Salon du Dallas Art

by J R Compton

I've been putting off writing this, because it's not about the art. It's more about the opening, with photographs I took informally. Unusually, I didn't take photographs of the art on the walls, except behind some people looking at it.

Not that I don't care about the art in this art show, it's that I don't have anything to write about it. No reflection on the art. Maybe a reflection on me, but mostly a reflection of the reality of the art not really being all that important, for a change.

I didn't want to wait any longer to say what I do have to say about this event. I almost put the photographs with one of my essays, but they clearly did not belong there. They belong here on the cover of DallasArtsRevue.

What I care about this show — and I'm talking here about Salon du FIT, an unwieldy title for a fairly unwieldy art show involving a whole mess of local artists — is the opening. It was a big party, with good food and lots of good people, many of whom are, in one way or another, artists.

Good talkers, too. Which was one of the intentions of the show, really. Not that many shows invite artists, then let us choose our own work to be in a show.

That's a nice touch.

But the nicest touch was the set and setting of this show showing in combination with a festival of independent theatre (FIT). In several ways, it was theatre. But nothing scripted, only hoped.

Darned few shows bring in a bunch of comfortable furniture in comfortable, conversational groupings, with plants and rugs and other accoutrements of real living, then let the audience sit comfortably around in the gallery and talk, especially during a very crowded and immensely popular opening reception.

Patterned after salons from the early parts of the last century and earlier, this salon and its perpetrators wanted people to sit among art and talk about art. To be part of the art all around us.

And that's what happened. It was a great party, and the art was nice, too.

The show continues at the Bath House Cultural Center on White Rock Lake through August 7. More information, including a list of all the artists whose work is in the show, is on the DARts calendar.

Andy Hanson photographing me photographing him. We shared a darkroom at the Dallas Times Herald in the early 70s when we were staff photogs there. He's since put me in several publications, most notably a photo of me mooing in front of a Roger Winter painting on the same inside back page of D Magazine as Tom Landry and that guy who owns the Cowboys playing poker. So it's about time I put him somewhere special. Note the colorful summer art crowd in the the Bath House's big gallery.

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