Category: Contemporary Art
-
Artist a Day: Lezley Saar
“Cabinets of Curiosities” are small collections of ephemera curated by antiquarians and naturalists who used objects “to tell stories about the wonders and oddities of the natural world.” These collections of skulls, specimens, botanical sketches, and other flights of fancy were popularized during the 19th-century Victorian era and were displayed in small spaces…
-
Artist a Day: David Hammons
It’s NBA All-Star Weekend here in L.A. (cue my extended eye roll) Much like my Superbowl post, this is as close to basketball as I want to get. Here are two examples of Hammons’ basketball drawings created from a charcoal covered basketball that’s repeatedly bounced on a sheet of clean…
-
Artist a Day: Kerry James Marshall
Happy Valentine’s Day! I’ve written about Marshall numerous times here, and today I thought I’d go simple and celebrate KJM’s love for love. All of these photos are from Mastry at MOCA last year and it’s a show that I still think of often. Kerry James Marshall’s Mastry Examines the Power of the Image…
-
Artist a Day: Amy Sherald
There is a confident sense of self in the subjects of Amy Sherald’s portraits whose gaze is as deliberate as their self-assured stance. They are dressed in sharp, bright colors with smart styling that merges retro and modern aesthetics into a style that’s not easily pegged to a specific genre. One painting features a young…
-
Artist a Day: Romare Bearden
Looking at Romare Bearden’s Sea Nymph reminded me of the underwater world created by Ellen Gallagher. Bearden’s collage works transports viewers to a vast array of worlds both real and supernatural. His work deserves a much larger post, but I invite you to get lost in the images found on the Romare Bearden…
-
Artist a Day: Derrick Adams
Derrick Adams’ collage work reminds me of the elaborate mosaics of Romare Beardon. I get delightfully lost in them. The artist currently has a show running at the Museum of Arts and Design called Sanctuary, that draws inspiration from the Jim Crow era Green Books, which were essential travel guides for African-Americans traveling…
-
Artist a Day: Hilton Als, Nothing Personal
“We have, it seems to me, a very curious sense of reality-or rather perhaps, I should say, a striking addiction to irreality.” James Baldwin, Nothing Personal, 1964. The book “Nothing Personal”, a collaboration between writer James Baldwin and photographer Richard Avedon, had an instrumental impact on a young Hilton Als growing up in Brooklyn.…
-
Artist a Day: Melvin Edwards
“The Negro has been run over for 50 years, but it must stop now, and pistols and shotguns are the only weapons to stop a mob.”~ Eli Cooper As a farmer and an outspoken advocate for unionizing farm laborers, Eli Cooper was determined to fight for better wages from landowners, however his advocacy was met…
-
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…
-
Artist a Day: Gary Simmons
I first saw Gary Simmons’s work in the magnificent lobby of CAAM last year. The mural titled, Fade to Black is an homage to classic silent films that featured all-black casts. These films were necessary representations that were created to counter the racist depictions of African-Americans in propaganda films like Birth of a…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 