Same Art, Different Venues

Robert Boyd

Sometimes you get to see the same exhibit in two different venues. I saw the Charles LeDray show workworkworkworkwork at the Whitney Museum and at the MFAH, for example. And the two sites made a big difference--the Ledray show in the huge, high-ceilinged MFAH seemed a bit lost. It really required a more intimate setting, which the Whitney provided.

Rigoberto A. Gonzales' exhibit Baroque on the Border had the opposite problem. When shown at the Art League in Houston, the work was so large that it felt cramped in the relatively small gallery where it was shown.


Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, El Dia 17 de Febrero del 2009 en Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico (On the 17th of February of 2009 in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico), 2010, oil on linen, 9'8" x 20' at the Art League Houston

Gonzalez' El Dia 17 de Febreo del 2009 en Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico is a heroically large painting--too large for the Art League. See how the painting is flush against the ceiling. Also notice the lighting. The Art League's track lighting is unable to bathe the entire painting in an even glow, so we end up with "hot spots" where the light is stronger on the canvas. Instead of illuminating the canvas, it's as if spotlights are being shined on specific portions of it.


Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, El Dia 17 de Febrero del 2009 en Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico (On the 17th of February of 2009 in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico), 2010, oil on linen, 9'8" x 20' at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center

The same painting is currently on view at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin. The exhibition space there is magnificent and perfect for large pieces like this. The ceiling (with skylights) is quite high. The piece has room to breathe. And because the lights have a sufficient distance from the painting, you don't get the spotlight effect.


Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, Se Los Cargo La Chingada (Beheading), oil on linen, 7' x 7' at the Art League Houston

Beheading at the Art League shows the spotlight effect.


Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, Se Los Cargo La Chingada (Beheading), oil on linen, 7' x 7' at he Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center

While the same painting at the MACC is lit evenly, so that no portion of it is dark and no portion is washed out.

I don't mean to suggest that the Art League is bad at installing artwork. On the contrary, I've seen many beautifully installed shows in the exact same space where they hung Baroque on the Border. The problem was that the art was simply too big for the space. The spacious MACC gallery was perfect for an exhibit of this work. When I saw the show at the MACC this past weekend, it was as if I were seeing it for the first time. The difference was that profound.

When Billionaires Attack

by Robert Boyd

A big piece of news in the art world this week was the summary dismissal of Paul Schimmel from MoCA in Los Angeles (some MoCA board members insist he resigned). He was MoCA's chief curator for over 20 years. One of Schimmel's first shows was Helter Skelter in 1992, a group show that was generally panned at the time but in retrospect seems very important. Personally, I loved Helter Skelter. When Misfit Lit, a show of alternative comics that I helped to curate, went to LACE, I flew down from Seattle with Larry Reid and Pat Moriarity to help install it. While we were in LA, we went to see Helter Skelter at the big Temporary Contemporary building (now permanent, it is called the Geffen Contemporary). At the time, what got to me was how dirty the show was--Paul McCarthy's robotic mannequins fucking trees! Robert Williams' paintings full of tits and ass! But in retrospect--and very influentially from my point of view--was that it combined very grungy aspects of performance and conceptualism with figurative "low brow" art, and the combination worked beautifully.

Schimmel (who was a curator at the CAMH in Houston in the late 70s) was at MoCA for 20 years, so he must have been doing something right. So what happened? Here's how Mat Gleason described events:

Paul Schimmel was fired at MOCA - it was the end of the fiscal year and they tightened the belt. It is easier to have a corporate sponsor pay a guest celebrity curator - the curating has been outsourced.

The design department is outsourced to Sheppard Fairey’s design company, the education department gets grants and therefore competes with the Board for power so people there are being hacked away left and right, but the cutting off of Schimmel is a bold move by the Jeffrey Deitch/Eli Broad consortium to advance the outsourced party time event based museum that will not function as a repository of great art but of great parties. 

