Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1180194
ART TOPICS W e begin with a doubleheader, as the Museum of Fine A r t s , H o u s t o n , continues its romance with the 19th and early 20th centuries in a season billed as "An Impressionist Autumn." Feminists will be pleased, as the underknown Berthe Morisot (1841- 1895) finally gets her due. The exhibition is the second in Texas this year for a tenacious painter who was the respected peer and equal talent to her more widely praised male contemporaries, Degas, Renoir, Monet, and Manet. As "Berthe Morisot: Impressionist Original" shows, she contributed her own sensibility and subjects to reflect a woman's experience in Paris during the Belle Époque. Paired with Morisot is a pendant exhibition, "Monet to Picasso," presenting treasures from an MORISOT AND FRIENDS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PRIVATE COLLECTION; COURTESY SICARDI | AYERS | BACINO; COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FRONT GALLERY; PHOTO CHRIS P. BACHMAN; PRIVATE COLLECTION, © 2019 ESTATE OF FERNAND LÉGER / ARS, NYC. 82 unnamed private collector. The powerful yet concise blockbuster highlights director Gary Tinterow's clout in securing this collection for exhibit; it's packed with 30 masterpieces, encompassing works by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh, Bonnard, Sisley, Pissarro, Signac, and Cassatt, and concluding with 20th- century titans Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Gris, and Léger (both exhibits through January 12, 2020). A s we head to press, Artadia Award-anointed Nestor Topchy is hours away from his New York debut at one of the world's most storied funeral chapels, Frank E. Campbell. Famed for its century-old tradition of sending off luminaries of society and culture in patrician style, the Upper East Side bastion has hosted memorials for a roll call of notables, from Rudolph Valentino and Judy Garland to Jackie O and Lauren Bacall. As such, it offers a fitting, and extraordinary setting for Topchy's ongoing "Eternal Now" series of T he show this fall for fans of contemporary portraiture is "Sarah Fisher: The Second Yes," at Front Gallery (through November 23). Peek into the artist's process, with a look at the interplay between photography F or Latin American collectors, Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923- 2019) remains the gold standard. The late Venezuelan innovator, who lived between his native country and Paris, had a major Houston presence thanks to long-time dealer, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, which was also instrumental in choreographing his epic Double Physichromie for the Public Art collection of the University of Houston System, which turns 50 this year. One of Cruz-Diez' most futuristic installations was realized by the nonagenarian at Buffalo Bayou Park's Cistern in 2018 — an immersive experience that paired an early-20th- century relic with the artist's vibrational 23rd-century light show. (The MFAH serves as U.S. HQ for the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation.) Visit Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino — which hits its quarter century mark this year — and you'll always see one of Cruz-Diez's buoyant chromatic works on view. Read our 2017 interview with the artist — one of the last ones he gave on the occasion of his final lifetime solo at Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino — at papercitymag.com. CHROMATIC MAN Above: Berthe Morisot's Woman with a Fan (Femme à l'éventail), 1876, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Left: Fernand Léger's Two Profiles (Les deux profils), 1928, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TOPCHY TAKES MANHATTAN PORTRAIT RAMA gilded icons, which are painted from life. Read these pages next month to learn New York's response to this Texan's exhibition. and painting that produces a Fisher portrait. The artist, one of the most closely watched from the MFAH Glassell Block program, was also a prize winner at Lawndale Art Center's "Big Show" in 2018. Fisher's work, which certainly owes a debt to Alice Neel, is now being pushed into new territory. A bonus is encountering it in the intimate, domestic interiors of Front Gallery, a bungalow whose front annex is curated by its homeowner, MFAH Glassell Core Fellow Sharon Engelstein. Carlos Cruz-Diez's Physichromie Panam 246, 2015, at Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino Nestor Topchy Sarah Fisher's Mother-In-Laws Tongue, 2019, at Front Gallery