THE LARGE MIXED media works of Radcliffe Bailey and the constructions, carvings, and castings of James Surls would seem at first viewing to be distinctly different. Bailey’s works command the attention of the viewer and allow no respite except to move on to the next one. Surls’ conceits invite close attention without being overwhelming. Yet, despite the many differences that one could list, the works of these two artists are both more and less than what may seem to be at first glance.

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Artist captures Katrina victims’ anguish By Michael Granberry, THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS When it comes to social activism, artist David Bates is the first to admit: “It’s not usually my… 

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Radcliffe Bailey, born in 1968, belongs to the next generation of Southern artists. Yet, like many working today, he readily acknowledges John Scott’s influence and encouragement. Like Scott, Bailey’s work draws inspiration from music.

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It’s like a weird dream. Soul siren Irma Thomas, dressed in a golden Jackie Kennedy pantsuit, beckons us into a lush landscape of blue irises, python-like oak limbs, and red-winged black birds that sing along to old-fashioned phonograph records

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Photographer Deborah Luster doesn’t try to connect the dots. In conversation, she lays out the autobiographical steppingstones that led to the creation of “One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana,” her 2002 masterpiece now on display at the Newcomb Art Gallery. But she leaves us to fill in the psychological blanks.

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John Hartman’s painted cities are the ones parents tell their wide-eyed children about, the astounding metropolises formed by almighty rivers and buildings that ignore gravity as they make their way to the moon. They’re Oz or Xanadu’s pleasure dome.

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It’s been said that beautiful photographs of destruction and human suffering make us uneasy, partly because of the difficulty most of us have reconciling beauty and misery.

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Welcome back, color.

With the worship of sociopolitical polemics and high-minded conceptualism and supposed death of painting at the end of the 20th century, color became something of a quaint anachronism.

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Sharp-eyed satirist, deft observer of the natural world, accomplished draftsman, frenzied expressionist—as an artist, John Alexander is hard to pin down. In his 40-year career, he has gone through periods in which he’s turned a critical eye on the social and political scene; years when he’s dedicated himself to honing his drawing skills to the level of an Old Master; times of painting lush landscapes, bursting still lifes, and churning seascapes; and an explosive phase in the late 1970s and early ’80s when it seemed he was about to transform into a full-blown abstractionist

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The Venice Biennale is just like any avant-garde art exhibit. Everything is a bit strange. Some things are beautifully strange, some fascinatingly strange, some incomprehensibly strange, some horribly strange.

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