Collecting, that is. C.K. Chesterton once wrote that there is little that separates a collector from a miser. Collectorsarenotnicepeople. But I can't stop! Here are a few recent acquisitions.
Ron Regé, Jr. drawing, 2 1/2 x 3 inches
I already have several drawings and comics pages by Ron Regé, Jr., so this just deepens the collection a little. As some of you know, Regé designed the logo for The Great God Pan Is Dead.
Ron Regé, Jr., Skibber Bee Bye page 4, 2000, 12 x 9 inches
Skibber Bee Bye is Regé's early masterpiece, a strange and at times disturbing graphic novel.
This is the second Nic Nicosia I have gotten at the Luck of the Draw. It is a creepy and inexplicable image, which is why I like it.
Lisa Tan, The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch Drawn From Memory, 2013, 7 x 9 inches
I had no idea who Lisa Tan was when I got this piece at Luck of the Draw. I still don't, really, but this isn't the first piece she has made about good old Bosch.
Raymond Pettibon,
The Means to an End, 2000
, lithograph, hand colored by the artist,
24 in x 18 inches, edition of 20
Calling all would be art-writers! We live in a world that is hostile to art writers. Artists simultaneously--schizophrenically--love to be written about and complain about how we fail to understand their work. Collectors apparently ignores us (Don Thompson said that art writers and art magazines were the least important determiner of art's monetary value, while Sarah Thornton spoke of people who read Artforum for the ads). Newspapers have been eliminating the art critic position for decades. The art world has become so odious that some writers are leaving it.
On the other hand, you have the proliferation of art blogs (including this one). Two Coats of Paint,Hyperallergic, Art Fag City, greg.org, etc., are all excellent venues for lively art writing. And you have Creative Time | Warhol Foundation, who give lots of money every year to art writers. The Great God Pan Is Dead can't give grants to art writers (because we are a no-revenue operation), but we can give prizes. Hence the first annual Pan Art Writing Contest.
OK, here's what we are looking for. A blog post between 750 and 2000 words about art. The following types of posts are acceptable:
1. a review of an exhibit that is still on view
2. a review of a performance from the last month
3. a review of a piece of public art that has been installed in the past three months
4. a review of a book or film about art that has been published or released in the past six months
5. an editorial on some current issue in the art world
6. a report on a local art scene
7. an interview or studio visit with an artist
Your entry should include at least one jpeg image (with proper credits)--more than one if possible.
The work should be original, and should be previously unpublished.
The submission deadline is January 31. Winners will be announced no later than February 28.
Here are the prizes:
Nic Nicosia.This handsome hardcover published by The University of Texas Press covers the career of Nic Nicosia, an really great photographer who we have reviewed here before.
Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics by Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that this classic collection helped reintroduce America to an all-but-forgotten part of its artistic heritage. A brilliant anthology.
I Am James Ensor. This artist's book by great Houston artist Lane Hagood stars the ghost of James Ensor. It's number 44 out of an edition of 50.
The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song by David Lasky and Frank M. Young. A graphic novel biography of the famous country music pioneers, drawn by David Lasky in a style that evokes early 20th century comic strips, this is a moving work of Americana.
Texas: 150 Works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston by Alison de Lima Greene. Published in the centennial year (2000) of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, this enormous, well-illustrated book is kind of a first stab at an art history of Texas, in a way. Focusing mainly on modern and contemporary work, it's quite fascinating to see how artists who are still quite active were seen in 2000. We have two copies of this excellent book to award.
The first prize winner will be able to select one from this list. The second prize winner can select from the remaining, and so on.
Writers retain all rights to their own work. The Great God Pan Is Dead may wish to publish the entry, but the writer retains the right to decline.The contest is open to everyone except for current writers for The Great God Pan Is Dead.
Here are some of my favorite exhibits and performances from 2012. I won't say "best." "Best" implies an Olympian certainty about my own tastes that I don't have. In fact, I'm continually changing my mind. It also implies that I saw everything, which I most certainly did not. "Favorite" is better.
