Liu Xiaodong: Borders at Dallas Contemporary The Dallas Opera’s Triumphant Return Brutalist Architecture Brings the Outdoors in Food & Fashion Collide at Eataly Dallas
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EDITOR’S NOTE
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February / March 2021
TERRI PROVENCAL Publisher / Editor in Chief terri@patronmagazine.com Instagram terri_provencal and patronmag
An exhibition incubating for nearly a year due to pandemic postponement was installed at last. Liu Xiaodong: Borders, opened in the final days of January at Dallas Contemporary, co-curated by DC’s executive director Peter Doroshenko and the artist. On the cover, Xiaodong’s painting At the Casa del Migrante in Juárez introduces At a specific time and place, which chronicles the Chinese artist’s journey to South Texas border cities and the active communities he found there. Incidentally, originally planned for the April 2020 issue, Danielle Avram’s story for Patron also laid in waiting. The Dallas Opera’s triumphant return brings to the stage The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which tells the true story of Jean-Dominque Bauby, the editor of ELLE magazine, felled by a stroke. Through the pandemic we’ve boasted many milestones of inventiveness. In Out of the Chrysalis, Lee Cullum brings to light the exceptional work of British composer Joby Talbot, librettist Gene Scheer, producer Leonard Foglia, and a host of talented individuals to make this world premiere March 5 and 7. And while we all hope to emerge from the chrysalis this year, The New Brutalism tours the Preston Hollow home designed by Austin’s Specht Architects, Magni Kalman Design, and landscape architect David Hocker. We wouldn’t mind being holed up here for a while. Corrugated concrete walls add elegance to the grounds, and the smart architecture brings the outdoors in. In a residence this extraordinary, we always love to see the work of local artists hanging on the walls. Dallas’ own Jason Willaford makes a cameo. To produce With Love, From Eataly, photographed by Elizabeth Lavin, we glamped out inside the new Italian food emporium, happily discovering the cornucopia of imported delicacies and restaurants. Photographing the latest looks from NorthPark Center’s venerated brands, a determined team included Elaine Raffel, Carlos Alonso-Parada, and Holly Dear’s House of Dear, with gracious assistance from Dalya Romaner leading the Eataly Dallas team. Brava/Bravo! In our departments, the cultural conversation is vigorous. First, Shirin Neshat’s I Will Greet the Sun Again, opening February 19 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, surveys 30 years of the Iranian-born artist’s photography and video works investigating themes of exile as well as the ancient and recent history of Iran. Steve Carter explores the details in A Timely Sort of Retrospective. Sapar Contemporary’s Nina Levent and the Crow Museum of Asian Art of the University of Texas at Dallas’ Jacqueline Chao discuss their show Cultural Ecologies of Asia, on view at Dallas Art Fair Projects. Acquisitions recaps some of the inspired works that entered our region’s museum collections, furthering inclusivity; Nancy Cohen Israel reports in The Rest of the Story. In Accessing Latin American Art, Chris Byrne shares the efforts of recognized art dealer Mary-Anne Martin, whose abiding mission is to bring the work of our southern neighbors to the fore. In Music, Brandon Kennedy, recasts his contributor’s identity for Patron with Channeling Breath to Trace the Contours of Sound, writing about the career of jazz trumpeter Dennis González. On the lighter side, we love the exaggerated Louis Vuitton Monogram by Swiss conceptual artist Urs Fischer in a new collection available at the expanded NorthPark store. Even the best of things can be reimagined. See the fresh styles in The Art of Overstatement. Finally, the force of Frida Kahlo is with us in 2021 when an exhibition of four paintings and one drawing opens this month at the Dallas Museum of Art. Frida Kahlo: Five Works reminds museumgoers anything is possible and serves as a fitting conclusion to this issue’s diversity. – Terri Provencal
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CONTENTS 1
FEATURES 38 AT A SPECIFIC TIME AND PLACE Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong visits Texas border cities to paint portraits of local residents for a show at Dallas Contemporary. By Danielle Avram 44 OUT OF THE CHRYSALIS The Diving Bell and the Butterfly emerges this spring at The Dallas Opera. By Lee Cullum 48 THE NEW BRUTALISM Light and shadow instill a Preston Hollow home with custom-fabricated concrete walls designed by Specht Architects. By Peggy Levinson 56 WITH LOVE, FROM EATALY Fashion and food collide inside the new Italian emporium at NorthPark. Photography by Elizabeth Lavin DEPARTMENTS 04 Editor’s Note 08 Contributors 16 Noted Top arts and culture chatter. By Anthony Falcon
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Openings 28 A TIMELY SORT OF RETROSPECTIVE The Modern’s Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again surveys the work of the acclaimed Iranian American artist. By Steve Carter Fair Trade 30 CULTURAL ECOLOGIES OF ASIA Crow Museum’s Jacqueline Chao and Sapar Contemporary’s Nina Levent discuss their new show at Dallas Art Fair Projects. Contemporaries 32 ACCESSING LATIN AMERICAN ART Art dealer Mary-Anne Martin makes a lifelong commitment to the work of our southern neighbors. By Chris Byrne Acquisitions 34 THE REST OF THE STORY Area museums broaden collections. By Nancy Cohen Israel
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Music 36 CHANNELING BREATH TO TRACE THE CONTOURS OF SOUND Dennis González’ rich tapestries of experimental jazz and sonics expand with Nights Enter Enter. By Brandon Kennedy 34
Atelier 66 THE ART OF OVERSTATEMENT Louis Vuitton at NorthPark Center introduces a capsule collection with Urs Fischer. By Terri Provencal Furthermore 68 FEARLESS FRIDA Dallas Museum of Art displays the pivotal painter's work. By Terri Provencal
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On the cover: Liu Xiaodong, At the Casa del Migrante in Juárez, 2019. See page 39.
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CONTRIBUTORS
CARLOS ALONSO-PARADA is a Dallas native and one of the most sought-after fashion stylists, known for his unique approach to style for both editorials and everyday life. After a decade of freelancing for the media and many celebrity fashion shoots, Carlos now works as a lead personal shopper for NorthPark Center, offering customers complimentary shopping services from the center’s 200-plus retailers. He enjoys spending time with his fiancé, Nolan, and their French bulldog, Noodles.
DANIELLE AVRAM is a curator and writer based in Dallas. She has held positions at Texas Woman’s University; Southern Methodist University; The Power Station; The Pinnell Collection; and The High Museum of Art. She has an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and a BA from the University of Texas at Dallas. In At a specific time and place, Danielle delves into the Texas border paintings of Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong, on view at Dallas Contemporary.
STEVE CARTER sneaks a preview look at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s blockbuster, Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again; it runs February 19 through May 16. The survey exhibition covers 30 years of the Iranian American multi-disciplinary artist’s career— photography, video installations, and more. At once both political and personal, the show is also a timely reminder of the universality of what it means to be human. Highly recommended.
CHRIS BYRNE is the author of The Original Print (Guild Publishing) and the graphic novel The Magician (Marquand Books), included in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University; Rare Book/Special Collections Division, Library of Congress; Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago; Thomas J. Watson Library; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is co-authoring the “Best Of” Frank Johnson’s comics for Fantagraphics with Keith Mayerson and co-founded the Dallas Art Fair.
HOLLY DEAR is the managing partner of Dear Clark Hair Salon. Renovating and rebranding under the new name House of Dear, the salon has been a mainstay for hair enthusiasts on McKinney Avenue since 2008 and remains the flagship. Holly trained under industry giants Toni&Guy and Vidal Sassoon, where she says she “learned the art of hair.” Her love of teaching crosspollinates bold new techniques to a new generation of stylists at her salon, as shown by their creativity in this issue’s With Love, From Eataly.
BRANDON KENNEDY is a partner/director at galerie frank elbaz in Dallas after spending several years as the director of exhibitor relations at the Dallas Art Fair. For this issue, Kennedy explores the collaborative worlds of Dallas musician/artist Dennis González and his upcoming release with his Ataraxia Trio +2, Nights Enter. Kennedy also recently contributed a foreword to Zac Crain’s A Pedestrian’s Recent History of Dallas, a photo book published by La Reunion, an imprint of Deep Vellum Publishing.
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LAUREN CHRISTENSEN has more than two decades of experience in advertising and marketing. As a principal with L+S Creative Group, she consults with a wide variety of nonprofit organizations and businesses in many sectors, including retail, real estate, and hospitality. Lauren is a Dallas native and a graduate of Southern Methodist University with a BA in advertising. Her clean, contemporary aesthetic and generous spirit make Lauren the perfect choice to art direct Patron.
ELIZABETH LAVIN moved to Texas in 2004 after graduating with a BFA from the University of Colorado. An expert storyteller, her internationally renowned work has documented important social and environmental issues. This year she covered protests and showcased the doctors and nurses on the front line in the UT Southwestern COVID Unit. “Working with a stellar creative team on the Eataly project was an exciting way to start 2021.” Elizabeth’s work shines in With Love, From Eataly.
LEE CULLUM is a Dallas journalist who has worked in radio, television, newspapers, and magazines. She was a regular commentator on what is now called the PBS NewsHour as well as All Things Considered on NPR, and, more recently, has interviewed CEOs for the public TV affiliate in DallasFort Worth. Her avocation has long been the performing arts, with opera her special passion. Hence her excitement to welcome back The Dallas Opera with its world premiere of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
NANCY COHEN ISRAEL is Dallas-based writer, art historian, and educator. She recently joined the Education Department at the Meadows Museum, where she has been a regular lecturer for over a decade. For the current issue, she enjoyed writing about museum acquisitions made in the past year. The diversity of artists represented by these works is a hopeful sign of broadened inclusion and an exciting step toward greater equity of voices in area museums.
PEGGY LEVINSON covers the latest trends and all periods of design for Patron readers, engaging her knowledge in the field as a former showroom owner. This issue finds Peggy exploring the new Brutalist architecture of a Preston Hollow residential project designed by Specht Architects with interiors by Magni Kalman Design. Tour this magnificent home that brings the outdoors in and embraces sustainable design features in The New Brutalism.
ELAINE RAFFEL says shooting this issue’s fashion feature in Eataly brought back incredible memories of vacationing in Rome, one of her all-time favorite cities. Working as creative director with megatalented photographer Elizabeth Lavin, NorthPark stylist Carlos AlonsoParada, and the House of Dear hair and makeup team was icing on the cake. "Make that Italian cream, please. All work should be this much fun.”
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The inauguration of the building in 2001 was a defining moment for the Meadows—join us as we celebrate this milestone and take a look back at the achievements made possible by this vital structure. View the permanent collection of Spanish masterpieces that brought a king and queen to Dallas, newly reinstalled to feature highlights from the 250 exceptional works the Meadows has acquired over the last two decades, and enjoy the companion exhibition Fossils to Film: The Best of SMU’s Collections, which shines a light on more campus treasures.
This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Musuem. A generous gift from The Meadows Foundation has helped make this exhibition and technical study possible.
meadowsmuseumdallas.org
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NOTED 06
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01 AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM Hair Story featuring LaShonda Cooks continues through Feb. 21. Vicki Meek: 3 Decades of Social Commentary is currently on view through Mar. 1. The Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Competition and Exhibition highlights artists of African American descent from all over the country through May 10. Opening Mar. 4, Dynasty: The Peculiar Search for Totality Featuring Artist Missy Burton, explores one family’s search for freedom, through Jun. 5. Tears: Weaponized, Devalued and Reconciled? will be on view Mar. 18–Jul. 24. Confederate Currency: The Color of Money will investigate the impact of slavery in the economy of the South, Mar. 25–Jul. 24. aamdallas.org 02 AMON CARTER MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART Meditations: Eleanore Mikus at Tamarind brings together rarely seen prints that Mikus created at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1968, through Apr. 18. Mythmakers: The Art of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington is the first exhibition to explore the unexpected resonances and moments of convergence between the themes, artistic sensibilities, and technical processes of these two artists; Mitch Epstein faces urgent, contemporary issues through his compelling photographs in Mitch Epstein: Property Rights; and inspired by the Carter’s collection and Natasha Bowdoin’s abounding interest in literature, In the Night Garden offers viewers a moment to pause and reimagine our relationship to the natural world. All three exhibitions are on view through Feb. 28. Image: Frederic Remington (1861–1909), The Stampede, 1908, oil on canvas, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK, Gift of the Thomas Gilcrease Foundation, 1955. cartermuseum.org 03 CROW MUSEUM OF ASIAN ART OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS The Crow Museum of Asian Art inspires and promotes learning and dialogue about the arts and cultures of Asia through their exhibitions, the research and preservation of their collections, artistic and educational programming, and visitor experience and engagement. crowmuseum.org 04 DALLAS CONTEMPORARY Dallas Contemporary presents three solo exhibitions: a career survey for Beijing’s Liu Xiaodong: Borders through May 30 in which the Chinese artist traveled to Texas border cities to paint portraits of people within the communities he found there; Ariel René Jackson: Doubt & Imagination, a lyrical film essay; and Paolo Roversi: Birds, 16
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THE LATEST CULTURAL NEWS COVERING ALL ASPECTS OF THE ARTS IN NORTH TEXAS: NEW EXHIBITS, NEW PERFORMANCES, GALLERY OPENINGS, AND MORE.
