Art news

Now on View in SF: Felicia Chiao's "I Just Want To Go Home"

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 02:01:00 +0200

Spoke Art sends our sincere thanks to everyone that has made it out to see Felicia Chiao's I Just Want To Go Home exhibition at our San Francisco location so far. And, our continued congratulations to Felicia on her incredible debut show with us which has officially sold out!

There is still time to see this fantastic collection in-person through September 25th. We are open by appointment only so please be sure to schedule your visit through the link below. For those of you not in The Bay Area, keep scrolling for a look at the installation with a set of photos from our friend, Shaun Roberts.

Exhibition on view : September 4th - 25th, 2021

View the exhibition online : here

Address : Spoke Art SF, 816 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA 94109 (map)

Schedule an appointment : here

COVID protocol : Due to COVID-19, this exhibition will be open by appointment only. For the safety and health of our colleagues, face coverings and social distancing required at all times inside the gallery.

Archaeologists Uncover Children’s Hand and Foot Prints in What’s Thought to Be the Oldest Cave Art To Date

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 23:57:12 +0200

Image via Science Bulletin

A series of hand and foot impressions uncovered in the Quesang village in the Tibetan Plateau might rewrite the art-historical timeline. According to an article published this month in Science Bulletin, researchers believe the ancient prints were made between 169,000 and 226,000 years ago and appear to be placed intentionally, cementing the notion that they’re the earliest examples of cave art yet to be uncovered.

Of course, there’s plenty of debate over whether these impressions are art, although archaeologists arguing for the categorization are staking their claims on intent. “It is the composition, which is deliberate, the fact the traces were not made by normal locomotion, and the care taken so that one trace does not overlap the next,” geologist Matthew Bennett told Gizmodo, rejecting the idea that the prints are a byproduct of common movement like walking or grasping nearby material for stabilization. If the impressions are considered art, they predate the prehistoric figurative findings in both Sulawesi and Lasceaux, which date back about 43,900 and 17,000 years, respectively.

Fossilized on a piece of limestone called travertine, the size and variances of the prints also indicate that they were made by two children. Archaeologists theorize that the indentations, which include five feet and five hands, were placed in mud near the Quesang Hot Spring before it compacted under pressure, or lithified, preserving the duo’s pieces in the hardened material for millennia. Although the research team isn’t sure that the creators were Homo sapiens—the timeline also aligns with the Denisovans, an extinct species from the hominin group that primarily occupied what’s now Asia—if they were, they were likely 7 and 12 years old.

Felicia Chiao's "I Just Want To Go Home"

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 23:53:24 +0200

Spoke Art is incredibly thrilled to share Felicia Chiao's I Just Want To Go Home, our next exhibition at our San Francisco gallery. With an incredible new collection of originals, prints, books and more, Felicia has created a world we can't wait to share. Until then keep an eye on this page as we share more sneak peeks before the show opens!

Collector's Preview: an advance collector's preview will be made available online before the exhibition opens. If you are interested in receiving a collector's preview, simply email SF@spoke-art.com and we will add you to the preview list.

Exhibition on view : September 4th - 25th, 2021

View the exhibition online : here

Address : Spoke Art SF, 816 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA 94109 (map)

Schedule an appointment : here

COVID protocol: Due to COVID-19, this exhibition will be open by appointment only. For the safety and health of our colleagues, face coverings and social distancing required at all times inside the gallery.

Objects that Help Tell the Story of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas’s Romance

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:37:00 +0200

The relationship between American novelist, poet, and art patron Gertrude Stein, and her American life partner and Parisian scene doyenne Alice B. Toklas is one of the most influential meetings of minds in the last century. The pair met in Paris in 1907, and the 40-year relationship that unfolded became the bedrock of the Parisian avant-garde for artists and writers, producing not only Stein’s own famously experimental writing, but also fostering the careers of artists like Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso.

Alice B. Toklas at Billignin, photographed by Carl Van Vechten
Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in a plaza, with pigeons, circa 1908

This literally storied relationship — captured in Stein’s breakthrough quasi-memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) — can be examined in historic detail via the Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers, an archival collection of manuscripts, letters, photographs, art, and even clothing, housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. A 1947 essay by Donald Gallup for the Yale University Library Gazette (Vol. 22, No. 2) details the acquisition of the Stein archive, following the author’s death in 1946, due largely to her close friendships with playwright Thornton Wilder and her literary executor Cal Van Vechten, both of whom had strong ties to Yale. The papers span the years 1837-1961 — including the two women’s separate upbringings in turn of the 19th century California — with only a selection of the archive currently available online.

Letter to Gertrude Stein from Pablo Picasso dated June 19, 1913, with envelope

“Dear dainty delicious darling” (Notes from GS to ABT, ca. 1914-40)

Among those 519 items currently digitized, there are a wealth of black and white photographs, letters, and notes between the two partners, as well as from family and friends, the majority of Stein’s literary output, and a host of charming ephemera from their daily lives. Series I of the collection includes holograph and typescript drafts of the majority of Gertrude Stein’s writings, including “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” “The Making of Americans” (complete with a quantity of notes, or “studies”), “Tender Buttons” and a group of unpublished fragments and carnets, notebooks kept by Stein with preliminary drafts of writings.

Square metal-frame locket with photograph of Gertrude Stein (ca. 1890s) attached to scrap of flowered cloth

The archive contains letters sent from a wide variety of Stein’s friends: artists such as Georges Bracque, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso; writers such as Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and Thornton Wilder; and acquaintances through many years such as Mildred Aldrich, Etta and Claribel Cone, Robert Haas, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Sir Francis Rose, Virgil Thomson, and Carl Van Vechten. It also contain letters from many of the same people, the latter group containing Alice Toklas’s correspondence following Gertrude Stein’s death.

Portions of the archive on personal papers and clippings gather together various personal effects of Stein and Toklas as well as documentation of Stein’s life as reported during her lifetime. Series VII, Photographs, show Stein from early childhood through 1946, the year she died. Prints showing Alice Toklas, various friends, artworks, and locales are included in this series, as are several volumes of prints made by Carl Van Vechten. The trove also contains numerous artworks and objects given by Stein and Toklas, including a painting by Pablo Picasso and a sketch by Henri Matisse.

Bolero style waistcoat in painted and quilted fabric depicting frolicking woodsmen and peasant women (undated)
Bolero style waistcoat in red flower-patterned brocade cloth with gold trim and two-button closures (undated)

Handle for rose seal, a carved orange jade madonna and child. In leather box embossed: Leuchars & Son Geffroy Suode Paris Made in England (undated)
Wax seal for embossing envelopes reading: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” in a circle around a central rose graphic (undated)

For fans of Stein or Toklas; those with a desire to peek into the lives some of the most famous characters in art and literary history; or anyone looking for a cross-section of life during an extraordinary period of international change and expansion, the collection is an incomparable treasure. It not only captures the exceptional nature of Stein and Toklas’s lives and relationship, but offers details of them at their most human.

Portrait of Alice B. Toklas by Dora Maar (1952)

Drawing and New Year’s greeting from Francis and Olga Picabia (estimated December 1938)

Gertrude Stein with Basket II and Marie Laurencin’s portrait of Basket II (ca 1940-46)

Women Artists Are in the Spotlight in West Palm Beach

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:36:00 +0200

WEST PALM BEACH, Fl. — “Spy Mission Kit” (1998) is a mixed media piece by Guerrilla Girls featuring an envelope, a pencil, postcards, flyers and other objects originally meant for public consumption. Using these, any individual who witnessed gender inequality at museums, galleries, and theatre production houses could mail in their concerns to the anonymous feminist collective and ultimately help illustrate the magnitude of bias against women artists. The irony is these items were collected as mementos to compose a piece from the nineties, yet, the issue they address is as relevant as ever.

Guerrilla Girls, “Spy Mission Kit” (1998), mixed media, with a work by Jenny Holzer on the right. (photo by Ashley Kerr, image courtesy the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida)

I am familiar with the many arguments against temporary shows featuring only “women artists.” I, too, believe women are not a monolith and that lumping a group of artists together solely on account of their gender is rarely the way to go. So when I visited For the Record: Celebrating Art by Women, at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, I was wary of encountering yet another performative gesture. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case.

Agnes Martin, “Dominoes” (1960), oil on paper, mounted on canvas

Drawing from the Museum’s collection, the Norton show brings together around 50 pieces by female artists working in diverse media to consider the contributions of women to the visual arts. Featuring works by well-known artists, such as Agnes Martin, Amy Sherald, Judy Chicago, and Alison Saar, the show’s lineup is undoubtedly impressive, but most importantly, it delivers on its promise of offering an opportunity to think about gender inclusion and exclusion within and beyond the art community.

From the get-go, visitors will learn that “11% of all acquisitions at 26 prominent American museums, from 2008 to 2018, were of work by women artists.” Eleven percent. That number was seared in my mind as I moved through the exhibition and noticed the word “American” written on so many placards that I caught myself searching for artists of other nationalities.

For a moment, I was genuinely worried I wouldn’t find anything beyond the US or Europe, until “Butterfly” (2013), an otherworldly sculpture by Japanese artist Mariko Mori, which dwells on the connections between East and West — and is on view for the first time at the Norton — emerged like a much-needed breath of fresh air. The futuristic piece made from polyurethane is covered in holographic paint, which reflects rainbows that seem to dance with the viewer’s gaze. Likewise, I was awestruck upon encountering “… of Prosperity” (2011), an imposing fiberglass figure in a gargantuan cobalt blue cotton dress by South African artist Mary Sibande which explores themes of gender, class, and race in her home country. The powerful presence of these sculptures confirmed my stance on the importance of approaching gender equity through an intersectional lens. It is no longer enough to have women at the table if they don’t represent the manifold identities of women around the world.

Mariko Mori, “Butterfly” (2013), painted polyurethane

On my way out, on a less than prominent wall, I read, “Black women make up 3.3% of the total number of female artists whose work was collected by US institutions.” This staggering number and sole reference to data about Black women artists left me wondering what those figures look like in the case of other, traditionally excluded, women artists. And so I left the Norton thinking that when it comes to true gender equity, there is still a long way to go.

For the Record: Celebrating Art by Women continues through October 3, 2021, at the Norton Museum of Art (1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, FL). The exhibition was curated by Assistant Curator J. Rachel Gustafson.

A Collector of Antiques Asks: “Can Something Be Racist and Also Be Beautiful?”

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:35:00 +0200

SAGINAW, Mich. — At the beginning of my guided tour through the Blactiquing Space, collector and curator Kevin Jones asked me a provocative, challenging question: Can something be racist and also be beautiful? It was just the first of many moments that evoked conflicting thoughts and emotions during my experience of the installation of his decades of collecting racist and racialized objects (mostly) from secondhand stores. Perhaps one of the reasons it’s so difficult to have an honest conversation about race relations in the United States is that our collective attention span has become so compressed, we can hardly begin to pick apart a subject so incredibly fraught with nuance. But in using racialized objects as material evidence of the African-American experience in US history — and through his adamant and authentic attachment to them — Jones has skillfully prepared an experience through which no one can pass untouched.

The Blactiquing Space, installation view, through “Grandma’s Room”

Detail of the “Black Christmas Tree” with a rope figurine by Nyesha Clark Young

The exhibition opens with “Grandma’s Room,” a bedroom-like installation that is tribute and shrine to the women in Jones’ life — including a bed covered in quilts made by his great-grandmother; walls covered in family photos; and a book of personal histories chronicling members the family since his great-grandfather’s birth in 1852; and post-emancipation move to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This area serves as a kind of threshold between original works presented in the foyer, including a selection of drawings by Jones’ uncle, Melvin Hardy, who spent a lot of time in the country’s carceral system, and the “Black Christmas Tree” — an all-black synthetic tree decorated with packages of Skittles, water pistols, figures rendered in rope by artist Nyesha Clark Young, and ringed with a paper wreath bearing the names of 229 Black people killed by police between May of 2020 and May of 2021.

“I wanted to pay tribute to and recognize those lives,” said Jones. “Because I want Blactiquing Space to be an acknowledgment of Black lives.”

A vintage toy presented along with the guest book. “I shouldn’t even have that out,” said Jones — not because it is offensive (there are numerous even more upsetting objects in the collection), but because it is valuable.
Photograph of an all-Black Girl Scout troop.

These pieces signify the highly personal nature of the collection that lies within the main body of the exhibition; one cannot reach the assortment of mass-produced racism without first passing through the veil of Jones’ highly personal and familial context. In this way, the Blactiquing experience instills a sense of conflict embodied in the objects — being disgusted or alienated by them, but loving and identifying with them, too. Over the guest book, Jones has mounted a vintage (apparently valuable) racist toy — a goonish face with exaggerated features whose eyes roll when you pull a string—and just below it, a beaming photograph of an all-Black Girl Scout troop. There is an uncomfortable leveling of the hierarchy between these objects — one gets the sense that Jones legitimately holds equal space in his heart for both of them.

Jones has hundreds of dolls in his collection.
Wall of dolls, detail view
This is one of several “topsy-turvey” dolls in Jones’ collection. The dolls are designed to switch back and forth between white and Black figures. Jones says this was designed to teach children racial hierarchy, pointing out that finer materials were used to create the white side of the doll. Paradoxically, it also carries the message that different kinds of people are fundamentally the same.

This one-two combo is a move that will repeat itself throughout the nearly hour-long tour Jones gives me of the space. Objects are mainly grouped by similarity, with an area devoted to Africana, another to cotton-picking, watermelon tropes (Jones is dressed in a watermelon-themed button-down that he acquired on his recent trip to Hawaii), toys, and two sections on advertising materials. The back wall of the exhibition is anchored by a cube shelf showcasing dozens of Black dolls — handmade, commercial, old, contemporary, horribly racist, tender depictions, well-loved, completely untouched. There can hardly be a more literal proxy for people than dolls, and seeing these numerous and individual Black bodies stacked into cube spaces cannot help but evoke a specter of Middle Passage, or its contemporary echo, the prison system.

Aunt Jemima vs. Uncle Ben checkers
A living room space for reading and reflection
An Aunt Jemima box
Selection from a shelf of Gold Dust washing powder. A twin himself, Jones finds particular resonance with this iconography.

Like the rest of the exhibition, the wall of dolls leverages the extraordinary power of presentation to create a mix of attraction and revulsion. As a neurodivergent viewer particularly prone to object repetition, many parts of the Blactiquing Space hold visual appeal for me in the arrangement of similar or same objects — the racist aesthetics of those objects notwithstanding. This represents a powerful bait-and-switch — being drawn, say, to the symmetry of a shelf lined with high-gloss blackface caricature busts, to have Jones reveal them to be a collection of “Jolly N***** Banks” designed to swallow pennies. And then to have him mention that one of them used to belong to his own grandmother, as a fixture of her home.

“I don’t know why she had that,” Jones said of his grandmother’s bank. “She is beautiful and I love her, and she is also racist.”
An assortment of cookie jars. Jones identifies these particularly with his grandmother — in his view, they resemble her. He also sees Black spokespersonship in advertising as an endorsement of good cooking. “If there’s a person like that in the kitchen, you know the food is going to be on point.”

