My favorites from the Kinder Building at MFAH, pt 1

Behind me is the visual art piece entitled Chromosaturation MFAH by Carlos Diez-Cruz (2017) which connects the Kinder Building to the rest of the MFAH complex; it was my first visit to the Kinder Building and I was very impressed

Number 6, Jackson Pollock, 1949; this piece is among the first fully abstract paintings Pollock produced using the drip technique, which he had learned from David Alfaro Siqueiros in the mid 1930s

International Mobile, Alexander Calder, 1949; a gift of the de Menils, this sculpture dominates the Kinder building atrium and fulfills Calder's plan to have the work visible from multiple levels

Nostalgic Echo, Salvador Dali, 1935; this work combines two of Dali's signature compositional strategies: hyperrealism and dream imagery; the image of the bell tower is from Dali's sister's school in Figueres, Spain

Comment (What/How), Yves Tanguy, 1940; Tanguy formally joined the Paris Surrealist circle in 1925, and he soon became celebrated for his abstract landscapes characterized by atmospheric vistas populated by enigmatic, biomorphic figures

Excursion into Philosophy, Edward Hopper, 1959; known for his compelling images of loneliness in everyday life, Hopper considered this piece to be among his most important works

The Kiss, Rene Magritte, 1951; the artist is quoted saying 'by asking what does this mean they express a wish that everything be understandable;' Magritte wanted to push the imaginations of his audience into deeper explorations

Acquamare Chaos, Toots Zynsky, 1997; with the opening of the Kinder Building, the MFAH is now the 12th largest art museum in the world based on square feet of gallery space

A Muse, Constantin Brancusi, 1917; Brancusi first carved a marble version of A Muse in 1912 before tackling this version in brass; he actually had a model for the piece and I wonder what she thought when shown the result

Still Life with Musical Instruments, Jacques Lipchitz, 1918; this artist extended the formal rhythms seen in the paintings of Picasso and Gris into three dimensional reliefs, this one in bronze

Chair, Model MR 90, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1929; designed for the 1929 Barcelona World's Fair, it's X-shaped frame was inspired by ancient Egyptian and Greek folding chairs; although still made today, this is a rare example with the original cushions

Sordidness (from the series Cosmic Monsters), Antonio Berni, ca. 1964; this creature, made from what society had discarded, embodied the vicious appetites and vices that plagued a deeply troubled sociopolitical era in Argentina

Variants, Mira Schendel, 1977; this work is composed of 93 rice-paper monotypes framed by Plexiglass sheets and hung with acrylic thread allowing them to appear to be floating in space

Podgaric Toy, Los Carpinteros, 2013; modeled after a Soviet-era monument erected in 1967 in Podgaric, Croatia, this sculpture, created from LEGO's, explores the status of orphan monuments, those that outlived the ideals they originally embodied

Vessel, Babs Haenen, 1989; this trailblazing, Dutch artist used a labor-intensive process for this hand-built composition composed of cut, colored porcelain shapes joined together in this eye-catching pattern

Transparent Migrations, Amalia Mesa-Bains, 2001; here the artist explores domestic space through sociopolitical, spiritual and economic practices to reveal the harsh realities and invisible status of working class Latinas in the US

Dragon Bench, Joris Laarman, 2014; this is the first sculptural work to be created with Laarman's in-house-developed MX3D-metal printer/welding machine which allows for the printing of molten metal in-air without the aid of support structures

Hechima 6 Chair, Nakamura Ryuji, 2008; this work, made from vulcanized fiber, appears to mimic the cellular structure of the plant form it is named after (hechima is Japanese for gourd)

16 Black and Blue Circles, No. 1235, Antonio Asis, 1965; the artist placed a metal grill a few inches in front of a wooden support painted yellow with alternating columns of black and blue dots that seem to vibrate as the viewer moves

Your Lunar Nebula, Olafur Eliasson, 2015; standing before the work the viewer sees himself reflected and inverted in the silvered crystal spheres while, stepping back, the overall array suggests magnified droplets of water as well as an immense cosmos

Wall Piece I, Tone Vigeland, 2002; Vigeland encased the ends of 420 steel rods in a clay mold, then wrapped the mold in lead and beat it by hand before attaching them into a grid-like pattern designed to give the work a waterfall effect