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which displays the work of the legendary fashion photographer. All three continue through Aug. 22. Image: Paolo Roversi, Anna Maria, Paris, 2011. © Paolo Roversi. dallascontemporary.org 05 DALLAS HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN RIGHTS MUSEUM The Fight for Civil Rights in the South combines two photography exhibitions covering the African American struggle for Civil Rights and social equality in the 1960s: Selma to Montgomery: Photographs by Spider Martin and Courage Under Fire: The 1961 Burning of the Freedom Riders Bus is on view Feb. 19–May 31. dhhrm.org 06 DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART The first US exhibition in over 35 years dedicated to the Spanish artist Juan Gris highlights his revolutionary contributions to the Cubist movement in Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris, Mar. 14–Jul. 25. My|gration highlights the contributions of artists who immigrated to the US, through Oct. 31. For a Dreamer of Houses displays contemporary artworks that evoke personal spaces and consider the politics of places, through Jul. 4. Dalí’s Divine Comedy showcases wood engravings from Salvador Dalí’s illustrated series, through Feb. 21. Contemporary Art + Design: New Acquisitions continues through Mar. 7. Moth to Cloth: Silk in Africa displays cloths drawn from the permanent collection that explore the production of silk and silk textiles in Ghana, Nigeria, and Madagascar, through Oct. 24. For his first solo museum presentation, Dallas-native artist Chris Schanck created a contemporary work inspired by the late19th-century Martelé dressing table in the DMA’s collection; Curbed Vanity: A Contemporary Foil by Chris Schanck is on view Feb. 7–Aug. 29. Devoted: Art and Spirituality in Mexico and New Mexico explores interrelated artistic traditions as well as the artistic qualities of these objects, Feb. 28–Jan. 2, 2022. Image: Juan Gris, Still Life before an Open Window, Place Ravignan, 1915, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950. dma.org 07 FORT WORTH MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY While the museum is closed, visit the museum’s website for fun interactive virtual events, learning, and activities. fwmuseum.org 08 GEOMETRIC MADI MUSEUM This charming museum is the first of its kind to focus on MADI art—hard-edged, non-representational art that extends beyond the frame. An exhibition for Tunde Odunlade continues through the spring. geometricmadimuseum.org
February 19–May 16
IMMERSIVE PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO BY A GROUNDBREAKING ARTIST Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again is organized by The Broad, Los Angeles, and curated by Ed Schad, Curator, The Broad. The presentation in Fort Worth is generously supported by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, with additional support from the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District. Shirin Neshat, Bonding, 1995. Ink on RC print. 34 x 51 1/2 inches. © Shirin Neshat/Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 3200 Darnell Street Fort Worth, Texas 76107 817.738.9215 Follow the Modern
FOCUS: Leidy Churchman January 22–March 21
Buddhadharma Fever, 2019 Oil on linen 86 1/8 × 102 1/8 inches © Leidy Churchman, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
NOTED: VISUAL ARTS
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09 GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CENTER Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants presents a new collection of President George W. Bush’s paintings of immigrants, Mar. 2–Jan. 3, 2022. Introducing the book of the same title, the exhibit brings to the forefront the stories of forty-three individuals who exemplify our proud history as a nation of immigrants and takes an in-depth look at the many issues surrounding the immigration debate in our country. bushcenter.org
ancient and recent Iranian history. The experience of living in exile and the human impact of political revolution are also explored by Neshat, through May 16. themodern.org
10 KIMBELL ART MUSEUM Through Mar. 14, Queen Nefertari’s Eg ypt celebrates the wives of pharaohs during the New Kingdom period (1550–1070 BC), when Egyptian civilization was at its height. Image: Statue of the Goddess Sekhmet Thebes New Kingdom, 18th dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III (ca. 1390–1353 B.C.E.) granodiorite, Museo Egizio, Turin, Italy. kimbellart.org
16 NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER Nasher Mixtape offers a compilation of “tracks”—micro-exhibitions focused on the Nasher’s permanent collection installed throughout the museum, Feb. 6–Sep. 26. The 2020 Nasher Prize Laureate Michael Rakowitz exhibition presents part of his series of sculptures and his film The Ballad of Special Ops Cody, through Apr. 18. Launched in October 2020, Nasher Public is a yearlong, two-pronged public art initiative that aims to generate access to public art by North Texas artists at the Nasher and throughout the greater Dallas community. Image: Judy Chicago, American, b. 1939, Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks, 1965, automotive lacquer on aluminum, 6 components each: 12 x 12 x 48 in.; 6 components each: 24 x 24 x 12 in. Nasher Sculpture Center, Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists. nashersculpturecenter.org
11 LATINO CULTURAL CENTER Currently on view by appointment through Mar. 13 is Quetzal Quatro: Genaro Hernandez, Juan J. Hernandez, Samuel Torres and Jose Vargas. lcc.dallasculture.org 12 THE MAC Finding Our Way is a photographic installation designed to serve as the catalyst for conversations on women’s issues in Texas and photography as a medium of self-expression. The exhibition is on view indefinitely through the winter and can be viewed by appointment. the-mac.org 13 MEADOWS MUSEUM Building on the Boulevard: Celebrating 20 Years in the Meadows Museum’s New Home will feature architectural drawings and renderings as well as commemorative installations and materials celebrating the international loan exhibitions, innovations in educational programming, and other significant milestones. Fossils to Film: The Best of SMU’s Collections, celebrates the museum’s association with the university. For the first time, the Meadows will host highlights from nine distinct campus collections at once, including the Underwood Law Library, G. Williams Johns Film and Video Collection, Bywaters Special Collections, Hamon Arts Library, the Shuler Museum of Paleontology, DeGolyer Library, the Department of Anthropology, Bridwell Library, and the University Art Collection. On view Mar. 14–Jun. 20. meadowsmuseumdallas.org 14 MODERN ART MUSEUM OF FORT WORTH FOCUS: Leidy Churchman continues through Mar. 21. Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again surveys 30 years of the artist’s video works and photography, investigating her passionate engagement with 18
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15 MUSEUM OF BIBLICAL ART Current exhibitions include Line Upon Line: Jorge Cocco’s Sacrocubist Images of Christ and the glass sculpture of Simon Waranch in From Earth To Light. biblicalarts.org
17 PEROT MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE Through Sep. 6, Nature's Art: The Mineral Beauty of China features over 70 specimens from various geographical regions of the country. perotmuseum.org. 18 THE SIXTH FLOOR MUSEUM AT DEALEY PLAZA Through Apr. 4, Art Reframes History, drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, explores the way artists interpret history. From visual art—photography, oil paintings, and screen prints—to music—opera, musical theater, strings, and percussion ensemble— the exhibit celebrates the life and legacy of John F. Kennedy. jfk.org 19 TYLER MUSEUM OF ART Ode To East Texas: Paintings By Lee Jamison continues through Mar. 14. Building a Legacy: Selections from the Permanent Collection is presented in conjunction with the museum’s 50th anniversary. Shortly after opening its doors to the public in 1971, the Tyler Museum formed a permanent collection that emphasized works by contemporary Texas artists. The 17th Annual High School Art Exhibition will begin Mar. 28 and continue through May 16. tylermuseum.org Please visit museum websites for any closings and date changes due to the ongoing pandemic. All the listed museums are adhering to strict CDC guidelines and require masks.
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NOTED: PERFORMING ARTS
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01 AMPHIBIAN STAGE Amphibian Stage currently has interactive virtual events, including acting classes, on their website. amphibianstage.com 02 AT&T PERFORMING ARTS CENTER Virtuoso violinists Kev Marcus and Wil B are Black Violin, and the dynamic duo of high-energy, classically trained musicians, renowned for their ability to meld highbrow and pop culture into a single genre-busting act, takes the stage Feb. 6. Using the entirety of the campus as a stage, Bombshell Dance Project will lead audiences on an active tour of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, including its outdoor spaces, during which they change locations with the performers, who in parts of the show, invite the audience to engage with them. The show’s title, The Great 30, refers to 30 movements used throughout the performance. Site-specific dance work will be created by choreographers Emily Bernet and Taylor Rodman to fit these unique spaces, Mar. 25–27. Image: Bombshell Dance Project. Photograph by Christopher Duggan. attpac.org 03 CASA MAÑANA Bennett & Babs sing your favorite hits by Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand Feb. 9–14. casamanana.org 04 CHAMBER MUSIC INTERNATIONAL Chamber Music International’s journey through Germany, France, and Bohemia with the scintillating music of Beethoven, Ravel, and Dvořák led by five superb young artists will take the stage Feb. 27. Next, Indianapolis Violin Competition gold-medal winner Richard Lin will be featured in works of Vitali, Franck, and Mendelssohn on Mar. 20. chambermusicinternational.org 05 DALLAS BLACK DANCE THEATRE Currently, DBDT invites viewers to visit #DBDT: At Home, a series of educational and digital events from the DBDT dancers. DBDT: ENCORE! presents a virtual performance Feb. 6. On Feb. 20, Cultural Awareness will take the stage. On Mar. 13, DBDT ENCORE will perform Dancing Beyond Borders. Image: DBDT Dancing Beyond Borders. Photograph by Brian Giulliaux. dbdt.com 06 DALLAS CHILDREN’S THEATER Viewers are encouraged to visit DCT’s website for digital classes, performances, and interactive activities. dct.org 07 THE DALLAS OPERA The Dallas Opera returns with The Diving Bell and The Butterfly Mar. 5 and 7. Next, Don Carlo’s thrilling music and searing drama will fill the Winspear Opera House Mar. 27–Apr. 3. dallasopera.org 20
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12 08 DALLAS SUMMER MUSICALS From the comfort of your own home, experience the wonder of Hershey Felder’s 2020-21 season. Streamed live from Italy, celebrated performer Hershey Felder will bring famous composers to life through profound storytelling and showcase their works with stunning music. Fiddler on the Roof will be streamed Feb. 7–14, and Puccini on Mar. 14–21. dallassummermusicals.org 09 DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Leonidas & Luisi sees acclaimed soloist Leonidas Kavakos step into the spotlight for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto Feb. 4–7. Mozart & Strauss features complex storytelling in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme suite Feb. 18–23. Mahler Symphony No. 4 fills the stage Feb. 25–28. Music from the Movies presents big-screen favorites Mar. 5–7. Schubert 9 & Dvořák are presented Mar. 11–14. Lush Life closes out the month Mar. 26–28. Image: German conductor and pianist Joana Mallwitz, courtesy of Dallas Symphony. mydso.com 10 DALLAS THEATER CENTER DTC will reopen (TBD) with Something Grim(m), a unique piece of devised entertainment encompassing visual art, scenescapes, and a captivating audio soundtrack experienced as an outdoor, sitespecific work of performance art. dallastheatercenter.org 11 EISEMANN CENTER The off-Broadway hit comedy Men Are From Mars–Women Are From Venus LIVE! will take the stage Feb. 13–14. Enjoy Keyboard Conversations on Feb. 15 and again on Mar. 8. An Evening with C.S. Lewis returns on Mar. 27. eisemanncenter.com 12 FORT WORTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Enjoy the legendary cellist in A Gala Evening with Yo-Yo Ma on Feb. 20. The music of Mozart and Beethoven takes center stage when Robert Spano returns to conduct the FWSO, Mar. 16–18. Image: Yo-Yo Ma, courtesy of FWSO. Photograph by Jason Bell. fwsymphony.org 13 KITCHEN DOG THEATER Last Ship to Proxima Centauri will open in Feb. or Mar., but the dates have yet to be determined. kitchendogtheater.org 14 LYRIC STAGE Lyric Stage will close its postponed 2019/2020 season at the Majestic Theatre with the timeless, magical fairy tale, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Jun. 12–14. lyricstage.org 15 TACA TACA nurtures arts organizations and provides visionary and responsive leadership to the arts community. By providing flexible
OLETA ADAMS SUN • MARCH 21, 2021
02 funding and much-needed resources, like professional development workshops, TACA allows arts organizations to spend less time on keeping their doors open and more time on running strong and effective programs that transform lives through the arts. taca-arts.org 16 TEXAS BALLET THEATER TBT will replace its upcoming productions with digital performances in response to pandemic-related safety protocols. Serenade/Star Crossed/World Premiere by Tim O’Keefe followed by performances of Bartok/Image/Imbue will be filmed and created specifically for the digital format for Feb. and Mar. viewing, respectively. texasballettheater.org
MADELEINE PEYROUX TUE • JULY 13, 2021
17 THEATRE THREE Currently, Oo-Bla-Dee is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 11– Mar. 14. theatre3dallas.com 18 TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND Alonzo King LINES Ballet sees unforgettable dialogue between movement and music on Feb. 5. Doug Varone and Dancers present modern choreography that is as accessible as it is sophisticated on Feb. 12. Complexions Contemporary Ballet will take the stage Mar. 11. From Mar. 26–27, A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham presents An Untitled Love, Abraham’s newest evening-length work, a celebration of family, love, and community. titas.org 19 TURTLE CREEK CHORALE TCC has provided musical journeys to Dallas audiences for over 40 years and offers a dynamic mainstage concert series at the Moody Performance Hall. The chorus group plans to resume programming at a later date. turtlecreekchorale.com
CHICK COREA FRI • AUGUST 13, 2021
20 UNDERMAIN THEATRE Founded in 1984 by a group of artists who transformed a warehouse basement under Main Street into a performance space, Undermain Theatre began producing experimental plays. Through the spring, Undermain asks audiences to check their website for virtual programming. undermain.org 21 WATERTOWER THEATRE WTT presents the 2015 Tony Award–winner for Best Play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which tells the story of Christopher, a young man with an extraordinary brain, who finds himself under suspicion for the murder of a neighbor’s dog and becomes determined to solve the mystery. Mar. 4–21. watertowertheatre.org
