Bieber MIA

Big Rodeo blunder: Selena Gomez fails to recognize the original Selena, makesTaylor Swift look brilliant

Selena Gomez is still trying to find her voice at the microphone.
Photo by © Michelle Watson/CatchlightGroup.com
Selena Gomez probably isn't sweating our Rodeo review.
Photo by © Michelle Watson/CatchlightGroup.com
While the rest of the stadium of tweens and tortured parents squealed to Gomez'swarble, I took quick notes on the performer's follies.
Photo by © Michelle Watson/CatchlightGroup.com
Let's start with the lowest point of the night — a mid-set break to introduceher father and sing "Happy Birthday."
Photo by © Michelle Watson/CatchlightGroup.com
But the biggest omission of her RodeoHouston night was not paying tribute to theoriginal Selena.
The set for Selena Gomez' Sunday show at the rodeo
Photo by © Michelle Watson/CatchlightGroup.com

Selena Gomez set the stage at a Sunday evening rodeo performance by confiding to the Reliant Stadium crowd, "It just feels so good to be back home in Texas." She would later add, "I'm just a girl from Dallas, Texas, and I'm on this stage because you believe in me."

Should we believe in Ms. Gomez (who hails from Grand Prairie, somewhere between Arlington and Irving)? After enduring her 58-minute-long performance, I can't say that I do.

While the rest of the stadium of tweens and tortured parents squealed to Gomez's warble, I took quick notes on the performer's follies. Let's start with the lowest point of the night — a mid-set break to introduce her father and sing "Happy Birthday." The moment was humanizing for the performer, not because she was baring her family roots, but because her control of the song was terribly off-key.

Indeed, while Selena's winning smile, svelte figure and incomprehensibly voluminous hair are key ingredients to becoming a time-tested pop tart, her vocals are lacking. Aside from her "Happy Birthday" blowup, this scarcity of singing skill shines through when she covers the work of other artists. If you've ever doubted the talent of Taylor Swift, the blonde product appears a genius when her track "You Belong With Me" is covered by Gomez.

Selena's dearth of singing talent pales in comparison to her as-yet-found originality in her own songs, which is perhaps why she relied heavily on three covers during her short set. "This is for the mamas and dads out there tonight," she announced before launching into a weak rendition of Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield." Taking a nod to her Disney management, she ended the night with a try at Pilot's "Magic" (which, incidentally, appears in commercials for Walt Disney World).

Even her original songs seem like riffs off of higher quality pop. Take Gomez' "Off the Chain," which repeats "your love, your love, your love," in an identical manner to the refrain of Ke$ha's "Your Love Is My Drug." In her stage costume, which involved a black sequined tank and Yves Klein blue tutu, Gomez represented the most watered-down aesthetic of Black Swan.

Despite a tanked trio of covers, I was most disappointed to not hear the one cover I'd been anticipating — a song by Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Last year, when performing alongside recently-confirmed beau Justin Bieber, Gomez reportedly wowed with a tribute rendition of "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom." No such effort was made Sunday for Gomez to recognize her late namesake, who attracted over 65,000 fans to the Astrodome during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in 1995.

While I mourned the loss of Selena 1.0, the hoards of tweens lamented that Beiber did not make a guest appearance (understandably, as he landed in Dublin earlier today as part of his UK tour). However, Selena echoed a virtual shout out to the crooner after he tweeted Sunday, "i miss you," with an all-band inclusive pre-show tweet "I miss all of y'all."

Selena still had her crew, "the Scene," which is the moniker for her backup band. That includes a guitarist, bassist and keyboardist, all of whom she introduced by name, along with her two (much needed) backup singers, Ashley and Lindsey, also known as "the Scenettes." Watching huge projections of the Scenettes writhe behind Gomez, I couldn't help but empathize as we each thought, "How did I end up here?"

I don't despise Gomez — as a seemingly stable and entrepreneurial teenager, she's a good role model, and her involvement with UNICEF is certainly commendable. I just hope that someday soon, Selena will — literally — find her voice.

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Art on the Prairie

The roots of Lone Star art: William Reaves unearths the Texas modernistlandscape

Richard Stout, "Evenings Fall," 1967
David Adickes, "Three Men on a Beach," 1953
Jack Boynton, "Inland Lights," 1956
Emma Richardson Cherry, "Southern Morning," c. 1930

This month's editorial series, True Grit: Houston Style, has sought to answer to what extent Houston embraces its Texas roots. To investigate how Houston artists have come to terms with their state's landscape, we went to William Reaves Fine Art, a gallery whose mission is to define modernism in Texas.

"We opened the gallery to convey a story about the evolution of modernism in our state," says the gallery's owner, William Reaves. He pinpoints Houston as the "birthplace" of Texas modernism for the community's willingness to display abstract works in museums and support award-winning artists as early as the 1930s. Artist-teachers like Emma Richardson Cherry and Ella McNeil Davidson had means to travel internationally and cultivated a generation of informed local artists like Robert Preusser and Frank Dolejska in the 1920s and '30s via institutions like the Art League and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Reaves notes that much ink has been spilt chronicling the first half of the 20th century in Texas art, but it was not until after World War II that the region received the necessary influx of knowledgeable artists to create an enduring community. Several local artists who stayed in Europe after the war brought back global influences. Paris was briefly home to a creative Texan expat culture, inculcating such minds as Herb Meers and David Adickes, who studied under the lionized Cubist painter Fernand Léger.

"This sort of French-looking, Texas cubist school that they created when they returned was very different from the bluebonnets people were used to seeing," says Reaves.

As the 1950s progressed, Houston became a "hotbed" for non-representational art, led by figures like Jack Boynton and Richard Stout (whose work from the era will be on view in an exhibition opening Friday). "A lot of this stuff from the '50s is new again because it's been kind of squirreled away in closets for awhile," says Reaves. "It comes off as fresh because there's a kinship with contemporary artists."

No doubt that international currents increasingly flowed into the local art mix, but did Houston artists ever completely turn their back on the Texas landscape?

"My impression is that it's a blend," says the gallery owner, citing Richard Stout as an example of an artist who has studied under other masters and blended that style with an impression of the state. Explains Reaves,

He paints in an expressionist style and has been informed by a lot of different artists over time. In addition, he was an art professor at UH for 25 years, so he's very aware of what's going on internationally. But Richard is also from Beaumont and his work almost always sees a landscape influence — a lot of coastal plains and rich atmosphere. Yet it is painted in a way that is informed by a lot of important artists from the New York School."

Similarly, Boynton and McKie Trotter presented work at New York galleries, yet their respective reductive landscapes and abstract expressionist works evince a horizon line evocative of the wide skies and flatness of Texas.

In truth, the link between Houston artists and their Texas roots is not a black-and-white issue. But to some extent, the answer is embedded in the cadre of works on view at William Reaves Fine Art. More than simply display and distribute artworks, the gallery presents curated thematic exhibitions that are accompanied by robust physical and online catalogues derived from research conducted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Hirsch Library.

"The gestalt of what we're trying to do," says Reaves, "is trace a history of Texas art that may have been overlooked, but at its zenith, there's this beautiful, vital modernism."

The exhibitions Lone Star Modernism: A Celebration of Mid-Century Texas Art and Richard Stout: The Early Years open Friday, with a reception April 9, 5 - 8 p.m. A gallery talk will be held April 30 from 2 - 4 p.m. Both exhibitions are on view through May 7.

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