He Must Have Been Fond of Pink
A trip to Houston usually is due to healthcare appointments. I have been fortunate in the past to double up on several; but then I stay overnight in a nearby hotel.
This time I planned to attend the Houston Quilt Festival. This is the first time I’ve been back since the pandemic. The show is much smaller—and I’ll talk about that later this week after I process my photos and review my notes.
However, I did have time to visit the Museum of Fine Arts on Wednesday afternoon.
The primary exhibit was a retrospective of Philip Guston.
I was not familiar with his work but found it interesting.
The first formal piece was a very large Mother and Child painted when Guston was still a teenager. He had just discovered Renaissance paintings and the piece does imply a significant influence.
The ‘mother’ is very masculine in appearance–almost with a five o clock shadow: the baby quite chubby.
Many of the next pieces have a soft pink background with shoe soles and red sticks with bristly hairs suggesting legs or arms.
I think this one was something about early morning looking out his window.
He progressed to some strictly abstract pieces with layers of colors reflecting differenct season.
His philosophy was that his work was all about the process not the end result.
That may be the only connonality between us—-I enjoy the process but rarely have a problem letting a piece go.
Every visit to the museum I try to find a section I have not spent time in. This time it was the Western Art section. There are several Remingtons there–on loan from the Stark Museum in Orange Texas—-but then i spied this piece.
Technically this is a piece of grafitti.
When Indians were moved from tipis to log cabins, some of the walls were covered with muslin—to keep the cold wind—and bugs out. This was painted on one of the walls and features a successful battle. The victors are on horseback, the opponents on the ground—known for shouting out insults along with arrows—see the top horse second from right—bad words coming from his mouth. The victor is portrayed several times–each time with more feathers.
The horses are stylized but each one has his hooves and legs in different positions—this is so charming and much more intriguing than shoe soles on a lovely pink background.
Sylvia Weir Art 
Oh my, that Indian “graffiti”, or since the muslin was on the walls, a mural. Just outstanding. Very much like the ledger drawings. I so appreciate you sharing it and yes, a bit more intriguing than the Guston painting. 😉