PaperCity Magazine

April 2014 - Houston

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APRIL | PAGE 65 | 2014 in Houston once previously, lured by NASA and the newly opened Brown Pavilion of the MFAH. On his second trip in 1976, Brauer clinked glasses with Wray, and the rest is (art) history. Weeks later, Brauer began what would be one of the longest-standing gigs for an art historian in town, lecturing for the MFAH. While the venue may not have been prepossessing, the topics were. He had arrived in town after an early stint teaching art history in the town of Oxford, so he serendipitously brought a tray of slides on Francis Bacon and Caspar David Friedrich, the latter the subject of a show of late-19th-century Romanticism in Europe. But why Bacon? "I had known him from the London art scene and met him quite a few times," says Brauer of a painter who, decades later, he still finds fascinating. The room where he first took to the lectern in Texas, the MFAH studio school, was sited in a sturdy red-brick warehouse deep in Montrose on Garrott Street. That day in 1976, it boasted an audience that included James Surls and John Alexander; the venue, though, was a far cry from today's glass-bricked Glassell with its airy interiors. That era's students were often smokers, and the tobacco-suffused classrooms were very much a makeshift affair. Brauer recalls trash bags used to black out windows and a small group of true believers clustered around his podium in cramped quarters that also doubled as an art studio. Two years later, a plum assignment turned up at the Women's Institute, in River Oaks, a bastion of intellectualism and a rigorous aesthetic dialogue. The University of Houston soon followed, and Brauer found himself in the enviable position of three paid teaching posts. (While he retired from UH after 23 years, he continues at the Women's Institute to this day, preparing a special series on Magritte and Braque this spring to coincide with blockbusters at the Menil and MFAH, respectively; at the Glassell, he directs the department of Art History and carries a full teaching load of six courses on diverse, tantalizing topics such as "Rococo to Revolution: Art of the Eighteenth Century" up to the art of the late modern and postmodern period. But those represent just the past few centuries of Brauer's expertise. At a moment's notice, he can discourse on cave painters of the Neolithic era, dish on his personal visits to Egyptian tombs, wax rhapsodically about a Pompeii show he saw last summer in London, and on and on. Yet, paradoxically, he's more into the spoken word than being a writer. Despite authoring a slew of catalogs and contributing a substantial half to the Menil's hefty tome on Pop art, his livelihood has always literally revolved around his own voice. He points out, "I was the last generation before TV. So you rely much more on sound. You listen to radio all the time. So I'm wired to listen. And hearing something has a different resonance." He compares the psychology of the classroom to a bullring: "You have to be perceived as being in charge of the room as soon as you step into it. Kind of like being a bullfighter in the ring, and the audience is the bull." BLOOMSBURY TO NASA Brauer's fondness for printed matter and the kingdom of volumes was inspired by growing up with the British Museum in close proximity to his Bloomsbury neighborhood. The Elgin marbles were his babysitter; he was raised around the corner from the venerable London institution and wiled away hours in its august interiors. So instead of getting into brawls in his working-class neighborhood, he popped into the refuge of the stacks provided by the reading room of the museum. Art school was a definitive experience for this native Scotsman, who studied as a teen at the progressive Sir Christopher Wren School. He matriculated into the swinging St. Martin's, whose grads number art stars such as Gilbert & George and whose lecturers have included Richard Hamilton, the priest of Pop art, who taught Brauer. [Conveniently, St. Martin's was near the stalls of the book dealers, where fabulous and often consequential finds fueled Brauer's nascent library.] It was an innocent time, when wayward and rowdy talents would get into drink; heady psychedelic drugs came later (but not for him). Also, London was still recovering from the bombed-out years, and in this environment, Pop burst forth out of longing. Brauer speaks of the British eying the U.S.'s post-war prosperity like a kid outside a candy shop, eager for the sweets inside, which were always slightly outside reach, while