In Fort Worth & Dallas

It's a little strange to be sitting here, shivering, in Laguna Beach this Monday morning, after sweltering for three days in one hundred degree heat in Fort Worth and Dallas. As I write this entry, the "June gloom" has lasted all day for two full days, and the sun shows no sign yet of appearing.

Texas was, yes! hot and humid. We arrived there late Wednesday afternoon, emerging from a flight with the worst seats we have ever encountered in an airplane. (Warning to all: DO NOT trust any seat reservations you make on Expedia, the airline is apparently not obliged to honor them!) We found ourselves in the very back row, prevented by the bulkhead from adjusting our seats while those in front of us adjusted theirs, our window view completely blocked by a large jet engine which roared deafeningly throughout the journey. Still, we arrived safely, and had that to be thankful for...

Grateful, too, to have a cheerful greeting at the airport from our friendly chauffeuse, Jackie, who regaled us with ample information about Forth Worth, the art education department atTexas Christian University, where I was to speak on Thursday, and the art of living in the state of Texas. She dropped us off at our hotel whence, once installed, we took a taxi to Sundance Square...

... in downtown Fort Worth for dinner, and found a lively city center with outdoor bars and restaurants where loud country rock bands...

... blasted out their music, and more modest soloists stood at the street corners playing their guitars. Dinner at a good Tex-Mex cafe, where Ellie appropriately downed a beer while I enjoyed a fine margarita and we shared an excellent table-side concocted guacamole. Hungry from the journey, I subsequently ate a perhaps overly generous carnitas plate. Arriving back at our hotel, we watched a dramatization of the Quentin Crisp story on television, and learned about Jack Kilby--the man who invented the microchip in a moment of genial happenstance. The latter provided a useful introduction for my lecture on creativity the following day.

And it turned out to be a great day. The Fort Worth museums are a feast for the art lover. We went first, in the morning, to the Kimbell Art Museum, and what a treat that was. This natural light-rich, Louis Kahn designed building...

... offers a perfect environment in which to see a collection that features a small, manageable number of choice works by some great, some lesser-known artists in the Western tradition--so fine that the meaning of that overused word "masterpiece" becomes immediately clear. We worked backwards through the ages, from Matisse, Picasso, Braque, to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists (including a wonderful, small painting by Van Gogh that neither of us had never seen before: no photos--this one was on loan and pictures were not permitted) all the way back to the Italian Renaissance. Of special interest was "The Torment of St. Anthony"...

... the first painting ever made by Michelangelo (at age 12!) along with a thorough x-ray documentation of its subsurface. This extraordinary museum accompanies its exhibits with useful art historical information, so we were left without time to explore the non-Western collections.

From the Kimbell, we walked across the street to the newly constructed Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, pausing at the corner of the building to admire a spectacular, towering corten steel sculptural work by Richard Serra, a riff on the Italian campanile which offers an echoing, somewhat claustrophobic interior chamber...

... from which one can look up to a small patch of sky far overhead...

This museum, too, is a treasure house, and we were struck immediately by the installation of the art work. Not only within the particular galleries, but from gallery to gallery there are carefully planned rhymes and echoes that delight the eye and enlighten one's perception of the individual works.

Sitting over lunch by the expanse of water...

... that reflects the architectural grace of the building itself, we recalled that a friend from many years back, Michael Auping, is now the Chief Curator at the Modern, so I went to the front desk to leave a message for him, in case he should have a moment to say hello and renew acquaintance. We were delighted that he came right down from his office to chat with us as we ate...

... and even more delighted when he offered us a personal tour of the lower floor of the museum, which we had not yet visited--in the course of which he treated us to endless fascinating insights about his collaboration with Tadao Ando, the building's architect, about the wonderful support he gets from the Forth Worth cultural community, about his choices for the museum collection and their installation. One of the highlights, where art and architecture come together to mutual advantage is the small elliptical gallery whose high concrete walls create a stunning environment for an Anselm Kiefer winged book...

Taken together, Michael's curatorial choices offer an interesting, non-stereotypical history of art since World War II.

I could wax on about these two museums. We should have, would have wanted to spend much more time there than we could afford. A morning and an afternoon were not enough. We left time, though, to stop in quickly at the Amon Carter Museum, which houses a pre-eminent collection of American art--though we were two days too early to see the exhibition that would have interested us the most, "Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s." A sprint through the permanent collection allowed us to enjoy a few glimpses of artists like Thomas Eakins and Frederic Remington, along with modernists Leon Polk Smith, Charles Scheeler, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Time enough, then, for a quick shower and a change of clothes before being picked up at the hotel for the drive to Texas Christian, where we met up with Amanda Allison, who heads up the Art Education Department and Susan Harrington, who teaches the course for which "Persist" had been ordered as a text. The talk there...

... went well, to judge from the response. The audience consisted largely of teachers, all of whom had received a copy of the book as a part of the package accompanying their summer course. The title I had been given was "Nurturing the Artist Within," and the idea was to re-motivate some of these teachers of art to get back in touch with the artist they may have left behind in the demanding business of their lives. I used the opportunity to explore what "nurturing" might entail, basing my talk on the example of what it takes to nurture a child. Having fed ourselves so richly on what the local museums offered, it was not hard to expound a bit on the nourishment needed to feed the visual appetite of the mind.

