That last post (part 2) might have left a bad taste in your mouth. Let's look at a few pieces of art that I liked in the show and wrap this up.(Part 1 is here.)
Art I Liked
Ken Price, Marcel, acrylic on fired ceramic, 1999
Wouldn't you like this lovely Ken Price? I would. This was at the William Shearburn Gallery booth, which I thought was pretty top-notch. (Update: For some reason, this image--a photograph that I took of Ken Price's sculpture, got a DMCA complaint. I guess that trumps fair use. You'll just have to imagine a beautiful Ken Price sculpture here.)
Joseph Havel, Soft Target #2, fabric, cut up American flags, needles and thread on aluminum, 2011
William Shearburn also had this lovely Joseph Havel piece.
Sandy Skoglund, Walking On Eggshells, pigmented inkjet on paper or cibachrome, 1997
I haven't seen a Sandy Skoglund in years, and was delighted to see this one in the booth of Yvanamor Palix Fine Arts. My understanding is that Yvanamor Palix operates as a private dealer out of a space in the Spring Street Studios building (curiously enough, she used to be located in Paris. I'd like to hear the story of how she landed in Houston.)
Susan Graham, Army Six-shot single action center fire revolver,glazed porcelain, wood base, plexi vitrine, 2003
Schroeder, Romero & Shredder had a table like pretty much every booth, but they left cool pieces of art like this one just laying around. It's like they were just daring me to try to swipe Susan Graham's revolver.
Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of a Lady, oil and enamel on canvas, 2006
William Betts, Amalienburg, acrylic paint on reverse drilled mirror plexi, 2011, detail with my reflection in it
I spoke to Patricia Ruiz-Healy of Ruiz-Healy Art in San Antonio about the fair. I was particularly interested because she was coming from a place so close by, but perhaps not that well known to Houston collectors. As far as they are concerned, she could have been coming from Europe or South America. She told me, "It's been good... It could be better. But it's the first year." But she also saw the fair as an investment--a way to grow some artists from South Texas who weren't well-known to the Houston market.
They had some great pieces by the late photographer Chuck Ramirez as well as several cool fire-drawn pieces by BillFitzgibbons. But what really caught my eye was this:
George Schroeder, model for Synergy, 2009
If you work in the Westchase area, you might have seen the huge version of this George Schroeder sculpture in front of the ABB building right on the beltway. When I first saw it, it struck me as the perfect piece of corporate sculpture, and I wrote about it.
Last Sunday, I was chatting with an artist who's been around the local scene for a long time, and we were discussing how Houston got Lawndale, the Core Program, and Diverse Works in a relatively short period of time during the late 70s and early 80s. He posited that there was something in the air artistically. I responded that there was also something else in the air--money. Houston was at an economic high-water mark in those days, and folks were writing checks for scrappy non-profit art spaces. Then came the crash of 1985.
Several friends have pointed out that Houston has more money than other places in the U.S. right now. It has not been immune to the recession, but the price of oil is high and that has mitigated a lot of the pain. If you are an Art Fair organizer in 2011, Houston has got to look pretty good! I enjoyed this fair--meeting gallerists, looking at art, and so on. But if this fair exist because there's money here for the taking, I would also like to see the local elite put some of that money into struggling non-profit art spaces here--places like Box 13, Skydive and La Botanica, as well as supporting our already established art spaces that still depend on folks' generosity to keep the doors open every day.
Anyway, The Houston Fine Art Fair is kaput for the year. We have to look ahead, not back! After all, we have Texas Contemporary Art Fair coming up in just a few weeks. And in a naked attempt to ride on that fair's coattails, I want to announce that I am curating a show with Zoya Tommy that will open simultaneously with the Texas Contemporary Art Fair. More details will be rolled out, but it's a group show with 10 Texas artists, working in sculpture, photography and painting. The name of the exhibit is Pan y Circos. Details coming very soon!
Everyone knows that art fairs are commercial enterprises. The point is to sell artwork to people for money. Money money money. But what kind of freaked me out was how much of the art for sale was about money--and in some cases, literally made out of money!
Mark Wagner, Gale Bill, currency and mixed media on panel, 2011
Mark Wagner had several pieces made out of carefully sliced up dollar bills at the Pavel Zubock Gallery booth, including the tour de force below.
Mark Wagner, The Land of Milk and Honey, currency and mixed media on panel, 2011
Not to be outdone, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery from New Orleans devoted their entire booth space to the folded dollar photos of Dan Tague.