If Moca is downsized into a celebrity-curated kunsthalle style circus, it will give the blue chip Broad across the street more Gravitas. And then of course when MOCA is broke yet again - who will save MOCA by purchasing the best paintings in the collection because the museum is more concerned with event programming? The Broad Museum across the street of course. [Mat Gleason, "MOCA Fires Curator Paul Schimmel," Coagula, 6/27/2012]

Eli Broad is being fingered as the evil mastermind, with Deitch as his hatchet man. Art Fag City lends some credence to this theory by pointing out Broad's recent involvement with MoCA.

According to the email, Schimmel was let go in conjunction with a number of curatorial assistants and other employees. This news comes just four years after wealthy benefactor Eli Broad pledged to donate up to $30 million over five years to the museum with “the expectation that the museum’s board and others join in this effort to solve the institution’s financial problems.” At the time, it was hailed as “the billionaire’s bailout” for the museum, which suffered losses in investments due to the stock market crash. Broad will match contributions to the endowment up to $15 million, and make annual donations of $3 million earmarked for exhibition support. ["Why Would MoCA Fire Chief Curator Paul Schimmel?", Art Fag City, June 28, 2012]

But if Broad was set on taking over MOCA or acquiring some of its best work for his own museum, how would Schimmel pose a problem? AFC suggests the issue was animosity between Schimmel and Deitch.

Reporters have cited the acrimonious relationship between MoCA’s new Director Jeffrey Deitch and Chief Curator Paul Schimmel as a possible cause for dismissal. The LA Times’s Christopher Knight wrote over Twitter this morning that “[t]ensions had been brewing for a long time.” 

This March, The LA Times reported that key financial personnel left the museum. Should personality conflict have been an issue, it would not surprise many. Schimmel is widely respected for exhaustive, thought-provoking exhibitions. Deitch is infamous for his belief that no distinction should exist between art and entertainment. Their personalities could not be more different. 

More broadly speaking, however, the firing harkens back to the fears of critics who expressed trepidation about Deitch’s appointment in 2010. Would a man who so indiscriminately embraced kitsch be a good match for the country’s best contemporary art museum? We already had questions after we saw the cancellation of their Jack Goldstein exhibition for a show of paintings by the late actor Dennis Hopper. The firing of an internationally renowned curator only further calls his leadership into question. ["Why Would MoCA Fire Chief Curator Paul Schimmel?", Art Fag City, June 28, 2012]

Jerry Saltz expresses similar opinions, fingering Broad as the man behind the scene.

Rumors of bad-blood between Schimmel and the duo of Deitch and Broad have circulated for years. That's not surprising, considering that go-go impresarios and a hard-nosed curator are like hydrogenated oil and muddy water. I've no idea whether Schimmel's shows are extravagantly expensive (as is rumored) or whether he was hard to handle (ditto). I know it's the job of a museum director to make sure curators don't run amok and overspend, though I should note that it's also a curator's job to want more. I suspect here that Deitch is probably just a pawn in Broad's game, someone to do his bidding, and that he'll eventually be gone, leaving total control in the hands of Broad and a board that he's hand-picked. (Broad is already building his own museum across the street from MoCA.) 

From where I sit, the whole thing stinks. Despite solid attendance numbers, MoCA seems to be in the state the Guggenheim entered in the early 2000s, under its megalomaniacal director, Thomas Krens. MoCA is becoming a tourist attraction for one-shot visitors, a rogue institution stripped of the reputation won for it by generations of artists. Schimmel's leave-taking confirms what was already known: The institution is being damaged, enough to suggest that MoCA may no longer be a genuine member of the artistic and creative community of Los Angeles. ["Saltz on the Firing of L.A. MoCA's Chief Curator, Paul Schimmel," Jerry Saltz, Vulture, 6/28/2012]

I think he may be onto something here. Broad brought in Deitch. Broad thinks his tastes and ideas, expressed through Deitch, should rule the day. Why should a curator have so much power over what art is shown? After all, it's the Broads of the world who determine what good art is these days. They do it through the auction houses, at the art fairs, through their private museums, through their displays of their private collections at public museums, and so on.