Obviously, the Blactiquing Space presents differently as the collection of a gay Black man who handles these deeply fraught objects with such emotion, connection, and care. One cannot imagine such a collection being acceptable or appropriate in other hands. But even with Jones’ commitment to his collection, the emotional drain of walking people through the experience is inescapable. Because inevitably, as we moved through the room, the tour became confessional. Surely no one can visit the Blactiquing Space and avoid recognizing something that strikes a chord. In my own work, I created and presented a 1:12 scale hoarder dollhouse, and people felt safe to tell me their personal and familial hoarding stories. It takes little imagination to guess what kind of stories Jones has heard throughout the run of his exhibition. He has not just created a space to show objects; he has created a place to have the most crucial and difficult conversation facing our society in crisis.

Curator and collector Kevin Jones

Jess Dobkin, a Performance Artist With a Unique Sense of Humor

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:34:00 +0200

TORONTO — How do you describe a Jess Dobkin performance? The Toronto-based artist has spewed tiny clowns from her vagina, turned her breasts into puppets, and blown bubbles with her ass. Her unique approach to creation is a bit like Marina Abramović on The Muppet Show; she provides an entry point for challenging topics like mental illness and sexual violence by wrapping them in the fluffy comfort of comedy.

“Humor has been such an important strategy in my work,” Dobkin told me on a break from installing her exhibition at the Art Gallery of York University. “It brings an element of connection and a way that we can all relate to each other. When I’m dealing with more sensitive subject matter, humor can make it more approachable. It creates an invitation into something that’s unfamiliar or transgressive by putting people at ease.”

Her intermingling of clown, puppetry, and stand-up comedy may be part of the reason that, while she considers herself a performance artist, her work appears far more often in theaters and bars than galleries or museums.

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University

“Part of identifying as a performance artist was about wanting to think outside conventional institutional structures,” Dobkin said. “When I’ve been invited to perform, it’s often been in queer spaces, which is what led me to theaters. I’ve been using theatrical conventions to talk about performance art for a long time. So now, it’s interesting to think about performance art in a gallery space.”

Originally from Scarsdale, New York, Dobkin completed a BA in Women’s Studies at Oberlin College and an MFA at Rutgers University before relocating to Toronto in 2002. She caught the attention of local audiences and critics early on with her quirky and occasionally self-deprecating works, which often centered on lesbian identity. In 2006, she shot to international infamy with “The Lactation Station,” a performance first presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where she offered samples of breast milk for the public. (She gave birth to her child the year before.) Since then, she’s continued to build her profile in Canada, the US, and the UK, with a mix of theater pieces, cabaret performances, and community art projects.

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University

At 51 years old, Dobkin is perfectly positioned for a career retrospective in terms of her place in the field and the volume of work she’s produced over the past 25 years. As she’s worked primarily in an ephemeral medium, there was an open question of how to address her legacy in the format of an exhibition.

“Performance art is about a live encounter. So what does it mean to do a retrospective of work that isn’t present?” Dobkin said. “In performance, time is one of the materials we work with. When remnants of past work come into the gallery, what are they saying now? It’s like bending time so that we can be in all times at once.”

Simply assembling documentation of past pieces would have been the obvious choice. Instead, Dobkin used her past works as objects of reflection to create something entirely new. Pink portable toilets (alternately dubbed “Porta-Janes” and “Latrine Vitrines”) serve as quirky display cases for photos, props, and puppets from past works, intermingled with new materials. An iPad app offers viewers an AR experience when sifting through the boxes that make up her personal archive. Disco and circus music play on tiny speakers throughout the space. A disco ball vulva illuminates the room.

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University

“Her flair for performativity really made it a process of putting the gallery on stage,” said curator Emelie Chhangur. “It’s not necessarily a show about critiquing the gallery or processes of exhibition making. But it makes us deeply aware of what they are. Each space ends up performing a different methodology from her work.”

Dubbed the Wetrospective, the show pays homage to the many elements of Dobkin’s practice. “Wet” refers to both her use of body fluids (as in “The Lactation Station”) and the in-your-face presence of queer sexuality in her practice. With “Being Green” (2009), she became a human puppet, lip-synching to Kermit the Frog’s well-known lament while being fisted by a Jim Henson look-a-like. References to past works haunt the show like friendly ghosts: a self-portrait lactates into one of the portable toilets while an exhausted Kermit sits passed out on another.

The title also captures a second, less obvious reference: the “We” points to a career grounded in collaboration and community building. In 2012, Dobkin co-created “The Artists’ Soup Kitchen” with Catherine Clarke and Stephanie Springgay, which offered free lunches to creative types, providing a site to refuel physically and creatively. In 2015, she launched “The Artist Run Newsstand,” a yearlong project with several dozen creators occupying an empty retail space in the Toronto subway, offering original works and multiples for sale, along with snacks and occasional performances. (In the exhibition, the soup kitchen dishes are rearranged as a mock William Sonoma retail display and remnants from the newsstand become a comedic diorama.)

Collaboration is also central to how the exhibition was conceived. Despite being billed as a solo show, the program features contributions from numerous other artists. This includes a sound bath by Andrew Zealley and the collaborative project “How Many Performance Artists Does It Take To Change a Light Bulb (For Martha Wilson)” (2015), which assembles documentation (video, photographs, drawings, audio recordings, and other formats) of a Dobkin piece, created by 100 other artists, including Zeesy Powers, Milada Kovacova, and Adrienne Crossman.

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University

“Organizing the show this way wasn’t a conscious decision as much as a product of the work,” Dobkin said. “If this was going to be a retrospective of my practice, it would have to include all the people I’ve worked with and learned from and who’ve supported me.”

In making the transition from performance to exhibition, Dobkin had to contend with the fact that she wouldn’t be present the whole time. To compensate, she introduced a group of creatures she’s dubbed the Gremlins. Based on a self-portrait created for her first performance “High Tide” (1991), the figures (more anarchist sex workers than folkloric rabble-rousers) appear throughout, interfering with works, knocking things over, and engaging in general fuckery.

“Bringing back the poster image became a kind of anchor while also disrupting the conventions of a retrospective,” said Dobkin. “The character becomes a kind of trickster docent and performer, taking the piss out of the formality attached to an artist’s first major show while having fun, turning things upside down, and making a mess.”

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective continues at the Art Gallery of York University (8 Accolade East Building, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto) through September 26. The exhibition is curated by Emelie Chhangur.

In 1940s Japan, a Trophy Wife Becomes a Spy

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:33:00 +0200

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s new historical drama Wife of a Spy is a slow-burn, Machiavellian film that’s peculiarly hung up on appearances. From its immaculate photography to its constant probing into its character’s fashion choices and cultural tastes, it investigates the manifold meanings of the act of looking. When protagonist Satoko Fukuhara (Yu Aoi) first appears, it is as “Yuriko,” a mysterious character in a film her husband Yusaku (Issey Takahashi) is shooting. However, the man is not a professional director, and this penchant for cinema is swiftly revealed to be just a hobby. An import/export businessman in 1940s Kobe, Yusaku surrounds himself with foreign collaborators and friends, which makes the local police, led by Satoko’s childhood friend Taiji (Masahiro Higashide), question his true allegiance. After returning from a turbulent trip to occupied Manchuria, where Yusaku witnesses atrocities by the Japanese Army, Satoko begins to see her country in a different light.

From Wife of a Spy

To satisfy the requests of public broadcaster NHK, which produced the film, Kurosawa shot Wife of a Spy on an 8K digital camera. Such high-definition technology confers a crisp and occasionally stiff look, which is curious for a period film so devoted to traditional celluloid. This manifests in everything from comments about the latest Mizoguchi release to the reel Yusaku shoots in Manchuria, which he plans to use in an exposé about the abhorrent war crimes there. Homages to the silent era abound — not only through Yusaku and Satoko’s work, but also in the disturbing Manchuria footage, which brings to mind A Page of Madness, Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1926 avant-garde masterpiece about a mental asylum.

From Wife of a Spy

In the film’s first half, Satoko is merely a pawn in the game between Yusaku and Taiji, but the back half makes it clear that she is the story’s true center. As Yusaku’s film within the film foreshadows, she eventually decides to steal his evidence of the Manchurian experiments and use them to expose his treason and break free of the cocoon he’s wrapped her in. However, as with most caper stories, there is more to her scheme. Aoi’s intelligent performance gives Satoko increasing dimensionality through this metamorphosis, as instead of leaving him they grow closer together through espionage. “I’m happy,” she says when Yusaku starts to treat her as his equal, “I finally feel I’m living with you.” No longer naive or fragile, she transforms into an astute player in her own right, perhaps the only one truly capable of understanding Japan’s politics and its ruinous future.

Wife of a Spy opens in select theaters September 17.

A View of Oxford That Evades Its “Ethos of ‘Intellectualism’”

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:32:00 +0200

Oxford, England’s Gothic architecture and ancient university have drawn students and tourists for centuries, and the city recently gained fame as the setting of the Harry Potter film series. But what’s it like to actually live in such a scenic and storied place?

Arturo Soto’s A Certain Logic of Expectations (the Eriskay Connection) is a sharply observed, decidedly less picturesque view of Oxford. In the book, Soto’s photos record the city’s less distinguished public spaces, while his short texts reflect on his encounters with Oxford’s unique traditions and social norms. Created over the course of four years while the Mexican photographer and writer studied at the graduate program of the Ruskin School of Art, A Certain Logic of Expectations evades, in Soto’s words, “the obvious charms of Oxford.” Instead, the book offers a critical but personal study of the city’s organization, and Soto’s place in it.

Arturo Soto, “Untitled, Oxford” (2016-2020)

People are expressly absent from Soto’s pictures, which focus on what the artist calls the city’s “non-places” — makeshift street shelters, graffitied walls, and cramped apartment blocks — that “fall outside the ethos of ‘intellectualism’ most people associate with the city,” the artist wrote in a recent email to Hyperallergic. The photos appear to have been shot spontaneously, perhaps on daily walks, and capture lonely streets and cluttered shop windows in bleak, close detail. “Oxford has a complex social divide that tends to be ignored,” he said. His decaying, vernacular subjects contest Oxford’s mythic proportions, but they also convey a sense of sameness and even isolation connected to the artist’s own experience.

“I am interested in cities because they’re the environment where most of us live, the stage where our everyday lives play out,” Soto wrote. “As such, we are bound to develop feelings towards them, and I’m interested in capturing those feelings.”

Arturo Soto, “Untitled, Oxford” (2016-2020)

The author’s sentiments show most clearly in his writing. Soto’s short texts collect his impressions of city folk, academics, and acquaintances as the tensions of Brexit and Oxford’s long-standing divisions between ‘town and gown’ simmer in the background. Soto’s measured writing is also tinged with humor and frankness that echoes influences like Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Georges Perec, and Augusto Monterroso. About a packed late night at the McDonald’s in town, he observes, “this is the only genuinely democratic place in Oxford, where young and old, rich and poor, town and gown, share a space in relative harmony.”

Soto’s writings move through many topics — urban experience, forgotten histories, social behaviors, and, in more tender moments, longing for a person or place that’s unattainable. His voice is diaristic, analytical, and exploratory. “The question of whether I could say anything meaningful about a city with such a rich history was on my mind,” Soto said by email. “This is, after all, the place where many great writers got their education and then went on to write about the city or include it in their books.” Now, Soto’s work gives a glimpse of Oxford through an alternative lens.

Arturo Soto, “Untitled, Oxford” (2016-2020)

A Certain Logic of Expectations by Arturo Soto is published by the Eriskay Connection and is available online.

NADA Is Opening a Fair Booth-Sized Project Space in Manhattan’s Chinatown

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:31:00 +0200

Esther Ruiz, “Well XXIX” (2021), neon, MDF, plexiglas, hardware, & paint, 24.5 x 18.5 x 3.75 inches (images courtesy of NADA)

The best way to describe the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA)’s latest venture may be “small but mighty.” Its new year-round project space at a commercial mall on 75 E Broadway in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood is roughly the size of a small art fair booth — about 10 by 10 feet. With the goal of showcasing artists from member galleries based outside of New York City, NADA joins a number of art spaces located in the East Broadway Mall, including galleries Tif Sigfrids and 106 Green.

NADA is known for its various initiatives in support of emerging galleries, artists, and arts nonprofits. In 2018, after 15 years, the organization canceled its foundational NYC art fair, opting instead to “dedicate additional resources to gallery programming.” (Annual fairs are still held in Chicago in September and Miami in December.) Since 2019, it has hosted NADA House, a sprawling public exhibition spread across 50 rooms of three Colonial Revival-era buildings in Governor’s Island; the organization also presents artist’s talks, performances, and workshops on practical topics like artwork insurance.

Opening this Saturday, September 18, the project space is the most recent addition to NADA’s program. Its inaugural exhibition, Light Show, features light-based sculptures by Colby Bird, James O. Clark, Corey Escoto, Guardian Angel School, Camille Henrot, Takashi Kunitani, Esther Ruiz, and Elke Solomon.

Elke Solomon, “Untitled” (2004), plastic, stainless steel, zip ties, rope light, 14 x 16 x 16 inches

The show was inspired by the Lower East Side’s “Lightning District,” so-called for the numerous lamp and fixture shops along the Bowery. Many of these stores have been threatened by real estate speculation in recent years — a scourge that NADA, whose members are mostly small businesses, has actively challenged by advocating for commercial rent stabilization and other forms of rent relief, especially during the pandemic.

“This upcoming show is an opportunity to inaugurate the space with the work of eight amazing artists and pay homage to the group of small businesses in the lighting district along the Bowery, calling attention to the issues shared by both galleries and other small businesses alike,” Max Warsh, NADA’s Director of Programming, told Hyperallergic.

It’s worth noting Chinatown’s ongoing battle with gentrification. East Broadway Mall under the Manhattan Bridge, where NADA’s project room will be located, is primarily frequented by the neighborhood’s local immigrant population, but some of its vendors have been pushed out by rising rent costs. In 2018, the mall was the site of art world controversy when Tramps Gallery, located in a retail space on its second floor, held an exhibition of works by the German artist Kai Althoff. An article in 4Columns accused the artist of appropriating and caricaturing Asian culture and motifs, and the gallery of “occupy[ing] territory in a neighborhood under siege by real estate developers who use art galleries as Trojan horses for gentrification.”

In recent months, community organizations including the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side have asked the city to support small businesses doubly affected by real estate expansionism and anti-Asian discrimination deepened during the pandemic, including shops at East Broadway Mall.

NADA hopes its presence in the struggling commercial center will bring its neighbors closer in the collective fight for renters’ rights.

“In opening a space, it’s important for NADA to build an alliance with other small businesses in the area and foster support for shared issues, such as the advocacy for a commercial rent stabilization bill in City Council — which has a hearing this Friday, September 17,” said Warsh. “Supporting this bill is just one way we can work together to create a more sustainable future for the neighborhood and push back against the overdevelopment that makes it difficult for many small businesses to stay in place.”

LACMA Receives 109 Indigenous American Artworks

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:30:00 +0200

Margaret Tafoya, “Wedding Vase,” 20th century, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the Reiter Family (photo © Museum Associates/LACMA)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has been gifted a trove of 109 Indigenous American works from the Reiter Family Collection that chronicles important developments in Native Southwest artistic traditions. The gift includes 82 Southwestern ceramic pieces as well as paintings and drawings, Pomo feather baskets, carvings from the Pacific Northwest, and ancient Meso- and Central American artworks.

