Road Trip: We’re mad for Allison V. Smith’s latest ‘zine, VI, which dreamily documents a love affair with the open road, from Marfa to Maine with a dose of Dallas. Smith’s eye is unerring, but also poetic. Pay special attention to the lens lady’s visit to Vinalhaven, Maine, where she goes inside the home of wordsmith artist Robert Indiana. Snap up the remaining copies of this edition at Barry Whistler Gallery for a mere $20. While you’re there, contemplate the modernism of another fierce Texas femme, the late Toni LaSelle, whose mid-century abstraction in the gallery’s back room is truly museum-worthy … Motor on to Waxahachie, where Webb Gallery mounts “The Greatest Show on Earth,” an homage to the American sideshow banner, the historic, the compelling and the strange (though September 9).
Museum Mile: It’s going to be a big, bold fall in the Dallas art world, from the sensuous golden age of the Paris poster — typified by le peintre of the dance hall, Toulouse-Lautrec — at the Dallas Museum of Art (October 14, 2012 – January 20, 2013) to the early court portraits of 17th-century Spaniard Diego Velázquez, whose full-length statement painting of monarch Philip IV travels to the Meadows Museum, part of an ongoing exchange with the Prado (September 16, 2012 – January 13, 2013) … Speaking of portraits, there’s a much-buzzed-about Lucian Freud stunner on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. It’s drawing throngs, as this is the only American venue for one of our time’s most psychologically astute painters of the human condition. It’s a real coup this show has landed in a Texas museum. The Modern’s Michael Auping is one of the curatorial talents weighing in on the prowess of Freud (through October 28). See you in September!
IMAGES:
Popeye, circa 1940, at Webb Gallery.
Allison V. Smith’s Olson House, July 2011, Cushing, Maine, 2011, at Barry Whistler Gallery.
Allison V. Smith’s Hermanos Vasquez, June 2011, Dallas, Texas, 2011, at Barry Whistler Gallery.