RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK -- Jammie Holmes

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

"Forgive us" (2020) by Jammie Holmes. Acrylic and Oil Pastels on Canvas 72h x 57w x 1.50d inches

Before COVID-19, the male figures in the paintings of Jammie Holmes never smiled. They still don't. "They are like me," he told the Dallas Observer. This week, as uprisings spread nationwide over the police killing of unarmed George Floyd, our cousin Dominic Britton took his own life. While Jammie Holmes and artists here in Indianapolis and worldwide angrily staged protests with art, Greg sang on Facebook, Ernest led arts leader talks, and we donated together. Resilience in adversity makes artist Jammie Holmes, our collector's tip of the week.

George Floyd’s Final Words, Written in the Sky

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Hilary Moss

Jammie Holmes’s “They’re Going to Kill Me (New York City)” (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Library Street Collective

Just after 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, as cooped-up New Yorkers spilled onto the Battery Park City esplanade — most in groups of two or three, each stationed a safe distance apart — a small plane glided past the Statue of Liberty and into view over the Hudson River. A banner swelled behind it, which read, “They’re Going to Kill Me.” These were among the last words of George Floyd... The aerial demonstration was the work of Jammie Holmes, an emerging Dallas-based artist. His “They’re Going to Kill Me” project over the weekend might seem like a major departure for an artist just gaining recognition for his figurative paintings, but this was a different way for Holmes to put himself out there.  [More]

Houston’s Rothko Chapel Is a Transcendent Artwork—But the Path to Create It Was Long and Difficult

ARTNEWS
Tessa Solomon

In a 1966 letter to the collectors John and Dominique de Menil, Mark Rothko wrote that the chapel commission “is teaching me to extend myself beyond what I thought was possible for me.”

Mark Rothko was known to be a perfectionist, but even by his own standards, creating the iconic abstract murals that now appear in a chapel in Houston, Texas, was a laborious process. Collectors John and Dominique de Menil had commissioned him to do the works in 1964, and according to some accounts, he dedicated a month to half an inch of canvas for the paintings for the chapel. He asserted so much control over the murals that, according to a 2018 biography of the Menils by William Middleton, his patrons never even got to preview Rothko’s work until 1967, when the painter invited them to see his paintings in progress. [More] 

Less Is More as a Texas Art Museum Reopens

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Michael Hardy

Social distancing was not a problem for Brad Cox and Cala Hawk at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Saturday, as they photographed “Elizabeth, Viscountess Falkland” by Paul van Somer (1576-1621). Todd Spoth for The New York Times

HOUSTON — They waited patiently in line in 80-degree heat, standing on large blue stickers placed six feet apart, to enter the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — the first major American art museum to reopen since the country went into lockdown in March. The 20 or so mask-wearing visitors who queued up on Saturday morning had already waited more than two months to visit, so what were a few more minutes? As visitors filed into the air-conditioned foyer, one group at a time, thermal imaging devices checked their temperatures. A green square around the person’s head meant they were in the clear; a red square meant fever. The Museum of Fine Arts is one of the wealthiest cultural institutions in the country, with a $1.3 billion endowment that provides about half of its $67 million annual budget. [More]

Roman Catholic and Puerto Rican Background Inspires work of Patrick McGrath Muñiz

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

CREATIO (2019) Oil on canvas 46 x 64 innches. Private Collection.

Patrick McGrath Muñiz is an American artist from Puerto Rico, that works primarily with oil paintings on canvas and retablos. His work is inspired after Renaissance, Baroque and Latin American colonial paintings while addressing issues such as colonialism, consumerism and climate change. The artist has shown at the Museo de las Americas, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Museo Convento de las Capuchinas in Antigua, Guatemala, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, The Fort Worth Community Arts Center, The Bronx Museum of Art, The Spanish Colonial Arts Museum in Santa Fe, The Albuquerque Museum of Art in Albuquerque, NM, The Station Museum and The Jung Center in Houston, Texas, among others.

