SARAH GREEN (VOICEOVER): This episode
of The Art Assignment is supported by Prudential.
We arrived to a rainy and cold Houston
and drove directly to Kim Chau, to fuel up on Vietnamese food.
We were so hungry, we forgot to document our meal
before we ate it.
Then, we ordered more and then forgot to document that.
But trust us, it was delicious.
Then, we spent a delightful several hours
in the spectacular studio of JooYoung Choi, who regaled us
with stories of her fictional realm
called the "Cosmic Womb," populated
by a variety of intriguing and adorable characters.
It wasn't until the next day that we officially
began our art trip tour.
And we started with the big daddy, the Rothko Chapel.
I'd heard a lot about this place and seen many pictures.
And I wondered if it would live up to expectation.
It's a nondenominational chapel that art collectors John
and Dominique de Menil commissioned painter Mark
Rothko to create in 1964.
Rothko helped design the octagonal building
with architects Phillip Johnson, Howard Barnstone,
and Eugene Aubry.
And it opened to the public in 1971.
According to its mission, the Rothko Chapel
is a sacred space open to all, every day,
to inspire people to action through art and contemplation,
to nurture reverence for the highest
aspirations of humanity, and to provide
a forum for global concerns.
Inside the space, you encounter and become surrounded
by 14 murals created by Rothko, all in dark shades
with subtle variations between each.
The light in the space is natural
and emerges from behind a baffle that
covers skylights and protects the paintings from sun damage.
So there's this ethereal low level of light
that suffuses the space and allows your eyes
to take in the texture of the painting surfaces
and the shifts in hue between them.
Every detail of the space is considered and just so.
The proportions, the seating, the pavers, the discreet
stanchions that remind you not to brush up
against these delicate surfaces.
While there, I kept thinking what
are the preconditions for worship,
for contemplation, for meditation?
It's a kind of comforting neutral
that admits the darkness of life and the world,
but that also is welcoming and enclosing and sheltering.
You then, emerge from the darkness of the chapel
back onto the glorious grounds that surround it.
You'd usually take in a full reflecting pool
and Barnett Newman's remarkable sculpture, "Broken Obelisk."
But it was away that day, being conserved.
But rest assured, it is back now in place.
The sculpture is dedicated to Martin Luther King
Jr. whose life of service to social justice and spirituality
was much admired by the Menils.
The entire campus is not only a destination
for more private meditation, but is also
a dynamic meeting place for spiritual and world leaders.
We stopped off at Siphon Coffee and then headed
to the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston,
which has this incredible building designed
by Gunnar Birkerts.
You know you've arrived.
But you're not quite sure how to arrive,
until you find the only way in.
Of course, we missed the opening of a new Angel Otero show,
by two days.
But luckily, there was a fantastic exhibition of works
by Matt Keegan and Kay Rosen.
Both artists explore language and linguistics in their work.
And for the past eight years, they've
had an ongoing mail art correspondence, a selection
of which was on view.
While it's easy enough to see that yes, they both enjoy
and excel at word play, the differences in their approaches
revealed the depths that are available to plomb when
it comes to exploring the architecture of language.
The show was clever and challenging,
both intellectually and optically.
And I found myself looking differently all day
at signs and the written word, pretty much anywhere
they appeared.
Across the street is the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
And we took a walk around their sculpture garden,
which is rather lovely.
We'd intended to go into the actual museum.
But we were too hungry and decided to go to lunch.
I thought we'd go back.
But well, we didn't.
I know.
We're terrible people.
Said lunch was immensely enjoyed at Underbelly,
where we had these refreshing colonial style shrub
drinks made with carbonated water
and preserved fruit vinegars.
They were the perfect counterpoint
to the spicy Korean braised goat and dumplings.
We probably should have stopped after that.
But we didn't.
Then, it was on to Lawndale Art Center, which currently
has up a really rad exterior wall mural, by LA
based artist Russell Etchen.
We were meeting up with JooYoung to see Lawndale's exhibitions
celebrating the artists who participated in their Artist
Studio program over the past 10 years.
JooYoung is one of those artists.
And she had on display a large scale sculptural
work that brings to life a development
in the ongoing tales of "The Cosmic Womb," where
Captain Spaciatano fights Lady Madness to protect the snow
people.
There was a lot of other good work too.
And I especially appreciated the small portrait paintings
on paper by Dawn Black, who's based in Baton Rouge.