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01 12.26 Eve Fowler: Just Seated Besides the Meaning and Kevin Ford: Same Same will close on Feb. 13. Next the gallery will open an exhibition for Carla Garcia on Feb. 27. The exhibition will run through Mar. gallery1226.com 02 500X GALLERY Terminal 2, a solo show by Kasey Short and Axiomatic in Pink, a two-person exhibition featuring artists Jihye Han and Yuni Lee, ends Feb. 13. Micro, a collection of text pieces portraying quotes that have been uttered to black bodies, will close Feb. 14. 500x.org 03 ALAN BARNES FINE ART ABFA belongs to a family of British art dealers, conservators, and restorers whose roots reach back to London during the reign of King George III. alanbarnesfineart.com 04 AND NOW The gallery will exhibit a group show of rostered artists, including Genesis Baez, Felipe Baeza, Dannielle Bowman, Jonathan Chacón, Justine Melford-Colegate, Kathryn Kerr, and Johnathan Payne, curated by Leslie Martinez. Feb. 27–Apr. 3. andnow.biz 05 ARTSPACE111 The Rodeo Show displays work by women artists informed by Western culture distilled in popular stock and rodeo events, through Mar. 20. artspace111.com 06 BARRY WHISTLER GALLERY And The Days Go By, new large-scale paintings on canvas and wood by Dallas-based artist Jay Shinn, and A New Body of Work, featuring large canvas works and small gouaches by Marfa-based artist Leslie Wilkes, continue through Mar. 13. barrywhistlergallery.com 07 BEATRICE M. HAGGERTY GALLERY Cultures of Consumption: The Art of Leon Richmond and Kazuma Sambe, on view Feb. 5–Mar. 2, displays an absurdist mash-up of advertising, food, celebrity, mythological creatures, and cheap consumable “goods’ to explore consumerism. Here, There; Now, Then: In Between Journeys, features eight ceramic artists exploring displacement and belonging through their cross-cultural understanding of China and the US. From Mar. 10–Apr. udallas.edu/gallery 08 BIVINS GALLERY Bivins Gallery highlights modern, postwar, abstract expressionist, and contemporary art. Kindness Not Canceled, a group show, continues through Feb. 21. bivinsgallery.com 22
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11 09 CADD/CADD SPACE CADD sponsors scholarships, including the CADD x Maddrey PLLC Artist Prize, which champions underserved art communities, with the inaugural prize awarded to Ciara Elle Bryant. CADD Fund, an evening of sharing innovative ideas about potential artistic projects, makes possible a high-impact idea that needs the support of the arts community. CADD Space, within the SieMatic showroom, displays the work of member galleries. caddallas.org 10 CHRISTOPHER MARTIN GALLERY Celebrating 25 years, the expanded gallery presents the reverseglass paintings of American artist Christopher Martin; the Rodeo series of Dallas-based photographer Steve Wrubel; the color-field paintings of New York–based painter Jeff Muhs; the work of Dutch image maker Isabelle van Zeijl; the acrylic constructions of Dallas artist Jean-Paul Khabbaz; the large-format paintings of Dallasbased painter Tom Hoitsma; the abstract work of California-based painter Chris Hayman; and the organic paintings of Atlanta artist Liz Barber; as well as the work of rotating artists. christophermartingallery.com 11 CONDUIT GALLERY Vincent Falsetta: New Paintings and Stephen Lapthisophon: Steam close Feb. 13. Next, After Laughter and Wablu the Shlablues will be on view Feb. 20–Mar. 27. In After Laughter, Margaret Meehan’s work addresses monstrosity as a kind of otherness that goes beyond dualities and instead exists in shades of gray. In Jeff Gibbons: Wablu the Shlablues, earthen materials such as clay and found objects are divorced of their practical usage and become part of a resonant feedback loop. Image: Jeff Gibbons, Self-Portrait, 2020, courtesy of the artist and Conduit Gallery. conduitgallery.com 12 CRAIGHEAD GREEN GALLERY CGG’s Annual Group Show continues through Feb. 27. Next the gallery will host three separate shows for Peter Burega, Jackson Hammack, and Mark Smith from Mar. 6–Apr. 3. craigheadgreen.com 13 CRIS WORLEY FINE ARTS Becca Booker: microscopic displays her “frenetic” mark-making in works on paper through Feb. 14. See Paul Manes’ large-scale oil paintings of bowls, raindrops, logs, and more, which are generally in neutral shades due to the artist’s color-blindness, Feb. 20–Mar. 27. Image: Paul Manes, Animus Mundi, 2019, oil on canvas, 78 x 104 in. crisworley.com 14 DADA The Dallas Art Dealers Association is an affiliation of independent gallery owners and nonprofit art organizations. dallasartdealers.org
42 15 DALLAS ART FAIR PROJECTS Through Mar. 3, Sapar Contemporary presents Cultural Ecologies of Asia, an exhibition curated by Jacqueline Chao, Senior Curator of Asian Art, Crow Museum of Asian Art of The University of Texas at Dallas. dallasartfairprojects.com 16 DAVID DIKE FINE ART DDFA specializes in late 19th- and 20th-century American and European paintings with an emphasis on the Texas Regionalists and Texas landscape painters. daviddike.com 17 ERIN CLULEY GALLERY Un(Controlled) a group show featuring Chivas Clem, Catherine MacMahon, and Delaney Smith continues through Feb. 22. erincluley.com
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18 EX OVO Ex ovo is a contemporary art exhibition space and features artists’ books in the Tin District. exovoprojects.com 19 FWADA Fort Worth Art Dealers Association hosts exhibitions of noteworthy art. fwada.com
Virtual Artist Talk with Mitch Epstein
20 GALERIE FRANK ELBAZ Josh Reames: Reclaiming the Moon opens Feb. 6 and continues through Mar. 20. Born in Dallas and known for his large-scale paintings, in his work Reames investigates signs, text, objects, symbols, and pop cutlture iconography. galeriefrankelbaz.com
Join the artist to learn more about his work and the exhibition; visit our website for details.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 6 P.M.
21 GALLERI URBANE Jószef Csató: Diary of Open Secrets and Iren Tete: Phosphene will continue through Feb. 13. Feb. 20–Mar. 27, Stephen D'Onofrio: Produce(d) Paintings and Joseph Montgomery: Pigpen Dispossessed mount in Gallery One and Two. Image: Iren Tete, Changing and Unchanging, 2021, ceramic, glaze, silver leaf, 28 x 18 x 18 in. galleriurbane.com
Cartermuseum.org/ PropertyRights #CarterPropertyRights
22 GINGER FOX GALLERY Open by appointment only, the gallery features paintings by Ginger Fox and select artists. gingerfox.myshopify.com
Mitch Epstein (b. 1952), Standing Rock Prayer Walk, North Dakota 2018, dye coupler print, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchased with the support of David Gibson, Phil and Subie Green, Stephen and Suzie Hudgens, and Morris Matson, P2019.99 © Black River Productions Ltd. / Mitch Epstein
23 HOLLY JOHNSON GALLERY Dornith Doherty: Atlas of the Invisible closes Feb. 13. For two decades Doherty’s work has been concerned with our stewardship of the natural environment. This new project explores the effects of air pollution on migratory birds. Todd Camplin: CALM & storm, featuring new ink drawings, closes
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NOTED: GALLERIES K ittrell/Riffkind Art Glass Gallery 4500 Sigma Rd. Dallas, Texas 75244 n 972.239.7957
35 Feb. 27. Eric Cruikshank’s New Paintings opens Feb. 20 and will continue through Mar. 31. hollyjohnsongallery.com 24 KIRK HOPPER FINE ART Chaos and Mayhem featuring Charmaine Locke and James Surls continues through Apr. 30. KHFA’s online magazine, Passage, serves as a forum for insights, dialogues, and connections at passagevision.com. kirkhopperfineart.com 25 KITTRELL/RIFFKIND ART GLASS Find an array of sculpture, goblets, jewelry, scent bottles, paperweights, platters, wall art, and other treasures large and small in a rotating selection of outstanding work by over 300 contemporary glass artists. kittrellriffkind.com 26 LAURA RATHE FINE ART RESILIENCE pays tribute to the challenges of the past while exploring a new chapter through a variety of inspiring new works of innovative media from artists such as Zhuang Hong Yi, Meredith Pardue, Stallman, Matt Devine, Lucrecia Waggoner, Carly Allen-Martin, Max Steven-Grossman and many more. On view Feb. 20–Mar. 27.
KENNY PIEPER “Ocean Diva”
27 LILIANA BLOCH GALLERY Regen is a return to directly utilizing the formal language of industrial objects as well as the relationships between objects from the vast metropolitan environment of New York City that surrounds Bret Slater, through Feb. 6. Nomin Bold’s first solo show in the US mounts Feb. 13–Mar. Bold joins the gallery’s international roster as one of the most prominent young contemporary artists in Asia. Image: Bret Slater, Strife, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 22.12 x 1.87 in. lilianablochgallery.com 28 MARTIN LAWRENCE GALLERIES The gallery is distinguished by artworks by Erté, Marc Chagall, Keith Haring, and others. martinlawrence.com 29 PHOTOGRAPHS DO NOT BEND The 1970s continues through Feb. 28. The exhibition highlights the conceptual change in art of 1970s photography. pdnbgallery.com
Offering Dallas’ finest selection of art glass!
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30 THE POWER STATION Full Length Mirror features Mathew Cerletty’s hyperreal portraits of mundane objects through Mar. 12. powerstationdallas.com
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SOUTHWEST GALLERY 4500 Sigma Rd. Dallas 972.960.8935
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31 SMU POLLOCK GALLERY Through Mar. 13, Driving Lessons: Thirteen Stories by Tim Coursey is composed of the artist’s original short fiction and drawings; it was created on the Risograph machine that is part of the gallery’s RISO BAR display. smu.edu/Meadows/AreasOfStudy/Art/PollockGallery 32 SWEET PASS SCULPTURE PARK Sweet Pass is an artist-run outdoor exhibition space located in West Dallas presenting the work of emerging and mid-career artists on a rotating basis. sweetpasssculpturepark.com 33 RO2 ART Ro2 Art Downtown shows James Talambas’ multimedia installation through Feb. 13 followed by a Yuni Lee and Jihye Han exhibit Feb. 20–Mar. 20. Jeff Parrott will also mount. Ro2 at The Cedars will feature Kai Peter Martin and James Zamora in Feb. and Ken Craft in Mar. Image: James Zamora, Mourning and Denial, 2020, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 72 in. ro2art.com 34 SAMUEL LYNNE GALLERIES Impossible Knots by Brandon Boyd continues through the spring. A Los Angeles native, Boyd is recognized as the vocalist and lead singer of the rock band Incubus, though he has been creating visual art since he was a child. This new body of work focuses on his continuous exploration of the nature of lines. samuellynne.com
35 SITE131 Though Mar.. 27, Site131 introduces a Nigerian American artist now living in Dallas in his first solo exhibition, Jeremiah Onifadé: surreal figures. Capturing what he keenly remembers from his native country, Onifadé’s narrative paintings serve as charming stories about the life he left. Singular, elegant, and dancelike figures stride across the canvas in a world all their own. Image: Jeremiah Onifadé, Portrait of a Young Boy With a Faltered Smile, 2020, acrylic and Garri on canvas, 48 x 36 in. site131.com 36 SMINK A showcase of fine design and furniture, the showroom also hosts exhibitions featuring Robert Szot, Gary Faye, Richard Hogan, Dara Mark, and Paula Roland. sminkinc.com 37 SOUTHWEST GALLERY SWG is looking forward to new beginnings by celebrating Spring Blooms as reflected in the work of Roberto Ugalde and highlighting his large vibrant-colored paintings through the month of Mar. Image: Roberto Ugalde, Cherry Blossom Riverside, oil on panel, 48 x 48 in. swgallery.com 38 TALLEY DUNN GALLERY picklock manual is a solo exhibition showcasing compositionally and chromatically exquisite works by acclaimed Swiss painter Pia
JOSH REAMES
RECLAIMING THE MOON February 6 - March 20
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136 glass st. suite 120
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“many moons”, acrylic on canvas, 2021, 68” x 48” (detail)
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Produce(d) Paintings
21 Fries. Fries’ spontaneous gestural paintings are, upon closer examination, prismatic collages of paint and printing techniques. Through Mar. 13. talleydunn.com
Stephen D’Onofrio
39 VALLEY HOUSE GALLERY Valley House will host Mark Messersmith: The Weight of Everything through Feb. 27. Next, David A. Dreyer: Cold Mountain Jam, Observatory will be on view Mar. 6–Apr. 17. Image: Mark Messersmith, The Weight of Everything, 2019, oil on canvas with carved wood pediment and mixed media predella, 87 x 65 in. valleyhouse.com
Open House Reception February 20
40 WAAS GALLERY Curated through a lens of sustainability, WAAS empowers artists to connect to their communities and facilitate societal change while offering a sanctuary to communicate artistic expression and immersion. waasgallery.com 41 WEBB GALLERY New paintings by Esther Pearl Watson and artwork by Powell St. John will be on view through Mar. 31. webbartgallery.com 42 WILLIAM CAMPBELL CONTEMPORARY ART Through Mar. 31, the gallery will host a group show featuring the artists of WCCA as well as a tribute show for the late artist James Blake. Image: James Blake, Kendal Castle, 2012, oil on canvas, 28.75 x 36 in. williamcampbellcontemporaryart.com AUCTIONS 01 DALLAS AUCTION GALLERY DAG’s Fine & Decorative Art Auction will be held on Feb. 17. dallasauctiongallery.com 02 HERITAGE AUCTIONS HA slated auctions for Feb/Mar. are: Urban Art Monthly Online Auction Feb. 3, In Focus: Banksy Special Online Auction Feb. 10, Fine & Decorative Arts Monthly Online Auction Feb. 11, Prints & Multiples Monthly Online Auction Feb. 17, RETROSPECTIVE Urban Art Online Auction Feb. 24, Photographs Monthly Online Auction Feb. 24, Come Fly with Me; Millard Sheets and the paintings behind the TWA Calendars Special Online Auction Feb. 26, Urban Art Monthly Online Auction featuring the Benham Collection Mar. 3, Urban Art Signature Auction–Dallas Mar. 11, Fine & Decorative Arts Monthly Online Auction Mar. 11, Art of the West Special Online Auction Mar. 12, International Comic & Animation Art Signature Auction–Dallas Mar. 13, Asian Art Signature Auction–New York Mar. 16, Prints & Multiples Monthly Online Auction Mar. 17, In Focus: Arsham Special Online Auction Mar. 24. ha.com
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A Timely Sort of Retrospective The Modern’s Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again surveys the currency of the work of the acclaimed Iranian-American artist. BY STEVE CARTER
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Clockwise from left: Shirin Neshat, Offered Eyes, 1993. © Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; Shirin Neshat, Untitled, from the Roja series, 2016. © Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; Shirin Neshat, Bonding, 1995. © Shirin Neshat. courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
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he oeuvre of Iranian American artist Shirin Neshat is epical, a journey that sings of East and West, political and personal, homeland and diaspora, the foreign and the familiar, yet always evincing a universality as riveting as a tale spun by Scheherazade. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again is a 30-year survey that celebrates the multidisciplinary artist’s photography and video work; it runs February 19 through May 16. The exhibition was curated by Ed Schad, curator at The Broad in Los Angeles, where the show originated. “I’ve had other surveys, but this is my favorite,” Neshat reveals. “It’s a timely sort of retrospective, beginning with my earliest work, Women of Allah, looking into Iran…and then my experience in the United States, as my whole life slowly changes, drifting away from Iran, looking at other cultures. And I think the most significant thing is that the last part of the show is taking place in America.”
