Category: Art/Culture
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Artist a Day: Deborah Roberts
Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye Art history, fashion and pop culture have maintained an unrelenting hold onto euro-centric ideas of…
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Artist a Day: Samuel Levi Jones in Sidelined
This post is about as close as I’m going to get to the Superbowl this year. At Galerie Lelong in New York, artist Samuel Levi Jones has curated a group show called Sidelined that interrogates power, how it manifests itself in sports and specifically in sport-related protest. Inspired by the NFL protests during the national…
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New Orleans Unfolds as the Canvas for Prospect.4
Prospect.4 officially kicked off Saturday, November 18 and the roster of international artists in the city-wide triennial is chock full of familiar and new talent whose work I’ve long admired. I was able to get a digital copy of the event’s catalog and after sampling the work from some of the artists chosen for the…
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Radical Women Take Center Stage in Two Important L.A. Exhibitions
Two exhibitions at the Hammer Museum and CAAM in Los Angeles have taught me one important thing: radical women get things done. If you silence them, they find a way to speak, if you hide them, they will be seen, and if you ignore their work, they will make their presence known. History has an…
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Artists Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley to Paint Obama Portraits
It’s a good week for contemporary artists of color. While the MacArthur Fellowship announcements kept me buoyed all week, the news that the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery announcement was extra special. Michelle and Barack Obama have chosen Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley to paint their respective portraits which will be debuted by…
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Poems and Portraits: Revealing and Reclaiming Blackness in Western Art
The cover of Robin Coste Lewis’ book, Voyage of the Sable Venus features a Harlem Renaissance era photo of a slim black woman standing on a sidewalk deep in thought. With one hand resting on her hip and the other cradling her chin, the woman is pondering what lies behind the glass window in front…
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On Monuments and Men
Our recollection of history is malleable, and confronting this paradox takes us down a tricky path of potholes filled with denial and subjectivities. The debate over Civil War monuments could have been a shorter one if we collectively had a better understanding of our history and the presence of mind to challenge our understanding…
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A Word on Mentors
The artists in this photo inspire what I write. Writers like Holland Cotter inspire how I write. This year I have been blessed with the good fortune of having Holland Cotter, the co-chief art critic for the New York Times, as my mentor. During this time he has been both a sage and a sounding…
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Yayoi Kusama Comes to the Broad in October
On September 1 the Broad will place 50,000 tickets on sale online for its highly anticipated fall show and anxious Angelenos hitting refresh on their browsers might end up feeling like they’re in an endless infinity loop. Consider it visual dexterity training for Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors opening in October. The traveling exhibition’s L.A. layover will feature 6…
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Kerry James Marshall’s Mastry Examines the Power of the Image
In 2008, artist Kerry James Marshall was the subject of an oral history interview with the Smithsonian Institute where he recalled his childhood memory of the Watts riots of 1965. He remembered hearing sirens and seeing smoke, miles away coming from where he used to live in Nickerson Gardens. Over the course of the afternoon…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 