After the talk, our hosts entertained us generously to dinner at a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant, and it was a pleasure to spend this time with people who take the trouble--and the risk--to be authentic in their lives. We each have our challenges, I learned again; they can defeat us--or enrich our lives if we choose to confront them with open eyes and a willingness to grow and change.

Friday morning, our friend Midge...

... arrived at breakfast time to drive us from Fort Worth to Dallas--a longer distance than I had imagined. First stop, once we arrived, was at the offices of Quin Mathews, who had heard of my interests through the MAC, where I was to talk that evening, and who had generously invited me to interview for his radio broadcast "Art Matters" on the local radio station WRR. Having learned about the monthly discussion group that Ellie and I call "Artists' Matters," he included Ellie in on the interview session that we recorded in his sound studio. I don't have details yet about the broadcast date, but will be sure to keep readers of "Persist: The Blog" informed. In addition to his work in radio, Quin is a film-maker, and we were to catch up with that aspect of his work later in the day at the Dallas Contemporary Art Center, where his documentation of the current installation was included in the show.

We made the pilgrimage from there to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, where the most dreadful moment in the history of this city is commemorated. It was strange, indeed, to be standing where Lee Harvey Oswald stood, looking down over that infamous "grassy knoll" and re-living that moment which all of us who are old enough remember with anguish--the moment when JFK was shot and killed. The museum offers a complete and fully documented history of that tragedy, with multiple display panels, video installations and a guided audio tour. Much of the material was familiar to us from previous accounts, but the drama of being on the actual spot was nonetheless intense--and, for me, intensely moving. I noticed many others around me who made no effort to conceal their tears.

Next we drove on to the Nasher Sculpture Center, another architectural treasure designed byRenzo Piano. (We wondered at the fact that Texas manages to support this marvelous projects, while Los Angeles seems to lag behind in this regard.) A fine, light-filled space where we found a show of drawings by the British artist Rachel Whiteread that we had already seen at the Hammer in Los Angeles, so we opted instead for lunch in the very pleasant cafeteria and a walk through the sculpture garden. It includes a good number of fine works by artists of all kinds, from Aristide Maillol...

... to Henry Moore and Mark di Suvero, but the highlight for me was the James Turrell room, where one can sit comfortably...

... and gaze up into the sky through the open square cut into the ceiling...

On the right day, it can be a monochrome painting of infinite, but on this particular day, with clouds constantly in motion, it was a moving picture of shifting shapes in white and grey. A very lovely meditative interlude.

Walking across the street, we found a retrospective of the contemporary Belgian painter Luc Tuymans at the Dallas Museum of Art. I have seen quite a number of his paintings separately in the past, and did not expect to be quite as impressed by this exhibit as I was. I had thought somehow that the artist's attenuated palette and understated dramas...

... might become less interesting when viewed in quantity, but I was quite wrong: they seemed only the more intense and moving. I had also underestimated the depth of his social and historical consciousness, and found myself much stimulated by his engagement with issues ranging from the Holocaust to the still-current Iraq war. Tuymans turns out to be a deeply committed humanist, who observes the world through a troubled and compassionate eye.

After a brief stroll through some other galleries at the Dallas Museum, we decided it was time to call it a day and drove on to The MAC where I was scheduled to speak at 6PM. We arrived in the area in time for a restorative cup of coffee and a cookie at a local cafe, and to wander through the galleries, admiring especially the beautiful, delicately constructed foam sheet hanging sculptures by the Japanese artist Kana Harada. I gave a briefer-than-usual talk and allowed more time for questions and discussion, which I think was an appropriate strategy for the cafe-style environment, with the audience grouped around small tables. It seemed to work well, and there were plenty of questions and observations. It was particularly nice to have our good friends Midge and Larry there, and to note the presence of our new friend Quin Mathews, who is also a board member at The MAC.

Dinner al fresco in still hot and humid weather with Midge and Larry and their friend--our new friend--Nancy. It seems that wherever we go we find ourselves in touch with genuinely human people who experience the same weird blend of suffering and joy that we know from our own lives. The deep pleasure is to be able to share it all, and to recognize others in ourselves, ourselves in others...

Midge had arranged for us to occupy the guest suite in their spectacular new digs at the South Side on Lamar, a gigantic, redbrick former Sears, Roebuck mail order distribution center...

... which has been converted into a small city unto itself, with shops, cafes, galleries, and markets as well as studio lofts and apartments for comfortable living. It offers everything a person could need in one (thankfully!) air-conditioned environment. Midge and Larry's 2,500 square foot space...

... allows ample room for a studio for Midge...

... along with spacious living quarters. The guest suite was perfectly comfortable, though we did regret the lack of windows there, at the center of the building. It was strange to sleep in a totally darkened space.

A final breakfast with our hosts, downstairs at the cafe, where we had to compete with a lively and growing crowd of songwriters, gathering there for a weekend workshop. En route to the airport afterwards, Larry was kind enough to indulge Ellie's wish to see what the residential areas of Dallas looked like, and we drove through some quite lovely suburbs--and past some quite substantial mansions along the way. A fond farewell to our hosts at curbside--and we took advantage or our early arrival to ensure good seats on the return flight! All in all, a great trip, and one that we'll remember for some time to come.