OPENINGS Born in Qazvin, Iran, Neshat moved to Los Angeles with her sister in 1975, at the age of 17. At the end of that decade, the Islamic Revolution and then the Iran-Iraq war made it impossible for her to return home, and she became an exile, caught amidst the monarchal Iranian culture of her youth, the severity of post-revolution theocratic Iran, and her adopted United States. At every turn she was a stranger in a strange land. “I was studying art at UC Berkeley, but I wasn’t really committed as a serious artist,” she says. “I was living in a state of turmoil and anxiety because I was completely disconnected from my family, and I just lost all interest in art.” Even so, she completed her studies before moving to New York. She didn’t make art again until she was 33, following a cathartic return visit to Iran, her first in 11 years. “I became deeply invested in understanding the cause and effects of the Islamic Revolution, how it had transformed the country and my family,” she recalls. “I felt strongly that making art was my way of interpreting or processing my thoughts.” What soon resulted was Neshat’s most famous series of photographs, Women of Allah (1993–97). Primarily self-portraits, many of the stunning black-and-white large-format images are decorated by Neshat in ink—designs, poetry from Forugh Farrokhzad and Tahereh Saffarzadeh, or lines from novelist Moniru Ravanipur. The writing, in Farsi, is integral to the image, and the meticulous detail is breathtaking. Many of the portraits also feature guns—ominous, disquieting interjections. “My interest was in the force of the revolution and the transformation of the country to this fanaticism that turned Iran upside down,” the artist explains. “It was terrifying, but also tremendously interesting to see how a nation that had been so modern, Western, so liberal under the Shah suddenly became this ideological, extremely Islamic nation.” The Book of Kings (2012) and The Home of My Eyes (2015) are among the other immersive photographic installations on view. In the late ’90s, Neshat expanded her vision to video and film, and several works are featured in the exhibition, including Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999), and Passage (2001). Turbulent is her breakthrough, and it earned her the International Prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale. The ten-minute black-and-white split-screen video plays on opposite walls of a gallery: a male vocalist sings to a male audience in a concert hall, a bravura performance; afterwards, on the other screen, a female vocalist sings to the same hall, empty, an astonishing multitrack lamentation that seems to ululate from every woman in the world. “The focus was that Iranian women are forbidden from the experience of music as public performance,” Neshat says. “Everything was about opposites—black, white, full audience, empty audience, stationary camera, rotating camera, music that was classical, music that was guttural—the sheer power of music transcends our ethnic national differences and emotionally impacts people in a way that no words could.” The most recent work is Land of Dreams (2019), which involves photographs and videos. It’s particularly important to the artist because it’s set in the US, and Neshat, now a naturalized citizen, finally feels ready to create art that views her adopted homeland. Absurd, satirical, and surrealistic, the plot has a young Iranian photographer in New Mexico going door to door to shoot portraits and write down the dreams of her subjects. “Land of Dreams is really about my story as an Iranian exile living in America,” Neshat says. “In many ways this work is a critique of both the Iranian and American administrations, flawed people of power, the humanity of the people on both sides… Ultimately what’s powerful about dreams and nightmares is that they don’t know boundaries.” Neshat adds in conclusion, “I think the exhibition spells out the nomadic nature of who I am and my point of view—it’s just really a perfect circle.” P
Above: Shirin Neshat, Untitled (Women of Allah), 1996. © Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Below: Shirin Neshat, Ilgara, from The Home of My Eyes series, 2015. © Shirin Neshat, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.
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Cultural Ecologies of Asia Crow Museum’s Jacqueline Chao and Sapar Contemporary’s Nina Levent discuss their new show at Dallas Art Fair Projects. INTERVIEW BY JACQUELINE CHAO
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ew York and Almaty-based gallery Sapar Contemporary, in collaboration with the Dallas Art Fair, presents Cultural Ecologies of Asia, an exhibition featuring new works by contemporary Asian artists from Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, and the US, on view at Dallas Art Fair Projects. In this conversation, Jacqueline Chao, senior curator of Asian art of the Crow Museum of Asian Art
Above: Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Pear and Ranier Cherries, 2019, acrylic on linen, 16.12 x 27.12 in.; Below: Heeseop Yoon, Still Life With Bouquet, 2019, pen drawing collage on paper, 60 x 23 in.
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and curator of the exhibition, speaks with Nina Levent, director of Sapar Contemporary Gallery + Incubator, about the collaboration, the exhibiting artists, and the themes of the exhibition. Jacqueline Chao (JC): Nina, it has been a pleasure to work with you on this project and thank you again for the opportunity. We’ve actually known each other for quite some time, and I know you work quite often with other museums and museum curators when developing your programs. Nina Levent (NL): We have been fortunate to work with curators like yourself who are interested in global and expansive themes but are also experts in particular area, be it Asia, African Diaspora, textile art, artificial intelligence, or drawing. We have benefited tremendously from their expertise. I have written for and about museums for fifteen years before becoming the founding director of this gallery. I have been mostly focused on issues of multisensory museums and diverse museums audiences. I also edited a volume of Food & Museum; representation of food and nature is another interest of mine. Having worked with and trained museum professionals worldwide, I have come to appreciate the depth of expertise and knowledge that museum curators and educators accumulate. It is a privilege for us to work with someone like you, who has a broader Asian expertise and who is able to speak to the wider themes, cultural development, and iconographies of Asia. Could you elaborate more on the theme of the exhibition? JC: What stood out for me when getting to know the artists and reviewing the works was this idea of “ecology” and the study of the relationship between organisms (and humans like us) and our surroundings. Each artist in the exhibition is investigating or is inspired by their surroundings. The term “cultural ecologies” was a way to think about Asia as not singularly defined to one place, time, or idea, but rather as a complex and interrelated set of systems. Some of the artists in the exhibition address environmental issues more directly: Indonesian artist Mulyana creates colorful knit and crocheted sculptural installations featuring ocean corals; Shinji Turner-Yamamoto employs elemental materials such as trees, fossils, and minerals directly in his work; and Singapore-based Wyn-Lyn Tan’s painting practice is driven by her fascination with remote natural landscapes and how they connect across time and cultures. Other artists are responding to the cultural changes in their surroundings, such as Mongol Zurag painter Uuriintuya
FAIR TRADE Dagvasambuu, who integrates Mongolian and Buddhist motifs with contemporary themes as she chronicles the lives of everyday women in her post-nomadic homeland; Saule Dyussenbina, a Kazakh multimedia artist who mixes traditional Kazakh motifs with contemporary objects that touch on themes of human alternations of environment and urbanization; Brooklyn-based artist Heeseop Yoon, born and raised in Seoul, Korea, is known for her large-scale line drawing installations and intricate black-and-white drawings that deal with memory and perception within cluttered spaces. Malaysian artist Ahmad Zakii Anwar’s paintings of fruits engaged in intimate acts express his interests in portraying the psychological and cosmological inquiries of the human spirit and body within one’s environment. As a curator of Asian art, I was excited to work with you on this project because of your interest in Asian artists in lesser-known regions. Can you speak more to your gallery’s projects and involvements in Asia and with Asian artists? NL: As a gallery we have a very particular interest and investment in Asia, especially the lesser-known regions of Asia. Raushan Sapar, the gallery’s co-founder, is from Kazakhstan, so we have been exploring Central Asia, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia for many years. I have traveled widely in Asia for research and studio visits. Our Incubator program is focused on the greater Central Asian region. This is how we ended up representing important artists from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other countries in the region. This year all of my travel plans were canceled, but we stayed close to our artists in the region. JC: I am thrilled that this show is in Dallas, especially during these unprecedented times, as it brings hope and positivity as we step into 2021. NL: We have been showing in Dallas for as long as the gallery has existed. My annual trip to the Dallas Art Fair has become a ritual I look forward to. Over the years we have shown many of our Asian artists, who in turn have developed a steady following among Dallas collectors. Shinji-Turner Yamamoto, a Japanese American artist whose work we have brought to Dallas almost every year, has been included in a number of important collections in Texas. Heeseop Yoon, a Korean American artist, has drawn groups of local art students to our booth for the last few years—art professors from the University of North Texas brought students to discuss Heeseop’s astonishing mark-making and drawing skills. I was saddened like everyone that I could not come to Dallas in 2020, so this exhibition is really a way for us to be more creative and to collaborate with the Dallas Art Fair. We proposed something more thoughtful and ambitious than an art fair booth—we wanted to work on a curated show that is focused on one region but also shows unexpected, fresh, and exciting work from lesser-known regions of Asia. I hope that at a time when we cannot travel, this exhibition will offer an exciting and refreshing alternative. P
Mulyana, Bety 1 2020, yarn, Dacron, cable wire, plastic, net, 73.62 x 37.37 x 20.12.
Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu, Protected IV, acrylic on canvas, 56.25 x 21.75 in.
Jacqueline Chao, Ph.D. is Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Crow Museum of Asian Art of the University of Texas at Dallas. Since joining the museum in 2016, she has curated and organized over 20 exhibitions at the museum featuring works ranging from the historical to the contemporary in all media from artists from across the globe. A specialist in Chinese and Buddhist art, she is a widely published author and frequent lecturer on Asian Art. Nina Levent, Ph.D. is an art historian, a museum expert, and the founding director of SAPAR Contemporary Gallery + Incubator. Dr. Levent’s curatorial and research interests include multisensory art, figurative representations in Western and Eastern cultures, crossdisciplinary research on creativity and perception, and cultural inclusion in contemporary art. She is deeply interested in the rich sensory heritage of Central Asia and Caucasus.
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Elena Climent, Bookshelf of My Mother with Arab motifs, 1996, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art.
Mary-Anne Martin
ACCESSING LATIN AMERICAN ART Art dealer Mary-Anne Martin makes a lifelong commitment to the work of our Southern neighbors.
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BY CHRIS BYRNE
ary-Anne Martin is an influential figure who formed the seminal Latin American Art department at Sotheby’s in the late ’70s before opening her namesake fine art gallery in 1982 at Amster Yard in New York City. Four years later, the gallery, known for its scholarship and breadth of major Mexican and Latin American painters and the development of younger artists, moved to its current space in a Beaux arts townhouse at 23 East 73rd Street. In 1990, Martin acquired Frida Kahlo’s Diego y yo, marking the first time a Latin American artist broke the $1 million threshold at auction. Chris Byrne (CB): In 2010, I had the pleasure of organizing a symposium with you in Dallas—can you tell us about your history with the artist Frida Kahlo? Mary-Anne Martin (MAM): My first encounters with works by Frida Kahlo were when I was organizing the first Mexican auctions for Sotheby’s and was looking for consignments. Almost nothing was written about her in English, and art students in the US were not taught about her work. I had the good fortune to be introduced to the art historian Hayden Herrera, who was finishing up her doctoral thesis on Frida Kahlo, and we started trading information. If she located a painting by the artist she would tell me, and if I found one I would let her know. She wrote so well that Harper & Row offered to publish her thesis as a book, and things took off after that. The biography, complete with 35 color photographs and 96 black-andwhite illustrations, was released in 1983. It sounds funny now, but in those days it was almost unheard of to include so many photographs 32
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in a scholarly thesis by a commercial (not university) publisher. That was 37 years ago, and the book is still in print and read in many languages around the world. Over that same period of time Frida Kahlo has become a feminist icon and possibly one of the most faked artists of all time. That was the subject of the symposium in Dallas that you mention. My library shelves are buckling under the weight of the books on Frida Kahlo that have been printed since that first biography. CB: After working at Sotheby’s for over a decade, you became head of their paintings department and, maybe more importantly, the first female senior vice president and officer of the board. MAM: In those days it was difficult for women to advance in most companies. Feminist writers enjoined us to “throw away our typewriters,” and a book in 1977 told us to “dress for success.” I remember a British print expert telling me it was a waste of time and money to train women as cataloguers because they just got married and had babies and left the firm. To make things more difficult, Sotheby’s was a British company, having acquired Parke-Bernet Galleries, an old American firm, and they were even less informed about women’s lib than the Americans. I was lucky in a way because one of the British experts (who was exactly one year older than I was) thought I had a good eye for art and taught me how to look at paintings. It’s a lot different from standing in a museum behind a velvet rope, and I found I had my true calling. When I joined the board, he taught me how to listen and say very little. That turned out to be the secret for women to be considered brilliant and “team players.”
