Email Author Susie Kalil

1994 Stories by Susie Kalil

• Going Public

  published December 15, 1994

  It's hardly news that advertisers take pleasure in a captive audience. And a prime target is the person waiting for a bus. Most who wait to get... More >>

• Losing Focus?

  published December 1, 1994

  Any way you slice it, FotoFest 1994 -- the biennial international photography event that filled the George R. Brown Convention Center from mid- to... More >>

• The Small and the Dreadful

  published November 17, 1994

  What we feel in relation to something monumental is not the same as what we might feel were the same thing diminished considerably. In the small,... More >>

• Black and White World

  published October 20, 1994

  Franz Kline liked beer at the Cedar Bar and English tea in the studio. He could play the dandy or the clown, talk about rugs, vintage cars,... More >>

• Abstraction Without Shame

  published October 6, 1994

  Since the early 1980s, we've been told time and again of the emergence of a "new painting" -- this despite the numerous and quite specific... More >>

• Thoughts in Motion

  published September 15, 1994

  It was a guy thing. Standing amid the loaded iconography -- axes, broken beer bottles, real dogs in a cell-like cage -- that comprise their... More >>

• Pushing the Artistic Borders

  published September 8, 1994

  In their "Poison Amor" collaboration now showing at Blaffer Gallery, Lubbock-raised Terry Allen and James Drake use junkyard refuse to make... More >>

• Big Show, Small Vision

  published August 18, 1994

  Don't go to Lawndale's "Big Show" expecting the alarmingly raw and rigorously heterogeneous works that often characterize juried exhibitions. My... More >>

• Plastic Jesus

  published July 14, 1994

  Raw, unrepentant and grisly, Paul Kittelson's provocative new series of life-size figures is simultaneously elegant, seductive and beautiful. His... More >>

• Art of Darkness

  published July 7, 1994

  The modern world at war is not a place to live. The "smallness" of human beings in a time of war bespeaks the meaninglessness of human life. This... More >>

• More Than Just A Pretty Face

  published June 9, 1994

  Edgar Degas always regarded the human figure as the most important subject for art. He built himself a reputation as the principal figure painter... More >>

• The Last Warhol

  published May 26, 1994

  Although Andy Warhol died in 1987, his art continues to pose questions -- questions concerning the nature of art and life. His work and personal... More >>

• The Secret Life of Plants

  published May 12, 1994

  Botany occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. For eons it was the one field in which humankind had anything more than the... More >>

• Trash Men

  published May 5, 1994

  Although Moody Gallery is filled with recent works by veteran Texas artists David McManaway and Jim Love, the exhibition will most likely send you... More >>

• Amazing Cleveland

  published April 28, 1994

  Drive north on Highway 59 toward the forest and lake district of east Texas, out past the master-planned communities and shopping malls under... More >>

• The Naked Eye

  published April 21, 1994

  Let's face it. We're all fascinated by anything that repels us, whether it's crocheted toilet-seat covers or images of crime, car crashes and,... More >>

• What's It All Mean?

  published April 14, 1994

  Robert Cumming's work first appeared in a Boston Sunday paper as part of a contest in which kids had to incorporate a given printed curlicue into... More >>

• Socialist Surrealism

  published March 31, 1994

  While Cuban photography of the 1960s and '70s was characterized by epic imagery and heroic representation and sentiment, "The New Generation: Two... More >>

• Wink Wink

  published March 24, 1994

  "Did you hear what the Art Guys did?" That line has been a sporadic refrain for almost a decade in the Houston art world, prefacing yet... More >>

• What Moves Us Deeply?

  published March 17, 1994

  To be a painter is to assume an immense load of cultural baggage. After more than a century of questioning and refining, what in painting still... More >>

• Art as Ecstasy

  published March 3, 1994

  To understand oneself and the place and time in which one lives and dreams, to make oneself not just more responsive to the visual world but more... More >>

• Black on Black

  published February 17, 1994

  On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. to hear Dr. Martin Luther King present his dream of freedom,... More >>

• Art of Contradiction -- Art of Change

  published February 3, 1994

  Anyone familiar with Dean Ruck's rough-and-tumble installations will probably expect something on the order of shredded hay bales rather than the... More >>

• Three-Ring Museum

  published January 27, 1994

  Until his death in 1992 at age 79, John Cage carried out a revolution that aimed to break the hold of the cultural elite. More than a composer,... More >>