Weekly
July 2, 2022 • View in browser
This week we lost Sam Gilliam, a groundbreaking artist who reinvented the way abstract painting is exhibited and experienced. We also saw the Metropolitan Museum hike its admission fees, the FBI raid the Orlando Museum of Art to seize disputed Basquiats, an armed jewelry robbery at TEFAF Maastricht in broad daylight, and other dramatic news in another dramatic week.
Also this week, insightful interviews with Cecilia Vicuña, Raven Chacon, Blackhorse Lowe, and an eye-opening essay on the life and work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, among many other great stories and reviews.
And finally, for this long holiday weekend, I recommend you check out our New York and Los Angeles exhibition guides to take a pause from everything and just enjoy art. Take care.
— Hakim Bishara, interim editor-in-chief
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Candelario Aguilar, Jr., “El Verde” (2020), mixed media on panel (photo Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic)
Cheech Marin’s Long-Awaited Museum for Chicano Art Opens in California
Matt Stromberg takes us through the newly opened Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture — also known as “The Cheech.”
For Marin, The Cheech is a site for further explorations of evolving Chicano identity and how the legacies of the past inform the present and future. But first, the work must be seen, and the museum is an important step in securing that representation and visibility.
“My mantra was always that you can’t love or hate Chicano art unless you see it,” he says. “My journey was to get as many people as I could to see Chicano art."
ALSO IN THE NEWS
Sam Gilliam, “10/27/69” (1969), acrylic on canvas installation, collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (photo by Fredrik Nilsen Studio)
Sam Gilliam, whose draping, color-drenched canvases insisted on the radical potential of abstraction, dies at 88.
Critics roast Prince William and Kate Middleton's uncanny, official portrait by artist Jamie Coreth.
The Met Museum is raising its general admission fee to $30,
The FBI raided the Orlando Museum of Art and seized 25 disputed Basquiat works.
Armed robbers sledgehammer through a glass display case in a jewelry heist at TEFAF Maastricht Fair.
Keanu Reeves and Alexandra Grant launch the Futureverse Foundation, an organization aiming to “help keep the metaverse widely accessible.”
WHAT TO SEE IN NYC AND LA THIS MONTH
Anas Albraehe, “Untitled” (2021) (image courtesy the artist and Anita Rogers Gallery)
Across New York City, new art exhibitions pay tribute to overlooked masters of their craft, address the urgency of direct political action, and evoke a shared sense of nostalgia. Our top picks include installations on the global climate crisis, pedagogical studies of Japanese photographers, and more.
From group shows that imagine radical possibilities to solo exhibitions that upend the status quo with humor and wit, this month’s Los Angeles selections reaffirm the role of art to challenge, question, inspire, and empower.
SHINING VOICES
Cecilia Vicuña, “Bendígame Mamita” (1977), oil on canvas, 55 x 47 inches (image courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London)
Cecilia Vicuña Sees Venice Through Her Mother’s Eyes
Valentina Di Liscia speaks with the artist about how a 1977 portrait of her mother may be one of the most evocative artworks at the Venice Biennale.
Raven Chacon, Loud and Clear
Marya Errin Jones talks with the acclaimed composer and noise artist and expands on his Pulitzer Prize-winning composition “Voiceless Mass.”
A Spotlight on Navajo Filmmaker Blackhorse Lowe
Nancy Zastudil interviews the award-winning filmmaker and discusses his non-traditional approach to portraying contemporary Native American stories.
TRANSFORMING INSPIRATIONS
Woomin Kim, “Shijang: Fish Market II” (2021), fabric, 56 x 54 inches (image courtesy Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC)
Woomin Kim Quilts the Nomadic Side of Global Capitalism
John Yau on Woomin Kim: The Shijang Project at Susan Inglett Gallery.
Her art makes no overt claims to be political, but on so many levels it is, from the craft of her quilts to the crafts she represents; from her recognition of everyday life as a constant struggle for economic survival to the flexibility and adaptiveness that characterizes many immigrants in the US.
Olivia Guterson Carries Ancestral Patterns Into Contemporary Art
Isabella Segalovich highlights how the Detroit-based artist draws from roots to create a dazzling new ornamental language.
Anja Salonen’s Surrealist Paintings of Existential Unease
Jennifer Remenchik on Unknot at in lieu.
ARTISTS, IMMORTALIZED
Installation, recreation of Basquiat’s studio at 57 Great Jones Street in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood (photo Mark Dery/Hyperallergic)
How Jean-Michel Basquiat Rose to Be King of the Art World
Mark Dery takes a closer look at the artist's lasting influence in context with King Pleasure at the Starrett-Lehigh building in Chelsea.
He wanted to tell us everything, all at once, and looking at his work fills me to bursting, makes me want to tell you everything it makes me feel and think, but I can’t, because his art begins where words end.
The Lost New York of Larry Stanton
Francesco Dama reviews a new, moving tribute to a bygone generation of creative minds.
Remembering Margaret Rose Vendryes, Creator of the African Diva Project
Souleo shines a light on how the artist is immortalized in the hearts and minds of those she impacted within the art world.
GOING DEEPER
Installation view of artist Agus Nur Amal PMTOH's exhibition at Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany (photo Hakan Topal/Hyperallergic)
Beyond the Controversies, Documenta Is a Remarkable Gathering of Voices
Hakan Topal on the 15th edition of the international art exhibition.
D15 provides tools to think, do things, and accumulate. It is a proposition with many parts. It is time to rethink art education and dissemination in fundamental ways to have an expanded reading of art practices without marginalizing them into new domains with an expiration date on them. After D15, business cannot be as usual.
L.A. Memo Paints a Dynamic Picture of Chicana/o Art
Matt Stromberg on L.A. Memo: Chicana/o Art From 1972-1989 at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.
Can Western Architecture Ever Be Truly Decolonial?
Sanoja Bhaumik on The Project of Independence at the Museum of Modern Art.
CYCLES IN CINEMA
From Losing Ground (1982), dir. Kathleen Collins (image courtesy Milestone Films)
Kathleen Collins’s Groundbreaking Portrait of Black Womanhood
Jourdain Searles on how the 1982 film Losing Ground has slowly gained the recognition it deserves.
Even now, Losing Ground feels revelatory, in part perhaps due to its disinterest in justifying the existence of its characters. The general absence of white people lets the film discuss Blackness from an internal, existential framework. Specifically, Collins welcomes analysis regarding the way media portrays Black women as emotionally and intellectually tethered to the men in their lives.
A Meta Remake-of-a-Remake Muses on the State of Cinema
Dan Schindel reviews Olivier Assayas’s miniseries version of his own 1996 film Irma Vep.
New Biopics of Elvis and the Sex Pistols Share Weaknesses
Jake Cole examines how Elvis and the miniseries Pistol are both overly fixated on the influence their respective musicians’ managers had on them.
MORE FROM HYPERALLERGIC
Mastaba of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep embrace (via Wikimedia Commons)