| Virtuoso | |
|---|---|
| Artist | David Adickes |
| Year | 1983 |
| Type | Sculpture |
| Medium | Steel and concrete |
| Dimensions | 11 m(36 ft) |
| Weight | 21 tons |
| Location | Houston, Texas, United States |
| 29°45′46″N95°21′54″W / 29.7628253°N 95.365047°W | |
Virtuoso is a 36-foot-tall, 21-ton outdoor concrete sculptural group by David Adickes. It was installed in 1983 on the outskirts of the Theater District in downtown Houston next to the Lyric Centre building. [1] It was commissioned as a work that "paid homage to music, dance and performing arts". [2]
Viewed from the intersection of Prairie and Smith Streets, the sculpture is a gigantic cello being played by a virtuoso who is invisible except for his head and hands. Behind the sculpture adjacent to the Lyric Centre, a life-sized trio of abstract musicians including a violinist, bass, and flute player accompany the giant cellist. [2] The work is equipped with an integrated sound system that plays classical music for passing pedestrians. [1]
Virtuoso, the artist's favorite work, was his first large-scale sculpture to garner major public exposure. [3] It initially was controversial with critics and many residents panning the sculpture; however, with time, it has been embraced as an iconic landmark. [2]
In 2005, the president of the Lyric Centre's property management group ordered the giant cellist's mustache to be painted black without consulting the artist. After Adickes and others in the arts community said it overstepped its bounds in altering the artwork, the property management company provided a bucket truck and paint so that the artist could repaint the mustache white. [4]
Jaume Plensa is a Spanish artist and sculptor.
Dixie Friend Gay is a U.S. visual artist who works in a variety of media and is noted for work exploring the power of nature, particularly public art.
The Kansas City Convention Center, often referred to as the Bartle Hall Convention Center or simply Bartle Hall, is a major convention center in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, USA. It is named for Harold Roe Bartle, a prominent, two-term mayor of Kansas City in the 1950s and early-1960s. Bartle Hall's four tall art deco inspired pylons are a striking fixture in the Kansas City skyline.
Luis Alfonso JiménezJr. was an American sculptor of Mexican descent. Known for portraying Hispanic-American themes, his works have been displayed at the Smithsonian and at Denver International Airport.
Allen's Landing is the officially recognized birthplace of the city of Houston, Texas, United States, the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States. Located in Downtown Houston between the Main Street and Fannin Street viaducts, the landing encompasses the southern bank of Buffalo Bayou, the city's principal river, at its confluence with White Oak Bayou, a major tributary. Allen's Landing is located south of the University of Houston–Downtown Commerce Street Building.
The architecture of Houston includes a wide variety of award-winning and historic examples located in various areas of the city of Houston, Texas. From early in its history to current times, the city inspired innovative and challenging building design and construction, as it quickly grew into an internationally recognized commercial and industrial hub of Texas and the United States.
Snowplow is an abstract outdoor sculpture by American artist Mark di Suvero located on the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The sculpture was purchased in 1975 by the Indianapolis Sesquicentennial Commission and first installed in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1977.
La Grande Vitesse, a public sculpture by American artist Alexander Calder, is located on the large concrete plaza surrounding City Hall and the Kent County Building in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. Popularly referred to as simply "the Calder", since its installation in 1969 it has come to be a symbol of Grand Rapids, and an abstraction of it is included in the city's official logo.
The Houston Alternative Art chronology was originally compiled by Caroline Huber and The Art Guys for the exhibition catalogue No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston, which was published by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) to accompany the group show of the same name. The exhibition was on view at CAMH from May 9-October 4, 2009. No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston was co-curated by Toby Kamps and Meredith Goldsmith and featured projects by twenty-one Houston artists using the city as inspiration, material, and site. This chronology documents Houston's alternative art scene.
Bob "Daddy-O" Wade was an American artist, based in Austin, Texas, who helped shape the 1970s Texas Cosmic Cowboy counterculture. He is best known for creating whimsical out-sized sculptures of Texas symbols. He was known for his uninhibited style and received attention as a serious artist in some art circles. He hand-tinting large photo-emulsion canvases of vintage photographs, some of which were exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His 40-foot-long (12 m) giant iguana, known as "Iggy", sat on top of the Lone Star Cafe in New York City from 1978 to 1989.
