordion book, ink on paper, 31 x 26 3/4 inches closed, 31 x 156 1/2 inches open

Her drawing has a children's book illustration vibe, which I quite like. These are fun, homey pieces.


Joan Linder, FedEx Box, 2010, watercolor on paper, 16 1/2 x 12 x 3 inches

Interestingly, Linder also did a trompe-l'oeil box. After seeing similar pieces at Frieze by Jürgen Drescher and Andreas Lolis, I am willing to declare "realistically rendered life-size three-dimension depictions of boxes" to be an official trend.


Joan Linder, FedEx Box (detail), 2010, watercolor on paper, 16 1/2 x 12 x 3 inches

OK, this post has gotten a little long. I'm going to stop here and publish a second part--there's still a lot more art from TCAF to plow through.