William Betts, Untitled III, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24"
Recognition by William Betts at McClain Gallery. This small exhibit blew my mind. Betts used surveillance photos from CTV cameras as the basis for his images--in short, automatic, random images made without regard for art. Then using software turns them into a spots of color that can be applied by machine dot by dot onto a canvas. Get close to the canvas and the images dissolve into dots. And despite the unartly origins and robotic execution of these pieces, there is something perversely moving about them. They really stuck around in my mind.
The Bridge Club, Medium, August 4, 2012, performance
Medium by The Bridge Club at Art Palace. People wandered in and out, chatting, clomping loudly across the floor, drinking beers in normal time. Meanwhile, The Bridge Club barely moved, sitting on chairs mounted on the wall, existing in slow time. This was a meditative, unearthly performance, and I loved it. I look forward to seeing their new project, The Trailer.
Christopher Cascio, Mushroom Mound, 2012, acrylic paint, colored pencil and toner transfers on paper Spring Break at Cardoza Fine Art and an exhibit at Front Gallery by Christopher Cascio. These two shows overlapped so I am going to lump them together. They gave viewers the breadth of Cascio's work--large-scale pieces and installations at Cardoza with smaller collages at Front Gallery. In both shows, Cascio deals with obsessions, benign and otherwise.
Hillerbrand+Magsamen, eState Sale, 2012, video installation with random suburban detritus
eState Sale by Hillerbrand+Magsamen at the Art League. Stephen Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen are a team of video and photographic artists whose work often deals with the absurdity of modern suburban life. Perhaps because I am a lifelong resident of the suburbs (with a few years living in the country, the city, and out of a suitcase), I really relate to their work. Much of it deals with the absurd accumulation of stuff that we suburbanites manage. A video of their daughter buried in a closet-full of stuffed animals, for example. This installation was notable for its combination of four large vertical videos and piles and piles of garage-sale-ready suburban detritus.
Perry House, The Vase (Intrusion Blue), 1989, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 48"
Nic Nicosia, Four Rectangles, NuVoile scrim material, cotton rope, site specific installation, 2012
Space Light Time by Nic Nicosia at Hiram Butler Gallery. The first Nic Nicosia photos I saw were part of a group show at FotoFest, and they were photos of rooms. He continued that approach in Space Light Time, except he photographed small boxes that looked like rooms, and made room-like installations, including Four Rectangles. I like the way he constructs an environment in order to take a photograph. But the way he makes these photos would be beside the point if they weren't so strange and beautiful.
Aaron Parazette, Flyaway, 2012, acrylic wall painting, 7' x 56'
Flyaway by Aaron Parazette at the Art League. Two walls of the large gallery at the Art League became two receding focal points made of intersecting lines and planes of green, blue and black. They sucked you in in the room, and curiously recalled the most famous Art League installation, Inversion by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck. The selection of small paintings that accompanied Flyway were quite choice as well. The feeling of motion and unbalance make these geometric pieces work for me.
Emily Peacock, Teenage Couple on Hudson St., NYC, silver gelatin print, 10" x 10", 2011-12
George Romney, Emma Hart as "The Spinstress", ca. 1784-85. oil on canvas, 68 5/8" x 50 5/8"
Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London at the MFAH. You go to a show expecting one thing (a collection of masterpieces) and sometimes you get something altogether different (a window into 18th century English art). Seeing the Reynolds and Gainsboroughs was fantastic, but for me the real discovery was George Romney, particularly his paintings of Emma Hart (later Lady Hamilton), the sexiest, wildest celebrity of the late 18th century. See England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton for more.
Patrick Renner, chamber #4 (bounded operator), dirt, sand, rock, gravel, window panes, plywood, found objects, cloth, 2012 chamber #4 (bounded operator) by Patrick Renner at El Rincón Social.Patrick Renner had two wonderful shows at Avis Frank this year, but his most exciting piece was a complicated sculptural installation at El Rincón Social. The subject was time--geological time and personal time as represented by memory. It seemed to be an especially Houston piece, reflecting a city full of geologists and geophysicists. He also produces small sculptural works that are similar to core samples. chamber #4 (bounded operator) seems related to that.
