PaperCity Magazine

December 2016 - Houston

Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/758043

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 100 of 131

91 addition. The 155 works, loaned from museums and private collections throughout the U.S., include the AMST's cache of 54 Hood artworks; everything is detailed in Kalil's lavishly illustrated, lyrically penned catalog published by Texas A&M Press. An illustrated map and timeline of Hood's travels, as well as vitrines filled with time-capsule materials including gallery announcements, letters, datebooks, and more bring the determined painter to life. After basking in the Hoods, one can easily make the case that Dorothy was Texas' greatest 20th-century artist. Her reach extended from California to New York, including representation in the Whitney and MoMA. Her double decades in Mexico, during the 1940s and 1950s, only add another layer to the equation, and interaction with seminal figures ranging from Pablo Neruda (who penned a poem to her) to Diego Rivera (she met her husband at his casa) and José Clemente Orozco (with whom she shared a studio), make the Rhode Island School of Design-student-turned-model worthy of a cinematic bio. While the catalog and exhibit sidestep the controversy that marred Hood's later years (especially the break with her staunchest supporter, gallerist Meredith Long, after she came under the spell of a scientist who was a questionable paramour), what remains — the artwork itself — is remarkable. The paintings are grouped in series, with many canvases reunited after being lost for decades. The presentation allows visitors to decipher Hood's inspirations and follow her on the journey to depict abstracted, heroically scaled views of deep space (enamored of NASA, she was friends with astronaut Alan Bean) as well as cavernous oceans seen from above, rendered in pooling pigment. Her collages, informed by mysticism and travels to world cultures (especially India) hold up well, but the delicate and surreal drawings and abstract, soaring color-field canvases are set to be Hood's contribution to art history. One hopes this exhibition will travel, especially to NYC and the West Coast, where the keepers of the canon may just allow Hood admission. After all, now is the time for both under-known African-American artists and women artists to be rediscovered, so the timing of "The Color of Being/El Color del Ser" couldn't be better. There's also a rumor that a form of this exhibition may be presented by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. And rightly so: When Maidana and Hood moved to Houston in 1962, she became one of the leading artists in a world dominated by big, brash male painters and also taught art at the museum school. A photograph in the exhibition's time capsule shows her as a member of the Houston Five — the only woman, alongside Richard Stout, David Hickman, William Anzalone, and James Boynton. (Hickman and Boynton have both passed on, but Stout and Anzalone still actively exhibit.) Thanks to being picked up by gallerist Meredith Long in 1960, Houston first families became Hood collectors: Dominique and John de Menil, Fayez Sarofim, Nina Cullinan, John O'Quinn (a regular in her studio), Mavis Kelsey Sr., Carol Ballard, Isabel Brown Wilson, Diana and Bill Hobby, and Carolyn Farb — the latter, associate producer of a 1985 documentary on Hood, The Color of Life, which won the American Film Festival Award in 1987 and was supported by the MFAH. Farb stepped forward early on to serve as underwriting chair of the retrospective — a seven-figure undertaking that is the most expensive, most ambitious exhibition ever mounted by the Art Museum of South Texas. It's doubtful that another Hood exhibit of this depth and magnitude will ever take place, even if this show were to travel, so don't miss Dorothy getting her due. "The Color of Being/El Color del Ser: Dorothy Hood (1918-2000)," at the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, through January 8, 2017; artmuseumofsouthtexas.org. On view in Houston, "Dorothy Hood: Select Paintings," at Deborah Colton Gallery, through January 28, 2017; deborahcoltongallery.com Preceding page: Dorothy Hood's Untitled, late 1980s, at Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi "HOOD'S IDEAS … LINK THE MYSTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC, THE EROTIC AND BEATIFIC, THE VERY DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE." — Susie Kalil in The Color of Being/El Color del Ser COURTESY ART MUSEUM OF SOUTH TEXAS, CORPUS CHRISTI Dorothy Hood, Mexico City, early 1940s

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of PaperCity Magazine - December 2016 - Houston