Deborah Roberts’s Dream Deferred, for Now

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Robin Pogrebin

Deborah Roberts, “Political Lambs in a Wolf’s World”(2018), mixed media on paper. Unusual shifts in scale and dramatic amalgams of several faces define her work. Arms hold a numbered placard, as in a police mugshot.Credit...Deborah Roberts and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Vielmetter Los Angeles

Deborah Roberts could have given up long ago. With a mother who worked as a maid and a father who worked as an electrical lineman for the city of Austin, Tex., she grew up trading her drawings of cars, horses, dolls and airplanes for her classmates’ fat red pencils. Her parents did not understand her passion. “My daddy hated art and said it was never going to be nothing,” Ms. Roberts said. At age 57, Ms. Roberts is about to have her first solo museum exhibition — a big deal for any artist, but especially gratifying for one who, four years ago, was working in a shoe store to pay the bills. Ms. Roberts, who has a big personality and a bigger smile, also hasn’t let the pandemic set her back, though it has pushed her debut at the Contemporary Austin in Texas to January from September — assuming the virus abates by then, as hoped. [More]

Faith-Centered Tattoos Are Analyzed in Study of University Students

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Religious tattoos of college students are more likely than non-religious ones to face inward, perhaps as encouragement to live out one’s beliefs, Baylor University professor says

WACO, Texas (Feb. 12, 2020) – With more than a quarter of U.S. adults now having tattoos — and nearly half of millennials sporting them — only a handful of studies have focused on religious tattoos. But a new study by researchers at Baylor University and Texas Tech University analyzes faith-centered tattoos and is the first to use visual images of them. The study, published in the journal Visual Studies, analyzed 752 photos of tattoos taken at a Christian university in the United States and found that nearly 20% of those were overtly religious in content. “The embrace of tattoos in the United States reflects a generational shift toward greater individualism and self-expression,” said lead author Kevin D. Dougherty, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at Baylor University. [More]

Feminine Bloodlines, Mexican Womanhood: Erasing Submissiveness, Beatriz Vásquez

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

"Sacred Heart" by Beatriz Vásquez

Indianapolis-based Beatriz Vásquez' Mexican heritage is firmly entrenched in her art practice. Her imagery of flowing colorfully patterned clothing and cultural symbols coupled with her use of the traditional Mexican technique of papel picado (cut paper) reflect the rich history of her family and her childhood growing up in the border town of Brownsville, Texas. Those memories and narratives converge tonight in the Arts Council of Indianapolis Gallery 924. For "Feminine Bloodlines," Vásquez has created larger than life figures to visualize and create space for an empowered and strong female presence in the 21st century. The exhibition runs through March 27, 2020.

12th Day of Christmas: Collecting Robert Pruitt's Black Bodies

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory Disney-Britton

Gregory Disney-Britton holding up the last of his 12 days of Christmas gifts,  "Benin Head" #29 of 45 by Robert Truitt

On this 12th Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a limited-edition print by Robert Truitt. Born in 1975 in Houston, TX, Pruitt makes drawings and sculptures about the complexity of the Black body and Black identity, often informed by science fiction, hip hop, and history. Represented by Koplin Del Rio in Seattle, Pruitt’s work is in the collections of The Studio Museum of Harlem and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Today's gift is from a suite of eighteen lithographs by visiting artists at the Tamarind Institute.

RELIGIOUS ART | ARTIST OF YEAR: Finalists for Artist of Year 2019

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Voting now open through October 31, 2019

The Alpha & Omega Project for Contemporary Religious Arts is pleased to announce the 2019 finalists for the Alpha Omega Prize - artist of the year. This year's five finalists are Indianapolis-based Anila Quayyum Agha; London-based Barnaby Barford; New Mexico's Patrick McGrath; and New York-based artists Saya Woolfalk and Naudline Pierre. The Alpha Omega Prize was created in 2008 as an annual recognition of the impact of artists on America's religious dialogue. Voting is now open through October 31, and the Artist of Year honoree will be announced on November 1. [Click here, to vote]