CONTEMPORARIES CB: In 1977 you organized the first auction of Mexican paintings in the US. Were you pleased with the reception? Was this the impetus for you to found the Latin American Art department at Sotheby’s? MAM: Your question makes it sound more “corporate” than it was in those days. We discovered there was a demand, and then we gave it a name. I chose “Latin American Art” because Mexico is in North America, so we could not say “South American Art.” Latin American seemed to cover all bases, although things have changed a great deal since the 1970s in the US, and the department has been cancelled and then revived a few times since then. At this time Christie’s, which entered the competition in the early ’80s, has kept their Latin American department and auctions without a break. In my own case, I found that no one stopped me from experimenting if things went well, and if they didn’t go well I found out soon enough (at bonus time). The first Mexican sale was successful, and it had some useful side effects. For example, US museums and American collectors who had owned or inherited Mexican works from the ’30s and ’40s suddenly noticed that there was an opportunity to sell them at auction in New York. I started traveling to Mexico regularly, and collectors there were excited to learn that high quality Mexican art (including portable Diego Rivera murals originally painted for his first one-man show at MoMA New York in 1931) was available in New York. When they arrived at Sotheby’s, they found other things of interest as well, such as jewelry, antique furniture, and Impressionist art. The auctions (which I convinced our CEO should be held in the evening) became a regular social event for prominent collectors such as Jacques and Natasha Gelman, David Rockefeller, Peter Wray, Dolores Olmedo, and many others. CB: Since opening a gallery dedicated to Mexican and Latin American art in 1982, you’ve fostered relationships with members of the Dallas/Fort Worth
Nahum B. Zenil, Christ of the Column II, 1986, mixed media on paper, 11.5 x 8.25 in. Courtesy of Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art.
community. MAM: In fact, I had a serious relationship with one of Dallas’ great collectors, Stanley Marcus, long before I left Sotheby’s to start a gallery. He was an avid collector of Mexican art and had Cubist Riveras, paintings by Gunther Gerzso, pre-Columbian antiquities, and a rare and famous little painting by Antonio Ruiz (el Corcito) of a rabble-rousing dictator standing on a chair and haranguing a crowd of pumpkins. Every year Mr. Marcus would write me a oneline letter asking me how much the painting was worth in today’s market. The big challenge for me was to compose a reply that took up less than three pages. It was for that reason that he was a great success in business and I was not. And he was a true collector, meaning that he did not stop buying art because he was old or because he ran out of wall space. He visited my gallery whenever he was in New York. I remember that he bought a collage by the Veracruz indigenous artist Nahum B. Zenil when he was 91, and a painting by Elena Climent when he was 92! I still cherish a painting by Gunther Gerzso called Southern Queen that came from Stanley and Billie Marcus’ collection. Many people have asked me for it, but I have always smiled and said it wasn’t for sale. Other passionate collectors and experts on Mexican art in Dallas who have become friends and advisors include Dr. Salomon Grimberg, who has written extensively on Frida Kahlo and who is now preparing a definitive catalogue raisonné on the work of Leonora Carrington. And Agustín Arteaga, whose career I have followed from Mexico City, to Ponce, Puerto Rico, to the MALBA in Buenos Aires, and finally to Dallas. It is so exciting to know you have a new director of the Dallas Museum of Art who is a genuine expert in Mexican and Latin American art, and who has strong connections with major museums around the world. P
Antonio Ruiz, (Mexican, 1897–1964), El líder/orador, 1939, oil on canvas laid on panel, 12.4 x 8.7 in. Courtesy of Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art.
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THE REST OF THE STORY
Area museums broaden collections to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. BY NANCY COHEN ISRAEL
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hile 2020 upended exhibition calendars and museum programs, it did not slow the acquisition of new works. Several of these additions reflect initiatives dedicated to filling in gaps and focusing on the work of underrepresented artists. Others were made possible through the largesse of patrons. And two museums received direct gifts from living artists. In this time of reassessment for museums worldwide, these acquisitions overwhelmingly mark a milestone towards equity and inclusion at North Texas institutions. Last February the Amon Carter Museum of American Art created an initiative to bring images by contemporary indigenous artists into its expansive photography collection. Soon after it made its first acquisition with Wendy Red Star’s Accession, a 15-print series of montages melding archival and contemporary images that explore the nexus between Red Star’s indigenous culture and colonist structures. The Carter also added new works exploring the Latinx experience. Justin Favela’s recent yearlong immersive installation at the museum, Puente Nuevo! may be familiar to many. Several of his smaller works on paper have now permanently entered the collection. Archi-props, After Ed Ruscha is a suite of eight lithographs that borrows the aesthetics of minimalism, though interpreted through the lens of Favela’s own Guatemalan-Mexican-American culture. In Aluminio/Hoja I, Favela uses aluminum foil on BFK Rives paper as the support. The image of a corn husk in this color screenprint pays homage to the tamale makers in Favela’s family while co-opting a process typically credited to white male artists. Sandy Rodriguez, conversely, incorporates elements of indigenous Mexican craft, such as Otomi paper making and Puebla clay, into her work. You will not be forgotten, Mapa for the children killed in custody of US Customs and Border Protection is a hand-processed watercolor map blending memory with current events to capture this haunting story. Charles White’s lithographic triptych, Love Letter I, Love Letter II and Love Letter III also entered the Carter collection. The first two works honor Civil Rights activists Angela Davis and the late Fannie Lou Hamer, respectively. Love Letter III celebrates the strength, courage, and dignity of Black women. White uses the conch shell to represent creativity and the life-giving power of women. Wangechi Mutu’s regal, newly acquired Seated III at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth also pays homage to women. It comes from her 2019 series, Seated I, II, III and IV, commissioned for the niches within the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Much like London’s Fourth Plinth, the Met recently decided to activate these unused spaces through rotating installations of contemporary sculpture. Interested in caryatids and inspired by high-ranking African women, Mutu created figures enrobed in a protective layer of coils. These are accessorized with polished discs reminiscent of lip plates, which reflect light as well as the changing world around them. In Dallas, the generosity of the Kaleta A. Doolin Fund for Women Artists at the Nasher Sculpture Center has made three acquisitions possible over the past 18 months, including Judy Chicago’s Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks and Maren Hassinger’s Field. Chicago’s early installation, dating from the 1960s, is comprised of 12 colorful, monochromatic squares and rectangles. This work, with its myriad installation possibilities, ties together the geometric minimalism of the New York school with the bold palette favored by the West Top: Wendy Red Star, Catalogue Number 1935.33.a,b , 2019, inkjet print, 18 x 28 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, © Wendy Red Star; Middle: Sandy Rodriguez (b. 1975), You will not be forgotten, Mapa for the children killed in custody of US Customs and Border Protection, Protection 2019, hand-processed watercolor and 23k gold on amate paper, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas. Purchased with funds provided by the Paper Forum of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 2020, © 2019 Sandy Rodriguez; Bottom: Melvin Edwards (American, b. 1937), ‘Five to the Bar,’ 1973, Welded steel and barbed wire, 14 x 20.5 x 20 in., Nasher Sculpture Center. Gift of the artist in honor of his mother, Thelma Felton Edwards. Photograph courtesy of Gray Associates, New York; Friedman Gallery, London, © Melvin Edwards/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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AQUISITIONS Coast minimalists. Minimalism influences Hassinger’s work in a different way. Using a geometric grid as her starting point, she weaves inert material, such as the wire rope in Field, into an organic form referencing living plants. The effect suggests the straddling of industry and the natural world. The Nasher’s collection was further enhanced last fall by Melvin Edwards’ generous gift of four sculptures and two drawings. Selected with Catherine Craft, who curated his 2015 retrospective at the Nasher, the Houston-born, New York–based artist donated work dating from the 1970s to the present. He made the gift in memory of his parents, Melvin Edwards, Sr. and Thelma Felton Edwards. Already encyclopedic in time and place, the collection at the Dallas Museum of Art is further expanded with the diversity within lived experiences. In the past year, the DMA has commissioned two paintings from Dallas-based Jammie Holmes, featured prominently in the exhibition To Be Determined. Dallas artist Oshay Green’s Untitled, a cement, black pigment, and resin painting, also entered the collection. Proceeds from the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art auction made it possible for the DMA to acquire Misha Kahn’s mash-up of furniture and sculpture in the bronze Tingle Tangle Mingle Mangle and Ian Cheng’s interactive video, BOB (Bag of Beliefs), first seen at the 2019 Venice Biennale. And in advance of Naudline Pierre’s upcoming exhibition, the museum acquired her painting Lest You Fall. The DMA also expanded its robust collection of African art with the addition of Mask with chin extensions. This early 20th-century work comes from the Pende people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Contemporary art at the Meadows Museum received a boost through the acquisition of two paintings by Secundino Hernández, whose studio patrons visited through a museum-sponsored tour of the ARCOmadrid international fair. The Meadows acquired Hernández’s monumental painting, Untitled (2019), as a result of this visit. After coming to the museum himself in March, Hernández donated one of his “palette paintings,” Orígenes Secretos, to the museum. Its lush, heavily textured surface offers a counterpoint to the placidity of Untitled, from the “monochrome series.” Growing its modernist collection, the Meadows acquired A Baby Rolling Over by the Catalonian sculptor Agustín Querol y Subirats. While Querol’s large-scale sculptural groupings in stone and bronze grace public buildings throughout Spain and Latin America, this modest terra-cotta is one of the sculptor’s few works in the United States. Acquisitions by their very nature are selected to strengthen or broaden a museum’s collection. These particular works reflect an urgency to respond to the social upheaval of the past year and to address systemic voids. In this age of reckoning, they will shape the story of our time and enhance these institutions for future generations. P
Above: Ian Cheng, BOB (Bag of Beliefs), 2018-2019, artificial lifeform dimensions variable, infinite duration Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund. Photographs by David Regen. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Installation view, Ian Cheng: BOB, at Gladstone Gallery, New York, 2019; Below: Misha Kahn, Tingle Tangle Mingle Mangle, designed 2017, made 2019, bronze table, component A: 31.5 x 88 x 28 in., uppermost bronze element, component B: 29.5 x 17 x 2 in., Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2020. Image courtesy of Friedman Benda and Misha Kahn.
