Hello and welcome to The Culture Project. I find my self wanting to write more and more these days. Not just about digital art and photography, but also adventures out into the traditional & contemporary art world. I’ve been wanting to revisit the Museum of Fine Arts Houston for a while now and thought it would be fun to document the trip. There was a photography exhibit and a lot of contemporary art I wanted to see. Not really sure if our audience is interested in these kind of write ups. So please let me know if they aren’t wanted and I’ll refrain in the future. I went with my wife and kids to the Houston Art District. There were a bunch of things we wanted to check out, but didn’t have the time to fully experience them all. We had to be pretty picky about what we saw this trip. I’m already planning our next trip back to see more. It was an amazing experience filled with all kinds of art.
I’ve been interested in different forms of art for a long time, but never really went out and explored the art world much. I didn’t go to art museums and didn’t really appreciate traditional and contemporary art like I do now. Digital art and writing sent me down a new path a few years ago. Generative art has changed the way I look at and perceive things in a huge way. I’ve been reading a lot more about art and architecture. I looked into a lot of different books at first not knowing where to start. I landed on three books to start out with that covered a large range of time periods, styles, and information.
Interaction of Color has turned out to be a really good read. It really makes you think about colors in a whole new way. Joseph Albers has an impressive resume. He was an artist, educator, and writer. He’s had a lot of interesting works on color theory. MFAH has one of his Homage to the Square pieces on display, but I wasn’t able to find it this trip. I’m excited to find it next time and see it in person.
Homage to the Square by Josef Albers on display at MFAH
The other two books; History of Art & Art Since 1900 were highly recommended on multiple lists. I started reading History of Art and was blown away by it. It covers a massive amount of things from the traditional world. Historic information covering tons of different cultures and their impact on art through time. This book was a lot of fun to go through and I find myself going back to it a lot. It covers tradition paintings, sculptures, architecture, and more.
Art Since 1900 covers contemporary art from some of the greatest of our time. I’m a lot more familiar with some of the names here and really enjoyed learning more about them. I’m always finding amazing artists I’ve never heard of.
Robert Frank & Todd Webb - Across America 1955
Our first stop was one of the main reasons for our trip. I’m a fan of Frank’s work and love the way he captures moments of people and places. He has some powerful black & white photos. Webb is just as talented and it was a pleasure to check out his work. Both men set across America on separate trips in 1955 to do a cross country survey of the everyday American people. It’s a look back at a drastically different place in time, before segregation had ended. Their photos are so similar at times and at others strikingly different. It’s a fascinating look back at two different perspectives from the same time period.
Todd Webb Photos from Across America 1955
After that we saw Yayoi Kusama’s “Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity”. This is something I’ve wanted to see for a long time and was blown away by the experience. You enter a completely dark room with only three people at a time and your given a little over a minute. The lights slowly turn on and you feel like your in a sea of floating lights. It was amazing.
James Turrell - The Light Inside - 1999
There are a few light based visual experiences at MFAH that we stumbled across. I didn’t really know what it was as we were going through, but it was something my kids and I really enjoyed. It was so different from what we were expecting and a really neat experience.
Multi Colored Underground Passage
Carlos Cruz-Diez, Chromosaturation MFAH (installation view), 1965/2017
We walked down the hallway from there and saw this massive work on the wall. I never could find a name or anything about it. It’s a really crazy piece of art made out of small pieces that were woven together. —Update on the Artist. El Anatsui
A close up shot of the material. I can’t even imagine how long this took to create.
After that we started to look at a lot of contemporary paintings from some artists I’ve come to really enjoy. I’m a big fan of Mark Rothko’s paintings and his exploration of color in his Untitled works. This was one I made sure to see while there.
I don’t know that I was a fan of Jackson Pollock’s work, but I definitely recognized it instantly when walking up to it. This was really neat to see up close. It was interesting how I could get lost in the work while staring at it. Seeing a picture of a painting and experiencing the actual artwork in person is profoundly different. The live experience is so much deeper. You can see the details and purpose in the strokes of paint adding texture and depth to each. The pictures I’ve seen of Pollock’s work look so flat in comparison.
Pollock is so well known for one style of paintings, I had no idea about his other works. I love some of his earlier paintings.
Blue (Moby Dick) - 1943 - Ohara Museum of Art
Male and Female - 1942 - Philadelphia Museum of Art
Anatol Wladyslaw was another artist I kept coming across while we browsed. He was originally from Poland and moved to Brazil in the early 30s. I couldn’t find a lot of information about him other wise. He has a wonderful painting style. MFAH had several pieces of his in their collection.
Samson Flexor was another abstract artist that I came across. He was originally from Romania, studied in France, and later settled in Brazil in the late 40s. One of my favorite abstract works from this trip.
Willem de Kooning is a fantastic abstract artist, one I discovered early. It wasn’t really a surprise when I read he is one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. Thanks to MOMA’s De Kooning's retrospective held in 2011–2012. I find he has an incredibly unique abstract style of painting. I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time and was really happy to come across his work while at MFAH. He was part of a group of poets, painters, dancers, and musicians that were active in the 50s and 60s in New York City. They were called the New York School. Rothko & Pollock were also members of this group.
This was one we came across that my wife and I both really liked. I didn’t know of Lee Krasner, so it was pretty amazing to find out she was married to Jackson Pollock. The art world can feel really small sometimes. She was good friends with a lot of members from the New York School. It seems I have a thing for Abstract Expressionism work.
Salvador Dalí is probably one of the more controversial artists of our time, but also one of the greatest Surrealist painters of our time. He has a hyper detailed style with strange but intriguing imagery. He’s one of the main reasons I started following the genre.
That leaves us with our last painter from the trip, Pablo Picasso. They have quite a few of his paintings at MFAH. He was one of the co-founders of the Cubist movement and contributed so much to the exploration of the genre. Though he is known for his Cubist style. He also painted Modernism, Post-Impressionism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and more. They say he painted around 13,500 paintings in his life time, which is crazy to think about.
I’ve tried to find the name of this one, but haven’t been able to yet.
On our way out we went across the street to walk around the Saint Paul’s Methodist Church.
Some really nice architecture to check out on our way back to the vehicle.
Thanks for reading! Please like and share the article if you enjoyed it. We are starting to cover more in the Art world. Though the The Culture Project’s roots are in the Generative Art scene. Our community is open to anyone that wants to learn about or share generative art. The communities Twitter & Discord. My twitter is @joshripple. If you like the content please give us a follow.