Tag: contemporary art

Postcard from Palermo, Sicily: Phillips’ passion for collecting left me entranced

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Above: Detail from “Curriculum Vitae XI,” Tom Phillips

The muses visit children in disguise with shrouded gifts ~ Terpsichore gives her a skipping rope ~ From Clio he receives old stamps of far forgotten colonies ~ Darkly to me Apollo and his team present the pnuema ~ the creative spark ~ all strife of art inside a filing clerk.”

Excerpt of text on Tom Phillips’ “Curriculum Vitae XI”

Last spring, we almost missed what emerged as our favorite museum in Palermo. Palazzo Butera was newly opened. Although we passed by it often, we didn’t see it in any guidebook or even resources online.

Word art by British artist Tom Phillips (1937-2022) so captivating it demands you stop in your tracks to slowly digest every morsel of poetry within each piece. But how could I absorb them all when we had a whole museum ahead of us?

The amazing part of this is his process. Most of his “Curriculum Vitae” series is composed in iambic pentameter, a form of traditional English poetry with ten syllables per line (Yes, I learned this through labels.). Yet, they are written, or carved as it were, somewhat on the fly.

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No need to travel afar to engage with contemporary art

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Above: Detail of “11th-Century Persia to 19th-Century America,” from “The Black God Tapestry,” Sandra M. Sawatzky, 2008-2017

Today many of us have become so accustomed to abstractions in contemporary art that any kind of figurative work comes almost as a shock. Yet, how are we to connect to the many non-human worlds that surround us if not through figurative imagery?”

Amitav Ghosh writing about Sandra Sawatzky’s “Black Gold Tapestry”

Through the years, I find myself increasingly drawn to figurative art. After wandering around the Blanton Museum of Art this past weekend, I realized those were the only pieces that caused me to pause and read the descriptive text accompanying them. The only ones I snapped pictures of to share.

The other unifying factor of these images is that all the artists are from North America. And all, save Mexican muralist Sequieros, are living, contemporary artists. Several I have been fortunate enough to meet or hear them speak about their works.

When we travel, we enter as many art museums as we can squeeze into our trip. Yet, when home in Austin, we often fail to make time to see the art available in our own backyard.

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Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: Santiago’s ‘Migrants’ and protesters haunting MACO

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Above, nine “migrants” from Alejandro Santiago’s “2501 Migrantes” haunt a balcony inside Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, MACO

There is a Zapotec saying…. “Why leave when you have it all here?”

Alejandro Santiago in 2501 Migrants: A Journey, directed by Yolanda Cruz, 2010
two of alejandro santiago's 2501 migrantes

“Returning to his native Mexican village after many years, the artist was startled by what he didn’t see. ‘Where are my friends, my relatives?’ Alejandro Santiago asked the remaining residents of the town, Teococuilco de Marcos Perez, in a remote mountain area of Oaxaca state. Upon learning that most of them migrated from southern Mexico to the United States in search of work, he vowed to honor the departed and ‘repopulate’ his impoverished hometown.”

“Alejandro Santiago dies at 49,” Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2013

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