South Texas Artist Takes a Contemporary Approach to Biblical Portraits

THE MONITOR
By Nancy Moyer

Jesus by Pedro Perez Oil Photo by Nancy Moyer

McALLEN, TX---STC art faculty member, Pedro Perez, imagines images of saints, martyrs, and deities with a contemporary twist. His sabbatical research exhibit, “Pentimento”, currently on display at the Library Art Gallery, transforms portraits of friends into modern-day saints by slipping them into the visual iconography traditionally used to depict images of Catholic saints. During his sabbatical in 2017, he immersed himself in Renaissance and Baroque art in Italy, France, and Spain, and studied the patronage of the church and wealthy families who supported the art. [More]

Show Us Your Walls: When You Display Ai Weiwei, Beware of Cats

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Ted Loos

Trey and Jenny Laird in their home in front of Sam Samore’s “Scenarios #53” (2007).

“Old lady house,” is the way Trey and Jenny Laird describe their four-story Upper East Side townhome, but the contemporary art inside — by the likes of Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler, Michaël Borremans, Jenny Holzer and Tracey Emin — does not seem outdated in the least. "We saw the Ai Weiwei show at the Tate [Modern], in the Turbine Hall, and I love his work so much, every single thing." The Lairds, married for 22 years, divide their collection of about 300 works evenly among their three homes; the others are in the Hamptons and in Marfa, Tex. Both the Lairds are natives of the Lone Star State, and have occasionally bought art by Texans, including the sculptor Tony Feher. [More]

Texas Visual Art: Anila Quayyum Agha’s Itinerant Shadows

GLASS TIRE
By Patrica Mora

This is NOT a Refuge 1, 2019 - lasercut, resin coated aluminum and lightbulb, 8 x 6 x 4 feet

Anila Quayyum Agha’s newest work, on view at Talley Dunn in Dallas, emerges as a small, quiet spectacle that operates with intelligence and sensuous resonance, and it deploys shimmer and shadow to deliver some of the best art I’ve witnessed — at any time or on any continent. In part, this is due to the fact that it inflects space with a distinct reminder that a gracious cosmography is not only possible, but perpetually operative. The show, titled Itinerant Shadows, conjures a meditative state, and it manages to do so with big “B” Beauty. The show offers a array of mixed media pieces that are gorgeous. Their beauty causes us to reflect upon interior versus exterior / solid versus void / dark versus light, and all other binary ways of perceiving the world. [More]

Dallas Museum of Art Announces 2018 Acquisition And Program Highlights

ARTDAILY

Derick Baegert, The Descent from the Cross, c. 1480-1490 (detail), Dallas Museum of Art, Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Fund in memory of Dr. William B. Jordan.

DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas Museum of Art continued to strengthen and expand its exhibitions and educational programming, bilingual offerings, and curatorial team in 2018 with the appointment of new leadership across departments, the development of expanded education initiatives, and the acquisition of major works across its collections. In support of the DMA’s commitment to engaging the community through programs anchored by its collections, three new curators and a new director of education joined the Museum in 2018, and the Museum expanded its off-site and bilingual program offerings. [More]

Artist’s Exploration of Cultural and Social Polarities Continues in Texas

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

This is NOT a Refuge 1, 2019 - lasercut, resin coated aluminum and lightbulb, 8 x 6 x 4 feet 

In a new show at the Talley Dunn Gallery in Dallas, Anila Quayyum Agha exhibits her newest series of large scale works. Anila Quayyum Agha: Itinerant Shadows opened on Saturday, February 9, 2019, and features multiple laser-cut steel sculptural installations as well as a series of embroidered, cut, and layered works on paper. As a Pakistani-American artist who currently lives and works in Indianapolis, Agha’s work explores the intersection of perceived cultural and social polarities such as the masculine-feminine, public-private, and religious-secular. Anila Quayyum Agha's recontextualization of Islamic geometric motifs creates a quiet space of contemplation and earned her the Alpha & Omega Prize for Contemporary Religious Artfor her “Intersections” sculpture in 2014.

