Douglas Newby Insights - Page 21
Pottery and Weaving
Craft or art? Pottery is the only craft that ranks one notch higher as art than weaving. Primitive and utilitarian, both of these art forms seemed to hit their zenith in the 1970s. This was a time of organic, back to nature, and when the Whole Earth Catalog movement was at its height. Now there is a resurgence. The weavings of Sheila Hicks were shown at the Biennial a few years ago. The Nasher museum in Dallas is having a one-woman show of her weavings and the DMA is about to install one of her pieces. Pottery has always had a special place for me, both working on the wheel and going to the Art Institute of Chicago looking at centuries of ceramics, and as a student doing site surveys in Oaxaca collecting pottery shards from centuries ago. Ceramicist Theaster Gates won last year’s Nasher Prize. This piece by artist and ceramicist Simone Leigh combines textiles and pottery. It pulls from both of these ancient mediums and cultures as craft and art communicate her black feminist thought. This art demonstrates how powerful contemporary radical political thought is when it draws from the power of history, culture, form, art, and craft. *Pottery and Weaving
#SimoneLeigh #WhitneyMuseum #WhitneyBiennial #WhitneyBiennial2019 #Design #Museum #Art #Weaving #Textiles #Pottery #Ceramics #Artist #CraftOrArt #Exhibition #BiennialExhibition #BiennialArtists #NewYork #BlackArt #BlackFeministArt #NewYork
Whitney Biennial Textiles
Artist Tomashi Jackson, originally from Houston and now living in New York, focuses these art pieces, woven together with found objects, on housing displacement in New York. We are also experiencing housing displacement of people and structures in Dallas. Just as the artist’s density-layered abstractions of found materials are messy, older neighborhoods and older homes are often messy. In Dallas we have seen well-intended politicians wanting to eradicate these older homes because they are not up to a perceived minimum middle-class housing condition. These politicians in concert with affordable housing developers want to replace the messiness of diverse housing and conditions in the older neighborhoods with sameness—sanitized new apartments. The affordability component of these new apartments comes from subsidizing some or all of them for lower or moderate-income residents. Every new apartment complex means one less homeownership possibility or renting a larger less expensive apartment in an older building. In New York, the City is taking over neighborhoods with forced sales for new luxury residential development. There are many faces of urban renewal. Urban renewal is almost always pitched as a way to improve the lives of low-income residents. When in fact homeownership and renovating small houses creates wealth for low-income residents and perpetuates a diverse housing stock. Artist Eric N. Mack also explores texture with mixed materials that create a blanket or quilt that recalls those we see at the State Fair of Texas and all the qualities and meanings a quilt represents and conveys. *Whitney Biennial Textiles
@tomashi_ashi #TomashiJackson @ernatmack #EricMack #Gentrification #UrbanRenewal #Housing #EquitableHousing #Art #Artist #Design #Texture #FoundObjects #FoundMaterials #CollectedMaterials #Quilt #Sculpture #HousingDisplacement #HousingJustice #WealthCreation #ProtectNeighborhoods #SmallHouses #WhitneyMuseum #WhitneyBiennial #WhitneyBiennial2019 #BiennialExhibition #BiennialArtists #NewYork
Self-Identifying
There has been much discussion about political oppression and psychological trauma of a growing community that self-identifies with a gender. We also have seen almost a romantic and cheery feeling about the emerging liberation and freedom associated with self-identifying. These strong photographic portraits by artist Elle Pérez display the physicality, pleasure, pain, and pushing the body, that also can accompany this journey. A carved branding on the arm, vials of testosterone, bruises from facial feminization surgery, and celebration of the body is included in this series of photographs that even add more layers to transfiguring. *Self-Identifying
#WhitneyMuseum #WhitneyBiennial #WhitneyBiennial2019 #Design #Museum #Art #Artist #Photography #Modern #Contemporary #Portraits #Self-Identifying #EllePérez #Gender #Emotion #Transfiguring #Exhibition #BiennialExhibition #BiennialArtists #NewYork
Whitney Biennial 2019
My fascination with the Whitney Biennial began when the Whitney Museum selected @JamesSurls for the Biennial. This was long before my first trip to New York. The 2019 Whitney Biennial was the edgiest, most elegant, and calm Biennial that I have seen in many years. Over the next few days I will be posting my impressions of some of the work, that the Whitney has selected to give a snapshot of current American art. I have found that the work in this Biennial is conspicuously current but much of it revisits mediums and approaches from the past—found objects, textiles, weavings, pottery, photographs, and pen and ink architectural façade drawings. The exhibition also includes two of the most current political toxic topics—gender self-identification and a suggestion of life/choice conversation, which the artist contributes to in a fascinating, subtle, elegant, and provocative way. This post will also include art from some of the other artists in the exhibition including Calvin Marcus, Joe Minter, Milano Chow, Augustina Woodgate, John Edmonds, Jennifer Packer, Janiva Ellis. *Whitney Biennial 2019