Carrie Schneider, Dress (stills from the video, part of the Care House installation), 2012, multimedia installation
Care House by Carrie Schneider.This complex work about Carrie Schneider's mother used her old house in Katy as the setting. Individual pieces occupied most of the first floor rooms. Visitors could wander the room seeing videos, objects, and installations about Schneider and her mother and her mother's struggle with cancer. The superimposed videos were cleverly done and quite moving. It was the most personal piece of art I saw all year, but it was one I could relate to. I lost my dad to cancer in 2001.
Larry Burrows,
One Ride with Yankee Papa 13,
1965,
Photo Essay
WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath at the MFAF. This sprawling exhibit was arranged sensitively around 26 distinct sections, including "Training," "Prisoners of War," "Refugee," "Civilians," "War's End," etc. Some of the images in this show are almost unbearable to look at, but they must be seen. Some are quite familiar, but most were new to me. The exhibit is a remarkable achievement. It's up through February 3, so if you haven't seen it, you still have time. The photo above is from a photo essay that appeared in Life--you can see the whole thing here.
Geoff Winningham, Jerdy's Barber Shop, Port Arthur, Texas 2004, Fuji Archive print (2007) from a 4x5 film negative, image size 15.25" x 19.75", uneditioned
Words and Pictures: Photographs 1971 - 2012 by Geoff Winningham at Koelsch Gallery. It's hard for me not to be sentimental about Geoff Winningham--he was my photography professor in school. But this show was a revelation to me. In the choices made, it showed a clever kind of post-modern sensibility, especially in his photographs of other people's collections of images, which I called "naive curation" in my review of the show. Honorable Mention. there were lots of shows in the Houston area this year that I liked. Here are are some of them:
Nic Nicosia's most recent body of work, Space Time Light, consisted of photographs of rooms he built. The rooms appeared to be square. The viewer saw the floor, three walls and the ceiling. The viewer was more-or-less standing where the fourth wall would be.
At Hiram Butler Gallery, Nicosia shows work from a new series of photos of rooms, I See Light. Additionally, he has used two of the gallery spaces as room-sized installations. When you walk into the gallery, you see Wall Paper, a three-walled room installation by Nicosia. Each of the walls is covered with Chromalux paper. (I didn't have a wide enough lens on my camera to capture all three walls at once.) This black paper is attached to the wall with black tacks. But because the paper is highly reflective and buckles slightly (I'm guessing because of changes in humidity), the box isn't utterly black. The viewer sees seams and reflections.
Nic Nicosia, Wall Paper, Chromolux paper with black thumbtacks, site specific installation, 20112
Because the room is covered with sheets of paper instead of one big piece (like Richard Serra's pieces over at the Menil), and because we can to an extent see the "seams" between the pieces of paper (where the white wall of the gallery shows through), the space of the room is emphasized. We see the parallel perspective lines receding as we would in a room made of bricks or cinder blocks. In short, this arrangement of paper on the wall emphasizes the "room-ness" or the room.
Nic Nicosia, Four Rectangles, NuVoile scrim material, cotton rope, site specific installation, 2012
Then when you turn left and walk into Hiram Butler's large gallery, you see Four Rectangles. These are four scrims hanging in a series. The largest is closest to you, the one behind it is slightly smaller, etc. We're still in a box (although the peaked roof makes it a little more complicated box than the ones Nicosia constructed for his earlier pieces). If we look at the walls, we can see the perspective of the room. But the receding scrims suggest a separate, false perspective. They create their own vanishing point as surely as Masaccio did in The Tribute Money.
Nic Nicosia, Four Rectangles, NuVoile scrim material, cotton rope, site specific installation, 2012
Nic Nicosia, I See Light (B+W), archival ink jet, 60" x 120", 2012
As you face Four Rectangles, I See Light (B+W) is on the wall behind you. These pieces at first remind one of his previous series, Space Time Light, where Nicosia built rooms and staged photographs within them. But if you look closely, you see that there is something different about the rooms in I See Light (B+W).
Nic Nicosia, I See Light (B+W) detail, archival ink jet, 60" x 120", 2012
As you can see, the mesh is connected to the walls, floor and ceiling by phillips head screws, and the screws seem pretty large. They seem large because the room is quite small. It's not really a room--it's a box. But the way it's photographed, that's not immediately obvious. The proportions of these boxes is the same as the rooms in Space Time Light--proportions that seem quite comfortable for people to inhabit. These boxes therefore have the feel of architectural models.
