UNDERBELLY: What does an artist do after years at one place, when moving to a new locale?

Throw a party, and put everything on the walls in an art studio fire sale!

Tod Bailey, a painter originally from Dallas, has been a resident of the David Addickes Sculptureworx studios on Summer St. for years, creating and showing his work. He is headed to Paris, to dip his toes in for a while, eventually hoping to land near northern Italy somewhere. It is a risky but necesary thing for artists to do, as one must refresh the mind and input new experience. Spending years staring at the lonely sillouette of downtown Houston's skyline behind an industrial facade of run-down warehouses will make one's brain cry out for relief. Paris is as good a relief as any.

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Luckily for Tod he has many friends to share the night with. From around 4:00 PM, people wandered through the artwork displayed. The keg got floated sometime between The Ted Leo Trio's set of blues covers and originals and Bright Men of Learning's set of adult-alterna-rock. These nights are chaotic at best and Tod Bailey was kept busy greeting newcomers, appeasing friends, and working to sell as many of the works on display as possible. The wine/cup/food table was nearly as warped as some of the paintings, and no one gave a fuck. Life is for living.

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One cannot take one's friends with them when they move. It is one of the suck-ass
realities we all face, but think about an artist. That artist has to leave behind his friends as well as the works he has created. Painters such as Tod, who work on large canvases, have to sell off, store, or lend artworks. When your typical work is at least 7 feet wide, storage and transport are tough. The ones that hurt are the "favorites," the pieces of art so fucking awesome that you never want to sell them. It is best in that case to lend them to friends and family.

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Having used all the space in his personal studio the party spilled out into the hallways of the large building, extending far into the cavernous structure. Paintings everywhere! Looking at them all it seemed very fitting that Tod was heading to Paris, as his work contains what seems a large Fauvist and Cubist influence. It will be very interesting to see what influence Paris and all of Europe will have on his sensibilities. Like many of us Houstonians, he shares a twisted-on-end world view because, frankly, Houston's flatness and homogeneity can twist the mind. Will the European countryside soften this? It may drive him insane. Whether this is for the good or the bad of his art will be judged much later. Now, all that matters is the intent to change, and the action to impliment it. Tod Bailey is in the thick of that shit it right now. It's a good place to be.

RXTT

ART THEFT

In the world of crime, it seems that nothing is more glamorous than the theft of highly prized works of art. Many art thefts occur each year, but it is rare to see one of the magnitude of yesterday's theft at the Paris Museum of Modern Art. According to the Associated Press story about the theft, parts of the museum's alarm system had been broken for two months,

"So with no alarm to worry about, a lone masked intruder entered the museum around 3:50 AM . . . The thief cut a padlock on a gate, then broke a sid window and climbed inside . . . The intruder later slipped back out, carrying the canvases and leaving behind empty frames. The whole thing took 15 minutes, a police official said." - ( Associated Press )

That takes some balls. The works that were stolen are very famous and are estimated to be worth around $123 million total. Interpol and collectors worldwide are on the look out for these works, in case they pop up for sale on the art black market.

The five paintings that were stolen. (Click images to enlarge)

Le Pigeon Aux Petits-Pois (The Pigeon with the Peas) - Pablo Picasso

La Pastorale (Pastoral) - Henri Matisse

La Femme a L'eventail (Woman with a Fan) - Amedeo Modigliani

L'olivier Pres de L'Estaque (Olive Trees Near Estaque) - Georges Braque

Nature Morte Aux Chandeliers (Still Life with Chandeliers) - Fernand Leger

In Memoriam: KENNETH NOLAND

Color-field painter Kenneth Noland died yesterday in his home. He was 85 and had been battling cancer for some time.

His NY Times obituary can be read here.

Mr. Noland was always exploring the relationships between colors, and the visual tension created by his seemingly simple forms. From his early studies to his late life, he kept at it, expanding his own visual vocabulary and technique. He remained devoted to abstraction and,

". . . continued to pursue his high modernist program, undeterred and confident about the future of abstract art. “It’s a fertile field that we barely have explored, and young artists will return to it,” he said at a symposium in 1994. “I’m certain.” - ( NY Times )

-FUPPETS- agrees.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, Happy Birthday from -FUPPETS-

One of the great humans of all time was born on this day, 534 years ago. Known simply as Michelangelo, this bad-ass was a master draughtsman, sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer. One of the two original "Rennaissance Men," along with Leonardo Da Vinci, his prodigious output is nearly unmatched in the history of art.
Primarily a sculptor, he created two of the most enduring masterpieces before the age of 30. These would be the Pieta' and his David. Click images below to enlarge.

Like any genius artist, he was praised and vilified equally. Some called him Il Divino ("the divine one"), while others denigrated him as "inventor delle porcherie" ("inventor of obscenities", in the original Italian language referring to "pork things"). The morons of the Counter-Reformation started with Michelangelo when they sought to cover up all the nudity and genitalia they saw as obscene. Fucking idiots. They were all afraid of getting hard-ons.
Also like many great artists, Michelangelo was a freak.

He told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: "However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man." Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating "more out of necessity than of pleasure" and that he "often slept in his clothes and ... boots." These habits may have made him unpopular. His biographer Paolo Giovio says, "His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him." He may not have minded, since he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person. He had a reputation for being bizzarro e fantastico because he "withdrew himself from the company of men."

The image below is a detail from part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling he painted, depicting the Fall and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Click the image below for a full view of the scene.

Happy Birthday Michelangelo.

MAX ERNST - Mural On Exhibit at The Menil Collection

One of the true giants of modern creative thought, Max Ernst was one of the founding figures of Dada and then of Surrealism. His ideas touched not only on imagery, but also on the very tools and methods used to create such imagery. Most importantly of all, he was among the very first to truly explore the deepest recesses of the human mind/consciousness.

Among the many processes created or refined by Max Ernst are:

Frottage (the rubbing of pigment on canvas/paper placed atop textural materials)

Grattage (the scraping of thick paint off of a canvas)

Decalcomania (the blotting of paint between two surfaces, then peeling off one surface leaving behind the altered pigment)

The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas is offering a show of some seminal Max Ernst works. The Menil is showcasing a large 17 by 14 foot mural in oils from 1934 titled Petals and Garden Nymph Ancolie (Petales e jardin de la mymphe Ancolie). There are around 120 works on display, 80 of them coming from the Menil holdings. The DeMenils were avid collectors of Surrealist and dada art, as well as being close friends with the artists. It should be a wonderful and freaked out show.