Random Acts Of Defiance

 Well, by somebody’s standards….

Went to the Museum District to see the work of a Mexican American artist who uses his art (paintings) to recover and put back into history Mexican-Americans and Hispanics. I just wanted to see his work, but when I was there it struck me as timely. Especially when the federal government is erasing from the public digital record references to Jackie Robinson’s military career; or any reference to any non-white or non-male, including Colin Powell and Thurgood Marshall, because: “DEI.”

Then on to the work of a female artist, a Polish Jew whose parents converted to Catholicism to evade the rising antisemitism in late 19th century Russia and Europe. A woman who, ironically, spent most of the last two decades of her life in Houston (her daughter lived here; and may still (?)). She learned to paint under a Cubist artist, and signed her works with a masculine form of her husband’s Polish name so galleries and critics would take her works seriously. She lived in Paris and had lovers male and female, and painted nudes, another genre reserved to men at the time. But most of her nudes are women; her lovers. And they are not odalisques or presented through the male gaze. They are figures clearly enjoying their own sensuality for themselves, not their male lovers. She did paintings for fashion magazines, and the influence of Cubism in her work laid the foundations of Art Deco (she is credited with the first Art Deco painting).

And yet I’d never heard of her, and you probably hadn’t, either. She fled Europe just before World War II , came to America, but her art was treated with disdain. She quit painting and helped raise her granddaughters, and since Houston didn’t have an art museum worthy of the name at the time, she couldn’t be persuaded to leave her art here.  She’s now being “rediscovered,” but she’s still a “woman artist,” so…

“DEI,” donchaknow? Her work resembles O’Keefe in some aspects, Picasso in others, and is foundational to Art Deco; but unless you’re well-versed in European art history (n.b., I’m not), you probably don’t know who I’m talking about; and if I told you, you still wouldn’t know.

DEI was supposed to start correcting that. But then we couldn’t possibly elect a Black woman to the Presidency, so…here we are.

I could describe the other artist’s work, but I Cano it credit here. I’ll tell you about one: portraits of the Presidents from 1977(the year of his birth), to 2019. Each painting is uniform in size, with a stark black background. Each president is portrayed from the eyes up. The level of the head slowly sinks as the portraits move from Carter to Trump. Obama has his head thrown back, his nose clearly visible. The only non-white man in the grouping. Trump sinks so low even his eyes are almost below the frame. The last picture is completely black. The artist invites the viewer to consider what American voters will do next. He painted the series in 2019. Now we know what comes next.

I’m sure Trump’s government would scrub this guy from history, too. If they ever noticed him.

It’s not really like it’s any worse than it’s been. John Tyler was a 19th century racist who wanted Texas in the Union as another slave state. It wasn’t long after that Texas left, to join the Confederacy. Woodrow Wilson was a notorious racist, and George Wallace wanted to do what Donald Trump is now doing. Except George Wallace lived long enough to admit he’d been wrong. It’s too late for Donald Trump to do that, even if he had the self-reflection (which he doesn’t). Whether the electorate does, is the real question.