Stanley Marsh 3 Accused of Sexual Misconduct, Again
Culturemap reports that Amarillo art patron Stanley Marsh 3 is the target of four lawsuits alleging that the 74 year old collector bought sex acts with a teenage boy in exchange for cash cars and drugs in 2010 and 2011. Marsh, known for sponsoring the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, is alleged to have had “mentoring [...]
US Returns 4000 Smuggled Artifacts to Mexico
The LA Times reports that customs officials in El Paso displayed a collection of 4000 objects of archeological interest siezed in the US last thursday, before shipping them back to Mexico. The relics, mostly arrowheads, were in El Paso, San Antonio and Fort Stockton, Texas; Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Chicago and Montana. Some were the [...]
On the Ubiquity of “Porn”
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 [...]
Daniel-Kayne, Houston Performance Art Guru, is Dead
Houston performance artist Daniel-Kayne was found dead in “The Temple”, his studio/performance space in Downtown Houston on Monday afternoon. According to an unnamed source who was there when police arrived, he had hanged himself, apparently a suicide, although the cause of his death is still under investigation. Born in 1968 in Liberty, TX, Kayne had [...]
Trapezoidal Rock is Smoking Gun in DMA Inness Attribution
The Dallas Museum of Art decided last week that a painting given to the museum in 1931 as painter Asher B. Durand’s “In The Woods” is actually a much nicer painting by George Inness titled “Stream in the Mountains.” There have been doubts about the unsigned painting’s authorship since the 1940′s, but it was sharp [...]
Sexy Aphrodite Censored in San Antonio, Naked Men in Vienna!
A 2,000-year-old statuette of the Greek goddess is too hot for the San Antonio Airport: an image of “Aprodite Emerging from the Sea” advertising the San Antonio Museum of Art’s exhibition “Aprodite and the Gods of Love” was censored from three venues in San Antonio, creating a micro-scandal and a lot of national publicity. SAMA [...]
City Council Meeting: Interview with Aaron Landsman and Mallory Catlett
City Council Meeting is a participatory performance work created by Aaron Landsman, Mallory Catlett and Jim Findlay. For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with them as a “staffer” for the piece and it has given me even more questions than I started with. Carrie Schneider: Can you give us an overview of what City [...]
FUTURAMA: “Visions of the Future” at the Ransom Center
ATTENTION FUTURISTS: Report to Austin, Texas on Thursday November 1 by 7:30 p.m. for author/futurist/design visionary Bruce Sterling‘s kick-off speech at this year’s Harry Ransom Center’s Flair Symposium, “Visions of the Future”. This event is free and open to the public at Jessen Auditorium, across the plaza from the Ransom Center at 300 West [...]
DAISIES
“Everything is being spoiled in this world. …Know what? When everything is being spoiled, we’ll be spoiled too!” So proclaim two teenage girls–both named Marie–before embarking on a romp of epic consumption and gleeful havok-wreaking. There is no film on the planet like Vera Chytilová’s 1966 Daisies. An explosive concoction of New Wave cinema, Dadaist [...]
Well done, Houston.
Recently I had the pleasure of traveling to Houston for the second annual Texas Contemporary Art Fair. I was impressed, and the fair deserves a pat on the back. Considering this fall is only in its second year, the caliber of work was impressive (albeit still mostly local galleries from Texas), the artist projects were [...]
Houston, We Have A Problem: Landeros Art Show Heats Up the Newswires
Uriel Landeros’ one-man show at Houston’s James Gallery has garnered national attention, with articles in the Houston Chronicle, the NY Times, and the Associated Press. Landeros is the 22-year old charged with felony graffiti and felony criminal mischief for allegedly defacing “Woman in a Red Armchair” at Houston’s Menil Collection on June 13. Gallery owner [...]
The Halloween Report 2013: Zombies, Candy, Costumes and Tradition Across Texas
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 [...]
Center For Curatorial Leadership Announces New Fellows- Texas Stands Tall, Again
The Center for Curatorial Leadership has chosen 11 fellows for 2013; among them are Emily Neff Curator of American Painting and Sculpture The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Andrea Grover, co-founder of Aurora Picture Show, now Curator of special Project sat the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island. The fellowships offer a combination of [...]
If You Build It, They Will Film: Beer Can House on HGTV Friday Night
Houston’s Beer Can House will be featured on HGTV’s new show “Home, Strange Home” this Friday, October 26th at 8pm CST! Host Chuck Nice and his HGTV crew made their way to Houston this Summer and spent the day filming the Beer Can House inside and out, including an extensive interview with Orange Show Board [...]
O.P.P. “In Appropriation” at HCP
Yikes! That’s it? I can’t believe that In Appropriation at HCP is closing already. I’ve been thinking about the show quite a bit. And while I’ve been thinking, the clock’s been ticking. The show ends this weekend, and I still don’t have a rock solid angle. Here are some tentative thoughts in the hopes [...]
Luce Resigns as Nasher/Tower Glare Reduction Mediator: Mayor Interviewed
Tom Luce,the lawyer asked by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings to act as mediator between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Museum tower in their tug of was over the ongoing glare problem, has resigned after public remarks made Tuesday October 23 by representatives of the Dallas Fire & Police Pension System, dismissing a suggested “louver” [...]
DF Chats: Calixto Ramirez in Austin
I recently had the pleasure of curating a video show at Tiny Park Gallery in Austin, Texas titled the Time and Space of Calixto Ramirez. The exhibition was a show of video work produced by ar Calixto Ramirez, an artist I met in Mexico City who has been living and working there for the better part of [...]
City Agency In Need of New Acronym Recognizes Austin’s Arts Partners
The City of Austin Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services Office, Cultural Arts Division (EGRSO-CAD?) handed out its annual Partners in the Arts Awards last week, recognizing the unsung cowboys of the Austin cultural trail. The 2012 Recipients were the African American Resource Advisory Commission – for their assistance with community outreach efforts related to the [...]
Aurora Open Screen Night is Now Open, But Please Check Your Hollywood at the Door
Houston’s Aurora Picture Show is looking for submissions for its “Open Screen Night,” a new quarterly event featuring experimental media projects and other screening events that are unlikely to find a home elsewhere. Specifically, they’re soliciting rough cuts, the products of youth media workshops, and artist projects, but are open to anything that fits the [...]
“Visible Unseen,” Regina Agu at Fresh Arts Gallery
We need to get a few things straight about Afro-Futurism. Afro-Futurism is an attempt to link the future to the past/present. It considers what “blackness” and “liberation” might look like in the future, real or imagined. Deeply rooted in history and African cosmologies, its culls pieces of the past/present, technological or analog, to build on [...]