The collection is a testament to the resurgence of ancient Pueblo techniques, styles, and motifs in the late 19th and 20th centuries, a lineage exemplified by the renowned Hopi-Tewa potter Nampeyo of Hano. Inspired by Sikyatki ceramic fragments found in the Hopi First Mesa, where many inhabitants of Tewa Pueblo took refuge during the Spanish invasion in the 1690s, Nampeyo achieved a unique synthesis of her ancestors’ motifs and her own designs nearly 400 years later. Pots made by her descendants, Fannie Nampeyo, as well as living artists Dextra Nampeyo and Steve Lucas, evince the continuation of these visual languages into the present.

Also included in the Reiter Family donation are a group of pots from neighboring Indigenous peoples of the Southwest, including the Santa Clara Pueblo, known for its polished blackware and red polychromic pottery. A wedding vase by 20th-century Santa Clara artist Margaret Tafoya is adorned with a deep relief carving of the Avanyu serpent, the Tewa guardian of water.

The gift comes at a time of rising museum and gallery interest in Native artwork, but also an increased awareness of its circulation and commercialization in non-Indigenous art market circuits to the possible detriment of Native communities. This week, members of the Osage Nation decried the auction of a cave in Missouri containing prehistoric Native American paintings on its wall. Dubbed “the most important rock art site in North America,” the cave was sold by Selkirk Auctioneers for $2.2 million to a private buyer.

A LACMA spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the works in the Reiter gift were acquired “via the artists and/or their descendants directly, as well as secondary market, auction, or gallery.” According to a press release, the Reiters began their collection with contemporary works purchased from the Santa Fe Indian Market and other venues in the 1980s and later worked their way backward, acquiring earlier and more historical pieces.

“The Reiter Family collections are both historically and institutionally significant in several regards,” the museum said in a statement. “Many of these works represent seminal moments when the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest began recuperating their traditional culture and integrating themselves into the Western art world.”

“In promising these works to LACMA, the Reiters wish to share with the wider public the powerful stories and artistic legacies of Indigenous American artists that so inspired them.”

Wilting Flowers Elegantly Sculpted in Glass by Lilla Tabasso Are Suspended in States of Decay

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:13:39 +0200

All images by Roberto Marossi, courtesy of Caterina Tognon Vetro Contemporaneo

Artist Lilla Tabasso (previously) traps bouquets and tufts of grass at their most precarious stages of life. From her studio in Milan, she creates delicate glass sculptures of wilting flowers and rough clusters of sod that have just breached their prime, capturing how they elegantly bow and collapse as they decay. “The focus is on the way in which they burst with life and vigor at first bloom until eventually the passage of time inevitably takes its toll,” the artist says.

Although Tabasso’s background is in biology, she doesn’t draw preliminary sketches and strays from sculpting faithful depictions, preferring instead to reinterpret a lily, peony, or hydrangea as her process unfolds. “More so than the shape or form, it is the choice of color, together with a warm and natural shade, which is a priority, (that) gives the flower its transparent melancholy, a permanent condition of every creation,” she says. Her recent works revolve around the idea of ataraxia, or equanimity, which manifests in the contrasts between the durable, resilient lifeforms and their inherent ephemerality.

In November, Tabasso will open a solo exhibition at Galerie Coatalem in Paris and is preparing her work for shows at Musverre and The European Fine Art Fair in 2022. Find glimpses into her process on Instagram.

Jack Shainman Gallery Adds Rising Nigerian Artist Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu to Roster

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 21:29:13 +0200

New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery now represents the rising artist Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu, who will have her first solo exhibition with the gallery in January.

A self-taught artist who learned to hone her craft by watching art instructional videos on YouTube, Chiamonwu has quickly established herself as an artist to watch for her hyper-realistic portraits of Nigerians in charcoal, acrylic, and other mediums. Her work was recently shown in a group exhibition at Black Wall Street Gallery in New York.

“When Nigerians see my art, I want them to immediately feel the connection that these are my people,” said Chiamonwu, who is based in Anambra.

The 25-year-old artist is set to join a roster that also includes a number of well-established figures, among them Carrie Mae Weems, Kerry James Marshall, Hank Willis Thomas, Malick Sidibé, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. In the last few years, the gallery has also been influential in supporting a younger generation of rising artists, including Toyin Ojih Odutola, Paul Anthony Smith, and Tyler Mitchell. Chiamonwu’s show next year will mark her first solo exhibition ever.

“There is a striking sense of vivacity and intimacy in her sitters, and the technique and skill required to achieve this is well beyond her 25 years,” said the gallery’s founder Jack Shainman in an email. “At first sight, I noticed how each image included figures that are deeply personal to Ifeyinwa. While I was not aware of just how close she was to them—she draws inspiration from her family, close circle, and culture—I could easily see the care and intimacy she utilizes to construct compositions that draw you into her world and space.”

Though she has been drawing since childhood, Chiamonwu only began to seriously focus on her art in 2015. She attended the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Nigeria, and received her degree in education. Her experience in learning how to teach has become an indelible part of her artistic practice.

“I love storytelling, and I try to incorporate that into my art,” she said. “I’m trying to educate people through my artwork. I’m focused on showing my traditions, my culture, my heritage because it’s going through a form of extinction now because of Westernization and technology. I’m trying to preserve that.”

Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu, Lost Page, 2018.

In works made between 2018 and 2020, Chiamonwu depicts Black Africans dressed in traditional Igbo clothing with painstaking detail. In Lost Page (2018), a woman whose natural hair is bedazzled with seashells weaves together a basket, while Abundance (2019) shows a man’s hands holding a surplus of seashells. For Chiamonwu, she wants to show her fellow younger Nigerians—both those living in the country and those who are part of its diaspora living abroad—their own culture. The goal is to portray “who we are and where we come from, as in everything about that in terms of the myths, the traditions, the culture,” she said.

For a new series, Chiamonwu has begun to incorporate text alongside her portraits in both English and Igbo to provide further context for the people she is depicting. Text that is part of the composition for The Portrait of an Igbo Man–Nwoke (2021) reads, in part, “[A]n ideal Igbo man also provides for his umunna (kinsmen). He holds important social and political powers and positions in his community, and he is always actively involved in protecting and safeguarding the interests of his community.”

Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu, The Portrait of an Igbo Man – Nwoke, 2021.

Chiamonwu said that her decision to incorporate text into her work is partly a way for her to experiment within her practice, as well as a way to educate “people who are not from my place, who are not African, who are not Black,” she said. “The more I write on the work, the longer it will stay for years to come.”

Electric Coffin’s “Electric Safari” at Roq La Rue.Currently on...

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 21:15:15 +0200

Electric Coffin’s “Electric Safari” at Roq La Rue.

Currently on view at Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, Washington is Electric Coffin’s exhibition of new works, “Electric Safari.”

Comprised of the artist duo of Duffy DeArmas and Stefan Hofmann, Electric Coffin create multi-media works that comment of the socio-economic and environmental concerns as well as reclaiming a sense of spirituality and connection with nature in the Anthropocene era.

This show will focus on their trademark “Unio” characters. These are animals that represent not just the natural world or environmental forces, but also spiritual drives or progressive aspects that drive humans such as progress, the desire for expansion, and exploration. These animal symbols all carry a machine of some type of their back, bound to technology and relentless human ambition that can be used for positive or negative purposes. Electric Coffin’s work seeks to create a dialog and attempt at understanding all these forces in order to meaningfully start to build a better world.

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Camille Rose Garcia’s “Obsidian Butterfly” at KP...

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 20:40:09 +0200

Camille Rose Garcia’s “Obsidian Butterfly” at KP Projects.

Currently on view at KP Projects in Los Angeles, California is artist Camille Rose Garcia’s solo exhibition, “Obsidian Butterfly.”

Inspired by Octavio Paz’s poem of the same name, ‘Obsidian Butterfly’ is a collection that explores the symbolism of natural forces, namely the ocean as a vessel to hold and heal feelings of sorrow and loss. While the initial inspiration comes from both the poem itself and the Aztec goddess’ namesake, the collection is both universal, and deeply personal. Last year when wildfires engulfed the West Coast, Camille was evacuated, not knowing the fate of her home. In those moments of uncertainty, she headed to the ocean to take solace in the vast body of water. The eerily beautiful colors of the sunset against a fiery sky later became the palette inspired in her current work, while ideas of opposing forces - water and fire - became evolving concepts. From this elemental juxtaposition, the works of “Obsidian Butterfly” were born, like a phoenix rising up from the ashes.

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ArtYard’s Living Exhibition Unfolds in Real Time in New Jersey

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 20:02:00 +0200

ArtYard is pleased to present Going to the Meadow, a living exhibition curated by Robin Hill and Ulla Warchol (Biolunar^L).

As we continue to navigate pandemic-related challenges with a renewed urgency to confront systems of oppression and racism — all of which is further compounded by the looming climate crisis — we are in a moment of necessary paradigm shifts in every aspect of our lives. Going to the Meadow, staged in four parts, borrows a musical term to examine the essence of collaboration at this moment in time. The exhibition invites 16 artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to be in residence at ArtYard while taking part in tactile, verbal, and conceptual dialogues with one another, beginning with the question: What do we collectively care about?

In Going to the Meadow, ArtYard’s upper gallery becomes the artists’ studio and the surrounding Delaware River Basin landscape becomes an extended area of engagement. Through the recursive practice of replenishing the gallery with a curated set of materials, the curators are staging an experiment in spontaneous making. As the artists explore multiple modes of exchange, perspectives shift and are collected, traded, and acted upon. The exhibition, unfolding in real time, aspires to prioritize process over outcome, the collective over the individual, play over work, and an equal embrace of success and failure.

As curators, Hill and Warchol define their roles broadly to include facilitation, interpretation, and translation of the artists’ visualizations. During the exhibition’s three-month span, visitors will observe the artists at work and at play and engage with a study-based installation, sourced from the artists’ individual practices, in the lower gallery. The work produced will culminate into one large-scale installation in November.

When: September 15–December 30, 2021
Where: ArtYard, 13 Front Street, Frenchtown, NJ 08825
Conversation Series Schedule & Registration: artyard.org

Participating Artists
Lisa Rybovich Crallé, Iris Cushing, SHENEQUA, Shayok Mukhopadhyay, Ramekon O’Arwisters, Hannah Chalew, Joanne Douglas, Andrew Sullivan, Carmen Argote, Milcah Bassell, Angela Willetts, Yvonne Shortt, Anna Mayer, Sophia Wang, Dahlia Elsayed, and Minoosh Zomorodinia.

About ArtYard
ArtYard is an incubator for creative expression and a catalyst for collaborations that reveal the metamorphic power of art. Located in Frenchtown, NJ in the Delaware River Valley, a 75-minute drive from New York City and Philadelphia, the interdisciplinary alternative contemporary art center comprises exhibition space, a theater, and a residency program, all of which are dedicated to presenting transformative artwork, fostering unexpected collaborations, and incubating original new work.

For gallery hours and related programming, visit artyard.org.

Follow @artyardcenter on Instagram and ArtYardFrenchtown on Facebook!

Artsper Looks to the Future of Accessible Fine Art

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0200

Artsper is an online contemporary art marketplace that is committed to making fine art accessible. With original pieces starting at less than $100, this emerging platform has something for everyone.

People tend to think of collecting art as an activity that comes with a steep cost, but Artsper enables its collectors to discover a variety of work regardless of budget and taste. With over 170,000 works from more than 25,000 artists, offerings range from art by today’s emerging talents to household names like Andy Warhol and Gustav Klimt, plus an expansive sale section.

Poonam Choudhary, “Monstera with fish” (2019)

Even when fine art finally feels within reach, figuring out what’s right for you can be a difficult and time-consuming task. However, when shopping online, buyers can see a wider breadth of works than they would in a traditional gallery. Artsper partners with artists and galleries to offer works in a range of mediums, from photography, painting, and print to sculpture and drawing.

On Artsper, no dress code is required and no social connections are needed to experience fine art. Returning work is easy and if visitors aren’t ready to buy, there’s no pressure to make a purchase: they can learn about upcoming exhibitions, art news, and more on the platform’s other outlets, which include an online magazine, an interview series, and a newsletter.

Still feeling intimidated by art collecting? Don’t worry, Artsper has a variety of thematic collections to help aspiring collectors get inspired and invest in the right pieces. They also offer a free art advisory service, so regardless of budget, all visitors can get one-on-one help with making the right purchase.

To shop on Artsper and learn more about their mission, visit artsper.com.

Artwork by Sylvie Groud, “Arches mutantes” (2013)

Painting by Daniel Convenant, “Sans titre N°16” (2020) and sculpture by Sylvie Groud, “Arche Idéale”

Artwork by Tiny de Bruin, “Attrape le soleil 2” (2020)

Artist Interview: Skewville

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 19:52:22 +0200

I’m currently sitting with Ad Deville from Skewville in Bushwick, Brooklyn in his backyard while he is setting up for the Bushwick Open Studios this Saturday. So firstly, what & where Skewville came from?

Skewville started in Queens with me and my twin brother, Droo. The word Skewville originated from the house we moved into that was totally dilapidated so we fuckin’ tricked the shit out of it with loads of retro furniture and that became like the honeycomb hideout for us and our friends. People would go into Skewville and make art and people were smoking tons of weed in Skewville. So that’s where and what we started our own bong company later that same year. Well, actually we kinda started it because I got fired from my day job as well…

What type of job/industry?

An advertising gig at one of the best agencies in NYC who totally suck ass by the way. And actually, because of that I collected unemployment which financed the first Skewville Smokables collection. Coincidently this weekend we will be celebrating its 25th anniversary at our Bushwick Open studios event. But anyway, so for 15 or 16 years we were killing it in the paraphernalia market, but after 9/11 the Government busted the whole bong industry. So, I slowly switched over to art and I opened Orchard Street Art Gallery & Factory Fresh. And then throughout the years Skewville just kind of developed, just kind of pushed more and more into the art scene and thats when the “Sneaker Mission” was created in 1999.

So this is when you started to get more serious about street art stuff? Tell me more about the “Sneaker Mission”.

Well, we silk screen on planks of wood, double sided, hand cut, then drill holes and lace them together. So essentially they are a pair of wood sneakers we toss over power lines. We have thrown over 5,000 pairs of fake wooden sneakers worldwide… South Africa, all over Europe, across the entire U.S.A…

Doesn’t sound like the worst job in the world…

Ya! Exactly! The sneaker project experiment was just kind of the birth of Skewville as street artists. Like we thought street art was completely played out in 1999 because everyone was doing posters and stickers and all the same shit. So it was kind of like what’s something new? Like what’s a new media? And that’s kind of what we saw the “Sneaker Mission” as, but I need to give that credit to Droo, because we were thinking about what could we put up on telephone lines and sneakers were her idea. We were originally going to fly kites into them that said “The Sky is Falling”. But that seemed it would be too expensive. But i was in the room when he said it so that counts as our Idea!

Good thing you figured that out out early… how much would 5000 kites cost??