Weather Tower, a public sculpture by American artist Jerald Jacquard, is located on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus, which is near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. The sculpture is located off White River Parkway East Drive in a plaza near IUPUI campus housing. Jacquard created this 20.5-foot-tall (6.2 m) painted steel sculpture in 1985. It was acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1999, where it stood at the front entrance until de-accessioned and moved to IUPUI's campus in 2005.
Broken Walrus I, a public sculpture by American sculptor Gary Freeman, was installed on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus, near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1975. Located north of the IUPUI Lecture Hall, the sculpture was removed around 2004 after it rusted. The work was fabricated in mild steel, painted an orange-red matte finish, and measured 36-inch (91 cm) tall by 8-foot (2.4 m) long by 24-inch (61 cm) wide.
Cornet is an outdoor concrete and steel sculpture of a cornet by David Adickes, located in the Strand Historic District of Galveston, Texas, in the United States. Modeled after a cornet purchased at an antique shop in New Orleans, the 20 feet (6.1 m) by 26 feet (7.9 m) replica originally served as a stage prop at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition. Adickes converted the prop into a freestanding sculpture for installation in Galveston in 1986.
Jon Peterson (1945–2020) was an American artist, most known for his "guerrilla sculpture" in the 1980s and his stylistically eclectic paintings in the 2000s. He was active in the emergence of Los Angeles’s downtown art scene—partly captured in the 1982 documentary, Young Turks—as both an artist and real estate developer. His work has been commissioned by or exhibited at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), the San Diego Museum of Art, Washington Project for the Arts, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston Art Festival, Foundation for Art Resources, and the International Sculpture Conference. It has been discussed in Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Village Voice, and recognized by the National Endowment of the Arts. Museum director and one-time Artforum critic Richard Armstrong wrote that his outdoor, urban "Bum Shelters" "neatly grafted function and relevance onto the sadly barren tree of public sculpture"; critic Peter Plagens called them "hand-made, subtly irregular riff[s] on Minimalism" that injected social consciousness into "erstwhile formalist work." Reviewers liken his painting practice in the 2000s to the "polymath"-model of Gerhard Richter, interchanging diverse styles and genres as a means to understanding the nature of painting itself. Peterson died March 4, 2020, at the age of 74, and is survived by his wife, Tanarat, and son, Raymond.
Monument au Fantôme is an outdoor sculpture by French sculptor Jean Dubuffet, installed on Avenida de las Americas at Discovery Green in Houston, Texas, United States. The painted fiberglass and steel frame sculpture features seven individual forms that represent features of Houston, including a chimney, church, dog, hedge, mast, phantom, and tree. Donated by the Dan Duncan family, it is part of Dubuffet's Hourloupe series, which has companion sculptures in Chicago, New York, and in Europe.
Houston Triptych is an outdoor 1986 bronze sculpture by American artist Ellsworth Kelly, installed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, in the U.S. state of Texas. It was commissioned by the museum and donated by the Brown Foundation, Inc. and Mr. and Mrs. M. S. Stude in honor of Mr. and Mrs. George R. Brown. Artnet's Phyllis Tuchman described the work as "three black geometric shapes mounted on a tall concrete wall" and said, "After the rain, the metal is dark and foreboding. In sunlight, shadows cast on the wall where the elements reach 12 inches into space practically mimic ivy vines."
An outdoor 2007 bronze sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. by American artist Ed Dwight is installed in Hermann Park's McGovern Centennial Gardens in Houston, Texas, United States. The sculpture was vandalized with white paint in August 2017. John D. Harden, Margaret Kadifa, Mike Morris, and Brooke A. Lewis of the Houston Chronicle noted that the vandalism occurred around the same time that protesters demanded the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials in Houston, and the same day that the city's statue of Christopher Columbus was vandalized with red paint.
Points of View is an outdoor 1991 sculpture by James Surls, installed at Market Square Park in Houston, Texas, in the United States. The abstract sculpture is made of treated pine and painted steel, and measures 25 feet (7.6 m) x 8 feet (2.4 m) x 4 feet (1.2 m). It is mounted on a concrete base that measures 3 inches (7.6 cm) x 54 inches (140 cm). The work was dedicated in 1992, following Market Square Park's renovation during 1991–1992.
Masaru "Taki" Takiguchi is a Japanese-born American artist and arts educator, based in Texas. He is best known for his sculpture, his work is often abstract and made of wood, stone or metal.
David Pryor Adickes is a modernist sculptor and painter. His most famous work is the 67-foot tall A Tribute to Courage statue of Sam Houston in Huntsville, Texas.