Dan Tague, Don't Tread on Me (left) and We Need a Revolution (right), archival inkjet on paper, 2011
Dan Tague, The End is Near, archival inkjet on paper, 2011
It wasn't just U.S. currency that was on display. I'm pretty sure Santiago Montoya, whose work was displayed at Arte Consultores from Bogata, Colombia, used other currencies in his money pieces.
Santiago Montoya, Wishing Stars (diptich), paper money on stainless steel, 2011
Galleries--next year, if you want to strike an original stance, show art made out of credit cards.
Improvisation
The booths looked great--a lot of work was done to make them look just right. But what happens when you show up and you forgot to pack a display stand? You improvise.
(I can't remember who this artist is or what the gallery was.) I asked them if the box was part of the art and was told no. I guess you just have to do what you can...
Bad Art
I've mostly discussed art I like. I don't suppose it will surprise you that there was some pretty bad art there. Glasstire even had its readers send photos of the worst art (here, scroll down). Here are a few of my "favorites."
David Buckingham, Love to Love You Baby, metal [sic]
James Wolanin, August 1963, acrylic and resin on canvas
These lovelies were at Caldwell Snyder Gallery, which had a booth full of similarly bad art. One can imagine a scenario of, say, North Korean artists being shown slides of contemporary American art and being asked to create something similar. These pieces feel like imitations of contemporary art by artists who don't really understand contemporary art.
On the other hand, the creator of this bronze teddy bear at Schuebbe Projects looks like he knew precisely what he was doing and just didn't care. It positively revels in its stupidity. (Sorry I didn't get the artist's name.)
Shred on, little dude!
Arman, Dark Magnetism (Cello), mixed media on board, 1991
I like Arman's early work, and I think the nouveau realistes are somewhat underrated. But then I see something like this and think, maybe they aren't really all that underrated. This piece was on view at the Riva Yares Gallery booth.
The Houston Comics Fair
I remarked in an earlier post how an art fair resembled a comic book convention with somewhat more expensive merchandise. The Houston Fine Art Fair also resembled a comic book convention because it had comic book-esque art.
Roy Lichtenstein, Reflections on Minerva, mixed media print, 1990
Roy Lichtenstein is the classic comics appropriator, but I was still surprised to see this piece at Hollis Taggart. Suprised for two reasons--first, I thought he stopped using comics as a source in the 60s. Second, his comics-based images typically were more anonymous--not well-known characters like Wonder Woman. And yet, here she is, in a prismatic dissolving visual space. Not bad.
Magdalena Murua, Triple Vortice, paper on canvas
This piece by Magdalena Murua required cutting up little circles of comic book artwork and pasting it onto a canvas. OK comics fans--can you tell just be the colors what comic this could be? (The detail below will show more than enough to figure it out.)
Magdalena Murua, Triple Vortice (detail), paper on canvas
This piece was at the now contemporary art booth. And it appears from looking at her website that all her art involves pages of comics.
Greely Myatt,unsure about the title, steel and air
At David Lusk Gallery, there was this piece by Greely Myatt that distilled comics down to one of its basic elements--balloons (word balloons and thought balloons).
More Bad Art
Arsen Savadov, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, oil on canvas, 2011
Mironova Gallery is a gallery from Kiev. Now I don't want to traffic in stereotypes, but, oh, why the hell not? You think of Russian (and Ukrainian) oligarchs--super-rich, super-crass dudes (and they are all men, as far as I can tell) buying up yachts and football teams and trophy wives and art by the metric ton. People like Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov, and Ukraine's own Viktor Pinchuk. They want art that screams out how wealthy they are and what good taste they have. So owning a pornified version of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is perfect, because he can point out the art history behind it and the post-modern pastiche that Arsen Savadov has created, and when the boys come over for some cigars and poker, they can discuss which of these demoiselles they'd most like to fuck. (Not surprisingly, Pinchuk is a big collector of Savadov.)
Oksana Mas, BMW from the series Heart Removing, 8 cylinder engine, leather, gilt
Oksana Mas, BMW from the series Heart Removing, 8 cylinder engine, leather, gilt
Oksana Mas has created a piece that hits all the conspicuous consumption buttons at once--a BMW motor, covered with fine leather like an expensive designer purse, with gold-plated nuts and bolts! The funny thing is that this is the third leather covered motor I have seen in the past year or so. The first was a V-8 covered with a carefully sewn snakeskin cover by James Drake at his Station Museum Show. The scond was another James Drake snake-skin over engine (a motorcycle engine this time) at Moody Gallery. But the meaning of Mas's engine is quite different--her's is about consumerism and wealth, while Drake's was about masculinity. (One thinks of "Who Do You Love" by Bo Diddley: "I got a brand new house on the roadside/made from rattlesnake hide.")