Nic Nicosia, I See Light (B+W) detail, archival ink jet, 60" x 120", 2012
What's important in these boxes are the objects and the lights. I'm told that Nicosia used phosphorescent paint to create the glowing parts of the photos. This gives them a different look than his earlier series, although he uses some similar elements (like the dirt in the photo above).
When you think of this recent work by Nicosia and the pieces in Space Time Light, you see that Nicosia is taking a specific form--the box/room--and working it out as a stage for art in multiple forms--photos of rooms, photos of boxes, and actual room installations. What he puts in those boxes/rooms is what makes them so interesting. They are like theaters (with us standing in the proscenium) or movie sound stages. But we aren't watching a drama--we are watching interventions on the room/box--dirt piled on the floor, a glowing line on all three walls, etc. Somehow, this seems just as dramatic as an actual drama.
There's a good show up at FotoFest headquarters called B-Sides. It's up through December 11. As usual with FotoFest group shows, this one quite various in its contents, and the overall level of quality is high. I want to discuss just two of the artists.
Nic Nicosia, like a lot of modern photographers, is not about capturing a perfect moment, but more about constructing one. He creates sets and then does some kind of action in them, and takes a photo of the result. Or, at least, that's what the viewer is left to conclude in the photos here.
Nic Nicosia, Untitled (dirt target) from the Space Time Light series, archival inkjet on canvas, 2008
The implication is that the figure has been throwing dirt at a target made of dirt (or mud) smeared on the wall. Or did he create the target by throwing mud at the wall? Hard to say. He appears to be very close to the wall, and he may be in the act of smearing the dirt on, even though his body looks like he just pitched a mudball. And what about the side walls, with their grey pastoral scenes. What is their relation to dirt? And is the target even really made of dirt? It looks too "clean"--dirt (or mud) as a drawing medium is surely more difficult to handle than is implied by this image.
Nic Nicosia, Untitled (black rectangle) from the Space Time Light series, archival inkjet on canvas, 2008
This image was even more mysterious. But the first thing I was struck by was the beauty of it. I like the brown and tan colors, the patterns on the wall-paper and how they interact with the light coming through the slats, and how those lines of light intersect the edge of the canvas. But were are again confronted with a strange room--one that appears to have been constructed from scratch for this photo, like a soundstage for a movie. The roof is deliberately left incomplete, and it appears that Nicosia has carefully dropped dirt (dirt!) through the exposed roof to create a rectangular pattern on the floor. Why? I have one possible answer. Nicosia may be recreating a famous physics experiment, the double-slit experiment, which was used to try to determine whether light was composed of discreet particles or whether it was waves in the ether. In Nicosia's version, dirt is substituted for light. The results appear inconclusive.
Richard Mosse went to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Yale (both George Bushes had been members, and they were recently in the news for an offensive hazing ritual) and asked the Dekes to have a yelling contest. The rule was that you had to scream at the top of your lungs, pausing only to inhale, until you just couldn't anymore. This video records the result.
Intense, no? And kind of psychotic. It's hard to imagine a better and more succinct explication of frat life--but more important, of guys. On Mosse's Vimeo site, one of the commenters remarks that this reminded him of new age men's groups who would do the same thing to try to tap into that inner warrior. So it's not all about "bro culture." It's men getting together. A group of guys drinking brews and screaming at the football game on the TV. A bunch of soldiers or rugby players yelling as they psyche themselves up for the battle or the game.
And, watching it (but not participating) is highly irritating and a little disquieting. As a video, it's like Bruce Naumann's Clown Torture. The person being tortured is the viewer! FotoFest had the volume for this piece at a reasonable level, but it should have been turned up loud! The real extremity of it would have come through.
(One last thought--if you wanted to have a truly scary Halloween decoration for your house, you could project Clown Torture onto a white sheet in your front yard. Of course, your neighbors would hate you.)
is Regé's early masterpiece, a strange and at times disturbing graphic novel. 
