YouDo (detail), Kara Walker, cut paper, 1993-94 Artist Kara Walker uses an old-fashioned art form – the black paper silhouette – in controversial ways to explore issues of power, politics and racism. Commentator Matthew Bourbon, a Denton artist, art critic and associate professor at The University of North Texas, has this review of a retrospective [...]
The One O’Clock Lab Band in San Giovanni Valdarno Last we heard, the One O’Clock Lab Band were in the Netherlands, preparing to head for Italy. Now they’ve hit Rome. The Art&Seek Blog has been following the University of North Texas jazz group on its European invasion, via freelance photographer and UNT student Michael Climents’ [...]
Kara Walker, Endless Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adverturess , 2001, on paper, Collection Walker Art Center, T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2002 Guest blogger Brad Ford Smith is a Dallas artist and art conservationist. For another artist’s take on the Kara Walker exhibit, check out Matthew Bourbon’s commentary for KERA radio in Art&Seek’s feature content area. [...]
The statue of Charles Tandy, the Fort Worth businessman and philanthropist, stands just north of the Tarrant County Courthouse in downtown Fort Worth. Because it’s surrounded primarily by cars and trucks going past, the Downtown Public Art Master Plan is recommending the statue be moved to the TCU Campus in front of Tandy Hall — [...]
One side of the Wyly Theatre, showing criss-cross concrete supports Read about the Arts District’s “Glass Skins” KERA radio story: Expanded online story: [sound of hammering] Those are the last few bolts being hammered out of a giant support column at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. [...]
A monumental work of art or a terribly misplaced reminder of cruel history? Conquistador Juan de Oñate is a hero to some in El Paso who feel the Spanish contributions to settling the West is often ignored. To others, he represents oppression and violence, an attempt to obliterate Native American culture. When sculptor John Houser [...]
Next week, WaterTower Theatre opens A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – the classic musical by Larry Gelbart and Stephen Sondheim. In this instance, “classic” doesn’t mean just “great” or “venerable” or “old and mostly forgotten,” but quite literally, “classic” in that the two main sources of the show are the [...]
The subtitle for this mesmerizing little video is “500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art,” which helps explain one of the fascinating things about it: the facial continuities, the remarkable similarities among the women whom painters have selected and painted over the centuries. After all, there are no ancient Egyptian, Chinese or African women [...]
Remember Stabiae — the subject of last year’s Dallas Museum of Art exhibition, From the Ashes of Vesuvius, In Stabiano: Exploring the Ancient Seaside Villas of the Roman Elite ? Stabiae was the wealthy Roman seaside resort about three miles from Pompeii, and like that famous town, it was buried by Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 [...]
Aston Martin of Dallas and Park Place Motors (l to r), both on Lemmon Avenue KERA radio story: Expanded online story: It’s the Avenue of Aspiration. Along Lemmon Avenue between the Tollway and Northwest Highway, there are nearly a dozen high-priced car dealerships: Porsche, Cadillac, Lexus, Mercedes, Bentley, Maserati, Hummer. Of course, many American cities [...]
