Hood has always been celebrated for her adventurous approach to life. She once said, "I think the only verifiable knowledge that I would ever pretend could be authentic is the history of myself. My psyche.... I regard my life as an experiment." She travels annually to India, a country for which she has a deep affinity, with her companion and business partner, geneticist Krishna Dronamraju.
Even now, as she sits in the high-ceilinged studio behind her Heights bungalow, surrounded by countless paintings, she chuckles at the disturbing effect her work can have. "There can be, shall we say, an awakening, a stimulating," she says. "I've always felt that disturbance is sort of a nice thing, having grown up in a bourgeois household."
Discomfort or no, the well-connected Long made sure Hood's paintings found themselves in Houston's most prestigious homes -- today, they hang in the foyer of the Lanier penthouse. In 1974, the prestigious Tibor de Nagy gallery gave her a solo show in New York. (Writing in the New York Times, the crotchety Hilton Kramer called the paintings "a more hygienic, less magical version of Max Ernst's imaginary landscapes.") Her work was collected by the Whitney, the Modern, the Brooklyn and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In fact, the '70s was Hood's decade -- she had solo shows at the MFAH, the CAM, Rice University and twice at the Everson Museum in Syracuse.
Hood's career, though, never took off the way some people thought it should (her paintings, at $15,000 for the largest, seem significantly undervalued), and many blamed Long for this, saying that he discouraged other galleries from representing her -- though it was because of Long that Hood made a living as an artist, and that over the years she had shows at commercial galleries in Chicago, New York and even Japan. Now, Hood says with a smile, "He was the boss. I was a peon."
I asked curator and critic Barbara Rose, who did a brief stint in Houston, why Hood has never gotten the recognition she deserves. "Because she never left Houston," Rose replied without hesitation. Indeed, reverse provincialism might be the key to why, despite her work's power and distinction, Hood hasn't gotten that retrospective. Does Houston prefer the prodigal to the stay-at-home?
I put the retrospective question to MFAH 20th-Century Curator Allison de Lima Greene. "We have shied away from the single-artist retrospective," was one reason Greene offered, along with lack of space in the museum. "Dorothy just hasn't fallen on our priority list."
The more people who love Hood, it seems, the more thankless the task of shepherding her career. Meredith Long is not the only person who has been criticized. Dronamraju, or Dr. Krishna, as everyone calls him, conducts Hood's business affairs, controls her appointments and, her friends admit, performs the crucial role of seeing to her health. Though he is respected in the Indian community, his commanding nature and self-aggrandizing tendencies (his business card lists six different posts) have made him no friends in the art world -- in fact, several people say his disregard for the rules of the business caused Long's break with Hood in 1997.
Dronamraju's a pushy salesman, which in the art world doesn't always work to advantage. "It took a year for Dr. K to understand that this is not a commercial gallery," says Lawndale director Eleanor Williams.
Dr. Krishna says he has helped Hood set up a foundation to handle her artwork, but it remains to be seen whether he is able to perform the delicate task of positioning her in the market at a time when the value of her work should rise. Dr. Krishna insists that he is working in Hood's best interest. "Lots of people express concern," he points out. "But they don't do a damn thing."
As for Hood, the business of art does not seem to have been her highest priority. She has left the job of archiving, dating and even titling many of her works to someone else. Though she seems to crave recognition as much as anyone, she has always been happiest at work in her studio, and that is where she waited for the world to come knocking.
"I believe I gave up ambition a long time ago," she said in a 1983 documentary about her life. "I believe there's no such thing as ambition. I believe there's accomplishment." A perfectly good distinction. But let's hope that in years to come, someone is there to put her achievement in the best possible light.
"Dorothy Hood: Paintings and Drawings" is on view through Oct. 24 at Lawndale, 4912 Main, 528-5858.
"Dorothy Hood: Paintings and Collages" is on view through Oct. 16 at Transco Tower Gallery, 2800 Post Oak Blvd., 526-6461.
Various works by Dorothy Hood can be seen at MD Modern, 2719 Colquitt, 526-5966.
