CASETA Holds Ninth Annual Texas Art Fair and Symposium

CASETA is an acronym for the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art.  It is a nonprofit that was organized to promote interest in and good art historical investigations of artists who lived and worked in Texas in the early days of the state.   It is notable that the subject of ‘Texas Art’ as an identifiable regional school is only a recent phenomenon.   Until the mid-1980’s, the idea of amassing a collection of art specifically from Texas was the avocation of only a few Texas history buffs who gathered the art along with all other Texana materials. However, interest in the field has grown exponentially. There were three early dealers in Texas art.  Valley House Gallery in Dallas had always supported local artists and shown them alongside international contemporary artists since the founder, Don Vogel, opened the doors in 1953. David Dike opened a gallery in Dallas in the early 1980’s specializing in Texas art.  William Reaves opened in Houston about the same time.  Having knowledgeable dealers drew collectors into this “new” field.   Museums across Texas began to organize shows highlighting early Texas art.  The publication of John and Deborah Powers’ Texas Painters, Sculptors and Graphic Artists added greatly to the art historical knowledge base.   A small group of visionary, powerhouse collectors began teasing paintings out of the attics and storerooms of older living artists and heirs of artists’ estates.

My, how things have changed in thirty years!  Now the field of Texas Art has matured to have a broad base of collectors and enthusiasts.   There are many dealers and regular auctions focusing on the field.  It is much harder to find bargains in Texas art, and the quality of things being shown and sold is much higher.   CASETA has done its part over the years to further good connoisseurship.   A CASETA seminar always includes a small art fair where dealers of Texas art can show their best pieces to a knowledgeable crowd.  And, the speakers always include some of the foremost authorities on various individual Texas artists or movements within the field.

Kevin Vogel of Valley House Gallery-Dallas was the lead-off speaker this year.   He spoke about three naïve artists whose paintings were done from memories of their lives growing up in small-town Texas; Clara McDonald Williamson (1875-1976), Harold Osman Kelly (1884-1955) and Velox Ward (1901-1994).   Of course, each has their own personal style.  But, they do have some common characteristics.  They tend to create complicated vignettes that are amalgams of memories from their youth.  They tend to do expansive images with a bird’s-eye-view of the events.  None of the three had much formal training in art and none came to painting until late in life.  Even though each grew up under rough economic circumstances and lived through some tough times, their work focused on the pleasant memories from their past.   And, by virtue of the fact their paintings document some of the facets of life in early Texas that have died out over the years, each was somewhat of an inadvertent historian of Texas.

Michael Grauer, curator of the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, TX gave a talk that found similarities and differences between the French Impressionists and impressionists painters of Texas.   He is working on an exhibition for April 2012 that will hang Texas impressionists’ paintings and consider where they fit in the wider view of art history.  Dr. Katie Robinson Edwards, a professor of art history at Baylor University, spoke about Texas Modernism and how it fits within the wider scope of international modernist painters.

The afternoon included a brief awards ceremony recognizing those who have made ongoing contributions to the field of Texas art.   There were some fitting tributes to those who have spent their personal and professional lives in the furtherance of art in Texas.

The highlight of the weekend seminar was Saturday evening’s event.  This was a one-night-only showing of nearly ninety paintings and prints from the Albritton collection.   Two huge galleries of the MAC (McKinney Aveney Contemporary) were hung with the BEST collection of Texas art I have ever seen.   Like Onderdonks?  There were five large paintings on one wall. Prefer Frank Reaugh?  Three large oils of his longhorns and landscapes hung side-by-side.  I believe most of those in attendance were gobsmacked at the quality and quantity of work beautifully hung for this one-night event.

My personal thanks must go to the Albritton family for their generosity in sharing their collection and to those who handled all the logistics of moving and installing these pieces only to pack them up and move them again after this opening.   CASETA seminars are always memorable, but this one was remarkably so!

Third Annual Dallas Art Fair

The third annual Dallas Art Fair was in town this last weekend and was an incredible opportunity to view and buy contemporary art.   Modern and contemporary galleries from across the nation showed up with the best examples from their collections and, for a small door fee, one could wander about from one showroom to the next, seeing some of the best of contemporary art.    Some New York City and Los Angeles heavy hitters were in attendance as well as good galleries from Santa Fe, Houston and some of our best local dealers; William Campbell Fine Art, Conduit Gallery, Dunn and Brown Contemporary Art and Valley House Gallery.  Of course, if you are interested in contemporary art, you should already be a patron of all these fabulous local galleries.  But the show offered an opportunity to check in with all of them in just a few hours, within the confines of a single building.   Bonus!