Right! Who knows but a small fortune most likely! But most of all it really got us back into street art. Particularly I think it was 2002, I moved into the city (Manhattan) with my girlfriend at the time Puffarella. And I said, the only way I’m moving into this city is if I could live in a store front, cause I seen a few artists do it. So we got a second floor apartment and ground floor storefront on Orchard Street in 2002 and started Portrait Street Art Gallery. But my inspiration for opening the gallery came that prior year I went to CBGB gallery and try to get a piece of mine into an art show there and got rejected. And I just remembered there is actually a great Ron English story in here… I told you about that right??

I’m not sure. But Ron has that show Saturday at Allouche Gallery actually…

Oh sweet! So, CBGB Gallery was like, “oh, we’re doing this group show”… ‘Cause I brought them a Skewville bong as a kind of audition… Crazy enough this was even before we mass produced paraphernalia. Every piece was one of a kind hand made at this point. This was like 1997. Anyway, we went to CBGB gallery because I was also making poster art parody stuff at this point. So, we went to CBGB gallery and she was like, “Oh, this is really cool. There’s this guy doing this group show. I’ll give you his number”. His name was Ronald English. And I’m like “No way!!”. So I wrote him a letter. I sent it upstate with one of our parody catalogs and photos of our “Toke and Highagain” Coke and Heineken parody, and works like that. And I had his phone number. So I called him a week or two later. He was just like, “who is this?” And I’m like, “this is Adam from Skewville. I just sent you a catalog”. And he’s like, “I didn’t get it”. And then I never heard from him again. Until a bunch of years later in Dresden Germany with Carla McCormick, who curated some happy street art thing. And I was sitting at a table suddenly with Ron English. So I brought up the story about him not receiving the newspaper flyer we designed and Ron was like, “yeah, I did get the catalog actually”. I was like, “what motherfucker!” You’re doing weed and smokable parodies now just like on our flyer! But honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way because it made for the best story ever. Maybe Skewville will make a smokable with Ron one day. We would be honored to work with Ron. It would be a great finally to the trilogy!

The craziest part is that we didn’t take it into the art scene initially. We took our parodies into the commercial scene and made a killing until the government busted it years later after 9/11. So the irony now is that it’s back in style and we are breaking out the old archives for the Bushwick Open Studios event this Saturday. It’s going to be like a mini retrospective. We emptied out our storage unit, so there’s going to be loads of stuff both artwork and smokable like this bong that’s available for purchase, and sneakers of course, all while simultaneously showcase the new space.

Oh amazing! And I heard there is an after party?

Yeah. the after party is at The Sampler across the street. So if you can’t make it during the open studio hours come hang at The Sampler after!

Well then they would miss out on touring your amazing Skewville custom row house which is just down the block from The Bushwick Collective in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Can you explain this surreal place?

Well it’s a row house with a horse stable in the back we converted into our art studio. The entire house inside and out, top to bottom, have been customized by us in our trademark Skewville color palette and style. For Saturdays event we will be opening up the entire basement, and both floors of the building will be open so you can see the totally gangster staircase which is usually not available to the public.

I mean honestly it’s worth the ride just to see this house. It’s a total trip. But I know you have to get back to setting up for Saturday so any last crazy or funny stories while tossing wood sneakers over stuff all over the world?

Well I’ve been caught a few times by police while throwing up the sneakers and they’re just kinda like, don’t know what to do. They usually just ask why we are doing it and I usually tell them that I can cut them down if it’s a problem, but they have never asked me to.

Well at least you have not gotten in any real trouble yet. Any last words?

We’ve always kept shit in house, you know, literally we can do that now. Mostly because dealing with galleries in our experience is crap, so our goal is just to kind of not be a shameless evil brand but still a brand which Skewville basically was originally. We will be making pillowcases, bedspreads and shameless stuff like that, but they’ll be smokable as well of course! We want to have artists come paint all these walls around us and have a place to chill and make art. So stop by Saturday and say hello and check out the new Skewville art compound.

Kim Sanho, Illustrations.Dreamy illustrations by Korean artist...

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 19:46:20 +0200

Kim Sanho, Illustrations.

Dreamy illustrations by Korean artist Kim Sanho.

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Newly Discovered van Gogh Drawing to Go on Display in Amsterdam

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 19:43:13 +0200

A drawing that has been newly attributed to Vincent van Gogh is set to go on display publicly for the first time ever. The van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will put the work—a rarity, given that new van Gogh pieces infrequently come to light—on view this week.

The work, titled Study for Worn Out, is dated November 1882 and depicts an elderly male worker sitting on a wooden chair, hunched over with his face in his hands. Van Gogh made it as a preliminary sketch for his 1882 drawing of the same title during the early part of his career, when he was working in the Hague.

“It’s quite rare for a new work to be attributed to Van Gogh,” the museum’s director Emilie Gordenker said in a statement. “We’re proud to be able to share this early drawing and its story with our visitors.”

The study belongs to a Dutch collector who was not named by the museum in its announcement. The owner approached the museum to have the work inspected for its attribution, and is loaning the work for display in Amsterdam until January 2022.

According to the van Gogh Museum, the artist detailed ideas that led him to make the final drawing—1882’s Worn Out, which is currently owned by the institution—in letters to his brother Theo and to his friend Anthon van Rappard.

In a statement, senior researcher Teio Meedendorp said that the technique used for the pencil and watercolor drawing aligns with other works on paper attributed to the Post-Impressionist master in the museum’s collection. Meedendorp said damage to the drawing’s corners also conforms to others in van Gogh’s oeuvre, given that the artist attached sheets of paper to the drawing board using pieces of starch, which caused wear. Gordenker said the drawing offers “an exceptional insight into this working process.”

Artist Hito Steyerl Declines Top German Honor, Citing Country’s Handling of Pandemic

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 18:56:12 +0200

Artist Hito Steyerl, who is known for her essayistic videos pondering power structures and new technologies, said on Wednesday that she would not accept Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit honorific. In a letter published in the German publication Die Zeit, Steyerl said she was declining the award because of the way German politicians had led the country during the pandemic.

The equivalent to being knighted in the United Kingdom or receiving France’s Legion of Honor, the Federal Cross of Merit is considered one of the most esteemed civilian awards in Germany. Among those who have received the Federal Cross of Merit are art historian Paul Dujardin and artists Neo Rauch and Wolfgang Tillmans.

Calling Germany’s partial lockdown “half-baked and endless,” Steyerl said she found herself confused by what was restricted and what was not, and was perplexed that the cultural and educational sectors had been de-prioritized. But she cautioned that she was “not a lockdown opponent.”

“As a university teacher, I couldn’t meet any students for almost three semesters,” Steyerl said. “However, it would have been no problem for me as a director to shoot commercials or reality TV elimination competitions almost all the time. How is system relevance defined here? Not to mention culture?”

She went on to cite a possible desire to award more nonwhite Germans the Federal Cross of Merit, and said that if the country’s politicians wishes to diversify the honorees, they also must address a surge in anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric. She said the choice to give her the award “seems more like the diversity-washing of systemic grievances.”

In the past, Steyerl has spoken critically of institutions where she has shown her art. In 2019, for example, when she showed at the Serpentine Galleries, in a venue that at the time bore the Sackler name, she compared the situation to being “married to a serial killer.”

Adult Art Class: Figurative Watercolor

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 18:36:59 +0200

Adult Art Class: Figurative Watercolor pesquivel Thu, 09/16/2021 - 09:36

Get expert tips on a variety of transparent watercolor techniques. Experiment with wet into wet, dry brush, wash, and drawing using watercolors, pen, and ink wash. With artist George Evans.

Join on your computer or tablet wherever you have internet. A Zoom link and art materials list will be sent to you prior to class. Students are responsible for providing their own art materials based on recommendations provided by the teaching artist.

Five Saturdays: October 16, 23, 30, November 6, and 13

Supplies needed for this class:

Watercolor set
Multi-purpose paper or watercolor paper, 9" x 12"
Watercolor brushes (flat 1/2" and round 12", short handle)
Pencils (water soluble), brown
Pencil sharpener
Brush-tip sign pen
Hair dryer
Sponge
Cardboard, 11" x14"
12" Ruler
Water pot
Paper towels

About the Instructor

George Evans has worked as a graphic designer, artist, and educator and is trained in visual arts ranging from drawing and painting to photography. He recently completed two digital murals for Los Angeles Metro using photography and computer graphics. George also works with watercolor and produces digital prints that have been shown in galleries and museums.

Short Title

Adult Art Class: Figurative Watercolor

Event type

Art Classes & Camps

Age Limitations

16+; proof of age will be requested on the day of the event

Policies/Notes

Pre-registration is required for all classes.

This class will take place online via Zoom.

For additional art class information, please contact @email.

For ticketing support, contact @email. Please visit LACMA's FAQ page for our refund policy.

Location (Campus)

Online

Event status

On Sale

Ticketing format

Internal

Ticketing code

22008

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Date

Sat, 10/16/2021 - 10:00 - Sat, 10/16/2021 - 12:00

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Image tile format

Exhibition Format

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On-sale time

Thu, 09/16/2021 - 09:36

Event audience

Adults

Teens

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Adult Art Classes are supported in part by the Dorothy Schick Endowment Fund.

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Image: Photo © by George Evans

Ticket price

Members $100; General public $110

Event Tier

Tier 3

Module

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First Look at ‘Numina’: A Wonderland Brimming with Bizarre Creatures and Fantastical Scenes Opens at ‘Convergence Station’ in Denver

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 18:08:55 +0200

Between a two-story metallic spaceship, gnarled trees teeming with strangely colored mosses and lichen, and fantastical creatures, the eccentric artworks that comprise the new space at Convergence Station by Meow Wolf (previously) rival those in even the most peculiar sci-fi universe. The immersive, swamp-like installation, which is dubbed “Numina” or the spirit of a place, is one of the anchors of the Santa Fe-based company’s latest undertaking, which showcases more than 70 installations by 300 artists across four floors and 90,000-square-feet. Four years in the making, Convergence Station opens on September 17 in Denver.

Accessible through a series of secret portals and wormholes, “Numina” is a 5,000-square-foot environment that scales 35 feet into the air and is designed as a multi-sensory experience inviting visitors to interact with their unearthly surroundings. When someone speaks to one of the four glowing creatures resembling sea urchins, for example, the forms warp and spew the echoed audio across the space. The color-changing “Fairie Orbs” similarly sing and vibrate with intonations when a person passes by, and the “Frog Egg Garden” emits kaleidoscopic lights and quiet sounds when activated with touch.

All images © Meow Wolf, shared with permission

Spanning three levels, the extraordinary, hand-built project is evidence of the team’s penchant for detail and ability to fuse seemingly disparate reference materials into surreal sculptures with various colors, textures, and shapes. The wood-like structural elements, for example, are wrapped in innumerable folds that artists modeled after the wrinkled skin of hairless cats, while pieces like the “Toad Piggies” are hybrid creations and the “Nudibranches” exaggerate the striking bodies of real-life mollusks by stretching them to seven feet. “Some ‘flowers’ were inspired by jellyfish, and some ‘jellyfish’ look more like flowers,” says Caity Kennedy, the project’s creative director and co-founder of Meow Wolf.

Although individual artists retained control over much of what they created—the expansiveness of this collaborative approach is part of what makes “Numina” so uniquely vast and diverse—Kennedy tells Colossal that she gravitated toward the more bizarre works rather than whimsical, fairytale-style pieces. “It is an interesting challenge to play with the balance of comfort and discomfort, to build a space that is welcoming but sometimes unnerving, to make people feel both safe and adventurous at the same time,” she shares. “There are so many things I could point out… Look for the sundial! Find the zoetrope! Point the sort of mollusk orchid/telescope creatures at the stars! Find Leomie’s Field Notebook in the library!”

Tickets are on sale now to visit Convergence Station in person. Otherwise, watch the video tour above for a more in-depth look at the unreal wonderland.

Lui Ferreya

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:23:58 +0200

Lui Ferreya is a freelance artist based in Denver, Colorado. On his website and in his Behance portfolio you will find drawings and other works in media both tradtional and digital.

Ferreya breaks down forms, whether of landscape, still life or portraiture, into geometric planes, and further subdivides these into smaller planes that he defines with linear patterns of tone and color.

His palette, though often high in chroma, is carefully controlled in terms of value and color relationships, allowing him to work a wide range of colors into small areas that in turn read as larger areas and feel almost naturalistic.

I particularly enjoy the way he approaches faces, with a keen awareness of the planes of the head and face, he marks off discreet areas, but maintains transitions that look soft edged because of the subtlety of the color relationships.

[Via Kottke and Colossal]

5 Works to Know by Barbara Kruger: Pasteups, Voyeurism, Surveillance, and More

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:20:37 +0200

Looking at Barbara Kruger’s work, you, the viewer, are always made aware of your status as a spectator, a consumer, and a reader. “Your body is a battleground,” the artist’s work says. “YOU ARE HERE, LOOKING THROUGH THE GLASS, DARKLY.” “You thrive on mistaken identity.” It’s all about “you.” But then, sometimes Kruger’s bizarre admonitions, rendered in chic Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text, are about “me.” In her 2008 work Untitled (The war for me to become you), the titular phrase appears against a firetruck-red background on a torn sheet of paper. Beneath it is another hand holding a lit match with a mysterious text superimposed on it: “Don’t turn me inside out.”

Kruger’s work often plays on this slippage between “you” and “me”—between subject and object, between the surveillant and the surveilled, between owning and being owned. It’s fitting, then, that a new traveling show by Kruger comes with a name making prominent use of those pronouns: “THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU.” Opening this Sunday at the Art Institute of Chicago, this “anti-retrospective,” as Kruger has called it, will also travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (Its Art Institute of Chicago presentation is curated by James Rondeau and Robyn Farrell.) On display will be a number of Kruger’s photo-based works and videos, many of which have been reformatted or newly produced for the exhibition.

Since the 1980s, Kruger has been producing her punchy art, which mimes the look of advertising and uses it toward more propagandistic ends. Her work—which has been copied by fashion brands, sometimes with Kruger’s blessing and more often without it—is graphic, sharp, and attractive. It is also disturbing, odd, and frequently difficult to parse. Kruger’s unsettling art considers the ways ideas are transmitted through mass media and how those concepts inform our own identities. Below, a guide to five of her essential works.

Radical Gaming – Immersion. Simulation. Subversion

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:04:22 +0200

Video games regularly hit the news for a number of reasons. Some of them justified. Other less so. Games are accused of corrupting young people, causing spikes of violence, hosting a culture of sexism and harassment, etc. Even the extravagant production budgets that some blockbuster games command never fail to distract the conversation from the intrinsic value of game culture.

Sahej Rahal, Antraal, 2019. Exhibition view at HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof

Mikhail Maksimov, Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat, 2020, Video game, screenshot, Courtesy the artist

Radical Gaming – Immersion Simulation Subversion, an exhibition that opened a few days ago at HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel, invites visitors to play with games that challenge gaming tropes -in particular the stereotypes of virility and the logic of competition- as well as our understanding of what it means to interact.

Boris Magrini, the curator of the show, calls these works “radical” because they offer alternative experiences of and in the virtual world. They break with the content, techniques and formal norms of the game industry and facilitate other modes of immersion and engagement.

