Month: January 2016

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Vanity Fair Lists, Polls, JMB

Spotted a magazine cover of Jean-Michel Basquiat in the grocery store last week and obviously had to have it, even though it was $15 damn dollars and I’m making peanuts at two part time jobs that don’t even add up to 1 half-time job.

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Look at that face. I luff him.

Vanity Fair’s Art and Artists 2015/16 Special Edition, which I resolved to read by Friday and review shortly after. But I was put off to start, they start out with an article about a poll they did of 100 artists and art tastemakers on the most important living artists…in 2013. I guess it’s really a 2015/16 collection of articles that have appeared in VF – it includes many articles by Ingrid Sischy, who died in July 2015. And it says “display until February 2016” so for all I know it’s been on display for 6 months.

I hate narrowing down lists so I know it would be hard to pick 100 people to ask but I had my issues with those they asked (only 54 of whom participated). I am tempted to come up with a list of people I’d like to ask who I should look out for. So, not who is most (or least) anything, but who are you – someone I admire – interested in, excited about, wanting to share. Things rumbling in the brain, more soon.

Image via @StArtEverywhere.

 

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Link Roundup, Issue 4

I had a great, relaxing holiday season, how about you? The 3 of us hung out at my parents’ place in Arlington, TX with my brother and small cast of assorted old friends for Christmas. (Through all kinds of weather, see above photo for proof, the Friday pictured was Xmas Day.) Then for New Year’s Eve just us adults went down to Austin and spent time with other assorted old friends then hopped down to San Antonio to kick it with sister- and brother-in-law. God bless happily babysitting grandparents! Then yesterday we went and saw Kehinde Wiley: A new Republic at the FW Modern. So good, and closes Sunday! The show was at Brooklyn Museum earlier in 2015 and will subsequently travel to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art later this year.

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Below, a The Toast-heavy linky list:

Confession: New York City took my marshmallows.

The most powerless people in the art world, from Hyperallergic.

On emotional labor, revelatory on its own but do some more reading, mmkay?

Best of Art F City in 2015.

18 Children’s books with female main characters, from Cup of Jo.

Catching up with friends in other ways than getting drinks or coffee.

Hot dudes…of color, helloooo nurse!

Marvelous cousin doing important research, quoted in WaPo, and the original HBR article that piqued their interest.

Recently hooked on Jessica Jones – article contains sorta spoilers, but watch the show and read the article.

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Houston, Part 3

It was a beautiful Tuesday morning in Houston in September. Auntie Julie and I went for a swim at her local outdoor pool (which stays open year-round! New Yorkers take note). After a shower and lunch I was off to the musum district again, this time to go to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, or CAMH, where a longtime acquaintance now works. The show was Texas Design Now, timed, I suspect, with Design Week. It was a great show, full of wonderful stuff in nearly every media by people I’d never heard of. The Houston Chronicle did a nice review (though unfortunately they have a subscriber paywall).

I first encountered Dean Daderko, now a curator at CAMH,  when he was helping friend & colleague Tara Mateik install an exhibition at Art in General and I was Tara’s intern, around 2006. Dean has been at CAMH for 4 years and loves Houston. Another mark in the “pro Houston” camp! I was very impressed with the exhibition in the basement, Whispering Bayou, a collaboration between  Carroll Parrott Blue, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, and George Lewis. An interactive video installation, when you walk up to a screen it begins to play interwoven clips of people talking about growing up around the bayou, a phenomenon I’m familiar with.
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We bumped into another curator friend of Dean’s, coming over from MFAH because of the excellence of CAMH’s packed shop. Networking!

Though I was set to head off to Waco again that afternoon, I could not resist popping in to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (aforementioned MFAH) to see their recently opened Mark Rothko show (open through Jan. 24!). With a stop in the James Turrell tunnel installation it made for the second Turrell I experienced in as many days.

Houston and Mark Rothko, of course! It was great, I’d never seen his early, more figurative work. It was a lovely show and a good visit to the museum. The last time I was there was while MoMA was renovating and sent parts of their collection on a tour. The first time I ever saw Starry Night was there.

A semi quick stop in the museum shop and 3 Christmas presents later, I was on my way to my old neighborhood of Sharpstown for a cruise. On the way out of town I stopped for a Vietnamese iced coffee and a Doughssaint (aka Cronut, my first!) in Chinatown, which I’d forgotten was so close to my childhood home. Another mark in the pro column for Houston.