across the pond the excesses and consumerism of the 1960s defined America's stance regarding Pop. The music of the time, and the space program were all seminal influences. "Life after rock 'n' roll and life after the manned space program was never the same. In the best way possible, of course," Brauer says. And both intersected his life. One of his most intriguing stories involves being tapped to paint John Lennon's guitar, a project undertaken with fellow artist Geoff Wynne. The two were definitely at the center of the action and made a nice income as set designers for a booming night club/gambling den of glamour owned by entrepreneur/ impresario John Aspinall. Brauer recalls making oodles of cash for creating motifs such as a pre-Elvis jungle decor, populated by Aspinall's famed live wild animals. The space program then got him to America, via press credentials to cover the first and only nighttime launch, that of Apollo 17 at Cape Canaveral. It was a thrilling time for Brauer, and there he first met a bigger-than-life talent who was tapped to be the official NASA artist: the immortal Robert Rauschenberg. The two men shared a nocturnal bus ride with a space program official, headed to the viewing area for liftoff. THE HOME OF MANY LEAVES Like the Romans naming their villas, this casa should be monikered "The House of Many Leaves." After years teaching, Brauer acquired the turn-of-the-century Victorian cottage in the Brooke Smith subdivision the Near Northside, just on the outer boundary of the Heights. He once shared the charmingly patinated abode with his former wife, Deborah Velders (the pair is now amicably divorced), who was director of exhibitions at the Menil when Mrs. de Menil was alive. Insider status gave the duo of art historians entry to cozy dinner parties with Madame de Menil that were rigorous, as recalled by Brauer; once seated to the right of Mrs. de Menil, he found his intellect severely strained to keep up the conversational salvos demanded of all guests. The house is encrusted in vines, creating an apt refuge for the intense Brauer, who is famously private and only entertains old friends (such as artist Richard Stout) at his residence, as well as a small coterie of former students. The uncompromising yet charismatic Brauer engenders respect, even awe, attracting a dedicated fan base of mostly female students who keep coming back year after year for classroom enlightenment. The library encompasses every room in the home, amounting to a banquet of art history with breadth and depth that are astounding and match its owner's ongoing mastery of subjects innumerable and vast. And the books keep coming. Literary catalogs litter the breakfast room; while a second story, added in 2008 to contain the overflow, is quickly filling up with tomes. Roman-era Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits. Check. An essay on fellow Brit Lucian Freud? It's neatly lined up in alpha order among his contemporaries. A rarest-of-the-rare Duchamp catalog from 1966? Indeed. All present and accounted for. But his is an indispensable research library, not a place for arcane or locked-up first editions (even though there are riches here for the bibliophile). It's also home to slides aplenty that fuel his lectures, plus a vintage collection of trusty Smith-Coronas. But one thing you won't find: evidence of a digital age. Señor Brauer is strictly analog. Without the distraction of emails, texting and online surfing, he has created a haven for the life of the mind. Above, from left: One of Brauer's trusty manual typewriters flanked by a prodigious slide collection that spans 40,000 years of art history. In the late Victorian cottage nestled in the Brooke Smith neighborhood, afternoon light pours in. Above, Ian Hamilton Finlay's compelling text works, referred to as concrete poetry. "LIFE AFTER ROCK 'N' ROLL AND THE MANNED SPACE PROGRAM WAS NEVER THE SAME. IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE OF COURSE." Atop the piano, which is often played, sheet music from Bach to Bartók. The composers are complemented by Brauer's hoard of life and death masks cozying up to hand casts. He calls his collection "one big happy family." From left, a Pop cereal box sculpture by pal Clive Barker, Chopin's hand, Keat's life mask, death mask of Napoleon, a bronze bust of Francis Bacon, William Blake's bust, a cast of Beethoven and a Clive Barker steel rendition of Chopin's hand. Above, Man Ray's lithograph of the Marquis de Sade, once owned by the late Houston gallerist Bill Graham.

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