Free from the mercantile constraints that often govern mainstream video games, the artistic games presented at HEK offer opportunities to reflect on many of the issues that have come to define our complicated cultural and historical moment: gender politics, queerness, the mysterious inner workings of artificial intelligences, racial discrimination, the excesses of financial capitalism, etc.

The interactive experiences of this avant-garde sub-genre also differ from mainstream contemporary gaming: instead of being purely adrenaline-fuelled, the rules of engagement involve meditative states, involvement of multiple senses, modified controllers, etc. They deviate from what the industry normally offers/sells. But that doesn’t mean that they are not fun, in their own, strange ways.

Here are some of the games that impressed me the most:

Theo Triantafyllidis, Pastoral (Video Game), 2019, screenshot. Courtesy the Artist and The Breeder Gallery, Athens

Theo Triantafyllidis, Pastoral (trailer), 2019

Theo Triantafyllidis, Pastoral (Video Game), 2019. Exhibition view at HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof

Theo Triantafyllidis, Self Portrait (Reclining Ork). Detail

Pastoral subverts the dynamics of the fantasy genre as well as one of its most common characters. Instead of waging battles against other powerful creatures bearing fearsome weapons, a beautiful transgender ork is walking across a wheat field, like a medieval knight from the ruling class fancying himself/herself as a peasant. In the background, a mythical character is playing the lute. The ork, whom the player is invited to embody, throws the player off balance: its calm gestures make it appealing and seducing while its fangs and extremely muscular silhouette render it slightly intimidating.

The world of Pastoral provides players with a restful moment. There are stacks of hay to sit on and bucolic music to enjoy. Even better (in my view): you don’t have to “interact” in order to enjoy the installation. I doubt I’ll see a work I like as much as Theo Triantafyllidis’ Pastoral this year. Sitting on the hay, watched over by a smirking tapestry version of the ork and reveling in the atmosphere of the work just filled me with pure joy.

Miyö Van Stenis, Eroticissima, 2021

Miyö Van Stenis, Eroticissima, 2021. Exhibition view at HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof

Karl Mountford x INPRNT.

The truly sensational illustration work of artist Karl Mountford is all available as fine art prints in his INPRNT Shop.

Be sure to follow INPRNT on Tumblr, too!

Should Artists Show Their Art in “Vanity” Galleries?

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:00:50 +0200

In a recent interview, I was asked where I saw the art gallery business going in the next ten years. This is a very interesting question and could have resulted...

The post Should Artists Show Their Art in “Vanity” Galleries? appeared first on RedDotBlog.

Fused Glass Art

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 15:29:30 +0200

What is Fused Glass?

Fused glass refers to the process of heating two or more pieces of glass in a kiln at very high temperatures. Basically, the pieces are melted together so they form a single piece of glass. Fused glass also has many creative uses but the invention of the glass pipe and the resulting blown glass art forms quickly dwarfed the popularity of fused glass art for a very long time. Thankfully, there was a resurgence in the early twentieth century, initially in America before spreading across the world, and fused glass art continues to be incredibly popular to this day.

Origins of Fused Glass Art

People often think glass fusing is a modern invention. Rather surprisingly fused glass art has actually been around a lot longer than one might think. Although there is some debate over whether or not the method was invented in ancient Egypt or Ancient Rome, what is widely accepted is that it has been around for about 3-4 thousand years.

Artists and producers experimented with melting various mixtures of silica, oxides at high temperatures, often greater than 2500oC. And the method quickly took off as colourful jewellery and other decorative items such as vases and bottles became popular across these ancient civilisations.

The Tools For The Job

Fusible glass is a must for creating fused art glass. Basically, this means glass types that won’t break when heated up and cooled down in the kiln. Popular glass types include Bullseye and Spectrum. Other tools required include a pattern design, glass cutter, pliers and of course a kiln. Also needed are cleaning solutions for the glass as well as health and safety equipment such as safety goggles.

Depending on the project there are many different creative effects that can be achieved. Ground glass called ‘Frit’ can be used to create both translucent and opaque effects. Glass rods called ‘Stringers’ are often used to create smaller shapes within the piece. These stringers can first be cut and shaped over a flame. Glass paint/enamel is powdered glass in a liquid suspension. This is piped on rather like icing a cake and is used to create finer details.

Types of fusing glass available at Creative Glass Guild
Glass cutting tools and equipment at Creative Glass Guild

Often artists will make multiple firings, adding additional glass pieces and firing at lower temperatures which partially fuses the glass. This is called ‘tack fusing’ and is used to create texture to the glass artwork.

Various combinations of sheet glass, Frit, stringers, gold mica powders, wire etc. can be assembled before placing in a Kiln for firing. You can fuse the glass flat, with texture, bubbles or slumped etc. Essentially there are as many possible combinations and uses – imagination is the only limitation!

The good thing about glass fused art is that the artist has as much time as they need to create their final piece as a lot of the work is done while the glass is cold, both before the firing process as they build the initial design and after the glass has cooled when the artist may cut and grind the piece to achieve their final vision. In essence, there is much greater control over the finished product compared with what might be achieved with blown glass.

Fused Glass Artists At Boha

There are many, many exceptional fused glass artists working today, and we are very pleased to represent some amazing talent here at Boha. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

Adam Hussain glass art specialises in kiln-form techniques to create one-off pieces, which have a handmade character. His art often features geometric patterns and abstract imagery of cityscapes constructed with 1mm glass stringers. Using both transparent and opaque glass he experiments with the transmitted and reflective light created by each artwork.

Amanda Charles glass art is inspired both by contemporary art movements and great art movements such as Bauhaus. Her abstract art creations focus on geometric and powerful colour contrasts. The elaborate detail of her pieces creates both linear and non-linear compositions – a harmonic dissonance if you will.

Cathryn Shilling art glass has been exhibited across all corners of the globe, from the Netherlands to Mexico, to Japan and Denmark. Cathryn’s work has also led to her winning the number 25 spot of Most Amazing Glass Artists Alive Today. She has also won the Warm Glass Artists Prize and twice nominated for the SUWA Garasuno-Sato Glass Prize.

Deborah Timperley is an accomplished UK glass artist who has produced stunning glass artworks for over 20 years. Her work features beautiful and colourful cast glass bowls and sculptures. It only takes one look to ‘feel’ the joy and creativity that has been poured into every single piece.

Dreya Bennet is inspired by water, especially the sea and its different moods.

“The colour of glass, its reflections and translucent quality instantly captured my heart. Glass has a similar quality to water. It is enigmatic, you can look at it or through it. It is there and not there and can create a potent visual effect, either opulent or subtle. I love the challenge of designing for different buildings, interiors and people, whether a large architectural piece or an intensely personal small piece” said Dreya.

Mark Ditzler glass artworks have a beautiful shine and iridescence. His pieces feature special “surface design elements”. These may be twisted canes, murrini. Screen-printed enamels and powders, iridescent and dichroic glass, or gold and silver foils are used as accents to produce glass art of heirloom quality.

Rebecca Mansbridge creates multi-dimensional pictures and free-standing fused glass artworks. They are enchanting and often atmospheric fused glass waves and pictures that capture the magical beauty and tranquillity of the natural world.

After More Than a Decade with David Zwirner, Donald Judd Estate Departs for Gagosian

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 14:29:58 +0200

After a little more than a decade with David Zwirner, Donald Judd’s estate and the Judd Foundation will now be represented by Gagosian gallery.

Larry Gagosian, the gallery’s founder, said he first got to know Judd in the 1980s and has long admired his work. “It is impossible to consider the history of American art without Donald Judd,” he said in a statement. “He played an essential role in the development of modernism and was as respected by his peers as he is revered by artists working today. … The use of color and proportion, together with a unique combination of rigor and elegance, was incredibly powerful and remains essential today. Being a partner in realizing his vision and presenting his work as he intended is a great honor for me and the gallery.”

In a statement, Flavin Judd, the artist’s son and the artistic director of the Judd Foundation, said, “The priority is always the exhibition of Don’s work in circumstances which reflect the conditions he required. Our partnership with Gagosian can broaden the understanding of his work and we look forward to the range of possibilities for their sites worldwide.”

Judd, who died in 1994, is best known for the three-dimensional artworks that he began making in the 1960s, which he saw as being between painting and sculpture. In a famed 1965 essay, the Minimalist artist labeled these works “specific objects.” Judd had these works fabricated to his exacting specifications in a range of materials, from painted aluminum to Plexiglas to plywood, and they have been shown affixed to walls in stacks and on floors.

All the while he was creating his art, Judd was a prolific writer and art critic, including being a frequent contributor to ARTnews and Art in America. Many of his most important writings were collected in Complete Writings 1959–1975, which was first published in 1975 and has since been reprinted several times. In 2016, David Zwirner Books and the Judd Foundation published Donald Judd Writings, which brought together previously unpublished writings by the artist. That was followed by 2019’s Donald Judd Interviews, featuring his conversations with other artists.

In the 1970s, Judd became disillusioned with the New York art world and soon settled in Marfa, Texas, which has over the years become an art destination because of what Judd left behind. With the help of the Dia Foundation, Judd founded a massive museum in the city, now called the Chinati Foundation, that showcases some of his most ambitious works, including 100 untitled works in mill aluminum (1982–86), alongside works by his peers Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, and John Camberlain. Upon his death, Judd’s home, studio, and library, along with the building that was his New York home at 101 Spring Street, were preserved and turned into a museum focused on the artist. Those spaces are now operated by the Judd Foundation.

Last year, Judd was the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that opened just before the pandemic’s lockdown. To coincide with this career survey, organized by Ann Temkin, Gagosian and the Judd Foundation mounted an exhibition at the gallery’s West 21st Street location in New York. On display was Judd’s massive 80-foot-wide plywood work untitled (1980), which debuted at the Castelli Gallery the following year.

It is rare, although not unheard of, for artists to depart one of the world’s largest galleries and join a competitor. Recently, Jeff Koons left Gagosian and David Zwirner for Pace Gallery, and Robert Ryman’s estate left Pace for David Zwirner.

Over the years, Judd and later his estate have been represented by some of the world’s top galleries. He started out showing with Leo Castelli and then left for Paula Cooper, where he had his first show at that gallery in 1985. Six years later, when Cooper’s longtime director Douglas Baxter left for Pace Gallery, Judd followed, and the gallery represented him at the time of his death. In 2010, the Judd Foundation moved its representation and that of the estate to Zwirner, which had mounted four solo shows of the artist in that time frame.

In a statement sent to ARTnews, dealer David Zwirner said, “The Judd Foundation has done, and will continue to do, amazing things for the legacy of Donald Judd and we were happy to support them over the last eleven years. That being said, and now that the major MoMA retrospective has come and gone, the moment seems right for someone else to support the Foundation. This gives us the opportunity to continue to use our expertise in Donald Judd’s secondary market.”

The News: Public School Mask Mandate, Far Right Group Sues Baltimore, Reimagining the Museum, and more

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 14:07:56 +0200

The post The News: Public School Mask Mandate, Far Right Group Sues Baltimore, Reimagining the Museum, and more appeared first on BmoreArt.

Simone Leigh: The Privacy to Heal

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 14:00:11 +0200

“Mystery,” “riddle,” and “secret” are words found in much of the writing about Simone Leigh. Not only do they aptly characterize her majestic, figurative sculptures with eyeless faces, they especially suit Free People’s Medical Clinic (2014) and its progeny, The Waiting Room (2016). Both presented in New York, these were experience-based social practice works, in which various healing justice practitioners—nurses, herbalists, yoga instructors, and others—provided free services, often directed specifically toward Black women. Even if photos could do them justice, few can be found online. Adding to the enigma, my requests for images from Stuyvesant Mansion, once the home of Josephine English, the first Black gynecologist in the state of New York, and the site where Free People’s Medical Clinic was originally staged, went unanswered, as did requests for comment from several people and organizations involved in the show’s planning, execution, and documentation.

Eventually, after many attempts to contact anyone qualified to speak about either exhibition, it became clear that this privacy is essential to the preservation of the work. The silence around Leigh’s projects is a deliberate choice. Privacy and dignity are key concerns when it comes to the health and safety of Black people; they can be a matter of life or death. To keep vital healing modalities alive, be they traditions of medical herbalism or corps of Black nurses organizing care for elderly and sick people, they must be kept secret, or they risk being destroyed. That is, if the two precedents to which Leigh repeatedly refers are any indication. She frequently invokes the United Order of Tents, a secret society for Black women medical professionals that was founded in Virginia in 1867 and continues today. The Order maintains both its roster and healing practices for members only. A volunteer-run Black Panther initiative is the source of Leigh’s 2014 title, Free People’s Medical Clinic. From 1968–75, the Party’s clinics were frequent targets of police raids and building evictions.

Black Panther Party nurse administering blood test in New
York, 1971.

The bulk of available photo documentation focuses on the healing service providers who participated in Free People’s Medical Clinic, a Creative Time commission that operated for one month at the Brooklyn mansion. The providers included yoga and Pilates instructors, herbalists, nurses, and individuals trained to help participants navigate the Affordable Care Act. They were dressed in uniforms that resemble those worn by members of the United Order of Tents. In Creative Time’s introduction to Free People’s Medical Clinic, such providers are cast as the impetus for the work, and the clinic is called “a temporary space that explores the beauty, dignity and power of black nurses and doctors, whose work is often hidden from view.”

BLACK HEALTH SEEMS DOOMED to be pulled between poles of spectacle and invisibility. The Waiting Room, which took a format similar to that of the 2014 work, was installed at the New Museum and at times included events open exclusively to Black women.
The work’s title refers to the death of Esmin Elizabeth Green, a Jamaican woman who died in 2008 after being neglected for a full day in the waiting room of Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, where she sought psychiatric care. Her body lay for more than an hour on the floor where she collapsed, publicly visible and captured on the hospital’s camera system; a staffer, perhaps to confirm she was dead, kicked her body. The video still exists online.

View of “Simone Leigh: The Waiting Room / Herbs for Energy and Pleasure with Karen Rose,” 2016, at the New Museum, New York.

But the work is not a response to Green’s death alone, as her story is no anomaly. Barbara Dawson died in 2015, also of a pulmonary embolism for which she was not treated. Instead of being neglected, she was arrested while seeking care that she hoped would save her life. When the doctors could not find the clot of which she complained, she was taken for a liar. When she insisted that she knew her body best, that she had a right to live, pleading “please don’t let me die,” care was not rendered; instead, the police were notified. “Either walk out of the hospital peacefully or I can take you out,” a cop demanded, relenting only when she became unresponsive.

This is what can happen when Black women and gender minorities seek health care in a field whose history is deeply entwined with oppression. Consider the origins of American gynecology itself, which relied on enslaved Black women as public test subjects in operating theaters and on plantations throughout the United States. Dr. J. Marion Sims, considered “the father of modern gynecology,” received plaudits and statues for his deeds. So it’s no small choice to hold Free People’s Medical Clinic in the former home of Josephine English, who delivered the six children of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (once known as Malcolm X) and Betty Shabazz.

View of Simone Leigh’s Free People’s Medical Clinic, 2014, at Weeksville Heritage Center, Brooklyn.

