Second only to Halloween as an art-saturated holiday, the end of each year is an orgy of group gift shows, holiday decorating events, and year-end pleas from nonprofits happy to help tax-dodging donors. Here’s an incomplete roundup of upcoming seasonal happenings around the state:. I’ll be updating as we check off the last few weeks [...]
With demand dropping for dull piety in art, contemporary artists have left the Nativity, the Annunciation, etc. to popular illustrators, and have rallied around Halloween as the new iconographic nexus. It’s got a lot to offer: superficially non-denominational (who isn’t afraid of death?), the holiday has opportunities for both serious and comic themes, and a [...]
This piece, just to the right of the door (I always work counterclockwise) was the first thing I looked at at the London Open at the Whitechapel Gallery, and the only one I photographed before the vigilant guard stopped me, but it’s typical. The two photos of Big Ben were supposedly taken before and after [...]
Popped into the Oxford Modern Art Museum to see some of Jenny Saville’s paintings in person- they’re based on photographs, so in reproduction you miss her somewhat annoyingly self-conscious painterly virtuosity. She’s very good at what she does, too good: large, in-your-face slabs of discolored, bruised and embalmed flesh, which, as you step away, are [...]
183 pieces in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s collection are now online in intimate detail as part of Google’s expanded Arts Project. With the Google-powered ability to zoom in so tight you can see the sweat on the Virgin’s . . . well, you get the idea, it turns out there are lot of [...]
One pitfall of installing dreck on your campus is that future webmasters may feature it online, unwittingly delivering backhanded insults to your university’s programs.
Every day I scan the web for Texas-related art news; to help me in my tireless quest, I’ve got a list of likely bookmarks I check often. They are the rocks I turn over looking for that elusive quivering newsy bit that I carry back to you, dear readers, each morning. It being the end [...]
I sympathize with Chris Jagers’ dismay at the renewed assertion of language at the primary, superior carrier of meaning in his blog next door, but don’t get too worried. It’s merely the latest wave in the long-running tide that has tried to integrate the visual arts into language-based academic discourse. Academia has never been happy [...]
The key to provincialism is the belief that something happening somewhere else is more important than what is happening right before one’s eyes. Since the people you know and the things you do seem relatively unimportant, they are worth less than your total effort and attention. It’s an attitude that saps motivation, blunts critical thinking, [...]
Let’s start with the Tolerance bridge thing I just posted on the newswire: why a new name? Is HAA trying to increase community involvement in a project that is essentially a private enterprise? I mean, it’s going to be great to have a walkable, bikeable bridge between Montrose and the Heights, but in keeping with [...]
All right, I’ve got to do another blog about the whole Wayne Dolcefino undercover Eyewitness News 13 thing. First the apologies: I suppose Dolcefino’s got space to fill, and his job is to make scandal, however hard he has to work at it. I work for Glasstire, and I’ve gotten an HAA grant before, and [...]
Wayne Dolcefino’s expose of the misuse of Houston Arts Alliance money kicked off last night on KTRK’s 10 O’clock news with a lot of frothing at the mouth: a brief clips of sexy dancers, a mural dismissed as a "flaming chicken", and the striking phrase, "lesbian puppet tourism" excerpted from one particularly evocative proposal. Here [...]
Forget the west coast, let’s eat it now!
Dan Fabian spent the summer drawing, and drawing, and drawing. Apama Mackey’s containerized art gallery on the 11th St. art corridor is crowded with 37 witty pages that balance obtuse humor, pointed commentary, and precise, admirable pen-and-ink work. In Mod Hermit Crab, Fabian pens a crisp illustration of the unlikely marriage between a crustacean and [...]
OK, everybody has hurricane pictures, but not everyone has a blog to post them on, so here goes: Paul Kittelson’s show at NauHaus included these fake broken and boarded windows. Oh, wait, they’re actually boarded! Ha! Ha! Talk about serendipity! Thoughtfulness taken to the extreme. These branches were carefully wrapped with reflective tape, lest someone [...]
The Damien Hirst direct auction at Sotheby’s is double interesting because people hate art dealers, AND they hate superstars. You can enjoy it two ways: either "Hirst is really sticking it to those bloodsuckers", or "lets hope the arrogant bastard falls on his face." No one’s crying for the galleries any more than they are [...]
The Damien Hirst direct auction at Sotheby’s is double interesting because people hate art dealers, AND they hate superstars. You can enjoy it two ways: either "Hirst is really sticking it to those bloodsuckers", or "lets hope the arrogant bastard falls on his face." No one’s crying for the galleries any more than they are [...]
A couple of weeks ago the New York Times ran an article by Nicolai Ouroussoff that decried the pragmatism of today’s architects, wistfully longing for more dreaming and less building. "Not so long ago", said the author, "many of the world’s greatest architectural talents behaved as though the actual construction of buildings was beneath them." [...]
I saw the Big Show at Lawndale weeks ago, when it first opened. I took a lot of photos, and picked these as my favorites. I’m afraid I’ve lost my checklist, so I can’t remember some of the artist’s names, that’s OK, right? I’m sure you’ll supply them via a comment. It’s not laziness, it’s [...]
August is the month to get away from Houston’s heat, and this year, as usual, I visited family in the UK, with a side trip to the southern France for espadrilles and a relief from the cold drizzle (known as "summer" in Britain), which, while a refreshing change from 90+ humidity at home, gets old fast on [...]