These are part of her Conceal project.
And they depict a wide range of people, who take on guises,
wear costumes, or engage in any number of masquerading tactics
in order to wield power and influence.
We then, headed over to Project Row Houses, an arts and culture
nonprofit organization in the northern third ward, whose
mission is to be the catalyst for transforming community
through the celebration of art in African-America history
and culture.
They accomplished this through a broad range of programming.
But we were there to see its current series of artists
rounds, featuring seven installations
by artists in the row houses along Hollman Street.
Walking into each of these houses
is almost like walking into ones actually lived in,
because each of them is a little world unto itself,
despite being architecturally nearly identical.
Each of the artists are part of Houston's arts community.
But they all have distinct approaches,
highlighting the diversity of viewpoints and practices
in the city today.
In one house, you'll encounter Regina Agu's investigation
of the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana
and its cultural and environmental exchanges
with the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of Guinea.
In the next, you'll experience the Jazz Church
of Houston, curated by Tierney Malone, which we caught
in between its transition between being a daytime museum,
dedicated to the history of jazz in Houston,
and a nighttime music venue with performances
by local jazz musicians.
In another, you'll see works by two different artists who
both use collage and have brought their distinct works
together into a collaborative installation.
And in yet another, you'll transport once again
into JooYoung's "Cosmic Womb," entering
her immersive installation, have faith,
for you have always been loved.
You pass through a maker's space,
where you can get a window into her planning process.
And then, you meet Spaciatano once again.
This time, Spaciatano has crash landed on Earth,
holding the wounded warrior Noiro,
soliciting you, the audience, to donate constellation plasma
to help heal them.
You can do this by adding your own light to the installation,
while thinking about a time when someone made you feel loved.
When we re-emerged into the present day Houston,
we saw the sun was getting lower in the sky
and hightailed it over to Rice University,
to take in James Turrell's "Twilight Epiphany."
it's situated in the middle of campus.
And it's one of his sky spaces, which
is this really beautiful series of works in which he engineers
the architecture of a given space to reveal and frame
a section of sky.
This one is two levels, is designed
to host musical performances, and just before sunrise,
and just after sunset, you can experience an LED light
sequence that projects onto its ceiling
and through its aperture.
We were there when it was under repair
and got to experience it in its unembellished state.
We sat within it and gazed up at the sky
as it transitioned from day to night.
Every once in a while, a bird flies
past, or the normal sounds of a college campus float in.
But it's mostly just you and the sky, which gradually darkens
and causes the light balance to shift and create
these mesmerizing optical effects at the aperture's edge.
We watched the moon rise and realized all of a sudden
that it was almost totally dark.
Yes, you can observe sunset without Mr Turrell's
engineering and framing.
But do you?
And does it look this cool?
We started our next day at Common Bond Cafe and Bakery,
where I couldn't resist this absolutely
delectable kouign-amman, which is a kind of caramelized pastry
that's worth seeking out.
Mark had dessert for breakfast and some other stuff too.
And it made us wish we lived in Houston so we could eat here
every day.
Then, it was on to the venerable Menil Collection,
a campus founded by the eponymous
art collectors we mentioned earlier.
Several buildings housed their permanent collection, as well
as host temporary exhibitions, including
its main building designed by Renzo Piano that
opened in 1987.
Inside, you take in their absolutely astounding
collection, built around the art that the Menils loved most.
You see objects from around the world
and from many different areas, presented without wall labels
and with exquisitely minimal mounts and barriers.
The Menils collected art from the 1940s
all the way to the 1990s.
And throughout the galleries, you
see masterwork after masterwork, presented impeccably
and mostly without comment.
Photography is not allowed in here.
We had special permission.
And it's not because they're snobs or hate the internet.
It's because they want the physical experience of art
to come first.
It was the philosophy of the founders
to foster each person's direct personal encounter
with works of art.
And for me, they do this so well.
The Cy Twombly Gallery is housed in another Renzo Piano
building, designed in consultation with the artist.
Sailcloth baffles allow just the right amount
of natural light to illuminate the artworks,
as well as the bare plaster walls.
I love Cy Twombly paintings and like them
in almost any environment.
But this one was transcendent.
It's rare that an artist can ever
control the conditions of viewership this tightly
and set up their audience to have
the best possible encounter with the work.
Well, here it is folks.
If you don't like Twombly here, alone,
in these perfectly proportioned spaces,
with the light perfectly tuned and the slight scent of plaster
in the air, you never will.
