Weekly
July 30, 2022 • View in browser
This week we ask many questions, among them: Should Donatello be remembered as a queer artist? Is Judy Chicago’s updated Womanhouse installation inclusive enough? Why is the Met Museum acquiring Indian art with obscure provenance? And what the hell are “blursed” images?
Also, read our reviews of Duke Riley, William T. Wiley, Troy Montes-Michie, Sonia Gechtoff, and many others. Wishing you an interesting weekend.
— Hakim Bishara, interim editor-in-chief
Donatello, “David Victorious” (1435-40) (Daniel Larkin/Hyperallergic)
Donatello’s Queer Glamour
Daniel Larkin dives into Donatello's unorthodox sculptural figures and the relationships between his own body and the bodies of other queer men.
At every stage of his career, Donatello pushed the envelope of Christian iconography with unconventional portrayals of the body. His disruptive figures breathed new emotional life into his subjects and their stories. Who is served by denying the gender fluidity and homoeroticism in certain figures?
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NEWS THIS WEEK
Photo of the action on July 22 (all photos courtesy Ultima Generazione)
Activists from an Italian climate advocacy group glue themselves to Botticelli’s “Primavera.”
The Met acquires a collection of Indian art reportedly rejected by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford over provenance concerns.
Louvre Abu Dhabi collection advisors are detained for their potential role in the acquisition of trafficked Egyptian artifacts.
Art Against Displacement calls on New York art institutions to reject a luxury development and rezoning plan in Astoria.
GameStop takes down tasteless “Falling Man” NFT that evoked a well-known 9/11 image by photographer Richard Drew.
EXPLORING JEWISH ART
Leonora Carrington, “Leye y Frade” (1974), lithograph on Arches paper, 26 x 19 1/2 inches, edition of 100 (courtesy Mixografia)
Leonora Carrington’s Little-Known Explorations of Jewish Mysticism
Matt Stromberg on Leonora Carrington: El Mundo Mágico at Mixografia.
In 1974, Leonora Carrington created 11 lithographs depicting her costume designs for a theatrical production of S. Ansky’s play The Dybbuk. This suite of prints forms the core of the exhibition… showcasing Carrington’s enigmatic form of Surrealism, which blends various visual and mythological strands from her European background with those of her adopted home of Mexico.
A Contemporary Look at Judaica
Isabella Segalovich dives into how artist Zsuzsa Ujj's porcelain works carry handcrafted Hungarian ceremonial Jewish artwork to the 21st century.
Dancing to the Borscht Beat
Isabella Segalovich spotlights Aaron Bendich's radio show and his new, independent Yiddish record label.
HISTORY AND LEGACY
Sonia Gechtoff, "Celestial Red" (1994), acrylic on canvas, 77 3/4 x 78 inches (photo by Guang Xu, courtesy the artist and 55 Walker, New York)
Sonia Gechtoff Finally Gets Her Due
John Yau on Sonia Gechtoff at 55 Walker.
Without resorting to arbitrary juxtapositions, her paintings resist reductive readings. That resistance can be read as a metaphor. Like DeFeo and Remington, Gechtoff attained a resonant, independent vision that, in her case, spans seven decades. It is time we look closer at what this marvelous artist achieved.
William T. Wiley’s Wild Art Legacy
Daniel Gerwin on Nothing Is to Be Done for William T. Wiley at Parker Gallery.
Who Has the Authority to Tell a Region’s History?
Annabel Keenan on Tassili at SculptureCenter.
IT'S THE REMIX
Installation view of Troy Montes-Michie: Rock of Eye at the California African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles, 2022 (photo by Elon Schoenholz)
Collage as a Strategy of Cultural Collision
Adam Lee on Troy Montes-Michie: Rock of Eye at the California African American Museum.
Montes-Michie [sites] the US/Mexico border as his “first experience with the language of collage,” describing it as an amalgamation of “two very separate cultures colliding on every level.”
Duke Riley’s Burlesque Spin on the Trappings of Museum Display and Folk Art
Louis Bury on Duke Riley: DEATH TO THE LIVING, Long Live Trash at The Brooklyn Museum.
Judy Chicago’s Wo/Manhouse 2022 Could Use Some More Diversity
Annie Bielski on Looking Back at Womanhouse and Wo/Manhouse 2022 at Through the Flower.
FILM & DOCUMENTARY
From The Art of Making It (2021), dir. Kelcey Edwards (all images courtesy Susan Norget Film Promotion)
The Art of Making It Is a Film for Those Who Haven’t Been Paying Attention
Dan Schindel reviews a new documentary on the inequities of the art world.
The art world currently faces myriad issues of exploitation, pay inequity, sexism, racism, ableism, and much more, often on multiple intersecting systemic and institutional levels. For those who haven’t been keeping up, the new documentary The Art of Making It serves as a reasonably useful primer on the situation.
Different Hong Kong Generations Come Together in Protest Reenactments
Forrest Cardamenis examines how director Chan Tze-woon compares and contrasts contemporary and historical activist movements in Blue Island.
The First Feature Documentary Made Entirely in Virtual Reality
Dan Schindel on We Met in Virtual Reality and its optimistic vision for the potential of the metaverse.
MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC
Alexander Si's "Sweet Green" (2022) (courtesy the artist)
A Faux Sweetgreen Storefront in Chinatown Probes the Racial Dynamics of Labor
Jasmine Liu highlights how artist Alexander Si's "Sweet Green" installation explores the racialized labor behind the salad chain.
“To mimic this type of whiteness, this type of marketing that’s very attractive to the mainstream appetite, with my own hand as an immigrant to this country — especially with our history of our labor being mostly invisible — I wanted to embed my own labor in it in this insidious way,” Si said.
Interference Archive’s Democratic Approach to Preservation
Billy Anania expands on Interference Archive as a true alternative to NYC’s market-driven gallery scene.
The Patrons Who Sustained Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Karen Chernick reviews a new book that illuminates the invisible tending behind an artist-patron relationship.
Reddit Users Share Their Most “Blursed” Images
Sarah Rose Sharp digs into a Reddit thread of simultaneously delightful and dreadful images.
Required Reading
This week, criticism of New York’s proposed “feminist jail,” activists are losing steam, cultural appropriation parodies on TikTok, and more.
IN OUR STORE
Eliminate the Stench Air Freshener x Guerrilla Girls
With all this heat, it’s bound to get a little stinky at some point. Eliminate the stench with this banana-scented air freshener created by our favorite group of masked feminist avengers.