Robert Puschautz Recreates Religious Artworks for East Texas Diocese

THE MIAMI HERALD
By Augusta Robinson, Tyler Morning Telegraph

Add caption

TYLER, TEXAS -- While viewing Robert Puschautz's "Madonna of the Roses," Tyler residents may feel they have a clear symbol of their city's connection to God's plan. The Tyler Morning Telegraph reports in the painting — which is inspired by a work by William-Adolphe Bouguereau that bears the same name — red roses drawn from those in the Tyler Municipal Rose Garden spring up in full bloom from a bush that surrounds Mary and Jesus Christ. The trees in the background are modeled from those created by American landscape painter George Inness, but might remind some of the Piney Woods of East Texas. Because Puschautz, a Chicago native who now lives in Tyler, avoids using photographs to create his works, even Jesus Christ was drawn based on a model — in this case his neighbor's sleeping baby. [More]

RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Detail of Vincent Valdez’s work “The City I” at the Blanton Museum of Art.

On his second day at the gallery, Ernest’s new co-worker brought his blanket to work. It’s not a small lap blanket for a winter chill. No, it’s a full-blown Linus van Pelt light blue blanket straight out of a “Peanuts” cartoon by Charles Shultz that he wears seated at his desk. When passing him, Ernest did a double-take. However, isn’t America used to men wearing bed sheets? While the blue blanket symbolizes purity, a painting unveiled last week in Texas depicts the white sheets of racism. Vince Valdez’s “City of Hope l,” now at the Blanton Art Museum is our art of the week.

Artist Vincent Valdez made a painting so provocative this Texas museum waited a year to unveil it. Now it’s a national sensation.

ARTNET NEWS
By Sarah Coscone

Mexican American artist, Vincent Valdez working on The City I, a painting of modern day klansmen, in his studio in San Antonio. Photo by Michael Stravato, courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.

It’s not every day that an artist sets out to paint a 30-foot-long canvas filled with larger-than-life Ku Klux Klansmen staring ominously back at the viewer. And so, when the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin purchased The City I from Vincent Valdez for $200,000, it knew it had to tread carefully. “Art raises uncomfortable questions at times, but the rewards that come from having difficult conversations are many and important,” said Blanton director Simone Wicha in a statement. She called the “City” paintings “an exploration of racism, one of the most persistent and challenging social issues of our day.” Valdez began his two-part “City” painting series in the fall of 2015, and the Blanton bought them the following year. [More]

Texas museum buys 'The City' painting about racism in America by Latino artist Vincent Valdez

BLASTING NEWS
By Joan Altabe

The artist Vincent Valdez works on an eight panel painting of modern day klansmen in his studio in San Antonio. Photograph: Michael Stravato/Blanton Museum of Art

The Blanton Museum in Austin, TX reports a purchase of a 30-foot long painting that views the KKK in an unusual way. Instead of lynchings and burning crosses, you get a casual, moonlit glance at a handful of klansmen loitering by a Chevy Silverado, holding cell phones or cans of beer - not unlike a group of teenagers hanging around a street corner. But rather than biker jackets and jeans, the garb is long white robes and face masks with eye-holes. And even though there's no violence in sight, the picture is full of foreboding. The title of the painting, “The City,” also makes no reference to the Klan. Artist Vincent Valdez, a Mexican-American living in San Antonio, told the Texas Observer that he created the work in reaction to the way that Trump fans the flames of white nationalism. [More]

Texas museum unveils racially provocative painting today after two-years of planning

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Michael Hardy

Vincent Valdez’s “The City I,” at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Tex., depicts a modern-day Ku Klux Klan gathering. Credit Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin knew it had a painting on its hands that required sensitivity: a 30-foot-wide panorama by the Houston-based artist Vincent Valdez that imagined a modern-day Ku Klux Klan gathering. And a string of recent art-world controversies had emphasized the need for such curatorial caution.  So after acquiring Mr. Valdez’s four-panel painting in 2016, the Blanton spent two years preparing for the work’s public debut on July 17. To display the painting, the curators had a special gallery built with a sign warning that the work “may elicit strong emotions.” Such warnings are relatively rare. [More]