This reminded me of an incident that has been in the news the past few weeks. This is the firing (and subsequent reinstatement) of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan. Sullivan, who had been president of UVA for two years, was abruptly fired by the Board of Visitors (UVA's version of trustees). The story here is complex, but similar to the MOCA story. Powerful donors and Board of Visitors members didn't like the direction Teresa Sullivan was going with the university--specifically, they wanted a very quick transition to online university classes on the Coursera model, which seems to be the flavor of the month. And, because they are rich and successful, they figured that whatever disagreements they had with Sullivan were a result of her inadequacies. The story of the scheme was leaked to the public and it quickly fell apart. The governor of Virginia quickly appointed a largely new Board of Visitors who reinstated Sullivan.

Some commentators have suggested that what the Board of Visitors was doing was part of a general attempt by conservative Republicans to seize control of higher education, which they see as one of the bastions of liberalism. After all, Virginia Bob McDonnel is a Republican and appointed all of the Board of Visitors. The suggestion is that if state universities are transformed into primarily trade and professional schools and away from the research institution/university model, they will no longer be liberal redoubts. And maybe this is true, but I think there is a slightly different (if overlapping) explanation, one which Siva Vaidhyanathan, writing about the Sullivan debacle for Slate, put his finger on.

At some point in recent American history, we started assuming that if people are rich enough, they must be experts in all things. That’s why we trust Mark Zuckerberg to save Newark schools and Bill Gates to rid the world of malaria. Expertise is so 20^th century. ["Strategic Mumblespeak," Siva Vaidhyanathan, Slate, 6/15/2012]

And I think we are seeing this in the art world. It's a world that has always been controlled by rich people, at least on an institutional level. But there is a complex dance between professionals (curators and directors) and the big-money trustees and donors. What the MoCA firing suggests is that big money is getting impatient with this dance. And this impatience is evident everywhere these days--the museum shows highlighting specific collectors, the private museums to show off super-rich collectors' collections, etc.

But hasn't it always been so? Didn't Nelson Rockefeller and Stephen Clark fire founding MoMA director Alfred Barr in 1943? So how is Broad, acting through Deitch and the trustees, firing Schimmel any different? I don't think it is qualitatively different. But what we have seen is the massive rise in the number of super-wealthy individuals and a rise in this kind of meddling--whether at universities or at museums. In some cases, these wealthy individuals might be self-dealing. They get a museum to show their collection, and that causes their collection to become more valuable. But I think probably just as often there is a sense of, I'm rich, I earned my money through my wits and my savvy, therefore I am imminently qualified to be a curator or museum director--or at least pull the strings of any nominal director or curator.

In short, events like the firing of Schimmel may be just one more sign of how the balance of power in the U.S. and in the world generally has shifted away from the 99% all the more firmly into the hands of the 1%--or more realistically, the .01%. (Since the expansion of the .01% has been largely driven by economic rents extracted by the financial industry, I think we should call these people the "basis point," which is finance jargon for 1/100 of one percent.) Broad, with his fortune derived from home building and insurance, is one of the top basis points in the U.S. And he is letting us know that when it comes to running an art institution, he knows better than any seasoned professional.

UH MFA Thesis Exhibition part 2: Seven Years Bad Luck

by Robert Boyd


Cheyanne Ramos for Sebastian Forray, Seven Years Bad Luck, pt. 2 (Kerri Green and the Living Unicorn), 2012, acrylic on canvas

The weirdest part of the UH MFA thesis show was a little sub-show by Sebastian Forray called Seven Years Bad Luck. I didn't understand it, but I loved it. But I was troubled by my lack of analytical ability. I'm an art critic, dammit! I should be able to create an explanation for any art I see, even if I have to make something up whole cloth. So I broke down and asked Sebastian Forray about the show. I'm still not sure if I understand it, but at least some questions have been answered.

First of all, the show consists of five paintings and the contents of a vitrine. The paintings are numbered, and none of them are painted by Forray. They all have titles like Seven Years Bad Luck, pt. 2 (Kerri Green and the Living Unicorn). According to Forray, "Some are straight commissions, others are collaborative, and one was made with almost no input from myself."