The overwhelming effect of this art was an appealing to the wealth flaunting tastes of the Victor Pinchuk's of the world. But that's what old money always says about the nouveau riche--their cash can't gain them class. I hate this art, but I kind of admire its brazenness.
So why the hell am I still writing about this? The Houston Fine Art Fair is so last week. I already covered it here and here. What else is there to say?
Well, plenty. Don't look for a thesis here. But I do want to discuss the art that was on display, the business that was done, the reaction of Houston to it. This is Houston's first art fair and mine as well. From what I've read, the expansion of art fairs was due to the encroachment of auction houses on galleries. Auction houses used to deal exclusively in old art, but in the 70s they tentatively stepped into the world of contemporary art. They had something that galleries couldn't provide--market pricing. This is not to say that auction houses are totally transparent, but at least the prices reported represent more or less what the market, at a given moment, is willing to pay for a given artist. These secondary market sales ate at the galleries' business. Art Fairs were a new way for galleries to market their work.
One of the best conversations I had at the show was with Debra Pesci, associate director at Hollis Taggart Galleries. Hollis Taggart shows postwar art with an emphasis on pop art. The prices for the work were not cheap, as one might imagine. Nonetheless, Pesci told me they sold three pieces. I asked her if that was enough to make it worth coming, and she bluntly replied, "No."
Pesci explained the difference between an established art fair (like the Armory Show or ArtBasel) and something like this fair. "In New York or in Basel, it's like a frenzy when they come in. There's a definite interest in buying right away, and also in being seen buying. In this area it's far more discreet. It's something that's much more thought about. [It] doesn't always make it viable for businesses to participate."
So given this, the question was, would Hollis Taggart be back? Pesci said, " I think it would be something we definitely would consider. I think that you need to establish an art fair more than one year. You establish the art fair's identity and your identity within the art fair so that people know who you are.
"It's getting a public to understand that this is more than just coming to look; it's coming to make acquisitions. That sounds really basic, but sometimes for new fairs, that's not always the case."
She made a point that coming to a new art fair was an investment because there was a learning curve for attendees. I hope they come back next year, because Hollis Taggart had one of the nicest booths. They had several works by Marjorie Strider and Idelle Weber. I saw their work last winter in New York in Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968. This is one of those shows where artists who failed to get "cannonized" the first time around get a second chance--and it was an eye-opener.
Idelle Weber, Step Sisters, acrylic on linen, 1964
Idelle Weber was one of the artists who really impressed me most in the Brooklyn Museum show.
Idelle Weber,Lever Building 2, collage and Gouache on Color-aid paper, 1970
Does this look semi-familiar? Here's what it reminds me of:
Mad Men title sequence
Mad Men title sequence
The Mad Men title sequence was put together by a group called Imaginary Forces, and they won an Emmy for it. I wonder if they thanked Idelle Weber when they accepted the award?
Hollis Taggart was not typical in their responses to my questions. The other galleries were all much more upbeat, but less specific. I was particularly interested in hearing from the Latin American galleries. After all, coming in from New York or Miami is much less expensive and difficult than coming from Bogata or Buenos Aires. One gallery that had work I liked a lot was Ginocchio Gallery from Mexico City.
Hugo Lugo,Estudio para marcar el camino, gouche y tinta sobre papel algodon calado, 2011
I spoke to Karen Pozos from Ginocchio. One thing that struck me was that Ginochio's art fair strategy was quite different from Hollis Taggart. Hollis Taggart goes to five art fairs a year, while Ginocchio goes to ten. One might conclude that art fair sales are a much more important part of Ginocchio's total revenue than Hollis Taggart's. They loved the Houston Fine Art Fair. I asked Pozos if they would be returning next year, and she immediately said yes, adding, "We kind of already decided that even before we had sold anything that we would want to come back again." And they did get some sales. But they had an advantage of having relative inexpensive works. The drawings by Hugo Lugo, for example, were available for $5000. That's nothing to sneeze at for ordinary folks, but compared to some of the more blue chip pieces for sale at the fair, it was a relative bargain.
Hugo Lugo, Estudio Para Desprenderse, gouche, tinta y hilo sobre papel algodon calado, 2011
I liked Lugo's work. The two pieces above look as if he painted on lined pages torn from a spiral-bound notebook. But he didn't--those pages are 29.5 inches high. In other words, he took paper, carefully cut out the holes and tore each one, and also carefully ruled out the blue lines. In the case of Estudio Para Desprenderse, Lugo went further--the blue lines are actually blue thread, sewn into the paper.