These are also precisely the conditions that inspired the Black Panther Party to create its Peoples’ Free Medical Clinics. There’s an astonishing symmetry between Leigh’s two projects and their less artistically focused antecedents. The HIV screenings held within the installations rhyme with the Party’s sickle cell anemia testing. Like the Party’s clinics, Free People’s Medical Clinic and The Waiting Room were staffed by volunteers. For the Black Panther Party, these volunteer professionals included physicians, pharmacists, lab technicians, medical students, and members of the National Black Nurses Association. Leigh hosted more esoteric wellness professionals alongside these traditional medical providers, including Karen Rose, a celebrated herbalist and owner of Sacred Vibes Apothecary in Prospect Park.

Leigh’s art exhibition focused on healing justice was temporary; it served to encourage work in the world rather than solve a systemic problem. While the Order remains in secrecy and the Panthers’ free clinics were destroyed, Leigh was able to create a model for healing justice in the space of the museum, receiving deserved praise instead of attacks.

IT’S TOO EASY, though, to think of the Panthers’ approach to healing justice as inherently radical and Leigh’s as only working within the framework of the capitalist art world. To do this neglects the historical necessity of sneaking pleasure and breathing room under the nose of an oppressor. As a former organizer, I’ve seen resilience-based actions, such as community gardening and wellness, demeaned to lift up protests and other direct approaches to insurrection. But where do we fill our cup, where do we go to imagine what’s possible when we are done fighting, and what’s on the other side of the movement if it succeeds? These are questions that art can help answer, because it seeks possibilities in the face of current conditions.

Simone Leigh, Brick House, 2019, bronze,
196 by 114 inches.

Leigh’s projects presented an alternative to the Western biomedical understanding of health—a realm where Black women are believed when they talk about their bodies and needs, where their decisions are the final word about which healing practices suit them, and where they are no longer punished for failing to comply. Care sessions were interspersed with lectures, public workshops, and the procession of at least 100 Black women artists. Both exhibitions were positioned as a “DIY model for spiritual and physical wellbeing,” as curator and writer Jared Quinton phrased it on Artsy. Unless these alternative approaches to spiritual, physical, and emotional wellness exist alongside Western biomedicine, Black people cannot thrive.

Free People’s Medical Clinic and The Waiting Room both reflect lineages of healing resistance, and reintroduce those modalities to communities in need of that historical knowledge. This is essential, as we are often isolated from our ancestral forms of healing, including forms of herbalism traditional to West Africa, movement practices lost to the Middle Passage, and other forms of physical and emotional resilience-building that sustained us prior to and throughout enslavement. Drawing from older traditions of African and African diasporic modes of creation and healing, these works succeed in showing the through line between what has already been built and what is yet to be.

Free People’s Medical Clinic brought an end to Leigh’s clinic-based work. The artist was born in Chicago to Jamaican immigrants in 1967, studied feminist and postcolonial theory at Earlham College in Indiana, and taught herself ceramics. Following these installations, she pivoted to figurative sculptures. In April 2019, Leigh told Elizabeth Karp-Evans at Cultured magazine that she “‘will not create social practice works anymore, at least not any more public-facing works,’ as too much of it was ‘out of [her] control.’” Although Leigh didn’t go into specifics, there’s something to be said about how turning Black healing into an artwork could result in hollow voyeurism. By providing healing to communities in need but limiting who could view the documentation and, at times visit the installation/performance—Leigh managed to strike a delicate balance by making sure Black healing practices didn’t get overlooked or forgotten, while also refusing to allow them to be turned into spectacles.

LEIGH’S MONUMENTAL SCULPTURES are much more visible—one has been displayed on Manhattan’s High Line, and in 2022, a number of them will appear at the Venice Biennale, where Leigh will be the first Black woman to stage a solo exhibition in the US pavilion there. But they are also more enigmatic than the clinic-based projects. They suggest the maturation of her strategy of refusal and concealment. Many stand like watchful deities, and sometimes feature a melding of Black women’s forms with various objects. In an essay accompanying Leigh’s 2019 Guggenheim Museum exhibition in New York—she was also the first Black woman to receive the institution’s Hugo Boss award—writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts contemplates one of the prominent mysteries of the artist’s work: why the figures have no eyes. “Perhaps through their unseeing eyes we may comprehend the riddle of private and public and publics winding across Leigh’s multiple arenas of engagement,” she offers. “Perhaps it’s a riddle Leigh answers as easily as she sometimes offers an entry and elsewhere seals it up.” Whether invoking craft traditions or healing practices, Leigh has long been interested in honoring Black culture without allowing it to be subsumed by the white-dominated art world.

The sculptures not only center Black women, but engage them as the most relevant interlocutors for her art. “Black women are my primary audience,” the artist wrote in a viral 2019 Instagram caption addressing white art critics’ assertion that her sculptures in the Whitney Biennial were insufficiently radical. Sentinel IV (2020) is a sleek, towering female figure, breasts pointing out like small arms to either side, with a mesmerizing concave head. The figure draws its form from ceremonial wooden ladles of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dan communities of Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, where oversize figurative spoons were presented to women as tokens of gratitude. The work’s placement in the recent New Museum show “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America”—adjacent to Kerry James Marshall’s Souvenir IV (1998), which features a figure similar to Sentinel IV on display in a living room—is a testament to the timelessness of Leigh’s work.

Leigh’s collaborative practice is often intergenerational. Not only does she spotlight ancestral knowledge, she also incorporates many genres of Black women’s art. As part of The Waiting Room, she founded and coordinated Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter, that previously mentioned procession of more than 100 artists, all of whom responded to a call from the Movement for Black Lives. The “women filled the institution from white wall to white wall with performances, workshops, videos, chants, a text collage, a digital altar,” Jillian Steinhauer reported for Hyperallergic. “The space swelled with an unapologetically empowering celebration of Black women[’s] . . . lives. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a museum.”

THROUGHOUT THE PAST YEAR, there seemed to be no alternative to the medical industrial complex that experiments on us, incarcerates us when we seek care, and leaves us to die in emergency rooms. That the disposition of the US medical profession has changed so little in the intervening half-century since the Panther clinics confirms the necessity and inherent radicality of Free People’s Medical Clinic and The Waiting Room. Black people were two times more likely to die of Covid-19 than white people, and were far more likely to bear the most harrowing consequences of the infection despite not being the race most likely to contract it. The alternatives imagined by The Waiting Room and Free People’s Medical Clinic seemed as urgent as ever. So why terminate such a vision of possible futures?

Leigh never wanted the works to be “heroic,” she told William J. Simmons in Interview. She didn’t think that they could save anyone. “My project was to expose an arena of expertise, a gold mine of knowledge that we have ignored, or even that we don’t know exists,” she explained. “I did not intend to set up a mock NGO pretending to rescue Black people from some abject situation. I’m tiring of having to talk about that post-colonial fantasy. This insistence on focusing on this same savior narrative is so perverse.” The world-building of these two shows was not meant to last forever, but here we are, seven years on, returning to these models as proof of concept.

Inside the purple covers of Waiting Room Magazine, the companion text to the 2016 installation, there’s an archival advertisement that reads: THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY ANNOUNCES THE GRAND OPENING OF THE BOBBY SEALE PEOPLES’ FREE HEALTH CLINIC. SERVING THE PEOPLE BODY AND SOUL. The magazine, which was impeccably bound by Zimbabwean designer Nontsikelelo Mutiti, was filled with Black medical ephemera ranging from an article by writer A. Naomi Jackson to the memoirs of a nurse who served during the American Civil War. It’s not easy to find a copy now that the show is over, which could be said for almost any exhibition catalogue. Those who attended the exhibitions will be able to refer to the text; those who weren’t will likely never see what it holds. Here again, the privacy embedded even in Leigh’s public-facing work is deliberate and carefully negotiated.

Yet her demand for privacy is paradoxically emphatic—public, even, and her model contains a multitude of possibilities for Black artists prioritizing their own wellness. It rings in the message of artist Tricia Hersey’s project The Nap Ministry, which bears the slogan OUR REST IS RESISTANCE, and lives in Naomi Osaka’s refusal to participate in a press conference while her mental health suffered. This demand for privacy to create, heal, and truly live is a stance of protection—one that must be carved out and fiercely protected.

The energy perserved by this carving is among its rewards. In 2018, Black women activists pushed a Central Park statue of J. Marion Sims from its plinth. Meanwhile, Simone Leigh’s statues continue to rise around the world.

NFT Marketplace Confirms ‘Insider Trading,’ Rare Lennon-Ono Recording to Auction, and More: Morning Links for September 16, 2021

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 13:48:27 +0200

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The Headlines

OLD ART BY YOUNG CHILDREN? Researchers believe they have identified fossilized handprints and footprints—in limestone dating back at least 169,000 years—that could be understood as the earliest art on record, NBC News reports. The markings, on the Tibetan plateau, were reported in a study published in Science Bulletin; they appear to belong to children of around 7 and 12. “The arrangement of the prints defies any practical explanation,” archaeologist Thomas Urban, who co-authored the paper, told the outlet. Gizmodo has published a diagram of the site, and notes that if the prints are as old as the study says, they would be well more than 100,000 years older than the Lascaux cave paintings. However, their classification as art and their age are subjects of debate. Archaeologist Michael Petraglia told NBC it is possible that they were carved into the stone later, and added that, “with such a gigantic claim the amount of evidence you would need to put together would be rather great in terms of scientific work.”

READY YOUR PADDLES. A tape of a 1970 interview that John Lennon and Yoko Ono did with a quartet of Danish teenagers for their school paper will be offered later this month in Copenhagen, the Associated Press reports. The artist and musician discuss world peace and perform two songs on the recording, which is being sold by the then-students along with a copy of the paper and 23 photos. Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneer has estimated the lot at around $32,000. In other art-celebrity auction news, the actor ( and painter) Sylvester Stallone is selling movie memorabilia at Julien’s Auction in Los Angeles. Robb Report has the story. Among the offerings are notebooks Stallone used while making the four Rocky films, and his costume from Judge Dredd (1995), which was designed by Gianni Versace. The sale carries a $1.5 million estimate.

The Digest

The OpenSea NFT marketplace confirmed that an employee acquired certain tokens that he knew would be promoted on the museum’s homepage. Users who raised the issue have likened it to insider trading. OpenSea said it is adopting new policies to prohibit such behavior. [Vice]

Mohammad Fahim Rahimi, the director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul, said that he will continue to run the museum and see if the Taliban allows it to operate. When the capital fell, he tracked down pro-Taliban members to guard the institution. “I was ready to give my life for it,” he said. [The National]

The Judd Foundation said that, after working with David Zwirner for more than a decade, it is moving to Gagosian. Donald Judd was “one of the first artists whose work I really admired,” said Larry Gagosian, who has had a big news week. Yesterday, he announced he was opening a third Paris gallery. [Financial Times]

Gilbert Seltzer, an architect who served in the Ghost Army during World War II, which used decoy tanks, audio recordings, and other tricks to confuse Nazi forces, died at 106. Seltzer served in various roles in the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, which included future superstar artist Ellsworth Kelly. [The New York Times]

For the latest issue of ARTnews, which is focused on collaboration, Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyanospoke, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, and other artists spoke about projects that have resulted from joining forces. [ARTnews]

Samsung signed a deal with the Louvre to display around 40 works from the Paris museum’s collection on its Frame TVs through a subscription service called Art Store. The electronics giants also has partnerships with the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Prado Museum in Madrid. [The Korea Herald]

The Kicker

THE CENTURY CLUB. The latest “Time 100″ is out, rounding up “the 100 most influential people of 2021.” Quite a few art people have either made the list or contributed short profiles. Art historian Hal Foster penned artist Barbara Kruger’s entry, and Studio Museum in Harlem director Thelma Golden wrote actress Tracee Ellis Ross ’s. There’s also curator Kenjiro Hosaka on architect Kengo Kuma, architect David Adjaye on economist Felwine Sarr and art historian Bénédicte Savoy (authors of the 2018 French government report on restitution), artist-activist Ai Weiwei on artist-activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, and lawyer and professor Anita Hill on artist Mark Bradford. For “Bradford, no concept is too large or too small, and no challenge is too complex or too mundane,” Hill says. “For Mark, no one is invisible.”

Artist Spotlight: Andrea Carpita

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 13:07:03 +0200

“Chinese Wonderland” by Photographer Alex Huanfa Cheng

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 13:04:58 +0200

Featured Artist Lorne Resnick

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 13:00:10 +0200

Artist Lorne Resnick presents a compelling collection of photography that celebrates the people and culture of Cuba. See more of his stunning photography on his website.

“Alberto and Ana” photography, various sizes

My interest in photography grew out of my love for music.

“Lores – Havana, Cuba” photography, various sizes

I went to a lot of concerts in my hometown of Toronto, and started shooting because of a real urge to capture that “decisive moment.” My first book, Live in Concert—10 years of Rock and Roll, was a collection of those moments.

“Havana” photography, various sizes

After my book came out, I transitioned into doing a lot of traveling. My first big trip was an overland journey to Africa, a continent that remains one of my favorite photographic destinations.

“Havana” photography, various sizes

I was away for a year, driving from Amsterdam to Cape Town, South Africa all the while creating a substantial body of work. Much of my early African work was photographed with infrared film, which created a new look and feel beyond traditional wildlife images.

“Santiago de Cuba” photography, various sizes

After my trip to Africa, my interest in travel photography was ignited. This has kept me moving around the globe, exploring different cultures and countries and capturing unique moments.

“Eraudis – Havana, Cuba” photography, various sizes

My pursuit of emotionally resonant images has led me to Papua, New Guinea, Vietnam, Greenland, Cuba, China, across Europe and to at twenty-two countries in Africa.

“Havana” photography, various sizes

My most recently published book, Cuba, This Moment, Exactly So, includes 250 black and white and color images from my twenty years of shooting in Cuba. It also features thirty-two micro stories from two-time Pulitzer Prize nominated poet Brian Andreas, a foreword by noted author Pico Iyer and an introduction by art historian Gerry Badger. The limited edition version includes a Cuban Music compilation of sixty songs.

“Havana” photography, various sizes

My book has won several awards including a Gold award from IPPY—Independent Publisher Book Awards for Photography, a Silver from IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Art/Photography, Foreword Reviews 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year and 1^st Place Photo Book from The Photo Awards.

“Gimnasio de Boxeo – Rafael Trejo” photography, various sizes

My commercial and fine art images have been exhibited in galleries across Europe and America. They have been used commercially for annual reports, billboards, television and websites, as well as worldwide advertising campaigns. Eleven fine art posters have been published of my travel work.

“Gregorio Fuentes Cojimar” photography, various sizes

I’ve won the prestigious Travel Photographer of the Year award, plus numerous commercial photography awards, and lead travel photography workshops around the world.

Artist Lorne Resnick invites you to follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

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“Cracked” by Martin Whatson in Oslo, Norway

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 12:08:27 +0200

International street artist Martin Whatson is back with a new stunning mural in Norway. The project is a collaboration between the artist and Somwhere Studio. Entitled “Cracked” the mural is located at Schous Bryggeri, Grünerløkka in Oslo.

Whatson is best known for his calligraphic scribbles in grayscale voids. Over the past decade, Martin has developed an unmistakable aesthetic combining abstract movement with figurative stencilled compositions.

With as many works on walls as on canvas and paper, the relationship between vulnerability and strength remains constant in each work. Delicate and organic characters feature; butterflies, ballerinas and animals all rendered in empty grayscale space. Almost stylised, these minimal figures are constructed of a few layers of hand-cut stencils.