I spent several hours visiting all the galleries and thought I would report back on a few of the highlights.  Trends…surface has always been important in art and especially so in contemporary art.  One just cannot understand the nature of a painting without standing in its presence and seeing the artist’s controlled use of paint or ruled-off, abutted geometric elements or thickly-applied swaths of paint or layer upon layer of thin, transparent washes.  One cannot fully appreciate a Rusty Scruby three-dimensional woven photo piece without being in its presence to enjoy the undulating surfaces and the repeated images of the woven surfaces.

One of the trends which has grown over the last several years is the use of thick epoxy surfaces.   Artists are painting onto panels and then applying ¼” thick, slick surfaces of epoxy on top.  Or, as in the case of Hung Liu, a Chinese-American artist whose work uses color digital images of Chinese women and children, some are applying the epoxy in repeated thin layers and adding painted areas between the layers and above the initial ground.  In Liu’s work, this technique allows the painterly elements to float over the top of the photographic elements in several layers.  It gives the flat digital prints a three dimensionality that is quite captivating…yes, pun intended.

A trend that started years ago and is now quite mainstream is the use of computer generated imagery and digital printing.  The vast majority of art photographs are now printed digitally and in the case of many larger prints are permanently mounted behind ¼” sheets of UV plex without surrounding matting and framing.  This gives the same slick surface as the epoxy-topped paintings.   Many painters are now using

computers as an artist of yesteryear would have employed a sketchpad, to plan out their work before pulling out the paints and brushes.   Many are using combinations of digital designs and other media to create original works.  Some are using the computer as their machinery of abstraction, morphing traditional subjects into something more poetic or, as is the case with John Holt Smith, paring down a traditional landscape into its most basic elements of color by honing in on an environment so closely that the trees, rocks, flowers and sky disappear, leaving only their colors to stand for them.

A brand new photographic collection by William John Kennedy was an interesting flashback to the 1960’s New York art scene.   Back in the early 60’s Kennedy was a successful photographer doing work for advertising agencies in New York City.  He became interested in a few of the contemporary artists who were just breaking onto the scene at the time.  In 1963-64, Kennedy did a series of photo shoots of Andy Warhol and his studio (the Factory) and a series of shoots of Robert Indiana in his studio with his iconic numbers and letters paintings.  Kennedy tucked his negatives of these photo shoots away and forgot about them until just this last year.   In 2010, Colton & Farb Gallery-Houston, TX published a series of these photos that document these two iconic artists early in their careers and also sponsored the production of a documentary film that interviewed Indiana and some of the artists working at Warhol’s Factory.  These photos tell the story of these artists before they became famous.   They are shot beautifully and ought to be quite popular with photo collectors and pop art aficionados.

A few of my favorites…

Gallery Henoch—NY, NY  brought a couple of artists whose paintings are personal favorites, Steve Mills and Steve Smulka.  Steve Mills’ trompe l’oeil painting entitled “Leaning Left” depicted a bunch of folded copies of the “Wall Street Journal” standing on end and, as promised by the title, leaning left.  The snippets of articles and photos to be seen are quite biting and witty political commentary on the newspaper’s editorial bias.   Steve Smulka has been working on a series of landscapes as seen through and around glassware of various sorts.

“Spacious Skies” has four clear, stoppered decanters in the extreme foreground and a southwest desert landscape depicted beyond.   He plays with the reflections of the landscape in the glassware and this pushes and pulls the viewer’s attention back and forth from foreground to background.

I also adore Alan MacDonald’s ironic, realistic, tongue-firmly-in-the-cheek portraits of Franciscan monks and dancehall women that were offered by Stewart Gallery-Boise, ID.  These portraits of imaginary characters are depicted with their attendant symbols literally tied to belts around the waist.  In one full-length image of a monk, the subject holds an open bag of “Space Raider” chips and has a large bell and several pewter tankards lashed about his waist.  His eyes are rolled back in his head and mouth is agape, the vapid expression contributing greatly to the irony of the scene.

 "Church-Galveston" by David Bates 

And of course, a long-time favorite of mine is David Bates.   Dunn & Brown Contemporary was showing “Church-Galveston” from 2007.   This employs the thickly applied paint and intense black outlining so distinctive to Bates’ work.  There were several Bates’ paintings at the show, but this was my personal favorite.

I spent many hours hopping from gallery to gallery and should have come back several days in a row.   There was too much to take in.   I did notice several ‘sold’ stickers throughout each gallery and

hope this is a sign the dealers were finding enough new buyers to keep them interested in this show.  Dallas needs this sort of event in order to build a collector base for contemporary art and kick things into high gear.   Even though we have a handful of great contemporary galleries in Dallas and Fort Worth, interest in this area of collecting has been somewhat sleepy.  I have seen many good

contemporary galleries close their doors over the years for lack of local support.    I wish all the participating dealers the best and look forward to next year’s show with much anticipation!

Brenda Simonson-Mohle