Art | Russell Brightwell

Due South

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Jeffrey Gibson’s I Put a Spell On You, 2015

I visited friends in Lexington, Kentucky this past week. We took a drive to Louisville to see, among other things, the fairly newly completed addition to the Speed Art Museum and the main exhibit there, “Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art.” It is billed as “the first contemporary art exhibition to question and explore in-depth the complex and contested space of the American South.” The works addressed “southern themes” – race, poverty, disparity, violence, disaster and decay among others. But it felt like stuff was missing. Big Southern stuff. At least to this gay, creative, white, mid-life Southerner. Themes like anti-intellectualism. The fascism of sports in southern culture. Souless, generic development with specious claims to “local.” Limiting/damaging ideas of masculinity and femininity. Lack of encouragement or even tolerance for true excentricity/individuality. Social conservatism. And hypocrisy. I loved Catherine Opie’s pictures of lesbian couples, but they didn’t say a lot about the sometimes fraught, often dangerous LGBTQ Southern experience.
I’m not sure if the show was good or bad, or successful or not. I was just looking for some of me in the show and it just wasn’t really there. Maybe something to look at creating myself?

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A New Mood at Rice

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Rice University’s new Moody Center for the Arts

I was thrilled to meet Rice University Moody Center for the Arts’ Executive Director, Alison Weaver, and tour the facility a little over a week ago. Alison explained that The Moody’s mission is to foster connections across disciplines and to connect art with science, performance, community and more. And to go “beyond the hedges” to connect Rice University itself with Houston through the arts. [Another example of a mash-up or collaborative approach – seems to be part of the zeitgist these days.] The striking building was designed by Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan and includes areas for “making,” exhibitions, learning and performance. With the work of Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Struth, teamLab and Mona Hatoum already having been featured, The Moody is well on its way to becoming one of Houston’s premiere arts institutions.

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Picturing Penn

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Still Life With Watermelon, 1947

Irving Penn’s 70-year career is celebrated in “Irving Penn: Centennial” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. From modern old master still lifes of the 40s for Vogue to his painted lips for L’Oréal in 1986, from impossibly chic shots of wife Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn to inventive portraits of celebrities and tradesmen alike, this show demonstrates Penn’s life-long precison and care as an artist. Such a different time – I wonder who [if any?] of today’s working photographers will be celebrated as true artists on the centennial of their birth? TBD.

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Art to Wear and Sell

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Order/Chaos: Garments from “18th Century Punk AW 16/17”

I was in NYC this past weekend. On the top of my must do list was the “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” exhibit at The Met. She and Issey Miyake and Yojhi Yamamoto (among others) changed how we looked at fashion AND how we dressed when they burst onto the scene in the 80s.
Kawakubo especially seemed more interested in ideas than wearable clothes, but nonetheless, she has made a long, lucrative career out of challenging norms in fashion. In fact, she has been quoted as insisting that she is primarily a businesswoman rather than an artist.
In many ways just as compelling as the garments were the wide range of “hair” pieces created by long time collaborator Julien d’Ys and Kawakubo’s exhibition design itself – in places hulking white washed Richard Serra sculpture like enclosures and in others glass vitrines hanging overhead and in still others, simple house shapes showcasing garments.
At 74, and despite this being a 35-year retrospective, she’s not done yet. I’m looking forward to her next collection already.

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The Japanese Garden in Hermann Park – Celebrating 25 Years

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I’m just getting back into the swing of things after moving house, so this is definitely a latergram. As a happy supporter and Executive Board Member of the Hermann Park Conservancy, I was thrilled to attend this year’s Evening in the Park Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of The Japanese Garden. [I and Art Directors David Sloat and Leah Justice created the branding for the event.] A roaring success, the event raised over $600,000. Those funds will be split between the operation of the Conservancy and the Japanese Garden itself. These galas are parties to be certain, but they raise funds to actually run these not for profit organizations – staff salaries and expenses – that aren’t typically covered by patrons’ generous capital campaign gifts.

Take a look at the Chronicle’s coverage.

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Be A Connoisseur

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Artist Leslie Wayne interviewed by HMACC Exhibitions Manager, Dominic Clay

This past Saturday I was thrilled to see my friend Leslie Wayne’s shared exhibition at the Houston Museum of African American Culture “Africa on my mind: The art of Malick Sidibe and Leslie Wayne.” Leslie and her sculptor husband, Don Porcaro, flew down from NYC for the opening and the next afternoon Leslie gave a gallery talk/interview. One of Dominic Clay’s questions to Leslie was along the lines of “What advice would you give to an artist who’s intent is to a have a global, cross-cultural approach to their art practice?” Leslie’s emphatic response was “Connoisseurship!” This from a NYC-based life-long working, successful artist. And I couldn’t agree more. For any kind of creative person – from painter to art director to copywriter – output IS connected to input. The more you absorb, the more you have to work with. Leslie admonished the audience to be informed, to look at everything we can. Be interested and engaged. Yes! Creativity does not exist in a vacuum. Or at least it’s more fun and more of this world if it doesn’t.

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Collaboration Is Cool

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LV + Koons Masters Collection Da Vinci Mona Lisa Shawl, complete with dualing LV JK monograms and Konns’s signature across the middle

Yesterday, I stopped by the Louis Vuitton store for an early morning presentation (in association with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston) of the new Masters collection, a collaboration with Jeff Koons. The latest in a string of LV collaborations, beginning with Stephen Sprouse and including Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman and The Chapman Brothers among others, this collection is a extension of Koons’s “Gazing Ball” series. Bags and accessories are printed with old Masters paintings, including Titian’s Mars, Venus, and Cupid and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. This collaboration, like those that came before, burnishes the LV brand by association with in demand artists, generates a ton of press and presumably sells product – the ultimate goal.

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I’ll Start at the Beginning

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The moment pictured – the Astor Place Diner in 1984 with my friend Alice (and that waiter) – wasn’t quite the beginning, but it was fairly soon after my move to NYC and Parsons School of Design after two years at Rice University in Houston. It was the beginning of my life in the applied arts and my love of art, design, architecture, photography, fashion, and eventually advertising and marketing. And as all my friends like to point out , “Look at that hair!”

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