Seth Alverson for Sebastian Forray, Seven Years Bad Luck, pt. 4 (The Slaying of the Blair Witch), 2012, oil on canvas

His collaborators/hired guns include some of the best-known young artists in Houston. And generally they are painters (one piece is mixed media) who exhibit a high level of craft in their own work. Seth Alverson and Cheyanne Ramos are virtuosos in their own paintings. I'd say they held back a bit for these paintings. Ramos in particular seems to have deliberately given her painting of Goonies star Kerri Green a "thrift store painting" awkwardness (that hot pink "glow" on the right of the figure, for example), and the same could be said of Seth Alverson's The Slaying of the Blair Witch. The fact that both these highly skilled painters did work that feels somewhat awkward and amateurish makes me think that this was a request on the part of Forray.


Emily Halbardier for Sebastian Forray, Seven Years Bad Luck, pt. 3 (Fresh Loaf '92 in Hooker's Green), 2012, oil on canvas

Emily Halbardier's work, by contrast, has been described as coming across "as under-skilled or shallow in its processes," but as an artistic strategy. "Deskilling" in other words. And we see this in Fresh Loaf '92 in Hooker's Green, but I think we also may be seeing a deliberate attempt to create an artwork as if it were created by another person--in this case, a teenage boy. The fantasy motifs, the raised knife, the cartoonish sexualized female figures (including one with approximately 46 boobs), the scatology, etc., all seem like the creations of another persona. (This strategy reminds me a bit of Jim Shaw's work. Coincidentally, Shaw has also long been interested in thrift store paintings.)


Graustark Gang for Sebastian Forray, Seven Years Bad Luck, pt. 5 (A Painting by the Graustark Gang), 2012, acrylic on canvas

Does A Painting by the Graustark Gang fit in with my "fake thrift store paintings" theory. I would say yes because all paintings of Alf are by definition thrift store paintings. But who are the Graustark Gang? They are Jessica Ninci, John Forse, Sam Ackerman and Michael Harwell. I liked the notes "taped" (painted) to the image.

The last piece (pt. 1, if you're keeping track) is by Cody Ledvina. It's the only non-painting.


Cody Ledvina for Sebastian Forray, Seven Years Bad Luck, pt. 1 (Life with Four Hundred Thirty Two i's), 2012, mixed media on panel


Life with Four Hundred Thirty Two i's really kind of screws up my thrift store painting theory. First of all, it's not a painting, and in my experience, thrift store art tends to be paintings. They may have absolutely bizarre imaginations, but thrift store artists seem to be quite conservative when it comes to materials. In any case, the whole thrift store painting idea wasn't really going anywhere, anyway. Maybe I should defer to Forray instead of trying to think up ideas about this art on my own.

So I asked him, what do parts 1 to 5 represent? He replied, "Each one represents a seven year section of my life (which began in 1977). There are plaques on each painting identifying the years. I am turning 35 this year, so I split my life into five seven year sections, each contributor got one section to make a painting for. Again, depending on who it was and what they wanted, I provided brief or detailed biographical information (or instructions), but also encouraged the other artists to incorporate their own memories/details from the same seven-year period." Damn, that was simple. So Ledvina's piece represents a period in either Forray or Ledvina's life when one of them was a red, three-headed man. Seven Years Bad Luck, pt. 2 (Kerri Green and the Living Unicorn) represents the years 1985 to 1992, and The Goonies came out in 1985. Maybe Forray had a crush on Kerri Green. Halbardier's part 3, with its teenage boy imagery, happens to coincide with Forray from age 15 to 21, so that fits. Part 4 covers the years 1999 to 2006, and The Blair Witch Project came out in 1999. But what Alf has to do with Forray's late 20s and early 30s--well, that one I don't get. But that's OK. The point isn't to puzzle these paintings out.

But I did wonder about the lack of art from the artist himself. Was this some kind of arch conceptual statement about authorship? But the answer is simpler and more straightforward. "Painting grads have to produce two shows during their graduating semester. One in the small projects gallery, and one for the MFA show. I did all my own work for the small project gallery where I defended my thesis. Curating is also part of what I do so I decided to base the MFA show on this aspect of my 'practice.'" As a curator, Forray is being highly interventionist. I mean, the usual conception of a curator involves a degree of deference to the art. Not here--he is the ringmaster, the architect, and the show is about him.