Hugo Lugo, Estudio Para Desprenderse detail, gouche, tinta y hilo sobre papel algodon calado, 2011
In addition to these spiral notebook pieces on paper, the gallery included one on canvas.
Hugo Lugo, Boceta Para Transformar una Memoria, acrílico y oléo sobre tela, 2010
I'm assuming that the other Latin American galleries are in the same boat. They have to go to art fairs because they can't count on American and European collectors to visit their galleries in person. And Houston might have seemed like prime ground for their art--after all, the MFAH has made it an important part of their mission to collect lots of Latin American art.
Of course, like every gallery here, the work in the Latin American galleries was hit or miss. Enjoy Coke by Gaston Ugalde at Salar Galeria de Arte from La Paz, Bolivia, was worth a chuckle.
Something to hang on your wall and you hoover some Bolivian marching powder, hmmm? Actually, I can't imagine anyone hanging this--it seems like an expensive bit of joke art. I talked to the folks from Salar Galeria. They explained that the underside of the coca leaf was light while the top was dark, hence the two tones used in this collage. They also said that because the leaves were coated with some clear resin or something, they would never fade in color. Yeah, right. If you bought this piece and the leaves did turn brown, what would you do? Go to La Paz and get your money back?
In contrast to this was the work at Document-Art Gallery from Buenos Aires. It was a brave booth. There was really no obvious eye-candy there. Here is the broken English of their website describing their mission:
Founded in Buenos Aires in 2009, Document-art is highly committed to search, identify and valorize not only works, but documents art-related, which become essential to understand conceptual movement in Latin America So we not also represent a number of artists that are continuing the tradition of Art in Latin America, but also research the world looking for unique documental material that supports and emphasize those works of art.
(I would have translated the Spanish version, but it was missing!) OK, if you can past the rough English, and if you, like me, are interested in conceptual art, you can see that this is simultaneously fascinating and, well, uncommercial! And yet, they hit multiple art fairs every year. I thought the booth, decorated with photos of artists and covers of obscure journals and manifestos, was very exciting.
Horacio Zabala, Hoy el Arte es una Cárcel, pencil on folded tracing paper, 1972
This sentiment, which echoes such gestures as John Baldessari burning his old paintings in 1970, is not what I expected to see at an art fair. One thing that was amazing about this art fair is that your could see art from the past 70-odd years of Latin American art--Wilfredo Lam and Joaquin Torres Garcia, constructivist work from various countries, and 70s conceptual work like Horacio Zabala's (and Milton Becerra's, who I will return to later) as well as work produced this year.
One gallery I liked a lot was YAM Gallery from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I spoke with curator Melanie Harris de Maycotte about their appearance at this fair. I asked her if the show had paid for itself, and she said, "It will. By the time we leave, it will have." She pointed out that they were working with museums (which ones, I wonder?) who don't buy pieces on the spot. This didn't occur to me--not only are galleries marketing to collectors, but also to museums--and museums have a different way of buying art than collectors. When asked whether they would return next year, she said absolutely. YAM Gallery is relatively new (6 years old), and unlike Document-Art or Ginocchio, they are just starting to dip their toes into the art fair world. The Houston Fine Art Fair is the second fair they have ever been to.
Adam Chamandy, self portrait, not sure about the media or date
Adam Chamandy, self portrait detail, not sure about the media or date
I liked Adam Chamandy's big self-portrait, and liked especially that the image was constructed completely of the word art, written small and by hand. It's the ne plus ultra of self-referentiality.
Latin American art was also very well represented in galleries from Miami. For instance, I really dug this piece by Argentine artist Daniel Gonzales at Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts.
Daniel Gonzalez, Love Song, hand-sewn sequins on canvas, 2011
I honestly like it, but at the same time, it seems like the kind of work that panders to the art fair audience. It's sparkly and sexy and in English. On the other hand, Colectivo MR makes a work that can be read as a criticism of cultural colonialism.
They put indigenous Andean people, dressed in clothes that seem (to this gringo) like highly formal indigenous garb, into a box at a theater or opera. The box seats represent class distinctions, but so, in a way, do the beautiful and elegant clothes they are wearing. Within their culture, these seem to be people of status. The juxtaposition of the embroidery on their clothes and the baroque gilt decoration of the box make this a more complicated piece than one might expect. So how did this work end up in an art fair? Well, I think the answer is simple--it is beautiful and visually striking.
