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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Coonskin Cap Chic

Remembering the Alamo — dark side and all — and how Davy Crockett's still cool

I wore faux coonskin on my head, and once told an adult that everyone called meplain old David, but that my real name was Davy Crockett.
The boys were very taken with all the re-enactors and even volunteered to be getup at 5:30 for the commemoration of the battle’s bloody pre-dawn conclusion.
I distinctly remember the panels in which Texian sharpshooters killed Mexicansoldiers and celebrated.
You feel them whether the gray on your head comes from your own hair or fromyour coonskin cap.
Yes, the epic battle was to some extent fought in defense of slavery. Jim Bowiehimself was a big-time slave trader.
Portrait by George P.A. Healy, c. 1820
Stephen L. Hardin made a name for himself with his military history of the TexasRevolution, "Texian Iliad."

Like most AARP-eligible, Caucasian American males, I grew up under the sign of Davy Crockett Alamo, as interpreted by Walt Disney and Fess Parker. I wore a faux coonskin on my head, and once told an adult that everyone called me plain old David, but that my real name was Davy Crockett.

And because I grew up in South Texas, not far from San Antonio, the Alamo connection was particularly strong. When my mother went shopping at Joske’s, that Taj Mahal of San Antonio retail, I’d tag along, hoping to talk her into buying me a book and into letting me visit the Alamo just a few steps away.

All this was memorable enough for a small town boy, but when word came that John Wayne was going to make an Alamo movie, and play Davy Crockett himself, I suddenly felt a little closer to the center of the universe. The excitement that attended the movie’s world premiere in San Antonio made its way to my hometown. So couple of years later, when I was in seventh grade, I was reasonably excited to study Texas history, even if it was at the hands of a strange, and possibly emotionally disturbed former coach.

That’s when I first realized that the legacy of the Alamo defenders was more ambiguous and complicated than I’d realized. I distinctly remember the comic book about the Texas Revolution that we read in class. Its overt racism made me feel embarrassed for my “Mexican” classmates. I distinctly remember the panels in which Texian sharpshooters killed Mexican soldiers and celebrated by exclaiming “Got a taco bender!” and “Got a bean eater!”

That was my first inkling that the Alamo’s appeal might not be universal.

The older I got, and the larger Vietnam loomed in my life, the more ambiguous the lessons of the Alamo became. It didn’t help that LBJ was exhorting U.S. troops to “nail the coonskin to the wall” over there in Southeast Asia, where I had no intention of ever setting foot.

But the Alamo fire never completely went out for me, and part of the process of reconciling myself to being a life-long Texan, when at times I really wished I were somewhere else, was to re-embrace the Alamo, dark side and all. Yes, the epic battle was to some extent fought in defense of slavery. Jim Bowie himself was a big-time slave trader.

But still…the Alamo defenders may not have literally crossed a line drawn in the sand, but they were surely brave, just as were the Mexican soldiers who crashed the Alamo’s walls. I still can’t read Travis’ final letter — "I shall never surrender or retreat" — without getting an emotional jolt.

And the more I learned about Crockett (which isn’t a lot), the easier he was to cling to. He fell out with his extremely powerful patron, Andrew Jackson, because he opposed Jackson’s policy of Indian removal, which was the ethnic cleansing of that day. There’s a lot of mythology surrounding Crockett, of course, but he really was witty enough to say (after he lost a re-election to Congress bid) “You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.”

Last Christmas, when my 12-year-old son, Gabriel, and my 10-year-old grandson, Cameron, and I made a trip to San Antonio, I took them to the Alamo and wondered how they would respond. They knew a little about the Alamo and Crockett, but they’d never experienced Fess Parker or John Wayne, and I wasn’t sure how this would all translate to their wired and digital generation.

But somehow the old shrine worked its magic, as they each left wearing coonskin caps, which they kept on as we explored the rest of the city. Gabriel even wore his to a Christmas party attended by boys his own age, and who responded predictably to the sight of the absurd headgear (which does, somehow, actually look pretty good on Gabriel). “Is that a condom on your head?” one kid asked.

I expected Gabriel to throw his cap away and foreswear Davy Crockett, but instead he got his back up. Davy Crockett was cool, whether his friends realized it or not.

Earlier this month, Cameron, Gabriel and I went back for the 175th anniversary of the Alamo’s fall. It was quite a time. The boys were very taken with all the re-enactors, and even volunteered to be get up at 5:30 for the commemoration of the battle’s bloody pre-dawn conclusion. Gabriel bought a copy of Crockett’s autobiography, which he’s promised to let me read when he’s through.

I also reconnected with Steve Hardin, whom I hadn’t seen in decades. As Stephen L. Hardin, my old friend and former fencing companion has become quite a writer and historian. He made a name for himself with his military history of the Texas Revolution, Texian Iliad. In Literary Houston, an anthology of writing about Houston that I recently published with TCU Press, I included two pieces by Hardin, who is simply one hell of a writer. One excerpt, from Iliad, vividly brings to life the Battle of San Jacinto and its revenge-and-blood-filled-conclusion; the other, from the unjustly neglected Texian Macabre, memorably describes Houston in the 1840s as “the worst place on earth.”

I rehearse all this because Hardin is so good at bringing history back to life, and to making you understand that the fighters on both sides were human beings, subject to the same emotions as us. Hardin led us on a tour of the greater Alamo battleground, which extends far beyond today’s Alamo grounds. When he came to the story of Susanna Dickinson’s exit from San Antonio, he became quite moved. This despite the fact that he’s told it, and contemplated it, many times before.

We were standing at the very spot where Santa Anna had the naked bodies of the Alamo defenders piled up and burned. Shortly thereafter, when the Alamo-survivor Dickinson left town, en route to Gonzales, she would’ve had to pass right by the smoldering ashes and blackened bones of her dead husband. As Hardin imagined the pain she must’ve felt, he was briefly brought to tears. He apologized, saying, “It’s just such a human moment.”

Despite the fact that the Alamo is surrounded by a impressively tacky atmosphere, complete with a Ripley’s Believe It or Not, these human moments still shine through, and you feel them whether the gray on your head comes from your own hair, or from your coonskin cap.

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