Sebastian Forray, The Vitrine of Ancillary Failures, 2012, vinyl records, books, buttons, brochure and television monitor in a display case

Hence this display case and its various mopey, dyspeptic objects. "The Vitrine of Ancillary Failures is a collection of failures, missteps, underdogs/antagonists that have caused an impact on me in some way," Forray writes.


Sebastian Forray, The Vitrine of Ancillary Failures detail, 2012, vinyl records, books, buttons, brochure and television monitor in a display case

So we have this James Elkins book, Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students, that calls into question the whole project of teaching art in a college setting, next to campaign buttons from the disastrous Modale-Ferraro 1984 presidential run. We have Self-Portrait by Bob Dylan, widely considered one of his all-time worst records. And we have a copy of Studies in Pessimism by by Arthur Schopenhauer.


Sebastian Forray, The Vitrine of Ancillary Failures detail, 2012, vinyl records, books, buttons, brochure and television monitor in a display case

All in all, the vitrine is almost a caricature of student disillusionment. It's over-the-top, and its presence in a MFA thesis show is humorous. There is something inherently optimistic about a show like this. A bunch of students are about to graduate, after all. And this is their best work, the product of two years of studying.And here's Debbie Downer with a vitrine full of bad vibes. What could be be more perfect?

Pan y Circos Walkthrough

by Robert Boyd



Pan y Circos

PG Contemporary Temporary Annex

3225 Milam Street

Houston, Texas

October 21 to November 5

Curated by Robert Boyd and Zoya Tommy

And The GGPID curator of the year award goes to ...

by Dean Liscum

If you don't "do art" and you're not blowing up your dictionary app every time you come across a word you kinda know, you probably have an idea of what a curator does but you're vague on the details. Essentially, a curator is a creative director and a manager for an art show. The curator decides what to show and brings that what together at a certain time in a finite space. Voila! The art exhibit.

Simple enough...Yeah, like herding cats... cats that just happened to be very focused creative types who don't always play well with others or take one for the team (or even know that there is a team or that there are others). Needless to say, it's a job. As with any other task, some do it well and others not so very. In order to recognize those that excel in this endeavor, I created an award...like spontaneously...like just this second...like pulled it out my ass (and thus a picture of the award will not be available for download). The GGPID Curator of the Year Award is also called the "Gilded Goat" because if you took gold spray paint to what I extracted from ass and it sort of resembles a golden goat.

In the future, we'll have a call for nominees, an impartial judging panel, a lavish ceremony, and a ginormous party at the MFA Beck building with lots of glitter and jello shots and house music. For now, you've got me, jello-less shots, lots of glitter (I thought I'd make it festive), and tears (glitter in your eyes has got to be a Guantanamo interrogation technique).

And the winner of the Great God Pan is Dead award for curator of the year is...

Paul Middendorf

I know what you're wondering...

Well, it's not for his "they call me peewee" bow tie or his cowboy boots or his curatorial selections (well kinda), but rather for his artistic principles.

Let me explain. For his show, SOUTHERN/PACIFIC, at Lawndale, Middendorf (say that three times fast and then click your heels) did his curatorial due diligence. He devised an organizational principle, found artists whose work satisfied its criteria, and then invited them to participate. They all accepted the invitation and then asked about details such as timeframes, logistics, and shipping expenses, etc. Now Lawndale is big for a non-profit art space. However, it doesn't have a shipping budget, which I learned in a very unscientific survey, is fairly typical for local\regional non-profits.

So a couple of the artists asked, "Can you come and get it?"

At this point in the conversation, I (and presumably all the other curators who failed to win this prestigious award) would have restated the request for clarity and emphasis. "I can include your piece in my show if I drive hundreds of miles in the Texas heat, pick it up and drop it off after the exhibition, and promise to cherish love and obey it while it's in my possession?...Uh huh." I'd have taken a long pause before I replied in a voice shaky from incredulity. "I cannot in good conscience deny the feral dogs of Luckenbach of that artistic experience." Then I would have called the next artist on my list. Only I'd have begun that conversation with my best Ed McMahon intoned greeting, "you MAY be a winner."

Actually, I'm not giving him the award for his principles because...

