Here are a few things you may or may not know about Texas: It is big, about 800 miles in diameter. It is many states, subcultures, ideologies, and ways of thought, all crammed into one landmass. It is unwieldy. It isn’t all cowboys. But it isn’t not cowboys, either. It is one of the best places in the U.S., and dare I say the Americas, for art. It has, as I learned from Glasstire’s William Sarradet, 10 distinct ecoregions. It is home to 3 of our country’s 10 most populous cities. It is woefully overlooked by many who either think it is a backwater, don’t understand its sophistication, or actively dismiss it.
For March, as part of Glasstire’s 25th anniversary celebration, we’re looking at what Texas is. This in itself is difficult to do because Texas is many things to many people. It’s hard to pin down a common ideology or through line that everyone can agree on, in part because a person’s landscape and the surrounding culture it fosters shapes their experiences, and West Texas is a far cry from the Piney Woods.
But still, there’s a spirit that, though nearly undefinable, snakes its way through Texans, both native and adopted. For both better and worse, it’s a sort of rugged, proud individualism that feels markedly different from the rest of the U.S. It’s what makes Texans feel like they have the power to secede — a “you can’t tell us what to do” defiance of everything else.
This bleeds into the aesthetic of the state’s artists. While I think defining a specific Texas art style is near impossible, for the same reasons listed above, in my recent essay on Robert Rauschenberg, I took a stab at it this way: “Artists who were raised in or adopt the state have a shared sensibility that’s hard to pin down. It is a bit, but not entirely, a visual aesthetic; similarly, it is an ideological ruggedness and independence — not from anything particular, but from everything, altogether.”
Glasstire’s work, as I see it, has always been to catalog and critique the many different ideas imbued in the art coming out of our state, and to reflect those ideas back at both Texas’ citizenry and our international audience of readers. We try to stay away from grandiose statements, instead favoring reflection, analysis, consideration, and, yes, maybe just a touch of mythologizing. (With Texas, it’s hard not to.)
As such, this month, our writers are taking a magnifying glass to what this state promises itself to be and actually is. You can expect an Art Dirt podcast episode in which Glasstire’s Editor-in-Chief, Jessica Fuentes, and I try to pin down how to define Texas; essays about how the state’s distinct regions manifest themselves; and the kickoff of our statewide panel discussion series, Talking Texas Art, in Dallas-Fort Worth.
You can follow all of our 25th anniversary content by clicking here. Thanks for reading, and go see some art!
— Brandon Zech, Publisher