A Time to Celebrate in San Antonio N by Cassandra Yardeni
ow in its 28th year, Contemporary Art Month is a cultural institution in San Antonio, bringing out the city’s most imaginative offerings throughout the month of March. Just weeks later, our beloved Fiesta celebration kicks off. The Alamo City shines with everything from Surrealist selections straight from the Whitney Museum to Fiesta medal mania and everything in between. Here is our guide to enjoying Contemporary Art Month and Fiesta on the town!
and surrealism. On display at the McNay through May 19, Real/Surreal features paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints that elucidate how artists—depending on intention and influence—developed degrees of reality in which imagination held more or less sway. Among the notable artists included in the exhibition are Charles Burchfield, Paul Cadmus, Joseph Cornell, Philip Guston, Edward Hopper, Man Ray, Ben Shahn, Charles Sheeler, Yves Tanguy, George Tooker, and Andrew Wyeth. While a basic connection to the observable world underlies realist Blue Star Contemporary Arts Center works, the term realism has many facets. Subverting reality Blue Star kicks off CAM with Gary Sweeney: A Forty-Year through imagination and the unconscious rests at the Overview, a visual valentine to the city that showcases heart of Surrealism. Yet convergences in these different, Sweeney’s work. The California-born artist moved to San even oppositional, approaches encourage new ways of Antonio in 1996 and made an indelible impression on looking at art of the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s in America. Real/ the local art scene through exhibitions and permanent Surreal offers visitors the opportunity to view additional installations, including one at the San Antonio International works by artists represented in the McNay’s collection, Airport. The exhibit is on view through May 11. which includes singular examples from this period by the same artists in the Whitney’s collection. Also on display at Blue Star is Scott Martin: Brake, a collection that comments on intersections both literal As part of the McNay’s commitment to contemporary and metaphorical. The symbol of a railroad crossing is art, the museum established the McNay Contemporary explored through still image and video, in a variety of Collectors Forum in 2003, a group which acquires colors and processes. According to the artist, “the railroad notable contemporary works in various media each year. crossing is a familiar image of time spent waiting, and Celebrating its ten year anniversary this CAM, MCCF’s even of time wasted, but it has become metaphorically selection for 2013 is a large color photograph by Brazilian significant to me for several different reasons. On one artist Vik Muniz (born 1961). hand, it represents a transition in my process from still photography to video, a place of crossing over from The Human Face and Form is also on display at the McNay; what is familiar to what remains unknown…Once the focusing on the most universal of subjects, the human train has passed, the braking ceases but the observation body, exhibit brings together nearly 40 modern sculptures, continues. The act of stopping creates a perspective that ranging from the early 1800s to the present day. Organized was there before, but not noticed.” by type rather than chronologically or stylistically, the exhibition shows ways that sculptors deal with different Through May 11, Lloyd Walsh: Solo Exhibition will be aspects and moods of the body, from portrait busts and on view at Blue Star. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Walsh other fragmentary forms such as torsos; to full reclining or currently lives and works in San Antonio. Walsh is currently standing figures, as well as human bodies in action. This an Associate Professor of Art at Palo Alto College, and collection is on view through May 19. proudly lends his signature neo-baroque style painting using surreal imagery to the CAM landscape. In the spirit of Fiesta, the McNay presents Fiesta, Fete, Festival: Selections from the Tobin Collection, on display McNay Art Museum through June 9. The exhibit moves from San Antonio Drawn entirely from the holdings of the Whitney’s to Seville, Venice, Versailles, St. Petersburg, and other collection, Real/Surreal: Selections from the Whitney cities to celebrate some of the world’s great festivals. Museum of American Art focuses on the tension and overlap Scene and costume designs from the Tobin Collection between two strong currents in 20th-century art: realism reveal that San Antonio’s own Fiesta—from NIOSA and March/April 2013 | On The Town 55