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Art in America
Iconoclastic Artist Alice Shaddle Re-Emerges in Chicago Exhibition
A curator recently shared with me a digital folder containing scanned slides of Alice Shaddle’s art, a lifetime of sculptures, collages, paintings, and installations, some of them representational, many others almost unclassifiably baroque. As I browsed the works—most constructed from paper, latex, or vinyl—two words kept recurring in the captions: whereabouts unknown. An unnamed 1960s sculpture of an overdressed little girl jutting forward with sinister pomp: whereabouts unknown. Camel (1969), a work that looks less like a desert animal than a two-headed bird in the throes of a delirious molt: whereabouts unknown. Gardener (1974), a sculpture that resembles a carnivorous...
Marian Zazeela Draws and Dreams on Her Own
A version of this essay originally appeared in Reframed, the Art in America newsletter about art that surprises us and works that get us worked up. Sign up here to receive it every Thursday.Rarely Seen and Seldom Heard: Dia Plots Projects with Reclusive Experimental Artists Marian Zazeela and La Monte Young The drawings in Marian Zazeela’s exhibition at Artists Space in New York look like words being born. Most of them are not even words, exactly, but accumulations of marks making their way through transformative stages somewhere between the embryonic and the etymological. Zazeela’s ornate style of drawing and calligraphy has been synonymous for decades with the work...
Art in America’s Spring Issue Features Joan Semmel, A Crash Course in Indigenous Art, and More
A remarkable moment in Emily Watlington’s profile of Joan Semmel in this issue: it’s 1972, and Semmel has just completed a group of paintings she calls the “Erotic Series,” paintings of men and women who’d agreed to be depicted having sex in her studio. They were not works of pornography but instead an attempt to represent intimacy—still, no dealer would show them. So Semmel took matters into her own hands: she rented a New York storefront, hung her paintings, and sat in her show daily, watching the reactions of people who came in to take a look. In Semmel’s lifetime...
Lacan’s Notorious Art Collection—and Its Impact on Artists to Come
In the 20th century, more than 3,500 philosophy programs—featuring the likes of Michel Foucault, Gaston Bachelard, and Gilles Deleuze—aired on French television, giving writers and philosophers a certain cultural cachet and a broad footprint. “Lacan, the exhibition. when art meets psychoanalysis,” a show at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, charts the impact of one such philosopher: Jacques Lacan, who was also a writer and psychoanalyst. His influence is widely felt in France and abroad, and in 1974, one of his 27 seminars, “The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,” aired on national television.Frankenthaler Foundation Files Motions to Dismiss in Ongoing Legal Drama with...
Frankenthaler Foundation Files Motions to Dismiss in Ongoing Legal Drama with Former President
The Frankenthaler Foundation and its directors have filed motions to dismiss the ongoing legal saga with former board president, Frederick Iseman, according to court documents filed Tuesday.LA's Felix Art Fair, Dover Street Market Tap David Hammons, KAWS, Sterling Ruby, Lauren Halsey, and More for Collaborative Projects The two motions were filed on behalf of the Foundation and its directors and come amidst a backdrop of escalating tensions and a barrage of accusations, including alleged “pay to pay” schemes, that have captured public attention. The motions challenge allegations brought by Iseman, who is Frankenthaler’s nephew, and directed at each of the boards current directors:...
A Survey in Singapore Connects “Tropical” Art from Latin America and Southeast Asia
Rumor has it that, somewhere in New York City, sometime during the mid-20th century, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera had a chance meeting with the Filipino painter Victorio Edades. This storied encounter centered around a formative conversation about the political power of murals, wherein both artists chatted with great gusto about how they’d paint their respective revolutions. While there is no real evidence as to whether this meeting actually took place, the tropical alliance the story suggests galvanized artists for generations to come.Investec Cape Town Art Fair Opens Its 11th Edition, With an Emphasis on Highlighting South Africa's Local Art...
German Feminist Icon Astrid Klein Gets Her New York Debut
Toward the beginning of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Contempt, there’s a long take in which the camera roves around Brigitte Bardot’s nude body. We listen as her character takes stock of her shoulders, her mouth, her eyes, her nose, her ears, as she asks her lover if he admires them all. “Yes,” he responds. “I love you totally, tenderly, tragically.”The Fire, the Couch, and the Clit Ring: Kaari Upson at Sprüth Magers The German artist Astrid Klein also appears to love Bardot totally, tenderly, tragically. In her piece Untitled (je ne parle pas…), Klein offers two-rephotographed images of a vampy Bardot strutting her stuff. Blown up to...
Judy Chicago’s Work Aged Poorly. That’s a Good Thing.
Judy Chicago became the most famous feminist artist of her generation when, for her monumental Dinner Party (1974–79), she enlisted hundreds of women volunteers to contribute craftwork to her giant triangular table. On that table, Chicago set plates dedicated to notable women from history, from the goddess Ishtar to the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. But in lieu of food, she served each woman a unique ceramic vulva, decorated as a tribute to her work.Norton Batkin, Founding Director of CCS Bard, Has Died This iconic installation toured 16 venues in 6 countries, with a message to women everywhere: you are never alone, even...
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