#WhitneyMuseum #WhitneyBiennial #WhitneyBiennial2019 #Design #Architecture #Painting #Museum #Art #Artist #Weaving #Textiles #FoundObjects #Photography #Modern #Contemporary #RearviewMirror #Exhibition #BiennialExhibition #BiennialArtists #NewYork
Dallas Inflection
New York projects the idea of black as the tone of fashion and uniform of the city. Blue suits and brown leather shoes for hedge fund managers and lawyers also come to mind. Especially before Memorial Day. But these are just the base notes for the New York kaleidoscope of costumes and color. When in New York I find myself dressing sometimes in a more formal way, sometimes a more casual way, and sometimes in the same way as I do in Dallas. One of the many great things about New York is that every inflection adds to the visual texture and personality of the city. I have found that regardless of what I am wearing, that when I bump into celebrities they are always polite. *Dallas Inflection
#Manhattan #UpperEastSide #City #CityNeighborhood #Fashion #StreetAttire #Dallas #Restaurant #StreetLife #Design #Costume #StreetFashion #Tourist @lagouluenewyork #lagoulue
Erector Set City
Last year MoMA displayed an artist’s vision of a 30th century city. The few skinny tall buildings piercing the cityscape struck me more than the colorful playful shapes. I was struck this year by the NYC tall skinny buildings with cranes on top being erected. They already changed the skyline. Only they appear above the Central Park trees. (Slide images.) From the Met rooftop we can see how these skinny structures relate to the NYC skyline imbedded into our consciousness. The skyscape begins to look like an ornately decorated cake with a few skinny birthday candles placed randomly on top. One more thing comes to mind. In the 1990s when artist Kengelez did the model 30th Century City, our Leadership Dallas class on the first day was divided into small groups for an exercise. We were given a tube of tinkertoys and five minutes to build the tallest structure without it falling down. Our group, a future judge, banker, and architecturally significant agent, took a judicial approach creating a solid aesthetically pleasing structure, not the tallest. I chuckle at groups that took opposite approaches on the spectrum. The developer, investor and entrepreneur without conversation started sticking vertical pieces on top of the other straight up! In 30 seconds it would topple and they would start over. Another group was equally hilarious when the starting whistle blew. An Asst City Mgr, Deputy Supt DISD, and Asst Police Chief opened the instructions and read the caution notes on the tinkertoy tube. More conversation, more reading, and when the final whistle blew, just like the developer group, the tinkertoy pieces were scattered on the table with no structure. Not saying these pencil-thin New York tall skinny structures are going to fall over but may tap into instincts of developers. I am saying bureaucrats are silly cautious. Decades ago Dallas looked like a toy city with buildings as tall as New York and Chicago, but only a small cluster. Soon maybe all cities will have New York’s birthday candle architectural skyscape. *Erector Set City
#CentralPark #NYC #Skyline #TallSkinnyBuildings #MetropolitanRoof #Architect #Architecture #City #ToyCity #ErectorSet #erectorsetcity
Metropolitan Interpretation of Dior
The recent exhibition of Jonas Wood at the Dallas Museum of Arts, Dior at the Dallas Museum of Arts, and now this Dior dress and Salvador Dali painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has me thinking about art, fashion, architecture, and how these aesthetic disciplines have the same notes and relate to each other. (Slide through to see previous posts.) I do not associate artist Salvador Dali with this painting of a woman in a pink taffeta Dior dress, nor do I think of Christian Dior when I see this dress. However, I love how the frills of the dress dissolve into strong architectural lines and simplicity. The vibrant color becomes subtle as it is further subdued by the consistency of a complimentary sash. In Jonas Wood’s painting of his boyhood kitchen, the defining architectural lines emerge from a lush botanical motif of the surfaces. The art patron standing in front of the painting is wearing the same botanical motif; however, the straight lines of her midcalf open jacket define the modernity of this apparel. The Van Gogh landscape painting almost becomes the pattern of the Christian Dior dress next to it just as a natural dense landscape almost becomes a solid with variations of shades. This dress does the same. These pairings of #DressForPainting, design, art, architecture, and fashion all come from the same place. *Metropolitan Interpretation of Dior
#MetropolitanMuseumofArt @metmuseum #Museum #Art #Artist #Design #Designer @Dior #ChristianDior #SalvadorDali #Architecture #Fashion #DallasMuseumOfArt #VanGogh #Landscape #Botanicals #JonasWood @DallasMuseumArt