From left: Secundino Hernández (Spanish, b. 1975), Orígenes Secretos (Secret Origins),, 2020, acrylic, alkyd, and oil on linen, 55.5 x 36.625 in. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Gift of the artist. Photograph by Kevin Todora; Agustín Querol y Subirats (1864–1909), A Baby Rolling Over, 1884–87, terra-cotta, 15.75 x 25.25 x 8.75 in., Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Given by Michael P. Mezzatesta in honor of William B. Jordan; Wangechi Mutu, The Seated III, 2019, bronze. 82.825 x 37.75 x 33.75 in. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, The Friends of Art Endowment Fund and Museum purchase. © Wangechi Mutu. Image courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, and Brussels. Photograph by Joseph Coscia, Jr., Imaging, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Channeling Breath to Trace the Contours of Sound Dennis González’ rich tapestries of experimental jazz and sonics expand with Nights Enter. BY BRANDON KENNEDY
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few decades back, on a Saturday morning, an unexpected visitor arrived at the Oak Cliff doorstep of one of Dallas’ foremost jazz trumpet players. The man knocking at the door happened to be the principal trumpet player of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and he announced that he was leaving his post there to pursue a monastic life in Spain. He was dropping out entirely and offered Dennis González the opportunity to buy his custom trumpets before he departed. A C trumpet immediately caught González’s eye (and ears). But he knew he and his wife were in no position to spend the money on such a horn, so he had to decline. Somewhat bizarrely, the gentleman insisted and accepted the $75 cash they had—well below the instrument’s value. Dennis spent many years learning the particular character of this trumpet (having played a B-flat trumpet for many years), his breath and phrasing finding its place as his tone aligned with the intervals and timbre of this individual vessel. Once a horn finds its owner, a calling emerges from within, your sensibility and approach finding the balance as the trumpet eventually becomes an extension of your voice. Several years later the man returned from his unsuccessful spiritual sojourn and came to collect his horn. Having spent at least three years forging a relationship with what was now his instrument of choice, González refused to relent. The man persisted, got aggravated, and was eventually asked to leave, without the horn. Ataraxia is a state of serene tranquility and calmness, an apt descriptor for González’ jazz trio. Plaintive tones and questioning phrasing often round out the way González’s enters and exits within a tune. Never bent on pushing an insistent melody or remaining front and center, González allows plenty of breathing room between repeated queries, variations of approach, and within open song 36
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structures. This allows players to solo (such as the exuberant bowed charge by Drew Phelps on the evocative Sita on Nights Enter) while the rich revolutions of Derek Rogers’ sonics act as a changing foundation for each musician to negotiate in turn, whether by means rhythmic, melodic, or improvisational. Jagath Lakpriya’s steady rhythm and spare ornamentation move the songs along with a steady tabla beat. The trio sings joyfully together on their debut double-LP Ts’iibil Cháaltun on González’s own daagnim records, released in 2017. The recently released Dark Night opens with some eerie atmospherics, erratic bells and shakers that get set in motion by Phelps’ post-bop repeating electric bass line. Along with Lakpriya on tabla and djembe, Phelps and González make up the core of Ataraxia
MUSIC Trio. Also enlisted on this sophomore album are Rogers on Moog and Jess Garland on harp, both adding a significant layer of texture and harmonics. Garland is featured on only a handful of songs, marked with shimmering climbs and stereo-panning sweeps. Rogers lays the foundation for the album, utilizing avariety of electronic, drone, ambient, and analog textures to set the tone. The album was recorded in the late summer and early fall months of 2020 at Klearlight Studio in Dallas and was beautifully engineered and mastered by Jimi Bowman. In June of 2020, Rogers sent González some sounds that he had created while experimenting with his new analog Moog synthesizer, which would become the first threads of Nights Enter. The two men had played together a few times before; their initial collaboration was performing at the opening of an exhibition I curated in October 2017 at the Karpidas Collection, a private art museum in Dallas. A 2018 performance at the Texas Theater resulted in their initial recorded offering, certain aspects, which consists of a hauntingly beautiful twenty-one-minute dialogue. The 1980s were a watershed decade for González’s playing and recording. He was involved in a number of projects in the former Yugoslavia, conducting orchestras and being invited to play at festivals between greats like Sun Ra and Lester Bowie (missing the opportunity due to a tardy mailed invitation). In 1987, Swedish record label Silkheart enlisted González, as a dozen projects were recorded in Dallas including musicians Charles Brackeen, who played with both Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman, and Ahmed Abdullah, who played with Sun Ra. In addition to his musical pursuits, González taught French and mariachi at North Dallas High School for several decades and hosted a show called Miles Out on KERA for 21 years. His adult sons Stefan and Aaron are both musicians in their own right—drums and bass respectively—and first collaborated with their dad in Stefan’s hard-leaning Akkolyte, originally a solo project while they were still in school. Come the millennium, they formed the cleverly named trio Yells at Eels. This new incarnation opened up the experimental expanses of jazz and improv, incorporating the various influences of a musical family brought together by Stefan’s muscular cadences, Aaron’s ponderous searching, and interplay with Dennis leading the harmonious conversations. After facing a series of health-related setbacks in recent years, González also finds joy and solace both in his visual art practice and his seven-year-old granddaughter, Issy. A few years back, as he was preparing artwork for his first exhibition in ten years, the then-toddler Issy grabbed a marker and began to scribble aggressively all over his largest work. Initially nonplussed, the loving grandfather soon took it as a sign of interest in collaborating and left it as is. In May of this past year, Ayler Records Executive Producer Stéphane Berlant saw a collaborative drawing of Dennis and Issy’s on Facebook and asked to use for the cover of their next release. The music didn’t exist as of yet, but Rogers was grafting the foundation. Berlant commented, “We have the cover, now where’s the music?” Thankfully, ten months later, we’re able to receive its expansive offerings and thoughtful collaborations in a time of need and reflection. As González said to me: “Just breathe deeply, let it fill you…spiritual music is so full of breath, like somebody trying to sing through a horn…the horn is the voice.” Nights Enter by Dennis González’s Ataraxia Trio +2 is available March 20, on Ayler Records at ayler.com. P
This page: Untitled collaborative art by Isabella Anaïs Sisk-González and Dennis González. Opposite, above: Ataraxia Trio from left to right: Jagath Lakpriya, Derek Rogers, Dennis González, Drew Phelps, Jess Garland. Photograph by Ginger Berry. Below: Night Enter cover art by Isabella Anaïs Sisk-González and Dennis González.
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At a specific time and place During the height of the immigration crisis, Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong visits Texas border cities to paint portraits of local residents for an exhibition at Dallas Contemporary. BY DANIELLE AVRAM 38
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Liu Xiaodong, At the Casa del Migrante in Juรกrez, 2019, oil on canvas, 118.12 x 197 in. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.
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I
t sounds like the setup to a bad joke: A Chinese artist travels to the Texas-Mexico border amidst the current immigration crisis to paint portraits of local residents. However, it’s not a joke, but the story of Beijing-based Liu Xiaodong and the works he created for his solo exhibition, Borders, at the Dallas Contemporary. Hailing from a small industrial town in northeastern China’s Liaoning province, Liu attended high school in Beijing before studying painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he has been a professor since 1994. He is associated with the “New Generation” of contemporary Chinese Realism: artists who came of age in the 1980s and ’90s, at a time when Chinese art was caught between Socialist Realism, a nationalistic movement dominated by glorified depictions of traditional communist ideals, and postCultural Revolution contemporary-art influences. Liu was also part of the throng of peaceful protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989, during which hundreds (in some reports thousands) of civilian protesters were massacred by the Chinese government. The incident left a lasting impression on the artist, and his career has since been fixated on capturing everyday people caught in the midst of potentially fraught situations. Using a combination of videography, referential sketches, photographs, and en plein air painting, Liu explores global problems such as environmental crises, economic and societal upheaval, and the treatment of minority populations. Although his works encompass broad social issues, Liu focuses on his own accounts of moments at specific times and places; his paintings are empathetic exercises in capturing slivers of contemporary existence.
Above: Liu Xiaodong. Photograph by Wei Bing. Clockwise from top left: Liu Xiaodong, Mountains and River, 2019, oil on canvas, 118.12 x 98.5 in. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong; Liu Xiaodong, Policemen in the Park, 2019, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 118 in. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong; Liu Xiaodong, Chatting, 2020, oil on canvas, 98.50 x 118.12 in.; Liu Xiaodong, A Wall that Can Turn Around, 2019, oil on canvas, 23.75 x 27.50 in.
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Liu Xiaodong, In Marfa, 2019, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 118 in. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.
“I only paint the world I see. I usually choose to depict ordinary people’s daily lives. By describing the lives of all kinds of ordinary people, I shape a multifaceted lifestyle. That is to say, by looking at a part, we can experience a kind of overall lifestyle and spirit.” –Liu Xiaodong
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“I only paint the world I see,” he explains. “I usually choose to depict ordinary people’s daily lives. By describing the lives of all kinds of ordinary people, I shape a multifaceted lifestyle. That is to say, by looking at a part, we can experience a kind of overall lifestyle and spirit.” Liu’s subjects have ranged from the jade pickers of Hotan, China (Hotan Project), to the occupants of two pubs and a café located mere steps from his London gallery, Lisson Gallery (Half Street). One of his most recent projects, the Berlin-based Transgender/Gay, depicts the lives of transgender woman Sasha Maria von Halbach and gay Chinese artist Isaac Hong. In 2016, he created arguably his most famous work: an automated painting machine titled Weight of Insomnia, which uses a robotic arm to paint images streaming from a digital video feed of a public location. The resulting works capture an extended period of time from a single, locked image, showing the constant regeneration of earthly spaces. People become ghostly images or diffused into the abyss of highly trafficked pathways, birds and clouds are speckled across the sky, and buildings shiver with the movement of the sun. Borders falls in line with Liu’s more traditional painting process. The basis for the exhibition began in 2018, when Dallas Contemporary director Peter Doroshenko was in Beijing, touring artists’ studios. During that trip he visited the studio of Liu’s wife, Yu Hong, also an accomplished painter. Yu encouraged Doroshenko to visit her husband’s studio, where he was instantly struck by the artist’s imagery and process. “Liu only had one painting he was working on, but I was completely engaged,” says Doroshenko. “It was very moving and able to capture a moment almost like film or photography. I couldn’t let it go.” Later that year the two reconvened in New York, where Doroshenko invited Liu to consider a project in Texas. Given the prevalence of coverage the US-Mexico border crisis had received all over the world, Liu opted to visit the Texas region of the border. He spent nearly five weeks in early 2019 and four in early 2020 driving
Liu Xiaodong, Boundary River, 2019, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 118.12 in. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.
along and traversing it from side-to-side, visiting Ciudad Juárez, El Paso, Eagle Pass, Piedras Negras, Laredo, and Nuevo Laredo. As do so many people who visit politically charged situations, Liu discovered that life in the area was both similar to and quite different from what is depicted by the media. Despite the ubiquity of border patrol and police officers, there is a casualness to everyday life at the border, far from the state of emergency espoused by certain political factions. It’s not uncommon for people to live in one country and work or attend school in the other, driving or walking across the border on a daily basis. While in Eagle Pass Liu befriended the local sheriff and even attended a barbecue at his home. The resulting painting, Tom, his Family, and his Friends, shows the sheriff seated at a table in his backyard next to a smoking grill, a mix of family, friends, and police officers—including one on horseback—in the background. Like many of Liu’s on-site paintings, which take one to two weeks to complete, the narrative is comprised of multiple sessions in the same location, with myriad events folded into a single image. The painting is one of ten included in the exhibition, alongside over 60 drawings and photographs and a short film documenting Liu’s border travels. “I’m pretty fast, and I can generally finish one large work in two weeks. By painting on-site, you can also convey in the painting the changes over time; for instance, the weather may be different every day, and this can reflect in every corner of the picture. This way the painting is filled with fortuity and sense of time.” While it’s impossible to resist trying to tease apart the painting’s individual moments, the strength of Liu’s work lies in his ability to convey an immediate sense of belonging. You cannot help but be thrust directly into the scene. What may have sounded like the beginning of a bad joke is instead the realization that it often takes an outsider to reveal what is going on in your own backyard. A Chinese artists travels to the Texas-Mexico border to demonstrate that amidst an international humanitarian crisis, humanity still exists. P
Liu Xiaodong, Boundary River, 2019, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 118.12 in. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.
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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly emerges this spring at The Dallas Opera. BY LEE CULLUM
Elaine McCarthy’s projections work on the set of 2015’s Iolanta, created by The Dallas Opera. Photograph by Karen Almond, Dallas Opera.
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he Dallas Opera is back! It’s about to become the first company in America to be on stage again, with the topflight troupe that brought us Everest—composer Joby Talbot, librettist Gene Scheer, and director Leonard Foglia—in a new work called The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly. “This is the team I love to dance with,” says Elaine McCarthy, a genius of projections who makes all things new, exciting, and every inch today. There’s not a whiff of yesteryear about McCarthy, unless
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it’s the 1790 house in Norwalk, CT she and her family have been restoring for 17 years. Indeed, McCarthy’s astonishing augmentation of the set did much to make Everest and Moby Dick such breakthrough successes, performed many times after their premiere in Dallas— unusual for new operas. “They trust me,” she confides in a telephone interview. I suspect that means she can pretty much do what she wants. Though not entirely, not this time, Foglia tells me, also by phone, from his Virginia home in the Shenandoah mountains, west
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly composer Joby Talbot. Photograph courtesy of Joby Talbot.
Librettist Gene Scheer. Photograph © 2010 Robert W. Hart.
Leonard Foglia at the Santa Fe Opera. Photograph by Kate Russell.
of Washington. “I wanted to create it at this moment as a teaser, a preview of what the production would be” without the constraints of COVID. Ever and above all else theatrical, Foglia has fantastic material to work with in Diving Bell. Like Everest, Talbot explains, speaking from London where he spends the part of the year he’s not at his place in Oregon, this latest venture “is about big things…that can happen: life, death, love, happiness.” “The story has music in it,” Scheer averred after they both saw the movie by Julian Schnabel and then read the book by JeanDominique Bauby. That is where Foglia’s flair for drama comes in. Jean-Do, played by baritone Lucas Meachem, is bedridden or in a wheelchair when we meet him, felled by a stroke at 44, when he was riding high as a celebrated journalist editing Elle magazine in Paris. Deprived of speech and movement except for his left eyelid, Jean-Do uses that eyelid to dictate the book on which this opera is based, blinking at each letter he wants to use so Claude, a ghostwriter, can take down the text. This they do—or, actually, did—four hours a day for ten months. Singing Claude at the Winspear will be Deanna Breiwick, known to Dallas’ online audiences for her yoga lessons and Living Your Best Life on TDO Network. She spoke to me from her parents’ house in Seattle, where’s she been camping in since COVID brought her back last March from a Rossini gig in Monte Carlo. Based for three years in Zurich with her own apartment, she now lives on the road when working, staying in Airbnbs or subletting short-term apartments. For Diving Bell she’s found a spot near White Rock Lake where Fritz, her Pomeranian, can enjoy the outdoors. Jean-Do “blinked a novel formed in his mind,” notes Andrew Bidlack, on the phone from his home in Maryland. A riveting tenor
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who led the climb in Everest, Bidlack this time plays an “arrogant” doctor who “sees the patient as a data set rather than a person.” And he knows something about doctors, having had emergency surgery last August when a glass jar broke in his hand while he was doing the dishes. It damaged his flexor tendon to the point that he “couldn’t move the thumb at all.” He’s recovered now, though, and luckily can still play the piano. Condescending to Jean-Do on stage, he nonetheless feels in his own heart “grateful to him that he put forth the effort” to the write Diving Bell and the Butterfly, really “a set of essays.” “A lot of things were left unsaid in his life,” he adds. “It will translate well to opera.” Chief translator, of course, is Scheer, master librettist of Moby Dick and Everest. His genius lies in his meticulous attention to original sources—Melville’s novel in the case of Moby Dick and extensive interviews for Everest and Diving Bell, both based on factual accounts. Indeed, he draws so skillfully on those conversations, it’s hard to know where they leave off and he begins, or vice versa. Hence the intense authenticity of his work. Scheer does a lot to bring Jean-Do to life, writing reveries, memories, fantasies, which he leaps off his bed to sing, though people in the room with him have no idea this is happening; it’s all in his head. It’s also a great relief to Meachem, he tells me from his home near Minneapolis. “I never leave the stage. It’s exhausting.” And very difficult to sing when you’re stuck in a hospital bed in a rehab center on the Channel coast of France and can’t move anything, not even, visibly, to breathe. Scheer says he’ll try “lying on the floor to practice.” Deanna Breiwick will make her Dallas Opera debut in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Photograph by Daniel Volland.
