In early December, I traveled to Buenos Aires, where I always encounter wonderful art and exhibitions, ranging from early Modernist to Contemporary, some of which I will note briefly here. Time and again in Buenos Aires, I have seen work by Latin American artists little known to me who were shortly thereafter the subjects of major museum and gallery exhibitions in the U.S. and elsewhere. I will therefore point out work by artists--a number of women in particular--whose art caught my eye. At MALBA, Museum de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, where I always begin my trip, the permanent collection galleries featured abstract work of the late 1950s by the Brazilian artists Lygia Clark, who had a retrospective at New York's MoMA in 2014, … [Read more...]
Underground Museum
An ArtTable Southern California event once again provided my first introduction to an extraordinary Los Angeles art space--the Underground Museum. It is situated in a series of connected storefronts on Washington Boulevard in Arlington Heights, a largely working class Black and Latino neighborhood in the heart of L.A. The space once served as the family home and studio of Noah Davis, a young African American artist who a decade ago began to achieve considerable renown for psychologically penetrating figurative paintings based on Black experience. Davis was also a gifted curator and in 2012 established the space as an alternative art venue for exhibitions and events, with primacy given to community engagement. His shows were brilliant, … [Read more...]
Eric Fischl Rift Raft at Skarstedt: The Naked and the Nude
After viewing the exhibition Eric Fischl: Rift Raft at the Skarstedt Gallery in New York a few months ago, I pondered the artist's extensive use of the female nude in this, his most recent series of works. While nudes have been ubiquitous in Fischl's paintings from the early psycho-sexual suburban narratives of the early 1980s to the less overtly allegorical, more formally oriented beach scenes produced in recent years, the new works offer a twist on his exploitation of the female nude as content. These paintings represent a continuation of his Art Fair Series begun in 2013. Having been invited to an art fair to give a talk, he was appalled and fascinated by the attendees and their responses (or lack thereof) to the art on view. He then … [Read more...]
David Hammons at Mnuchin: Institutional Critique
The exhibition David Hammons: Five Decades at the Mnuchin Gallery left me feeling cold and disquieted. Not that this artist's work, which I've long admired, is not brilliant, passionate and deeply moving. It's that there is a terrible, chilling disconnect between the work and the venue. This disconnect is something sought by Hammons, which he exploits to politically and racially pointed ends. The exhibition critiques the gallery, the art market and the historically, predominantly white art world as a whole, systems that financially support his work and hold it in high esteem. David Hammons is an African-American artist, now 72-years-old. He emerged on the L.A. art scene in the late sixties in the context of the Watts Riots and the ensuing … [Read more...]