Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544027
W ith its cynical attitudes and shadowy, black- a n d - w h i t e v i s u a l s , film noir captured the American imagination in the years surrounding World War II. Not just a genre but a definite mood, noir's misanthropic morality finds artistic expression in The Warehouse's exhibition "Chase a Crooked Shadow: Film Noir as Contemporary Mirror," its opening perfectly timed to Dallas Arts Month. Guest curator New Mexico Museum of Art's Alexandra Terry organizes this sweeping, complex, and intensely topical exhibition. Shaped by moral instability and the growing realization that the American dream is compromised, noir replaced suggestion with spectacle, making it a fertile worldview that continues to influence contemporary art. Using noir's themes and archetypes as curatorial concepts — including detectives and antiheroes, landscapes, violence, and psychological states — "Chase a Crooked Shadow" juxtaposes work from the Rachofsky and Hartland & Mackie/Labora collections with loans from other institutions to highlight this film genre's legacy, illuminating the deviant aspects of modern life we might wish would just remain in the shadows. Why you should go: Nearly 80 talents are showcased, with works informed by a brooding sense of unease, arrayed across diverse media — painting, sculpture, N othing is more thrilling than rediscovering an artist lost to the sands of time — especially when that talent was once the toast of three continents for his portraits of the beau monde, with patrons who sought him out at his studios in Belle Époque Paris, then Manhattan and Buenos Aires. So, the curtain rises on Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (1841 – 1920) when his transatlantic retrospective arrives this spring at the Meadows Museum, SMU, co- organized by the Meadows and Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid, where it opened last fall to great fanfare. With Gilded Age society figures such as the Vanderbilts among his sitters and friendships with tony collectors William Hood Stewart and Archer Huntington (founder of The Hispanic Society of America, which bestowed an honorary membership on Madrazo), the artist's career was ascendant photography, installation — traversing generations, aesthetics, and geography. Watch for Texans — both the known, Nic Nicosia, and underknown, Troy Brauntuch and the late Patrick Faulhaber, poignantly represented by a miniature photorealist street scene — alongside national and international notables Janine Antoni, the late Gordon Parks, Ross Bleckner, Alighiero Boetti, Mamma Andersson, Marlene Dumas, and Danh Vo; the latter's crumbling American flag, In God We Trust, 2025, formed from milled steel and spilling logs, becomes the exhibit's marquee piece that speaks to our dystopian time. April 11 – July 18, thewarehousedallas.org. Kendall Morgan with Catherine D. Anspon The Art of Noir High Society: Madrazo at the Meadows Danh Vo, In God We Trust, 2025, at The Warehouse Julie Curtiss, Limule (Horseshoe Crab), 2021, at The Warehouse HARTLAND & MACKIE / LABORA COLLECTION BEQUEST OF MRS. D'ADELSWARD-POURTALÈS, 1934, MUSÉE D'ORSAY, PARIS, INV. 20417. © GRANDPALAISRMN (MUSÉE D'ORSAY)/PHOTO BY ADRIEN DIDIERJEAN. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, CATHARINE LORILLARD WOLFE COLLECTION, 1887. © THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/ART RESOURCE/SCALA, FLORENCE From top, works by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta, at Meadows Museum: The Marquise d'Hervey de Saint-Denys as the Goddess Diana (La marquesa d'Hervey Saint-Denys como la diosa Diana), 1888. Girls at a Window (Muchachas en la ventana), circa 1875. THE RACHOFSKY COLLECTION