Andriana Chuchman, who charmed Dallas audiences as Magnolia in TDO's spectacular Show Boat, returns in a dual role. Photograph by Karen Almond.
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Tenor Andrew Bidlack and Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke made strong impressions as Rob and Jan Hall in The Dallas Opera’s 2015 world premiere of Everest. Both return for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Photograph by Karen Almond.
Tenor Richard Croft, UNT Professor of Voice. Courtesy of Richard Croft.
Lucas Meachem stars as Jean-Dominique Bauby. Photograph courtesy of Lucas Meachem.
Like Talbot and Scheer, Meachem has been to Paris in recent months. (He was last there rehearsing Carmen, which got cancelled.) One day, by chance, while shopping for carryout lunch, he happened into a Star Wars-themed bar, and who should own it but Jean-Do’s son, Theo. Lucas Meachem introduced himself as an American baritone about to sing the role of his father in an opera. Of course, Scheer met Theo too, and took a train to the Channel coast to see the hospital setting with Theo’s sister, Celeste, and their mother, Sylvie, Jean-Do’s estranged partner at the time of his stroke. He was having an affair that had ruptured his relationship with the mother of his children—“a lovely lady,” according to Talbot. Sylvie may in fact be the pivotal person in Diving Bell. (She is for me in the movie.) Sylvie is played by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, who tells me by phone from Houston, where she lives with her baritone husband and two daughters, that Sylvie is the one through whom we know Jean-Do. The same thing happened, she says, when she played Laurene Powell Jobs, wife, then widow, of Steve Jobs, in an opera about him in Santa Fe. “Jobs is revealed through Laurene,” Cooke points out, “and Jean-Do through Sylvie [who] reveals that relationship… She deeply loves him. Basically, they are still married, or together.” Dallas audiences who saw Everest will remember Cooke’s final scene with Bidlack. She is at home, pregnant with their first child, on a patched-in call to him, her husband, stuck in a storm on the brooding mountain where he will not last the frozen night. “It was hard not to cry,” she admits (so does Bidlack), and singing Sylvie is the same. Cooke so inhabits a role that I didn’t notice what a powerful voice she has until watching her on YouTube. “Some singers focus on hitting the high notes,” she observes. “Some like me are interested in the music.” As well she might be with Diving Bell;
Talbot wrote Sylvie for her. Scheer has drawn upon 30 hours of interviews to shape the spine of this opera. To that he has added a startlingly brilliant leap of imagination: Learning that Jean-Do had a contract to write a novel based on The Count of Monte Cristo, Scheer has incorporated Abbé Faria from the book by Dumas into the internal churning of the locked-in mind of this suddenly silenced bon vivant from the world of French journalism. Sung by Richard Croft, currently at the University of North Texas, whose tenor voice is supple and subtle enough to play Gandhi at the Met, the abbé befriends Dantès, who becomes the Count of Monte Cristo. They are together in a dungeon where both have been tossed unjustly. The abbé “teaches him Greek, math, a classical education,” as Croft puts it. In the opera he becomes a spiritual guide to Jean-Do, with whom, says Foglia, he “can work out his situation.” Mercedes, lost love of Dantès, also appears from The Count of Monte Cristo and is sung by Andriana Chuchman, who calls this character “a stranger but strangely familiar.” Chuchman also plays Sandrine, a speech therapist. It is Sandrine who devises the alphabet system that allows Jean-Do to write his book with thousands upon thousands of blinks. He calls her his guardian angel. At home in Winnipeg, Chuchman, like all the others, is thrilled to be doing new work—or any work at all. It’s been a long drought since March. Careful to give nothing away, McCarthy does however allude to a “transformation” at the end. What transformation, I wonder? There certainly was nothing like that in the film. Finally, after a lot of listening, I find out, but dare not disclose it. That scene, the pièce de résistance by Scheer, made miraculous, no doubt, by the elegant sounds of Talbot, will be worth the price of admission and much more. P
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THE NEW BRUTALISM
LIGHT AND SHADOW ADD DIMENSION TO A PRESTON HOLLOW HOME WITH CUSTOM-FABRICATED CONCRETE WALLS DESIGNED BY SPECHT ARCHITECTS. BY PEGGY LEVINSON PHOTOGRAPHS BY CASEY DUNN
A view from the infinity edge pool looking into the living room. Chaise lounges by Richard Schultz for Knoll. The wall is surrounded by a stream of water that spills into the pool in back.
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The defining Brutalist architectural feature is a solid-pour concrete wall corrugated on one side and polished on the other.
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reston Hollow is an old section of North Dallas mostly comprising narrow, winding streets with large lots intersected by creeks and woods. It’s also where recent transplants from Austin found the perfect piece of property for their new home—secluded yet in the middle of Dallas and hidden from other houses yet next to an outdoor sculpture garden. Next, the newcomers made it their mission to find the perfect team to help realize their dream of having a home in which the lines were blurred between inside and outside. They did their homework by traveling and researching several residential projects that Specht Architects had completed in the Northeast. They wanted an individual design that was uniquely their own and wouldn’t be executed for other clients. What they saw in these other homes convinced them that Sprecht could accomplish this. The next important task was finding an interior design firm that would create the modernist design—simple and straightforward—they envisioned for their busy lifestyle. They were drawn to Magni Kalman Design in Los Angeles, allured by their created environments of sumptuous luxury but with the
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The breakfast room, with a custom marble table and BRNO chairs for Knoll, vintage Arredoluce chandeliers, and Jason Willaford’s paintings Cinnabar Green, Pink Madder, and Hydrangea Blue from Galleri Urbane.
Open kitchen with white counters, wood cabinets, and Alo barstools by Poltrona Frau.
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clean lines and uncluttered spaces of good modern design. Then, because the idea of the home as part of the environment rather than sitting atop a landscaped yard was so vital to the project, the choice of landscape designer was integral. They enlisted the firm of David Hocker, whose clear mission was to establish the landscape as a link between the architecture and site, and whose work is anchored in the area’s geography and climate. They hired the venerable contracting firm Sebastian & Associates to realize their vision. Seen from the street the home evokes the Brutalist architecture of the midcentury. Two giant monolithic concrete walls at right angles create the intersection forming the spine of the structure. Brutalism often features raw, unadorned concrete (béton brut in French), appearing permanent and impenetrable. Scott Specht explains, “Brutalist architecture is meant to age in place, to appear as something permanent in a chaotic world.” Juxtaposed with that, a floating roof creating clerestory windows around the perimeter makes the structure appear light and airy, and ample use of glass and white stucco softens the austere concrete walls. Water features abound, with a narrow band of water gently surrounding the north-south axis of the house. “We used ancient Asian and Roman techniques, like the courtyard impluvium that collects rainwater in pools,” says Specht. In every aspect, the house relates to the nature around it. Operable glass walls in most of the rooms allow the invisible interaction. “It’s a manicured and formal design with the architecture dissolving into the landscape elements, which in turn transition into the surrounding
The living room has a corrugated concrete fireplace wall and custom rug by Mansour Modern. The barrel chairs and curved sofa are by Magni Modern. Ib Kofod-Larsen Elizabeth chairs.
woodlands,” says David Hocker. In fact, every bit of land was used, including the outer edges, where Hocker designed a bamboo forest screen with walkways throughout, creating an informal maze. The pool along the north-south axis utilizes the slope of the land, with an infinity edge going down to a creek. Even with all the windows and glass doors, the clients didn’t want to be confronted with the glare of direct sunlight. To that end, Specht prepared computerized sun studies so that the house would be completely shaded in all seasons. The major tenet of Magni Kalman design is to blend architecture and interiors—“like a glove should be seamless,” says Jim Magni. In fact, the Magni-designed interior responds to the modernist palette of glass, steel, and concrete with rich, sensual textures, furniture designed specifically for the space, and the major impact of contemporary art. White walls and liberal use of light and dark wood floors soften the exposed concrete of some of the interior walls. Magni reused very little of the clients’ existing furniture, instead opting for custom pieces and midcentury icons that fit the needs of the space exactly. The furniture plan is sparse and streamlined, allowing for the art, architecture, and landscape design to take center stage. The serene entrance is flanked by an exposed courtyard with a maple tree and other plantings taking advantage of the open sky and rainwater. This leads to the spacious living area with dining and seating looking out on the pool area beyond. The light wood floors and walls of windows make the living room seem to float in space; the corrugated concrete fireplace wall brings the outside in and
In the dining room a Harlow table by Magni Modern and chairs by Tom Faulkner accompany Andrew Bennett’s Untitled Central Player.
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grounds the room. A combination of bespoke furniture pieces by Magni Modern and vintage midcentury iconic chairs artfully mesh the 21st-century contemporary design with classic modernism. The glass Harlow dining table is paired with art nouveau-inspired chairs by British designer Tom Faulkner. The painting is by American contemporary artist Andrew Bennett; the Matchstick Men sculpture is by Wolfgang Stiller. The open kitchen and breakfast seating area has a custom Caesarstone table with Brno chairs covered in playful red leather. Three color-saturated paintings are by Jason Willaford. Willaford’s wife Ree, the owner and director of Galleri Urbane, worked with the couple on several artworks in their home. José Lerma’s Amusadora adds humor and color to the hallway running from the living room to the office. A custom organic white wave desk is in the office. The photographs are from the Smoke Ring series by Donald Sultan. In the primary bedroom Magni continues his well-considered design theme of nodding to the modernity of the house and its roots in classicism with custom designs and icons from midcentury modernism. The art is by Los Angeles–based artist Mona Kuhn from her photographic series She Disappeared into Complete Silence. A guest bedroom has vintage Warren Platner chairs and side table. The comfort and dramatic elegance of the home extends outside to the pool and outdoor living areas. Seating arrangements, with furniture by Richard Schultz from Knoll, Sutherland, Link, and Paola Lenti, bring the interiors outside, and the glass window walls erase barriers between front and back, out and in. Concrete, glass and abundant greenery create a permanent structure in an impermanent world. P
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Clockwise from top left: Primary bedroom with a custom rug by Mansour Modern, Ille armchairs by Minotti, and a custom ottoman. On the fireplace wall, Mona Kuhn’s AD 7272 and AD 6031 from the She Disappeared into Complete Silence series; Vintage chairs and a table by Warren Platner adorn the guest suite; A guest suite with a Modena leather bed by RH Modern with bedding by Versai, Wilshire nightstands by Magni Home Collection, and custom suede bench; The primary bath opens to the backyard.
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Clockwise from left: The open courtyard with a connecting wall; behind the glass hangs a large work by JosÊ Lerma, Amusadora; An event lawn is spacious enough for sports and large gatherings; The office is enhanced by a white wave desk and two photographs from Donald Sultan’s Smoke Rings series.
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, e v o y l l a h t t i a Wom E fr
PHOTOGRAPHER ELIZABETH LAVIN, RR&CO CREATIVE DIRECTION ELAINE RAFFEL, RR&CO FASHION DIRECTION CARLOS ALONSO-PARADA HAIR AND MAKEUP HOLLY DEAR, HOUSE OF DEAR
E
ataly Dallas opened to a standing ovation in NorthPark Center in December last year, just in time for holiday gift-giving, when eager shoppers waited in long lines (we were there) to sample the fare and merchandise from this wondrous Italian emporium. Eataly’s credo is “Eat. Shop. Learn,” and it offers plenty of each. Eat at one of the three restaurants: at Il Pastaio taste the house-made Casarecce with Pesto Trapanese accompanied by a nice glass of Italian wine; La Pizza & La Pasta offers the beloved culinary staples and then some; and Terra, the third-floor restaurant, boasts its specialty Per La Tavola—a tomahawk from Snake River Farm for two to four people, slow-cooked and seared on a wood-burning grill and served with Polenta ai Funghi, coal-roasted yams, and charred broccolini. Eataly also has plenty of counters offering grab-and-go fare. Shop— thousands of items imported from small producers across Italy as well as locally sourced produce and meats. Learn from a staff trained to educate customers about the people and places behind the gourmet items. In a hurry? Shop the Made in Eataly fridges filled with popular dishes to-go.
Eataly also offers cooking and wine classes (did we mention the extraordinary wine selection?) at La Scuola di Eataly—virtual for now—to teach guests about regional Italian wines, how to make fresh pasta (and the history of it), and how to prepare Eataly’s signature recipes. You’ll also hear plenty of stories. Book these online. Under the same roof as some of the finest Italian luxury fashion brands—Canali, Gucci, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Salvatore Ferragamo (Eataly stocks the family’s private wine label, Il Borro), and others—Eataly bolsters the cultural conversation. Each Eataly in the franchise has a theme; this store’s is “Patronage of the Arts,” perfectly paired with NorthPark Center’s display of museum-quality art, which includes the work of two Italian contemporary artists: Mimmo Paladino’s bronze A Surrounded Figure (Assediato) from the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection and Sergio Storel’s copper Torso in the Neiman Marcus Garden, from the Neiman Marcus Collection. And when Eataly’s first floor Caffe Lavazza opens, the finishing touch will be an installation by a local artist. Bravo!
