Weekly

December 18, 2021 • View in browser

This week, check out our top art books and films of the year (so much good stuff!). Also, France approves a not-so-popular Notre-Dame renovation, two artists face charges for pretending to be Native American (yeah, you read that right), and much more. Lauren Moya Ford's beautiful piece on the Colombian sculptor Feliz Bursztyn makes for great weekend reading. 

— Elisa Wouk Almino, Senior Editor

From Memoria (2021), dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (image courtesy NEON)

The Best of 2021: Our Top 10 Films
Amidst another tumultuous year for cinema, Hyperallergic’s favorites include an unconventional musical, experimental meditations on solitude, documentaries about coffee farmers, and a forgotten concert.

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A compilation of some of our top picks for the year.

Best of 2021: Our Top 10 Art Books
Memoirs by Ai Weiwei and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, a biography on Harold Rosenberg, and more are on our top list for art tomes this year.

NEWS THIS WEEK

Members of Guggenheim Bilbao's cleaning staff outside the museum's entrance as part of the action "Is Everyone’s Work Equally Important?" (photo by Urtzi Canto; courtesy of Art Builders Group)

• Artist Lorenzo Bussi collaborated with cleaning workers to protest poor working conditions and low pay at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

• The British government bans the export of a unique 17th-century painting featuring two female subjects of equal social class but different races.

• Two Washington state artists are facing federal charges for falsely representing themselves as Native American.

• The Armory Show has announced three curators for its 2022 edition, all of which are experts in the fields of Latinx and Latin American art.

• France approves a controversial renovation plan for Notre-Dame’s interior, reportedly including modern murals and immersive art experiences.

LATEST IN ART

Feliza Bursztyn in her studio in Bogotá (ca. 1980) (image courtesy Estate of Feliza Bursztyn, photo by Raphael Moure, all images courtesy Muzeum Susch)

Feliza Bursztyn, a Colombian Sculptor Who Obliterated Norms
Lauren Moya Ford takes a closer look at Feliza Bursztyn's life and work ahead of Welding Madness at the Muzeum Susch.

An outspoken, free-wheeling 20th-century woman living in conservative, Catholic Colombia, [Felizia Bursztyn] created vibrating, noisy kinetic sculptures out of scrap metal and cloth that demanded viewers’ attention with a mix of sensual and disturbing energy.

The Poetry of Black Daily Life in the Art of Whitfield Lovell
Alexandra M. Thomas on Le Rouge et Le Noir at DC Moore Gallery.

The Mysteries of the Universe in John Willenbecher’s Early Work
John Yau on John Willenbecher: Works from the 1960s at Craig F. Starr Gallery.

Installation view of Brice Marden: These paintings are of themselves at Gagosian in New York (© 2021 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian)

A Moving Meditation on Mortality in Brice Marden’s Late Paintings
John Yau on Brice Marden: These paintings are of themselves at Gagosian.

I do not think that Marden is trying to make language, but looking at the paintings and drawings I began to think that there is an asemic element to these works that should not be ignored.

Silver as a Lens Into Santa Fe and Its “Place in the Myth of the American West”
Nancy Zastudil on Nathan Young: Activation/Transformation at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

Athena LaTocha Digs Deep into Brooklyn’s Past
Louis Bury on Athena LaTocha: In the Wake of… at BRIC Arts.

ALSO ON HYPERALLERGIC

Original illustration by Auguste Raffet, engraving by Hébert, “Attack and take of the Crête-à-Pierrot” (March 24, 1802) (image via Wikimedia Commons)

Ancient Rome and the Myth of the Black Avenger
Sarah E. Bond examines the profound impact of the Haitian Revolution on the history of the Atlantic world and how abolitionists used ancient Roman figures to articulate their ambitions for the movement.

Yugoslavian Monuments Deliver a Message from Two Billion Years in the Future
Dan Schindel dissects the only film directed by composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, Last and First Men.

The Humboldt Forum’s Disappointing Ethnographic Collections
Rafael Cardoso: “Despite the abundance of African objects on display, the voices of the continent are hardly heard; its vibrant life is reduced to the totemic stiffness of overstuffed vitrines.”

How John Wilson Turns Thousands of Hours of Video Into Unique Explorations of New York
Dan Schindel talks with the filmmaker about the second season of his HBO show How To with John Wilson and going down every rabbit hole he can find.

Required Reading
This week, Metro Pictures officially closed, tributes to bell hooks, the Wayfair conspiracy, celebrity profiles, and more.