The ashen tones of the compositions and vacant backgrounds are reminiscent of his alternative canvases, the concrete. True to form, no gray space stays gray for long in Martins presence. whether immersing entirely or embellishing a detail, the images disappear beneath expressive, spray-painted strokes of assorted colours and textures.

Take a look below for more photos of “Cracked”.

Book Review: A History of Pictures for Children

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 08:46:01 +0200

A History of Pictures hardcover edition was originally published in 2016, and the paperback edition in 2020.

This particular edition I'm reviewing is interesting because it features the same content as the original book but re-written for younger audience. The book is authored by David Hockney and Martin Gayford with illustrations by Rose Blake who appears as a small kid in this book. This book only has 128-pages compared to the original's 360 pages.

The writing is definitely more accessible to younger readers and the content is written in an engaging manner. This book explores the meaning and purpose of art. There are many examples included from the history of art, including the caveman drawings, famous paintings created during The Renaissance, Chinese art, Japanese art and modern artworks created with collage and digital tools.

There's also discussion into the different styles and art movements, and what makes art look good and/or impactful, and how art has influenced people and other artists. The most interesting part about the book is finding out how these artists think.

This book provides a good introduction into art history and does a good job at making the content lively with additional illustrations drawn for younger audience.

A History of Pictures for Children is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | AU | JP | CN) and Book Depository

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

The links below are affiliate links, which means I earn some commission from each purchase, but at no extra cost to you.

The Best Self-Moistening Water Brushes for Artists on the Move

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 03:35:41 +0200

Super convenient for artists on the go, self-moistening water brushes are just paintbrushes with a water reservoir in the shaft: you simply fill up a water brush and get to work. Water brushes are perfect for aquarelle-style painting in watercolor or aquatint. They can be used with watercolor pens and pencils, or with powdered or solid pigment to avoid the mess and hassle of extra tools. They are also a must-have addition to any pocket watercolor kit for plein air painting. Browse our roundup below to find the best brush for you.

Eye Candy for Today Fragonard’s La Bascule

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 02:40:37 +0200

La Bascule (The See-saw), Jean-Honoré Fragonard, oil on canvas, roughly 30 x 39″ (75 x 99 cm), in the collection of the Louvre, currently on display at Musée Fabre, Montpellier. Link is to the Louvre’s page, which has zoomable and downloadable images.

This painting and another by the French Rococo artist were recently acquired by France after having been thought missing for years.

Fragonard is sometimes dissed as frivolous and pandering, but I quite like him — particularly his drawings. Here, though, the elements of his painting style I most admire are present: his soft, atmospheric landscapes, theatrical lighting and playful compositions.

Eye Candy for Today: Fragonard’s La Bascule

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 02:40:37 +0200

This painting and another by the French Rococo artist were recently acquired by France after having been thought missing for years.

This week: Felicia Chiao, Casey Weldon & Scott Scheidly print releases!

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 01:37:06 +0200

Spoke Art is excited to share three new prints from artists Felicia Chiao, Casey Weldon and Scott Scheidly available this Friday, September 17th at approximately 10am PT. Set your reminders now because you won't want to miss these!

Following her incredible solo exhibition debut at our San Francisco gallery, we will be releasing our first print edition with artist Felicia Chiao. Fuck Pigeon with Yukult is a limited edition large format archival pigment print measuring 36" x 36" in an edition of 50 for $400. Each print comes hand-signed and numbered by the artist.

Also available this Friday, LOL from gallery favorite Casey Weldon. If you've followed Spoke Art over the years you've definitely seen his work adorn our gallery walls on many occasions. This classic print from Casey is a limited edition archival pigment print measuring 12" x 16" in a signed and numbered edition of 100 for $50 each.

We're thrilled to also be releasing a new limited edition from artist Scott Scheidly. Most Spoke Art fans may be familiar with his "Pink Series" featuring political personalities and pop culture character portraits we've showcased over the years. For this release, Scott has created a gorgeous still life called Inevitability. This archival pigment print measuring 16" x 20" in an edition of 50 for $65.

Be sure to sign up for our mailing list and SMS reminders here to stay informed on all our releases.

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Thu, 16 Sep 2021 00:55:34 +0200

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Evoking Childhood Nostalgia, Color and Cartoon Commotion Burst from Kayla Mahaffey’s Paintings

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 00:09:03 +0200

“No Harm Done.” All images courtesy of Thinkspace Projects, shared with permission

Surrounding Black children with jumbled masses of cartoon characters, doodles, and explosions of color, Chicago-based artist Kayla Mahaffey (previously) imagines adolescent daydreams and an array of playtime inventions. She infuses her acrylic paintings with a longing for carefree summer days, mornings spent watching the foibles of favorite animated characters, and hours left open for adventure, capturing feelings of joy and curiosity. Vividly rendered and layered with squiggles and globs of color, the large-scale works find “value in the sugar-coated nostalgia,” which Mahaffey explains:

There have been numerous occasions where we omit the truths of our past to only be met with the disappointments of the future, a never-ending cycle that has influenced our current era for the best and the worst. Even though we’re currently going through a very troubling era, let’s take a moment to remember those times where we felt the most safe or where we felt the happiest. Many of us wish to go back to that life, but not to change anything, but to feel a few cherished things, once again.

If you’re near Culver City, you can see the pieces shown here as part of Remember the Time at Thinkspace Projects from September 18 to October 9. Otherwise, find Mahaffey on Instagram to see where she’s headed next.

“The Sweet Escape”

“Head in the Clouds”

“The Child In Us”

“Tender, Love, and Care (TLC)”

“Beautiful Day In The…”

Left: “No Public Enemy.” Right: “Kid In Play”

“Daydreamin”

How I Made This: Erin Jane Nelson’s “One Entanglement, Under Clouds”

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 00:04:04 +0200

According to Erin Jane Nelson’s mom, the first word the artist said as a baby was flower. In the context of Nelson’s newest body of work, this is fitting. The pieces touch on invasive species, pathogenic fungi, sewer drains, frogs, national borders, climate collapse, colonialism, and—yes—flowers, obliterating distinctions between human and nonhuman worlds.

Nelson’s exhibition “One Entanglement, Under Clouds,” on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) through October 2, comprises wall reliefs alongside freestanding ceramic and metal sculptures. The wall reliefs, shaped like shields or burst cells, are made of plywood or stoneware. Their surfaces accumulate fabric coverings, photographic images, drawings of plants and other organisms, and ceramic embellishments resembling tentacles and seedpods. It’s as if some unseen rhizomatic root system holds these disparate elements together.

On the gallery floor sit large, powder-coated steel armatures with amphibian-like feet. From the armatures, fabricated by Nelson with fellow Atlanta artist Jane Foley, hang ceramic bells. Nelson hand-threw the bells on a wheel and then added modeled ceramic appendages (similar to the ones on the wall reliefs) before firing and glazing them. The glazes on the bells call to mind petri dish cultures or cells seen through a microscope, and the clappers spill out from the bells’ interiors like the labella of orchids. She made these pieces, Nelson says, “with the idea of them as these fragile, almost un-ringable alarm bells.”

Nelson sees her artmaking as a continuous exercise from which she pulls threads for specific projects. The work in this show, for instance, grew out of half a dozen ceramic bells made around the time that Nelson was reading a book on fungus, Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life.

Conjoining a wide variety of materials in each piece demands a considerable amount of planning, so Nelson relies on drawings and stencils to determine forms before she begins construction. She works out of her home in Atlanta, where she and her husband, Jason, have “turned most of the usable space into some kind of studio.” The garage houses their kiln, wheel, and slab roller, while the basement is a general studio space. Sometimes projects spill into the backyard and patio. “Having everything under one roof is definitely a dream,’” she says, recalling past years spent living in an apartment and commuting to studios across the city.

The photographic images in Nelson’s work mostly come from a massive archive of film and digital pictures she has taken over the past 15 years and which she prints on a pigment printer. Interspersed among them is found printed material; a few of the wall reliefs here, for example, feature clippings from a 1960s U.S. Department of Agriculture circular on invasive aquatic species. For Nelson, the visual language of these “stark, early- and mid-century, black-and-white photographs feel[s] like a big part of the origin story of American exceptionalism and how we see landscapes.”

As for the rest of the items she embeds in her works, Nelson gravitates toward secondhand stuff. “When I try to consciously source materials, I find it very hard to find anything at all,” she says. “Ebay rabbit holes are also partly to blame.” Found objects and ceramic add-ons are attached with Ecopoxy, a resin derived from plant materials, by-products of corn and soybean oil production, algae, sugars, and saps. Though still carbon intensive, it is less intertwined with fossil fuel production than traditional petrochemical-based commercial resins.

Most weekends, Nelson spends a few hours working in her garden before settling into studio work. Though the soil, according to the artist, is a “challenging, super-acidic, super-dense red clay made worse by development, neglect, and lawns,” she’s been working to bring it back to life with the assistance of fungi, bugs, and bacteria. In her introduction to “One Entanglement,” Nelson explains, “I want to imagine that the frenetic, entangled collapse of our planet could unfold into a thousand possible adaptive futures.” In her backyard, exhausted ground becomes fertile again and her alarm bells don’t look so different from wind chimes.

A Reunited History: Jacob Lawrence at the Phillips Collection

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 23:52:34 +0200

It seems fitting that the Phillips Collection’s centennial celebration would include a major exhibition of works by painter Jacob Lawrence, whose career was deeply entangled with the Washington, D.C., institution. Collector Duncan Phillips, who founded the museum with his mother, was one of the artist’s early champions who solidified his support by purchasing all odd-numbered panels of Lawrence’s sixty-part epic “The Migration Series” (1940–41) a year after its completion. Always on view, that half of the series, now a cornerstone of the museum’s vast collection of European and American modern art, is a significant reflection on how the lingering legacies and consequences of slavery affected the development of the United States. During a time of widespread protest and political chaos in the United States—where white supremacy and anti-racist activism collide and historians and educators fight for a more inclusive and truthful narrative of American history—the thoughtful Phillips Collection exhibition “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle” presents an older, recently reunited series, titled “Struggle: From the History of the American People” (1954–56), to provide a useful lesson in constructing history.

In thirty panels, “Struggle” interprets key and lesser-known moments from the years up to and after the American Revolution; the titles often quote pamphlets and letters that capture the attitudes of that time. Created during the start of the Civil Rights movement, Lawrence’s work represents a more complicated narrative of America’s beginning in which the white founding fathers’ struggle for independence is entangled with that of Black, Native American, and enslaved populations.

The story commences with a panel titled …Is Life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? —Patrick Henry, 1775 (1955). This line from the lawyer’s advocacy for the freedom of the American colonies from British rule, which led to his appointment as commander of the Virginia militia, appears in the caption just below Lawrence’s image and animates a multiracial crowd of colonists, their fists raised in anger against oppression as they are surrounded by crimson gashes symbolizing the violence inherent in all revolutionary causes. Across the cycle of panels, scenes of Black and Indigenous courage and resistance are amplified against a presumed backdrop in which the ongoing fight for peace and universal equality is never won. This paradox—where legislated slavery and displacement continue within a “democratic” society—is encapsulated in the title of Panel 5, We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country! —petition of many slaves, 1773 (1955). The cited petition was written by an enslaved Massachusetts man known only as Felix. His words electrify Lawrence’s imagery, a brutal and chaotic collision of bodies, rifles, and bayonets that does not represent a specific revolt, but stands for the many slave rebellions that took place during the early decades of the nation’s founding and were never memorialized in art.

Another underemphasized facet of U.S. history is boldly rendered in Panel 21, which presents American soldiers in blue-and-white uniforms in the midst of battle against Shawnee warriors during the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. A dense, jarring weave of arms and weapons in a tight chevron pattern communicates the strength of both forces on the battlefield, but Lawrence positions the Shawnee fighters at the top of the pictorial field, where they loom over the Americans like a waterfall. While the Shawnee were eventually defeated in 1813, Lawrence chooses to represent the tipping point and thus suggests the possibility of an alternative story in which Native American peoples retain their sacred homelands. Lawrence ends the sequence with an image of covered wagons heading West, its simplicity disturbed by the blood-red ooze seeping out of the side of a cart—an uneasy reminder of both the utopian and colonialist dimensions of Manifest Destiny and the uncertain outcomes of the nation’s quest to secure freedom for some.

Jacob Lawrence, Panel 2, Massacre in Boston, 1954, egg
tempera on hardboard, 12 by 16 inches.

These horrific costs as well as the many specific contexts of Lawrence’s paintings can be hard to process all at once. Soft gray walls and dim lighting encourage viewers to get close to the works and spend time with Lawrence’s extended captions and the curator’s richly researched wall texts. And while each panel measures roughly twelve by sixteen inches, Lawrence’s compositional economy, dynamic figural arrangements, and electric use of color distill these harsh realities of continual conflict into an expressive and nuanced visual poetics. For instance, in Panel 2, which illustrates British troops firing on a crowd of colonists in 1770, Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Wampanoag descent who escaped from slavery to join the cause against the British, has just fallen to his knees. His softly mounded figure is in the midst of collapse: blood pours from his mouth as he grips his chest while his protesting comrades form a human pyramid around him. Like Attucks, figures throughout Lawrence’s series convey an intensity of action even in images of presumed stillness. The subject and composition of this panel also capture the triangulation of these struggles for freedom, where enslaved people would fight for whichever side of the American Revolution seemed more likely to fulfill the promise of liberty.

Built from striations of ochers, deep browns, and beige earth tones, these paintings show Lawrence turning away from the more graphic elements and jewel tones of “The Migration Series” toward visceral imagery in a corporeal palette. Such formal details convey both passion and violence, mirroring Lawrence’s two central themes: an unbridled belief in the nation and a relentless fight for true emancipation for all—the two poles of our American project.

Sacred Native American Cave Sold Off to Highest Bidder

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 23:43:04 +0200

On the walls of Picture Cave in eastern Missouri is a 1,000 year old Native American artwork. The cave, along with the 43 acres surrounding it, was sold yesterday by the Busch family to an anonymous buyer at auction for $2.2 million.

The Picture Cave and its surrounding land are some of the foremost sites of Native American art in the country, and are incredibly precious to the Osage Nation. Along with the eight other tribes of Missouri, the Osage Nation was pushed out of the state as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Busches have owned the land since the 1950s and have used it primarily as hunting grounds.

Last year, when the Osage Nation heard that the Busch family was planning to sell the Picture Cave, they began working to procure the land. In collaboration with the Conservation Fund, as well as Fish and Wildlife Services (on the account of endangered bats living in the cave), representatives of the Osage Nation tried to directly buy the land from the Busches to no avail. The amount that they could offer was not enough.

During these failing negotiations, the Busch family had their land valued by Selkirk Auctioneers & Appraisers. Brian Laughlin, the director of Selkirk, said that when he heard that the Picture Cave was located on the land, he thought that the previous estimates Busches had previously received were “unbelievably low.”

“[Picture Cave] is our ultimate sacred site,” according to Andrea Hunter, a member of the Osage Nation and director of its Historic Preservation Office. On the cave’s walls are 290 prehistoric glyphs of exceptional quality that depict people, animals, and mythological figures.