This page, from left: Manolo Blahnik Maysalebi floral pointed-toe mule, Nordstrom. Il Mercato, Marketplace, Eataly Dallas. Prada leather logo flat slide sandal, Neiman Marcus, both NorthPark Center. Il Mercato, Marketplace, Eataly Dallas. Both NorthPark Center. Opposite: Dolce & Gabbana sequin bra, tulle corset gown, silk floral headpiece, Lucite box bag, and crystal leather heel, all at Dolce & Gabbana. Eiseman Estate Jewelry Collection Henry Dunay 18k yellow gold Where There is Smoke drop earrings set with pear-shaped green tourmaline, pave set with 87 round brilliant-cut diamonds, and 18k yellow gold three-stone ring with cushion rubellite center stone flanked by two cushion amethysts, Eiseman Jewels. La Pescheria Fishmonger, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center. Assistant stylists: Meredith Hays, Braxton Frank, Kristin Schulz, NorthPark Center; Hair and makeup: Jenny Bailey, Samantha Cantu, Laurel Rains, House of Dear; Models: Chase Domke, Isabel Ensminger, Magdalene Groves, The Campbell Agency. Pizza photo courtesy of Eataly Dallas. Photograph by Alison Smith.
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Versace La Coupe des Dieux cashmere sweater, mixed-print silk shorts, and bondage mixed-print belt bag, all at Versace. Il Mercato, Marketplace, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center. Opposite: Versace blazer, cardigan, bralette, bike short, pant, and sandal, Versace. Seaman Schepps 18k yellow gold square earring set with four square faceted rock crystals and round brilliant-cut diamond center, and Eiseman Collection necklace in 14k yellow gold with an emeraldcut aquamarine, accented with round diamonds and blue sapphire cabochons on a Byzantine chain, Eiseman Jewels. Il Mercato, Marketplace, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center.
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This page, from left: Andrew Gn floral brocade coat and dress and Rosantica Holli pearl-handle caged minaudiere bag, all at Neiman Marcus. Goshwara 18k yellow gold G-One bead earring with emerald, moon quartz, and white pave diamonds, Eiseman Jewels. Fendi Colibri tulle pointed-toe slingback pump, Nordstrom. Salumi e Formaggi cured meats and cheeses, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center; Canali patterned shirt and khaki pant, both at Canali. Venchi Wall, Eataly Dallas, NorthPark Center; Dolce & Gabbana small crystal Devotion bag, Dolce & Gabbana. Il Mercato, Marketplace, Eataly Dallas. Both NorthPark Center. Opposite: Etro jungle tiger V-neck caftan and Amina Muaddi Emili crystal slipper, both at Neiman Marcus. Vhernier 18k white gold tourbillon earrings featuring 442 round pave diamonds; Vhernier necklace in 18k white gold with double-sided mother-of-pearl links alternating with 13 polished white gold links; and Vhernier Abbraccio ring in 18k white gold set with 100 round diamonds along the edges, Eiseman Jewels. Il Mercato, Marketplace, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center.
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h k , g t
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Messika pf Paris Wild Moon diamond necklace in 18K white gold with 18.18 twc of pear, marquise, and round brilliant-cut diamonds, and 18K yellow gold Snake Dance large 3/4 hoop earrings with round brilliant-cut diamonds and pear-shaped diamonds with pave diamonds. Exclusively at Eiseman Jewels, NorthPark Center; Act N°1 tiered top with feathers and black pant, Elements, Lover’s Lane.
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This page: Dolce & Gabbana leopard-print blazer jacket, silk martini-fit shirt, and leopard-print tuxedo pant, all at Dolce & Gabbana. Terra, Eataly Dallas. Both NorthPark Center. Opposite: Naeem Khan sequin top, pajama pant, and Balenciaga shop floral phone holder bag, all at Neiman Marcus. Eiseman Collection cube earrings in 18k white gold with turquoise and pave diamonds, Eiseman Jewels. Steve Madden skyscraper rhinestone embellished over-the-knee boot, Nordstrom. La Pizza & La Pasta, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center.
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This page, above: Jason Wu belted pleated chiffon midi dress, Neiman Marcus. Goshwara Beyond earring set in 18k yellow gold with two cabochon amethysts, two amethyst beads, and pave diamond links; Eiseman Estate Jewelry Collection Georgian Era necklace in 15k yellow gold set with 26 graduated oval amethysts 100ctw; Eiseman Estate Jewelry Collection 18k yellow gold, with citrine, amethyst, and round brilliant-cut diamonds; Goshwara 18k yellow gold twin ring with one pear-shaped amethyst and one-pear shaped peridot and pave diamonds; Henry Dunay ring set with three cushion peridots; Goshwara 18k yellow gold ring featuring round tourmaline center stone with green garnet halo and sides; Eiseman Estate Jewelry Collection platinum ring with octagonal rubellite and ten tapered baguette diamonds. All at Eiseman Jewels. Terra, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center; below: Goshwara 18k yellow gold G-one ring featuring emerald-cut green tourmaline surrounded by blue sapphires and diamonds; All Eiseman Collection: 18k yellow gold polished-bead stretch bracelet with pave diamond horse bit detail; 18k yellow gold 3mm polished-bead stretch bracelet with bar set with round-cut diamonds; 18k yellow gold polished-bead stretch bracelet with pave diamond flower detail; 18k yellow gold polished-bead stretch bracelet with one pave diamond bead; yellow gold 4mm polished-bead stretch bracelet with fourrow pave diamond bar; Julius Cohen platinum and 18k yellow gold bracelet set with round cabochon emeralds and pear-shaped and marquise diamonds, and Eiseman Estate Jewelry Collection David Webb rock crystal ring accented with 28 round brilliant-cut diamonds set in 18k white gold. All at Eiseman Jewels. Opposite: Zimmermann Lovestruck floral paisley midi dress, Strathberry Nano leather tote, and Dior D-way heeled slide, all at Nordstrom. Messika Snake Dance hoop earring with round brilliant-cut diamonds and 24 pear-shaped diamonds, and Messika Glam’Azone cuff bracelet in 18k white gold with two oval diamonds surrounded by 478 round-cut diamonds, Eiseman Jewels. Terra, Eataly Dallas. All NorthPark Center.
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The Art of Overstatement
Louis Vuitton at NorthPark Center introduces a capsule collection with Urs Fischer. BY TERRI PROVENCAL
Artist Urs Fischer. Photograph by Maegan Gindi. Courtesy of Louis Vuitton. Left: Louis Vuitton x Urs Fischer dress in tech jersey. Courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
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hen it came to a hardworking Louis Vuitton there was no messing around. In 1854, the enterprising founder already carried 17 years of honed experience under his belt before he made his own Parisian house—a maker of custom waterproof trunks appealing to voyagers traveling by boat, horse-drawn carriages, or trains—the stuff of legend. In homage to his late father and the inventor of the “art of travel,” Vuitton’s son Georges branded the luggage with the company’s signature interlocking LV Monogram in 1896, and the world knew when a Louis Vuitton traveled. Today the French house flourishes not only as one of the most recognized brands in the world, but also as the embodiment for highly considered creative ingenuity. Who can forget the patented luggage lock, still used today, that Georges invented and challenged Houdini to pick? The house loves invention and intervention, teaming up with many artists over the years, most recently with Urs Fischer, a Swiss conceptual artist renowned for investigations in decay and transformation through sculpture and installation. Newly unveiled, the “Louis Vuitton x Urs Fischer” collaboration shares the artist’s audaciously exaggerated hand-drawn LV and floral motif he describes as “memory sketches” for a collection of black-and-red or
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black-and-white leather goods, ready-to-wear, shoes, and accessories. Augmented by in-store installations and an entire visual universe enriched by the artist’s fanciful characters—a cat napping inside a banana skin, a bird carrying a peach—window displays are activated along with a digital and social-media content cycle that brings the characters, the collections, and the unfettered partnership further to life. Fischer’s womenswear capsule is available at the newly expanded Louis Vuitton in NorthPark Center. In addition to sneakers, dresses, trousers, and tops, find seven special-edition bags here—a Keepall, Cabas, Onthego, two Neverfulls, Speedys, Pochettes Accessoires, and a hard-sided beauty case all emboldened by the tuffetage treatment that uses velvet-like material to create texture and tactile relief. In a nod to the streetwear-inspired world, low- and high-topped sneakers, jogging pants, and a nylon parka give style to the lounge-y looks of today. Unveiled in November, the ultra-modern NorthPark store demonstrates the luxury atelier’s enduring commitment to the arts. A visually arresting open footprint offers a highly curated experience through works of art, furniture, and historical objects plucked from Louis Vuitton’s archives. New York City–based
ATELIER Louis Vuitton x Urs Fischer Collection. Photograph by Pierre-Ange Carlotti. Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton x Urs Fischer sneaker in cotton canvas and leather.
photographer Todd Eberle montages are displayed here, along with Anish Kapoor’s The World Turned Outside In, 2003. James Turrell’s photograph of his installation Akhob, from Louis Vuitton Las Vegas City Center, adds to the collection. Vintage furniture pieces by designers including Carlo Scarpa, Jacques Quinet, Federico Munari, Etienne de Souza, and Carlo Mollino strengthen the interiors, as does a suspended contemporary perch, Cocoon, by Fernando and Humberto Campana, featuring a fiberglass perforated shell lined in calfskin. In the Men’s Universe, find artistic director Virgil Abloh’s multi-pastel crayon monogram story for the pre-spring 2021 collection, where lightness engulfs the dark shades of winter. Abloh’s core values of diversity, unity, and inclusion, which he describes as “nuance,” inform the socially conscious weather-considered staples like rain hats, berets, and puffer jackets. A handsome wood ceiling is installed over the men’s area. Nearby, Concertina Shades by Raw Edges from the Louis Vuitton Objets Nomades collection marks the watch and jewelry display. Louis Vuitton’s entire product categories and collections, including men’s and women’s leather goods, ready-to-wear, shoes, accessories, watches and jewelry, travel, fragrance, elegant tomes, and the Objets Nomades collection are under one roof, embracing liberty and bon vivants in one universe. P
Louis Vuitton x Urs Fischer Collection. Photograph by Pierre-Ange Carlotti. Courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
Image caption.
Louis Vuitton, NorthPark Center. Photograph by Brad Dickson. Courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2021
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FURTHERMORE
FEARLESS FRIDA In a pivotal year, we are reminded of the brave history of the Mexican painter. BY TERRI PROVENCAL
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From above to below: Frida Kahlo, Diego and Frida 1929–1944, 1944, oil on masonite with original painted shell frame. Private collection, courtesy Galería Arvil. © 2021 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F., Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Frida Kahlo, Still Life, 1951, oil on masonite. Private collection, courtesy Galería Arvil. © 2021 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F., Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Frida Kahlo, Sun and Life, 1947, oil on masonite. Private collection, courtesy Galería Arvil. © 2021 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F., Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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hough she was vigorously photographed as a postrevolutionary heroine, Frida Kahlo’s journey to acclaim was onerous. But since her death in 1954, Kahlo’s life and career have become legendary and inspirational to women across the globe. Exhibitions of the Latin-American artist’s work have shattered attendance records, and Frida fever has spurred films, dolls, costumes, and more in homage to the artist. From February 24 to June 20, a sampling from the cultural phenom that is Kahlo will take pride of place at the Dallas Museum of Art within the Atrium Overlook, on Level 4. Internationally recognized for her self-portraiture with autobiographical characteristics, Frida Kahlo: Five Works will display a few fine examples of the Mexican artist’s still lifes, to include four paintings and one drawing. Loaned from a private collection, courtesy of the Galería Arvil in Mexico City, the installation presents a vehicle for understanding larger aspects of Kahlo’s artistic practice. She explored still life painting late in her career, flexing her own unique language and metaphorical imagery. These works too reflect her life experiences. “It is always exciting to delve into the works of a dynamic artist like Frida Kahlo,” said Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott Director. “This generous loan will offer our visitors a chance to look closely at these five works and explore the many stories they can tell about Kahlo, her remarkable work, and her inspiring life.” Exhibition curator Dr. Mark Castro, The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art at the DMA, offered this insight: “Planted in a whole honeydew in Still Life is a small pink flag with the Spanish inscription Soy de Samuel Fastlicht. Me pintó con todo cariño, Frida Kahlo, en 1951. Coyoacán. In English this reads: I belong to Samuel Fastlicht. I was painted with all affection, Frida Kahlo, in 1951. Coyoacán. Kahlo painted this work for her dentist, Dr. Samuel Fastlicht, in her hometown of Coyoacán, just three years before her death. The year before, Kahlo asked him to repair a dental bridge that was causing her pain. She agreed to paint two works for him as payment, including this vibrant still life. Of European origin, Fastlicht arrived in Mexico in 1921, eventually making important contributions to the study of Mexican history through his studies of dental mutilation and herbal medicine used by ancient Mexican cultures. A close friend of Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, he at one time owned three works by Kahlo: this still life, as well as another painted in 1952, and also a self-portrait painted in 1948.” During the paintings’ stay, Castro and the DMA’s painting conservator Laura Hartman will examine three of them using noninvasive imaging techniques such as X-radiography and infrared photography to investigate further how Kahlo painted. “At a time when art has become a critical source of solace and inspiration for many of us, this small installation offers a glimpse into the work of one of today’s most admired artists,” said Dr. Castro. “At the heart of the sensational story of Kahlo’s life are captivating works like these; they are visceral in their emotion and vibrant in their execution.” P
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