WORK BY DOUG MACWITHEY PRE-CORSICANA
From the collections of Charles Dee Mitchell, David Searcy and Ben Fountain, curated by Temple Shipley.
December 7, 2024 - February 16, 2025.
From “Nameless,” David Searcy’s essay on Doug MacWithey in Shame and Wonder (Random House, 2016):
“Though the scale of his work was usually rather small, he was inspired by these immense old spaces, loved, as much as anything, the sense of grand necessity [. . .] And although the big ideas that might have needed ten-foot tables never quite got into gear, [. . .] he required, all the more I think, all that expansiveness. I think such spaces meant to him a kind of endlessness. Historical and physical. Whatever concentrated, pared-away-to-almost-nothing bit of art he did, he wanted to be endless. As if nothingness and endlessness depended on each other. Even some isolated scribble would, in principle, in his heart, belong to an endless series endlessly elucidating endless variations on its faint, essential self.”
Twenty years ago, a bearded, hand-painted, ceremonial Goliath-head mask made of papier-maché, unsigned and undated but likely from the late 19th or early 20th century and used for Odd Fellows initiation rituals, surfaced in the orbit of Corsicana and Doug MacWithey. A “housewarming” gift from Dallas curator (and friend of MacWithey’s) Charles Dee Mitchell, it was the sort of object that would appeal to someone who had recently purchased an historic Odd Fellows lodge—now 100W. After MacWithey’s untimely death in 2010, the mask traveled with his widow, Karan Verma, to Austin. Now it is back upstairs, alongside a two-part exhibition of MacWithey’s work in Anteroom.
Spurred by the mask’s return, three local collectors—Mitchell along with writers Ben Fountain and David Searcy (also both friends of MacWithey’s)—have made possible a two-part, idiosyncratic retrospective of MacWithey’s work. This first installment of works created prior to his time in Corsicana runs from Dec. 7, 2024 to Feb. 16, 2025. The second installment will show work created during his time in Corsicana, opening Feb. 22, 2025.
Born in 1952 and known for minimalist sculptures, often in galvanized steel, as well as elaborate and richly wrought works on paper, which he called “drawings” that incorporated his writing, MacWithey harbored interests from Sufic texts to emblem books teeming with allegorical illustrations or obscure collections of alchemical symbols.
“The significance of the show is the significance of Doug MacWithey, which is [. . .] unknowable,” says Searcy, who describes MacWithey as “deeply introspective.” As part of “this Goldilocks search for a place for him to work” (according to Searcy) the artist moved with Verma to Galveston. Then, following an artistically difficult period, they moved to Corsicana.
“Something emerged and got refined” in MacWithey’s work, Searcy says. “It was very beautiful [. . .] a very different body of work.”
“His sculpture was always very severe, very Duchampian,” Searcy continues. But “the drawings changed a lot”—and in the time after Galveston, the art captured “a fine, rarified kind of vision [. . .] more spare and mysterious.”
Art advisor Temple Shipley curated the exhibition. “The feeling that I had when I saw the works installed in Corsicana was just that even though these pieces had been made before Corsicana, before Doug was there, they felt very much at home, and I was struck by that,” she says. “The feeling instantly that there was something more powerful about them being there and being displayed.” What 100 West offers in Anteroom is a chance to recommit to history. “This material is returning to Corsicana. We recently celebrated the 10th year of 100 West,” Shipley points out. “I think there’s an education that’s happening with this exhibition.”
