In his 1960 essay, Modernist Painting, Clement Greenberg writes, “With Manet and the Impressionists the question ceased to be defined as one of color versus drawing… and became instead a
Francis Bacon: Late Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gives its viewers an opportunity to delve into the literary and philosophical foundations that support Bacon’s famously atheistic world
The current installment of Roni Horn’s two-part drawing exhibition, When I Breathe I Draw, Part II at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston offers viewers an opportunity to think about how
Rich people sure have been taking a lot of flak in the art world lately, haven’t they? There’s hardly an institutional exhibition, call for submissions or trendy non-profit show that
Houston viewers can gird their loins and prepare for their eyeballs to pop when they step into a corner of Trenton Doyle Hancock’s ongoing history of the universe. (The show
Toby Kamps’ curation of Lawndale Art Center’s annual Big Show is big. Featuring nearly 200 artists, it reverses a recent trend in Lawndale’s eagerly anticipated annual open-call exhibition. The Big Show is historically a
A year or so ago I found an old paperback copy of the early 20th-century art critic Clive Bell’s theory of art. I picked it up because I admired the
Thingness, the title of Dallas artist Benjamin Terry’s solo show at Art League Houston, refers to objective reality. A thing is a thing if it exists in the physical world. Terry’s
The subtle irony in Modern Twist, an exhibition of mostly post-war Japanese bamboo vessels and sculpture on view at Asia Society Texas, is that they feel ancient. They’re not affected
Remember not so long ago when the crisis of criticism was on everyone’s tongue? It was only a couple of years ago, but it seems like a lifetime. Panels were convened, postmortems
THE GROUP Core Program critical writing fellow Taraneh Fazeli’s essay, Toward a Social Practice Pedagogy, recently appeared in Core’s 2016/17 catalogue. The text is collaboratively written by a group of
Over the past few weeks I’ve visited two universities and conducted studio visits with undergraduates and graduates. Then I spent a couple hours at the University of Houston’s Masters of Fine Arts
An incomplete guide to critiquing painting in tumultuous political times. 1.) It does not matter who makes a painting. The object is all. 2.) A person who is offended by
For American artists of my generation, born well into the 1970s, the Cuban Revolution depicted in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Adios Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art
Last weekend I attended Watch Out For Painting, an international conference on the contemporary state of painting at the University of Houston. Hosted by the Blaffer Art Museum and funded by
Given Ron Mueck’s career in film, it’s natural that his sculptures take on the effect of props in some larger drama, some absent set. Mueck’s sculptures have the language of
If there’s any truth to the idea that the most significant art of the future is often unrecognized as important in its own time, then Gunther von Hagens’ “plastinated” corpses
Damn, I’m depressed about the stagnant, rent-seeking, extractive stupidity of this corrupt social order. But nothing helps me fight my fear-of-fascism blues more than to take a deep breath and
Every other year the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston hosts an exhibition of works by local high school students. Curated by the CAMH’s Teen Council, itself comprised of high school students,
Last weekend Terry Allen performed songs from his recently reissued 1979 double album Lubbock (On Everything) and his first record, 1975’s Juarez at the Heights Theatre in Houston. If you’ve
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