TEXAS, AUSTIN: BLANTON MUSEUM OF ART, UT AUSTIN, AND TORCHY'S TACOS

March 25, 2021

On our last afternoon of the trip, we spent a few hours in the Blanton Museum of Art of the University of Texas. Founded in 1963, it is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. The current building, erected in 2003, was funded in part by a $5 million donation from the wife of James Michener, but then the Houston Endowment made a $12 million donation in honor of its then-chariman, Jack Blanton, and the museum got its new name (although there is a Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building).

The entry way is designed like an atrium, and hanging from the ceiling is Thomas Glassford's work Siphonophora (2016), which looks like a giant sea creature.

When we were there the Blanton had a special exhibit of artworks collected by Leo Steinberg (1920-2011), a part-time art history professor turned print collector. Over about 50 years he amassed a collection of about 3,500 prints covering 500 years of art history. It is an incredibly diverse collection. Here are a few of my favorites. 

(L) The Holy Face (1649) by Claude Mellan and (R) Haitian Woman (1945) by Henri Matisse:

The Prophet Jeremiah (early 1570s), after a fresco by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel:

Three Camels (c. 1641) by Stefano Della Bella:

Joan Miro's I Work Like a Gardener (1964):

 

Figure One (1963) by Jasper Johns. (Steinberg was an early champion of Johns's work) and Violinist (1950-1952) by Saul Steinberg (no relation to the collector Leo Steinberg):

Of course, there must be some works by Picasso, one of the most prolific artists of the 20th century. I didn't get the title and date for this piece, but I love the mix of modern art with a classical Greek subject:

Another Picasso, Blind Minotaur Guided by a Young Girl in the Night (1933):

Moving on to other galleries, here are more of my favorites.

Green Blue Black (1963) by Ellsworth Kelly (Remember that name when you come to the end of my pictures of the art museum):

Homage to Sterling Brown (1972) by Charles White. (Brown was a poet, writer, and Howard University professor, and the target on his chest represents the violence faced by African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. White was himself an African-American academic.)

In Daughters of Wounds and Relics (2006), Dario Robleto fashioned a hair braid out of audiotape recordings of the voices of the last known Union Civil War soldier and Confederate widow's voices, paper from letters written by soldiers who died in various wars, and lace and fabric from mourning dresses:

Close up:

An iconic face meets an iconic style: Farrah Fawcett (1980) by Andy Warhol. (Note: Fawcett was a University of Texas alumna.)

Untitled (1988) by Brazilian artist Frida Baranek reminds me of a dust devil in the desert or of the tornado that swept Dorothy and Toto from Kansas to the Land of Oz:

Another Brazilian artist, Regina Silveira, created Masterpieces (In Absentia): Marcel Duchamp (1983) from self-adhesive vinyl. It references the sculpture of a bicycle wheel on a stool by Marcel Duchamp:

Colombia Coca-Cola (1976/2010) by Colombian Antonio Caro comments on U.S. imperialism and capitalism in his native country:

The museum didn't have a Frida Kahlo piece, at least that I saw, but they had Picos with Orange (1925) by her future husband Diego Rivera. "Picos" was Rivera's nickname for his daughter Guadalupe:

Seepage (2007) by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui looks like a metallic tapestry, but it is made from Nigerian liquor bottle caps tied together with copper wire. According to the information on site, it is the artist's way of "addressing the legacy of colonialism in Africa and the historic triangle trade . . .  Seepage reminds us of the way that people were treated as commodities or currency."

Very powerful.

