Beaumont art lovers can enjoy four exciting exhibits this season, all just a few hours’ drive away.
To start with, there’s “Devoted: Art and Spirituality in Mexico and New Mexico” at the Dallas Museum of Art. Drawn from the museum’s extensive Latin American art collection, “Devoted” features folk art from the Hispanic Catholic tradition. You’ll see bultos, wooden sculptures of holy figures, and ex-votos, small oil-on-tin paintings that express gratitude for answered prayers. With only 35 works on display, “Devoted” is a small but important treasure.
“Devoted: Art and Spirituality in Mexico and New Mexico” runs through January 2, 2022.
Second, there’s “The West as Home” at the Stark Museum of Art in Orange. The “West” mentioned in the title includes the American West, Native American culture, and frontier life. The idea of “home” is stretched to include not only houses but the people found there and the land itself.
Visitors will see Apache baskets, paintings of adobe houses, stark Western landscapes, and colorful still lifes. Photographs of Native Americans are among the most interesting items but the exhibt’s strength is the inclusion of all the varied peoples that inhabited the wild west.
“The West as Home” runs through January 22, 2022.
One of two shows coming to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is “Afro-Atlantic Histories.” Coming to Houston from Brazil’s Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the exhibit details the history and lingering legacy of the African slave trade.
With some 130 artworks and documents from 24 countries spanning more than 500 years, “Afro-Atlantic Histories” has a somber theme. But many of the works show the resilience and strength of the Africans. And in that, there’s often an elegant beauty.
Among the many works seen in “Afro-Atlantic Histories” is The Stream Crosses the Path, a powerful piece by American painter and long-time Houstonian John Biggers. In it, Biggers shows several African women standing at the edge of the water. Their tan dresses contrast with the dark blue waters beyond them.
“Afro-Atlantic Histories” opens October 23, 2021 and runs through January 17, 2022.
The final exhibit is “Calder-Picasso,” also at the MFAH. It’s a collection of paintings, sculptures, mobiles, and more by American Alexander Calder and Spaniard Pablo Picasso. Two of the most prominent and prolific artists of the 20th-century, the men met only a handful of times during their lives. Their work, however, shared many parallels including radical innovation.
The relationship between their art is precisely captured in two pieces named Acrobat. Calder’s Acrobat is a simple wire sculpture. Made with just a few lines, the figure clearly represents a human figure. Picasso’s Acrobat is an abstract painting, with two arms, two legs, and a head but no body. Picasso’s figure is bent in half, its arms and legs at impossible angles.
“Calder-Picasso” opens October 31, 2021 and runs through January 30, 2022.
Olivia Flores Alvarez is a freelance columnist for The Beaumont Enterprise.
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