Bathroom Jewelry
Dallas bathrooms became infamous in the 1980’s and their notoriety continued into the 1990’s. These huge bathrooms were considered contemporary expressions of Texas bigness and over-the-top opulence. It wasn’t until the recent Camp: Notes on Fashion exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art that I realized Karl Lagerfeld designing for Chloe may have even had a better idea. Rather than just one opportunity to have their opulent Dallas bathroom photographed and published in a showy shelter magazine, one could have worn the Karl Lagerfeld-designed showerhead necklace and matching earrings (scroll to see image) to display a decadent opulence, inspired, I am sure, by the Dallas bathroom. The oversized 80’s and 90’s houses are now often torn down but this 1983-84 Karl Lagerfeld necklace can be prominently worn or displayed forever. It is true that some extraordinary outfits can only be worn once as they are easily remembered. I am sure the strategy for this necklace was to wear it first for a series of small dinners hosted in the owners’ personal homes in different locations and then regional parties, before the necklace and earrings were unveiled on either coast and internationally. Handled right, this jewelry could have become quite practical. Camp is, “Ideas, held in a special playful way.” Susan Sontag, 1964. *Bathroom Jewelry
#NewYork #Texas #Dallas #Fashion #Design @metmuseum #MetropolitanMuseumofArt #MetCamp #KarlLagerfeld @Chloe #Chloe #CampNotesOnFashion #Camp #Showerhead #ShowerHandle #Jewels #Necklace #Earrings
Heidi Tribute
Cultural Slumming! This was the headline for the House of Moschino Jeremy Scott-designed dress exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum’s Camp: Notes on Fashion. How appropriate that Heidi Dillon wore, Drink Moschino Cape from this series, a few years ago to the DMA Art Ball. Heidi, more than anyone else I know in Dallas, has always embraced camp and elevated it to high fashion. Heidi loves fashion and has fun with fashion. The Metropolitan chose this quote by David Halperin for the piece: Camp—demonstrates an exhilaration in identifying with the lowest of the low. Heidi can elevate the lowest cultural ritual to a cultured Chi-Chi expression. Cultural slumming would define one of my favorite hijinks in which Heidi was an enthusiastic participant. Many years ago, the Dillons and I were invited to the very elegant opening of the Chanel store in Highland Park Village. Heidi’s response was to enhance the decadence of this elegant evening with what some would consider a low form of cultural ritual—tailgating. Across from the Chanel store in a Ralph Lauren parking space, the open trunk of the Bentley revealed blocks of the finest foie gras in exquisite serving pieces. This was my first time tailgating for any event, but it was a delightful and joyful experience as we drifted back and forth from the Chanel store to the tailgate. Heidi has the ability to identify with the lowest of the low and enjoy life with the highest of the high. If you slide through images, you can see some other fabulous costumes by Jeremy Scott shown at the Metropolitan Museum. Earlier this year, Heidi Dillon hosted Jeremy Scott at her house for dinner. I am sure he came away from the evening with further inspiration. *Heidi Tribute
@heididillon_hfd #HeidiDillon @metmuseum #MetropolitanMuseumofArt #MetCamp #DallasMuseumOfArts #Fashion #Camp #CampNotesOnFashion #Museum #NewYork #Neighborhood @JeremyScott @ItsJeremyScott #Dallas #Tailgate #CulturalSlumming #Design #Costume #HighFashion #LowCulture #Exhibition #FashionExhibition #UpperEastSide #Manhattan #dallasartball #dallasmuseumofart
Sam Gummelt Re-emerges
Sam Gummelt was a national sensation in the late 1960s. He was a major influence on artists like Dan Rizzie and David Bates in the 1970s. He was great friends with artist David McManaway, Bill Komodore, and many other celebrated artists of that generation. He shared a birthday with artist Barbara Bell and, most of all, I think of Sam Gummelt as a Tremont Artist, not because he lived on Tremont Street in Munger Place, but because of the hours and days he spent on Tremont sharing stories, ideas and inspiration with other artists. Sam Gummelt was also one of the favorite artists of the late architect Frank Welch who vigorously collected him. Sam Gummelt has shown his work over the decades in important galleries and been collected by sophisticated patrons, but like David McManaway his production never equaled his talent or the demand for his paintings. I am very excited that the Barry Whistler Gallery is showing Sam Gummelt’s work in an exhibition that opens Saturday night from 6:00 to 8:00. Slide through to see photographs of Paul Black co-curated by Allison V. Smith and the 1814 Magazine along with the paintings of Sam Gummelt makes this a very exciting opening. *Sam Gummelt Re-emerges
#TremontArtist #SamGummelt @AllisonVSmith #AllisonVSmith @BarryWhistlerGallery #BarryWhistlerGallery #GalleryOpening #Artist #Art #Design #DesignDistrict #Dallas #ArtExhibition #Photographs #Portraits #BlackAndWhitePhotography #PolaroidPhotography #Opening @1814magazine #1814magazine #paulblackcarol @pauljamesblack #DallasNeighborhood #tremontartists