I'm a big fan of  Great Depression art, and I love Romance (1931-32) by Thomas Hart Benton (a gift of Mari and James Michener to the museum):

Desert Ranges (1940) by another of my favorite Depression era artists, Maynard Dixon (whose middle name was Maynard and first name was actually Lafayette!):

At 4'1" x 11'5", The Charge [A Cavalry Scrap] (1906) by Frederic Remington is the artist's largest painting:

After all that 20th and 21st century art, these two paintings from the European collection seem out of place, but aren't they gorgeous? On the left is David with the Head of Goliath (1620-23) by Claude Vignon, and on the right is Holy Family (c. 1653) by Mattia Preti:

And I can't leave out South American art. This is Our Lady of Cocharcas (c. 1785) by an unknown artist:

I have to throw in one more interesting thing from the museum. I stopped in the restroom before leaving. Texas had some interesting Covid-based bathroom policies. Visitors could only use every other stall and every other sink. They must clean twice as often so they only want to clean half as much?

My very favorite part of the Blanton Art Museum is this structure next to the museum created in 2015 from plans gifted to the museum by American artist Ellsworth Kelly, who died in 2015. (See one of his paintings earlier in this post.) It is the only building Kelly designed, and he named it Austin to honor the place it would be built.

The  cruciform floorplan gives the interior the immediate feel of a cathedral, enhanced by the fact that a sign by the entrance forbids flash photography, asks guests to silence their devices, and asks visitors to "please respect the quiet nature of this space."

Looking from the front door to the far end of the "nave."

The "rose window" over the entrance:

Stained glass windows at the end of each "transept":

The morning light had just begun to stream through this window, casting glowing strips of bright colors onto the wall and floor.

Squares divided between black and white decorate the walls. I didn't count, but I wonder if there were fourteen, the number of the Stations of the Cross in a cathedral.

I was quite moved by this simple building. There is a lovely purity about it that really appeals to me.

On the inside of this transept I was focused on the colors of each square, but from the outside I find myself looking more at the twelve-point star formed by the tumbling windows.

Austin is at the beginning of the main sidewalk that leads into the University of Texas at Austin campus, so we decided to follow the yellow brick road. Right away we noticed that there was a very long line of people--perhaps two blocks long.

These were community  members waiting to get their Covid-19 vaccination. They seemed to be ahead of California in their vaccine progress.

Bob wanted to see the 307-foot-tall Main Building, aka "the Tower," that is known for being the site of one of the first mass shootings in the United States. In 1966, after stabbing his wife and mother to death, a very disturbed 25-year-old former Marine took a bunch of weapons to the observation deck at the top of this tower. Having a view of most of the campus, he spent 96 minutes shooting at people before a policeman and civilian were able to reach him and shoot him dead, but not before he had killed 15 people and injured 31 others. It is a beautiful piece of architecture, and it is too bad it has such a painful day in its past.

I was intrigued by this sculpture in an area leading up to the tower. The West (1987) by American artist Donald Lipski is a set of two steel buoys, each measuring five feet in diameter. They are decorated with corroded copper pennies (heads on one buoy and tails on the other).

There is a nice statue of George Washington in front of the Tower. It was placed here in 1932 in honor of George's 200th birthday by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the State of Texas.  

This view shows how close the campus is to the capitol.

We stopped to admire one more sculpture on our way back to our hotel.

Littlefield Fountain, named after one of the university's benefactors, includes a monument dedicated to students and alumni who died in World War I. The sculpture shows the prow of a ship emerging from the wall with the winged figure of Columbia holding two torches. She is flanked by a soldier and a sailor. In front of her are three seahorses (upper body of horse with lower body of fish), two of which are being ridden by mermen.

We needed to eat before heading to the airport for our flight home, and we took the recommendation of one of my former students to each at Torchy's Tacos, a chain that has locations in eleven states but none, sadly, in California.

There was a long line when we got there.

They've got a definite theme going on.

I can't remember what kinds of tacos we ordered, but they were very good, good enough that I will go back if we run across another one on our travels.

This is a side order of street corn. SO good.

It turns out that the Torchy's we went to is just a block from Magnolia Cafe. Bob had to go back and get a reuben sandwich. It was delicious and we were stuffed.

We drove to the airport, turned in our rental car, and hung out until our flight time. I like to walk around airports, and my attention was caught by a few unusual things in the Austin Airport:

Hey, FRIDA!

Bye-bye, Texas. See you again some day.