Milton Becerra, Analysis of a process over time, photographs and video, 1976-77
"Beautiful" is not the word that comes to mind with Milton Becerra's work in the Hardcore Art Contemporary Space booth. The work consists of black strips of cloth hung in parallel lines in and on damaged buildings. Becerra was responding to art of his time--minimal art, constructivism, etc.,--which seemed removed from ordinary concerns. Obviously one thinks of Daniel Buren, but a better comparison would be Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica in Brazil, two constructivist who abandoned pure abstraction to bring objects and performance into the world in which they lived.
The location of the photos is Longaray El Valle, a neighborhood in Caracas Venezuela. My understanding was that the government forced the inhabitants of the neighborhood to vacate it and move into new government housing projects. This kind of slum clearance/rehousing was a world-wide project in the post-war period, drawing equal support from the left (removing the poor from tenements owned by slumlords to supposedly better places to live) and the right (freeing valuable land for development and concentrating the underclass into narrowly proscribed areas). And artists of all stripes were there to record these events (for example, Muswell Hillbillies by The Kinks--for all you rock and rollers out there). Becerra's art in a sense criticizes then current art movements and artists for their apparent indifference, at least as it was reflected by their art. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Carlos Cruz-Diez!
Milton Becerra, Analysis of a process over time, photographs and video, 1976-77
I spoke with Nina Fuentes, the owner of Hardcore Art Contemporary Space in Miami. I remarked on the daringly uncommercial nature of the work (at least it seemed so to my eyes). It was political, it was not pretty, it incorporated video, etc. Nonetheless, she said the show had gone very well for them. She said she planned to come back next year.
Ana Tiscorni, not sure what the title is, installation with chairs
Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery is another Miami gallery that shows a lot of Latin American artist, including this installation by Uruguayan artist Ana Tiscorni. It was unusual to see installations like this in the art fair--work usually was free-standing and pretty much portable.
In this blog and in curatorial efforts I often try to introduce art comics into the neighborhood of contemporary art in general. Often the reaction of the art world is similar to that of white people when black folks moved into lily-white suburban neighborhoods in the 60s and 70s. A more common reaction, however, is indifference. Acceptance is the least common, but even within "acceptance" there are problems. Tokenism, for example, or a mistaking of art comics for the worst, most cliched aspects of "mainstream" comics (i.e., superheroes). To carry my neighborhood analogy way too far, it would be like the white guy assuring his new black neighbors that they are welcome because the white guy loves watermelon.
Superhero comics suck. They are hacked out by people with no taste, owned by corporations whose only aesthetic is to pander, they are sexist, I hate them. Now surely some people will say, well what about Jack Kirby/Plastic Man/Batman: Year One/Grant Morrison/Watchmen, etc. What about those comics you loved as a boy? All I can say in response is that any genre, no matter how limited and debased, can become a location for artistic expression. There are good Westerns, after all. But when I talk about superhero comics as a whole, I see a vast fetid swamp.
What set me off today? This:
Kenneth Rocafort (art) and Scott Lobdell (script), page from Red Hood and the Outlaws #1, published by DC Comics, a division of Time-Warner
Here's what Noah Berlatsky had to say:
Criticizing DC is worthwhile because pointing out sexism is worthwhile and good writing is worthwhile and most of all because these morons deserve to be insulted. But hoping that Dan Didio is going to give a fuck about feminist complaints is like hoping that the coal industry will, after serious discussion, suddenly decide that solar energy is the future. You can teach an old dog new tricks, maybe, but you can’t turn an old dog into a penguin.
I’ve said this before more or less (most recently here) but maybe it bears repeating. Superhero comics are a tiny, niche market. Within that market, women are a tiny minority (10% at best, from the figures I’ve been able to find.) The audience for superhero comics is the small rump of 30-year-old plus men who have been reading superhero comics for 20-plus years and still want to read about the child-oriented characters of their youth — only, you know, in a kind of skeevy, adult way.
Now, maybe you read superhero comics, and that doesn’t describe what you want from them. Which is cool — but it’s worth realizing that you are in the minority (among superhero comics readers. You’re among the vast, vast majority in terms of the rest of the world, obviously.)
If the reboot makes anything clear, it’s that the core audience remains the core audience. It’s not going anywhere. This is what mainstream superhero comics are.
The point being, the best possible outcome here is not that DC starts writing better stories. It isn’t that they become more diverse. It isn’t that they hire more female creators. The best possible (note I said “possible”) outcome is that these shitheads finally, finally go out of business. (Noah Berlatsky, The Hooded Utilitarian)