We also visited their former 1930s commercial building
that now houses a 1996 Dan Flavin
installation, which the artist completed just
before his death.
And just to provide as sharp a contrast as possible,
we followed that up with a visit to the Menil's Byzantine Fresco
Chapel.
Currently, it features Francis Alys's "The Fabiola Project,"
which is the artist's collection of paintings
he found in flea markets around the world,
all by different artists, but all
with the same subject matter, a 4th century saint known
as Fabiola.
Rendered in a variety of mediums,
the works are modeled after an 1885 painting
by French academic painter Jean-Jacques Henner,
which was lost long ago.
The artists were working from reproductions and illustrations
of the original, which can explain
the consistency of composition in most, as well
as the reversals and color inversions.
It's the inconsistencies that really stand out.
The small differences in facial contour, the delicate folding
of the veil in one picture and the unnaturally dramatic
in the next.
Fabiola is revered as the protector of abused women
and also the patron saint of nurses.
And while very little is known about the history
of each picture, they're presumed
to have been painted mostly for personal or devotional reasons.
It's absolutely fascinating to stand in this room
and think about the remarkable persistence of this image,
about the impulse and ritual in making
one's own copy of an icon.
Why do we need these images?
And how does this impulse toward reproduction
represent itself in the internet age, when
the images that stick with us most
are blogged and reblogged, tweeted and retweeted,
as we receive them or with our own additions, however slight.
Then, we filed those thoughts for later
and thought about none of that while
wolfing down Torchy's Tacos.
We then scooted along to Inman Gallery,
in the Midtown District, which was hosting
an exhibition of the work of Jamal Cyrus
with whom we met there to film an assignment.
He was delightful.
And his assignment is excellent.
And you should really get going on this one,
if you haven't already.
We had very little time on our last day,
but were able to make two last stops
before heading to the airport.
The first was the Orange Show, the life's work
of Jeff McKissack, a postal worker who
made this entire structure in the middle
of a residential area, entirely on his own starting in 1956.
Ruben Guevara, the preservation and restoration manager,
kindly walked us through, despite it
being very early and very cold.
Anyway, the orange was McKissack's favorite fruit.
And the show was intended to illustrate
the benefits of good nutrition, which of course included
plenty of oranges, which he planned to sell there.
McKissack anticipated crowds for his attraction.
But he never opened it to the public, until nine months
before his death in 1980.
After this, a foundation was formed to preserve the place
and really open it to the public,
so that we might marvel in McKissack's singular vision
and imagine for ourselves what he imagined
might take place on its stages.
The same foundation looks after our next destination, the Beer
Can House, which is the former home
of another remarkable resuscitator of things
most people throw away.
John Malkovich and his wife Mary lived here
and enjoyed drinking beer here.
And John started customizing his backyard
with inlaid marbles and rocks and bottles
and, yes, cans in the late 1960s.
After finishing with the backyard, he moved to the front
and eventually to the surface of the house itself.
He made garlands out of cut beer can lids,
which hang from the roofs edge, move energetically in the wind
and make a resounding noise.
This noise moves throughout the property and surrounding
area, where houses like John and Mary's are being
replaced by high end condos.
We couldn't stay longer.
But we wanted to.
There was much more to see.
Houston, the 4th most populous city in the US,
felt that big, that full, that diverse.
Many of the places we visited had been on my
must visit before I die list.
And in each case, I was not disappointed.
Far from it.
Sometimes, that anticipation and those bits of knowledge
can prepare you for a richer experience, where you're
better able to be in the moment, rather than be
in information gathering mode.
Everywhere we went, I saw profound evidence
of Houstonians caring deeply about their cultural heritage,
about listening to artists and helping
them realize the projects that others might
deem too grand or too costly.
They care about remembering neighborhoods, fostering
community, and providing platforms for artists
at all stages of their careers.
Houstonians are even committed to preserving
the expressions of those who didn't consider themselves
to be artists.
The city has changed a great deal since John and Dominique
de Menil planted roots here.
But their ethos has held strong, that art
is central to the human experience
and that the experience of art can be spiritual,
without necessarily being religious.
Pretty much everywhere we went was free and focused
on helping you to have a sincere, direct,
and profound as possible encounter with whatever
was on view.
This video can't replace those experiences,
but can perhaps prepare you so that when you do
have the chance you're ready.
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