[Disclosure: I am married to one of The Art Guys. I am not an impartial bystander. Read the following with that in mind.] It was announced yesterday that the Menil Collection is removing the artwork The Art Guys Marry A Plant from its collection. Practically speaking, this means digging up a small tree and removing [...]
In the wake of this fall’s Houston Fine Art Fair and Texas Contemporary Fair in Houston, someone remarked to me that art fairs are “Art Porn,” an overwhelming smorgasbord of visual stimulation and (hopefully) frenzied acquisition. This got me thinking about how the term “porn” has expanded from its traditional sense. To wit: Food Porn [...]
Saturday, 4 pm Lawndale Artist in Residence Domokos Benczedi (right) is asked to lower the volume on his unscheduled art fair performance by fair director Jeffrey Wainhouse. – B.D. To which Domokos replied: “MAN, WE DON’T TURN IT DOWN FOR ANYBODY!” Domokos then left the building. – K.K. Saturday, 1:24 pm These are [...]
In conjunction with the fabulous Lawndale Art Center, Glasstire presents the Lawndale/Glasstire Barfly series at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair. The Barfly series brings together interesting people from the arts and a variety of other fields to hang out at the Glasstire Gulf Coast Dive Bar. (Designed and built by Bill Davenport!) No panel discussions, [...]
Three things: 1. Amid the brouhaha following Paul Schimmel’s departure from MoCA this summer, Eli Broad was quoted in the LA Times as estimating the value of MoCA’s exhibits by the cost per attendee: Total cost of exhibition ÷ Number of attendees = cost per attendee Broad complained that some of MoCA’s shows had cost over $100 [...]
Let’s take a moment to check in with Galveston. Poor old Galveston, right? The city has its great old Victorian mansions and brick streets and palm-lined avenues; it also has that decaying grandeur of Gulf Coast towns that get their teeth kicked in every 20 years by a hurricane. It’s run-down and funky. The hustling [...]
In what can only be described as a coup, the massive ceramics collection of New York dealers Garth Clark and Mark del Vecchio was acquired by the MFAH five years ago. In 2009 there was a small “teaser” show to announce the acquisition, and now the bulk of the collection has been unveiled in a [...]
This Mughal Dynasty (mid-18th c.) fly whisk is on view in the MFAH’s Indian art galleries. It’s an outstanding object which alone merits a visit to the museum. The MFAH purchased it in 2009, at the time of the opening of the Indian art gallery. The handle is a remarkable example of ivory carving, but [...]
Last week we ran a Mad Lib contest during the Texas Contemporary Art Fair, promising fame and free Glasstire t-shirts to our winners. And here they are, selected by the staff under the criteria of “made us chuckle.” Thanks to all who participated; you all are winners in our book. But only the people who [...]
BLOG CONTINUOUSLY UPDATED!!! The Texas Contemporary Art Fair is open! The Glasstire staff will be live-blogging the fair through Sunday. Come by and see us at our booth, with Art Fair Mad Libs with exciting prizes (i.e. t-shirts) throughout the weekend. And, just like the Houston Fine Art Fair, we’ll be asking readers for their [...]
Here it is: our live blog of the Houston Fine Art Fair! We’ll be posting images throughout the fair. (Don’t forget about our contest for Best and the Worst art in the Houston Fine Art Fair. Send your images and captions to info@glasstire.com and if we publish your picks, you’ll win a VIP pass to [...]
It’s the BIG Show, the annual smorgasbord of Houston art at Lawndale Art Center! Here are a few highlights of this massive open-call hodgepodge: Patrick Turk’s work is currently on view in Collage, at the Bank of America building.
Here at Glasstire, we are all about visual art in Texas. But every once in a while we venture off of our own site to see what else is going on in the world. On such occasions we naturally turn to those esteemed pillars of journalistic integrity, namely, The Onion and The New York Post. [...]
Two striking artworks are now on view in San Antonio. That they are both sculptures by women depicting a frozen moment of enraged feminine violence is, I think, a coincidence. Gabrielle Dumontet’s Medusa wall sconce, sculpted in 1906, is odd in many ways. First off, good luck finding information on the artist (even the French [...]
Suddenly, it seems the Austin collective Okay Mountain is everywhere: after their big splash at the 2009 Pulse fair in Miami (their installation Corner Store received both the PULSE prize and Viewer’s choice award, and was purchased by Kentucky collectors Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown), they’ve been seen at Freight + Volume and currently [...]
The people in Dallas who know about these things have all heard of Dan H. Phillips, but I figure most everyone elsewhere in the state has yet to run across his quirky and exceptionally skilled work. His current show at Webb Gallery, Early American, showcases Phillips’ masterful cabinetmaking skills alongside his equally masterful, and sly, [...]
Today the Houston art world is a-twitter with the announcement that Toby Kamps, Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, will be taking over the post of Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at none other than the Menil Collection, just up the street. Kamps takes over for Franklin Sirmans, who left the [...]
Lawndale’s Big Show has been the first line item on many a Houston artist’s resume. It’s the one time every year that Lawndale sets aside its curatorial authority in the name of supporting the community with a big ol’ enveloping-and-not-too-particular bear hug. The idea is that the quantity over quality approach will hopefully give a [...]
What with the piles of shoddy painting clogging many art venues these days, it is a relief to see Darren Waterston’s current exhibit at Inman Gallery. It’s one of those rare instances when one needn’t wonder whether it’s oneself, or all those other people, who have got their heads so far up their asses that they [...]
These snapshots are from Andrea Dezsö’s show "Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly" at Rice University Art Gallery. The photos don’t do the show justice: each window at the gallery has been transformed into a life-sized "tunnel book," with layers that recede from the viewer into a fantastical distance. This is old school special effects [...]
