Visual Art

Watercolor is an unforgiving, fragile medium.

I step into the Ismaili Center—opened last December on the banks of Buffalo Bayou—and the space announces its intention immediately. The light is controlled. The quiet is profound, engineered so conversation is possible, so presence can be felt.

A needle passes through a sheet of paper and leaves behind a wound no wider than its point. Light catches along the raised fibers. Repeated hundreds of times, these punctures gather into a composition: marks made not by adding material to the surface, but by breaking through it.

Heinz Berggruen bought his first Klee in 1940 for reasons that had nothing to do with investment.