• He's poisoned the well for ever other sane curator, "What do you mean you won't drive 8 hours in the Texas Heat to pick up MY work? Middendorf would do it"
• You know there will be bracelets - WWPD (What Would Paul Do) or (Middendorf for Me! I'm an artist!)
• Gallery's will work "Middendorf" clauses into their curatorial contracts - You want it here. You Middendorf here.
• Some even worse, unforeseen consequence will arise from this, I can almost foresee it.

If this award was endowed, we could provide security to the winner. But it's not so he's totally on his own. Albeit, the threat-level is not real high. We are in fact talking about artists and lovers of art, a.k.a. curators. (What are they going to do. Spatter his thrift-shop threads with acrylic paint. Have you priced acrylic paint lately?)

Ultimately, I bestow this completely fictional and totally worthless (financially, professionally, psychologically) award on him because that kind of irrational, financially and personally irresponsible action is kind of endearing while remaining completely asinine.

Oh. And did I mention he's gonna return the art work to the artist only to later travel back at a later date, pick up the artwork, and transport it to Portland, Oregan for the northwest debut of the show? Details are sketchy but his friends and loved ONE (he's got one, but that was at the time this was published) insist that there will be an intervention.

If doesn't work, I'm sure I could pull another award out of my...

The 2010 Houston Fringe Festival Art Exhibit

The Fringe Festival is go! You have one night left to see the first weekend's performances. Do it! My favorite  performances were by the Ratgirls, the CORE Performance Company, and the Nonsense Music Band, but it's all great. (Each weekend in the four week festival is a different program. See them all!)

This video is no substitute for seeing the actual exhibit, by they way. So faithful Pan readers (in the Houston area)--please come down to Navigation Blvd. in Houston's beautiful Barrio Segundo and see what I'm so excited about.

Kamps to Menil... What Now for CAMH?

In what passes for big news in the Houston art community, the Menil Museum, after an exhaustive international search, hired Toby Kamps to be its Modern and Contemporary Art Curator. Toby Kamps is currently the Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum here. Depending on where Kamps lives, he may find his commute either lengthened or shortened by a mile or so. You can read all about this move here, here and here. Here's a picture of Kamps by Bill Olive that I stole from the Chron:



So this is very exciting and all, but I have one question? What happens at CAMH? They are one curator short now. I suppose they will begin an exhaustive international search, working through whatever professional organization(s) curators have, as well as their own networks. I reckon they'll be looking for someone with an advanced degree (preferably a doctorate) and lots of practical curatorial experience.

I'm going to suggest to CAMH that they think outside the box. Sure, experience and education are good, but maybe what CAMH needs is someone with something else. Someone plugged into the now. An art expert who brings an expertise in modern electronic communication--a blogger, for example. But a blogger who knows a lot about art (yet has weirdly inexplicable and somewhat charming gaps in his art knowledge). Someone with whom, by hiring, they could save on relocation costs--important in these tight financial times! Someone unafraid to write about himself (or herself) in the third person. I think someone like that would be a brave, visionary choice for a new curator for CAMH.

Just my two cents.

In Which I Leave My Bloggish Safety Zone and Curate an Actual Art Exhibit

The Houston Fringe Festival is a very cool event. Some readers may recall that I attended and blogged about it (here, here, here, here, and here) last year. This year is is expanding to four weekends from August 19 to September 11. And I'm sure it will be amazing.

But what is most exciting for me is that I'm going to be involved. No--don't worry. I'm not dancing. Definitely not. Oh no no no. Nope.

I will be curating the festival's art exhibit. The theater has a long wide hallway that kind of goes nowhere (actually it goes to other rooms that won't be open during the performances). So my job is to gather art for this space. It's an interesting challenge, but one I think I'm up to. I have only started thinking about the artists I might want. Right now I have a big fat list of disparate artists--I plan to winnow it down to four to six artists whose work I think would be interesting if shown simultaneously. Most (if not all) the artists will be Houston-based--there is a rich pool of talent here.

I suspect I have will have some new readers Wednesday (if all goes according to schedule). I've been saving this announcement for you all. I hope to see you in August at Frenetic Theater.