#Chelada
#Texas
#Austin
#BlantonMuseumOfArt
#BlantonMuseum
@BlantonMuseum
#Austin
#ElsworthKelly
#BriceDailyPhoto

Painted in 1940, when Texas was being remade by oil wealth, roadside commerce, and Depression-era dislocation. American artist Jerry Bywaters, then in his mid-thirties, had already become a central figure in Texas regionalism. Rather than romanticizing the state, he shows its contradictions: opportunity beside exploitation, faith beside commerce, plus heat and smoke beside cosmetics and poise. The sitters’ identities are not known, but their anonymous presence becomes part of the painting’s power. They stand for the human cost and human nerve required to move through a world where modern industry promises escape even as it scorches the land around them. Two women stand at the edge of a West Texas road with a tense, almost theatrical presence. One wears a fitted black dress, black heels, a necklace, and a feathered black hat over blond hair. Her posture is upright and self-possessed, as she looks into the distance. Beside her, a second woman wears a white blouse, yellow skirt, red belt, and tall western boots as she holds a white hat. A suitcase and round hatbox rest near their feet. Their cheeks and lips are brightly painted, their legs elongated, and their clothing sharply outlined. Behind them stretch signs, poles, a garage, scattered tires, roadside advertisements, and oil fires that stain the sky with smoke. The women are often read as sex workers waiting for a ride into the oil fields, yet the picture resists easy judgment. Bywaters called the image a “sympathetic caricature,” and their stylization does not flatten them into mockery, but heightens their force, danger, glamour, fatigue, and will. The road curves forward past Joe’s Garage, a Jax beer sign, “Hattie’s Hut,” and the unsettling contrast between a “666” sign and nearly hidden “Jesus Saves” tag to set up a visual argument about boomtown desire, moral anxiety, and survival in a landscape transformed by the oil industry. The women are not passive victims. They appear monumental, alert, and determined.

“Oil Field Girls” by Jerry Bywaters (American) - Oil on board / 1940 - Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, Texas) #WomenInArt #JerryBywaters #Bywaters #BlantonMuseum #TexasArt #AmericanArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #UTA #BlantonMuseumOfArt #AmericanArtist #1940sArt #OilFields #arte #AmericanRegionalism

Today I am singing twice with Panoramic Voices at The #BlantonMuseumofArt - “our choral repertoire in FOUR different languages! Can you guess what they are? (Share your guesses in the comments)… spoiler alert, English isn’t one of them. 🤫”

Free with museum admission:)
#panoramicvoices

Excited to be performing with #PanoramicVoices at the #BlantonMuseumofArt this Saturday, at 4:30pm and 6:30pm as part of #BlantonAllDay!
Full schedule at links below!
www.panoramicvoices.org
blantonmuseum.org/programs/bla...
#choir #atxarts #austin ##singing #choral #museumevents #freeconcert #sing

Estela Bocángel Montesinos was a Peruvian trade unionist and political activist. Together with her five sisters (Augusta, Natividad, Alejandrina, Raquel and Camila), they were known as the "hermanas Bocángel Montesinos.” In 1931, during the government of General Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro, the sisters gained relevance as part of the "Socorro Rojo" group, associated with the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores (National Confederation of Workers) which was providing assistance to political prisoners and linked to the Partido Comunista (Communist Party). In 1932, Peruvian artist José Sabogal depicted Estela in this close-up portrait with her dark hair pulled back, wearing a mauve-colored beret with a small decorative flower on the side. She's dressed in a light grayish beige coat with a textured appearance, possibly fur. Underneath, a portion of a peach-colored, v-neck top with a small, patterned design is visible. Estela’s face is gently rounded with her rosy cheeks and pink lips accentuated against her caramel coffee-tone skin. She rests her hands atop each other in her lap. Her dark eyes are looking down and slightly to our right, with one eye larger than the other, giving her a calm, yet contemplative expression. Sabogal was a painter, muralist, and educator as well as "the most renowned early supporter" of the artistic indigenist movement of Peru. Although Sabogal's own descent was Spanish rather than indigenous, he promoted pre-Columbian culture and esthetics. He reportedly "became Peru's militant indigenist and aesthetic nationalist, and led this movement for the next 30 years” as a founder and long-time leader of the “Peruvian School” of painting.

“Estela Bocángel Montesinos” by José Sabogal (Peruvian) - Oil on canvas / 1932 - Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, Texas) #WomenInArt #art #ArtText #OilPainting #PortraitofaWoman #Portrait #BlantonMuseumofArt #artwork #womensart #JoséSabogal #JoseSabogal #Sabogal #PeruvianArt #PeruvianArtist #1930s

The Sioux woman in American artist William Gilbert Gaul’s “The Land of the Free” stands firmly and solitarily. Her gaze out across the wide Western landscape is reverent, contemplative. She possesses the wisdom that only years of experiences can cultivate, and she draws upon it face the world. While depictions of Native American men standing alone in majestic landscapes are common in American paintings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, solitary renderings of women in such environments are rare. This Sioux woman is wrapped in a Navajo blanket and perched atop a craggy valley rendered in thick oil impasto. The Sioux often chose high places like mountain peaks, as depicted here, to bury their dead, and women mourned alone. The work’s title borrows from the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” used by the U.S. military during this time — well before it became the national anthem in 1931. William Gilbert Gaul, familiar with tribal funerary traditions from his experiences with the Sioux, may have set this twilight scene at its “last gleaming” to evoke the destruction done by U.S. forces against Native American communities at the turn of the century. William Gilbert Gaul, sometimes called Gilbert Gaul, was a late 19th and early 20th century American painter and illustrator of military subjects ranging from the American Civil War to World War I, as well as American Western vistas and scenes like this one. In 1882, Gaul was elected to the National Academy of Design when he was 27 years old. Later, he was awarded the medal of the American Art Association, the medal of the Paris Exposition in 1889, two bronze medals of the Chicago Exposition in 1893, the medal of the Buffalo Exposition in 1901, and a gold medal at the Appalachian Exhibition of 1910 in Knoxville, Tennessee.

“The Land of the Free” by William Gilbert Gaul (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1900 - Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, Texas) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #sioux #womensart #BlantonMuseumofArt #artwork #WilliamGilbertGaul #Gaul #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist #NativeAmerican #mourning #GilbertGaul

A favorite image from my recent trip to Austin.

This is Adolph Gottlieb's "Cadmium Red Above Black," painted in 1959. It's currently on view at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX.

#AdolphGottlieb
#BlantonMuseumOfArt
#Austin
#AbstractExpressionism
#ColorField

Went to a museum today and got to check out a bunch of things. Here's just a few things I really liked.

#museums #art #blantonmuseumofart #austinmuseumday

Nature Reflect
Snøhetta adds series of RAIN-CATCHING sculptures to Austin museum.. #architecturee studio has completed the redesign of the #blantonmuseumofart campus in #austintx, installing massive "petal"-shaped #sculptures at its centre.

www.dezeen.com/2024/07/15/s...