The process of trying to buy back this ancestral land was incredibly frustrating for Hunter and other members of the Osage Nation. “It was our land to begin with and we then had to resort to trying to buy it back,” Hunter said. “And we’ve got landowners who don’t understand the history of the place they live in and whose significance doesn’t amount to more than monetary value [for them].”

After the Busches refused to sell the land directly to the Osage Nation, a representative of the Conservation Fund was present at the Selkirk auction to bid on their behalf. The maximum amount of funds that they had been able to gather was $2 million, just $200,000 less than the winning bid. “Watching it get to $2 million stopped my heart,” said Hunter. “It broke my heart.”

Hunter and her office are currently in contact with a representative of the buyer from Nashville. It is their hope that they might be able to communicate the significance of Picture Caves to the Osage Nation, and perhaps arrange a sale or donation of land to the Native community. As of today, they have not been successful in making direct contact.

When asked if the sale had met any pushback, Laughlin said there had been “feelings and emotions that were not necessarily 100% positive.”

Tomashi Jackson Rediscovers Long Island’s Beleaguered Past

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 22:45:43 +0200

WATER MILL, NY — Until recently, artists and vacationers lived inexpensively in many parts of the Hamptons and the surrounding communities. Now, of course, that situation has dramatically changed. Thanks, however, to zoning regulations, there still are considerable areas devoted to farming, which bring in farm workers who often have to commute by bus. But real estate prices have skyrocketed, and many upscale stores and restaurants have moved in. In response to gentrification and, more recently, to the urban exodus prompted by COVID-19, there also are numerous pop-up sites organized by the major New York galleries. As always, the art business follows the money. This is a familiar situation; it’s not so different from what happened in the East Village of Manhattan in the 1980s, where the art galleries paved the way for posh real estate and other forms of gentrification.

The Parrish Museum, whose large present building opened in 2012, has a special interest in presenting the many American artists who have lived and worked in the East End of Long Island. And Tomashi Jackson’s The Land Claim presents work by a visitor who has studied and responded critically to the recent history of this region. Starting in January 2020, Jackson, who was invited by the museum, began an extensive dialogue with local Indigenous, Black, and Latinx families on Long Island’s East End. Conversation with a Shinnecock Nation member about land appropriation inspired the title.

Installation view, Tomashi Jackson: The Land Claim, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, July 11–November 7, 2021. Left to right: “The Three Sisters” (2021); collaborative Work: “Vessels of Light (From Jeremy, Juni, and Steven)” (2021), pigmented, archival ink on polycarbonate sheets. Window installation with photographs by Jeremy Dennis; Richard “Juni” Wingfield; and Juntos, New York, USA, 2020, by Steven Molina Contreras (Photo by Dario Lasagni)

The exhibition has four distinct parts: an outdoor audio recording of these interviews (“The Interviews,” 2021); a vinyl window installation, and one painting, in the museum lobby; six more large paintings in the first gallery; and, finally, in the next gallery, archival materials such as photographs and books. The audio and archival materials are the basis for her window and paintings. The window, “Vessels of Light (From Jeremy, Juni, and Steven)” (2021), is composed of enlarged photographs from Jackson’s interview subjects, including images of Shinnecock children and descendants of Black farm workers. The brightly colored panes cast violet, blue, and yellow shadows onto the lobby floor; through them, the Parrish’s large sculpture garden can be seen. The painting, “Three Sisters” (2021), which hangs adjacent to “Vessels of Light,” has photographs visible underneath reddish translucent sheets, which partially obscure the women’s faces.

Jackson’s paintings employ locally sourced fabrics, potato bags, ground shells from a Shinnecock wampum carver, and soil from the museum’s site; potatoes were grown at the site, which was once a farm employing Black and Latin migrants. She paints historical photographic images in halftone lines and overlays them with images printed on transparent vinyl strips, the paintings framed in wood constructions by Ruben Palencia that extend out from the wall at the bottom.

Installation view, Tomashi Jackson: The Land Claim, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, July 11–November 7, 2021. Left to right: “Among Harvests (Aserrin de colores)” (2021); “Among Protectors (Hawthorne Road and the Pell Case)” (2021); “Among Gardens” (2021) (Photo by) Dario Lasagni

The works are complex constructions. “Among Protectors (Hawthorne Road and the Pell Case)”(2021), for example, recreates a photograph of a woman standing in front of a bulldozer; she is protesting a Hamptons development on sacred Shinnecock land. The piece also includes an image of another activist, Chenae Bullock, leading a Shinnecock prayer service at a construction site where the remains of what was most likely a member of the Shinnecock Nation were discovered. To these layers, Jackson has added the local soil, dust from the studio of a Shinnecock wampum carver, and burlap potato sacks.

I usually focus on the work on display, not paying much attention to the wall labels and other auxiliary information that can be found online. And so, I confess, initially I didn’t pay much attention to Jackson’s archival materials. Her exhibition had, so I believed, two obviously competing goals: to make convincing paintings and to document the political and social history of the Hamptons. The paintings seemed transparently indebted to Robert Rauschenberg’s 1960s silkscreens, but where his combinations of photographs of Old Master art and contemporary news images often responded only tangentially to politics, Jackson aspires to make a critical statement by using local photographs. Yet, set in the magnificent, very high-ceilinged, white-walled Herzog & de Meuron galleries, her works risk becoming luxuries, like all art in such settings. And that is an uneasy position for a political artist.

Installation view, Tomashi Jackson: The Land Claim, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, July 11–November 7, 2021. “Among Fruits (Big Shane and the Farmer)” (2021) (Photo by Dario Lasagni)

But first impressions can be misleading. When I looked further and thought more, I realized that I had completely misunderstood The Land Claim because I had misidentified Jackson’s artworks. Far from being mere paintings, they are two-part artifacts: paintings plus archival supplements. Without her audio and archival presentation, which highlight the presence of communities that are in danger of being marginalized or even disappearing, these paintings would remain incomplete.

The museum website advises: “Visitors are encouraged to add images, anecdotes, and experiences to the narrative by attaching their own family photos and written accounts to the North Wall,” which is in the second gallery devoted to the exhibition. That is an important statement, for many of the museum’s visitors come from a relatively privileged position and so we need to consider the social costs of our lifestyles. The very titles of her paintings “Among Fruits,” “Among Heirs,” and “Among Protectors” (all 2021) emphasize the importance of this beleaguered social history, which needs to be preserved. And if the claims of her art will be heeded, that is one powerful step toward making that happen.

Tomashi Jackson: The Land Claim continues at the Parrish Art Museum (279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, New York) through November 7.

Nikolai Astrup’s Joyous Norway

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 22:38:14 +0200

The painting “Rhubarb,” by the Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup (1880–1928), depicts a woman picking that extravagant-looking plant in a spring garden high on a hill. The woman, Astrup’s wife, Engel, wears a delicate white dress with a pale blue print that fairly glows, much like the flowering fruit trees above, with the deep surrounding greens; a mountain streaked with glacial ice across the lake creates a high horizon line that presses the scene toward the front plane. The mood is quiet, suffused with the thin light of a northern night, and though the painting expresses a kind of reverence for Astrup’s wife and a nearby daughter, it is not sentimental. We may wonder why Engel wears so fancy a dress for such a mundane activity; she feels like kin to female protagonists in paintings by the Nabis, similarly embedded in pattern and color in a very different world.

The painting is dated 1912–21, which means, like many of his efforts, Astrup labored on it over a period of years. He did not produce with ease. In fact, he created just 250 paintings and 52 woodcuts during the course of his life, cut short by the respiratory ailments he suffered from the time he was a small boy. Like the rhubarb’s, his season was brief.

Nikolai Astrup, “Barren Mountain (Kollen)” (1905–6), oil on canvas, 39 7/16 x 47 3/8 inches, KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen

Astrup was a horticulturist as well as an artist, and he planted many varieties of rhubarb to harvest on his own farm, called Sandalstrap, on land across the lake from the garden where Engel is at work — that of his childhood home in Jølster, in rural western Norway. He painted the theme of a spring garden repeatedly throughout his life. Indeed, one of the strange sensations in visiting the first-ever North American survey of his work, Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway, on view at the Clark Art Institute through September 19, is a continuous deja vu in discovering this marvelous work yet noticing that the same themes recur in subtle variations, in a Groundhog Day chronology.

Curator MaryAnne Stevens has assembled a striking survey of nearly 100 works in which Astrup constantly revisited the parsonage where he was raised, the eldest of 14 children born to the local pastor; the gardens and buildings of Sandalstrap (now Astruptunet, a preserved site named for him), which he laboriously built on the inauspicious southern slopes of Lake Jølster from 1912 on; the bonfires set along the mountains on St. John’s eve; those local mountains, such as the giant, mounded Kollen, with its distinctive profile; fields of bright yellow marsh marigolds, threatened in Astrup’s lifetime by farm cultivation and drainage, but lighting up his penumbral greens and blues as surely as Engel’s dress.

Nikolai Astrup, “A Morning in March” (c. 1920), oil on canvas, 25 9/16 x 18 5/16 inches, Savings Bank Foundation DNB / KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen

Those flowers were mostly gone by the time they were painted: Astrup’s work is as much about memory as observation. It is a point made more than once by the authors of the excellent catalogue, including Karl Ove Knausgård, master of memory, who originally published the short “Prelude” in the current volume less than a decade ago, on the occasion of a visit to his mother in Jølster. “Everything we could see,” he wrote, “Astrup had painted.”

Norwegians indeed know and esteem Astrup, but he is barely known in the United States. Everyone has heard of his elder contemporary, Edvard Munch, who collected works by Astrup. Curious that there is not a hint of psychological trauma in Astrup’s paintings and prints, despite the parallels in his own experience to Munch’s hardships, including illnesses that took the lives of siblings and eventually his own. He and Engel had eight children, and we see a couple of the little girls dressed in red, harvesting something from the floor of a beech grove with flowering foxglove in several paintings and prints. Unlike Paul Gauguin, Astrup seemed to harbor a real affection for his large family and a true obsession with his home region. He might have chafed in letters against the philistinism of Jølster, but he lived there always; it was the wellspring of his creative life, to which he returned after training in Kristiania (now Oslo), and making repeated and sometimes extended visits abroad, including to Berlin, Paris, and London, studying and admiring art that was all the rage.

Nikolai Astrup, “Midsummer Eve Bonfire” (before 1916), oil on canvas, 53 9/16 x 77 3/16 inches, Savings Bank Foundation DNB / KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen

Though perfectly capable of the kind of naturalistic painting that characterized a previous generation of Norwegian artists, Astrup preferred to explore the tropes of modernism — the flattening, the odd perspectives and exaggerated palettes, the patterning — which he wielded with a folksy, almost naïve execution. A hero was Henri Rousseau, and that influence is evident in works like “Funeral Day in Jølster” (1908), an early painting, with its spare line of mourners following a pastor through a landscape colored in what Astrup called his “poisonous greens.” He would have been all too familiar with such processions, as living conditions hastened mortality in Jølster.

Yet his letters include fond memories of picking berries on the thatched roof of the drafty house that doomed his health, a subtle mixture of danger and beauty that also permeates his work. A goose and girl in the flowering night garden in “Night Light, Rhubarb, Goose, and Bird Cherry Tree” (c. 1927) are northern kin to Rousseau’s monkeys and lions in the tropics — with the difference that Astrup’s subjects were actually observed, if inflected and enhanced by memory. Astrup discovered authenticity close to home. His patterned interiors and simplified figures recall painters like Denis, whom he would have seen at the Salon des Indépendants. Astrup was not alone, of course, in marrying an “authentic” national and local voice with modernist aesthetics; such was the mission of countless late 19th- and early 20th-century culturati across Europe, not least his countrymen Edvard Grieg and Henrik Ibsen.

Nikolai Astrup, “Night Light, Rhubarb, Goose, and Bird Cherry Tree” (c. 1927), oil on canvas, 26×28 3/8 inches, Private collection

I teach the history of print, but I had not previously heard of Astrup, who, as it turns out, was as inventive as Munch in his exploration of woodcut. As an artist’s medium, woodcut experienced a revival only in the late 19th century. Astrup’s extraordinary prints were never issued as uniform editions and, like his paintings, were often produced over long periods of time, sometimes as commissions years after they were initially carved and impressed. Like so many European artists, Astrup was blown away by the Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts flooding the markets by the time he first traveled outside Norway in 1902, and the influence of Hokusai and Hiroshige can be seen in his raking perspectives and varying chroma of identical scenes. Like Astrup, Gauguin similarly resisted the notion of consistency in his radical prints.

Astrup used oil-based inks which, unlike Japanese water-based inks, took ages to dry, though, as in ukiyo-e, he printed separate colors from separate blocks carved with the same scene. “Bird on a Stone,” a 1905 composition printed in versions, and displayed along with its woodblock matrices, has a vertical format common in many Japanese prints; the lakeside view is partially screened in the foreground by branches, a device commonly found in prints by Hiroshige. In four versions of “A Night in June in the Garden,” the dome-shaped Kollen presents various degrees of a rose-colored tint that recalls Hokusai’s Mt. Fuji at sunset. Astrup would go back and forth between the same scene in prints and paintings; such is the case with his glorious “Marsh Marigold Night,” a sweeping view of the valley with shadowy mountains surmounted by a gray-red sky, executed in both mediums.

Nikolai Astrup, “Marsh Marigold Night” woodblock, before 1915; print, c. 1915, color woodcut with hand coloring on paper, 1/16 x 18 9/16 inches, Bank Foundation DNB / KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen

After centuries of quasi-colonial subjugation to Denmark (mostly) and Sweden, Norway became fully independent only in 1905, and artists were engaged in helping to discover and build a national identity based on “authentic” local and regional characteristics. In this, there was an interesting nationalistic twist to Astrup’s use of wood. He lived at a time when Norwegian wooden stave churches were being restored after their wholesale destruction in the 18th century. Viking ships were being excavated. Norwegian mythology gave a prominent role to an ash tree that linked three concentric realms, one of which was inhabited by trolls, and logs were still the preferred building technique in this timber-rich country. With links to many contemporary writers and intellectuals, Astrup was conscious of playing a role in the (re)constitution of his nation’s culture, and his woodcuts are part of that effort.

Astrup’s father forbade his children from participating in midsummer festivities, with their drinking and dancing and roots in the pagan past, but as an adult Astrup celebrated such events in his paintings and prints. He cultivated native species in his gardens and built notched houses. He grew up reading Norwegian folk tales that had been collected in the decades before his birth and published with illustrations by Erik Werenskiold (1855–1935), an artist he admired, with captions like “The Trolls had only one eye among them, and they took turns using it.” In a few of the paintings and prints on view, a goblin is formed by the silhouette of a pollarded tree (e.g., “A Morning in March,” 1920); “Grain Poles”(1920) shows crops drying on tall supports that form a floppy regiment of figures with human faces, spirits of the valley. Toward the end of his life, Astrup painted such magical scenes alongside intimate views of interiors decorated with local textiles — two realms, one haunted and the other cozy, testimony to the paradoxes of a revelatory career.

Nikolai Astrup, “Farmstead in Jølster” (1902), oil on canvas, KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen

Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway continues at the Clark Art Institute (225 South Street, Williamstown, Massachusetts) through September 19.

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