January 26, 2022 • View in browser

Our work at Hyperallergic means that we often encounter stories of under-recognized art histories that tell a story we don’t often hear, whether it’s about an art movement that has received little recognition outside of a city or region or a type of work that is largely invisible to art lovers because institutions have been slow to embrace the work due to various factors. While we often seek out and publish under-recognized art histories, we decided to compile many of these unique stories into a special edition of Hyperallergic to shine a light on them. To understand contemporary art, it is necessary to investigate the connections that are sometimes invisible to those who are unaware of the backstories.

Many of these stories, like alternative spaces in Los Angeles, may be well-known to many but we chose to include them here to highlight their importance. In the case of LA’s alt spaces, I frequently encounter people outside Southern California (and sometimes Californians) who don’t realize the significance of what the artistic innovators of that city actually created as a foundation that helped lead to the global success of the city’s art scene today. In other cases, like the Cass Corridor, I was surprised to learn that people outside of the Detroit area rarely know about the movement that was influential for many contemporary artists, writers, and curators in the region and beyond. 

A number of stories focus on individuals, like Rafael França, Sam Tchakalian, PHASE 2, Frances Gearhart, Renluka Maharaj, and Suchitra Mattai, some of whom had commercial careers, museum shows, and some renown, or still do, but we thought they would benefit from a wider circulation of their work to the readers of Hyperallergic. We also invited artist and writer Daniel Temkin to write about a programming language that might be the least NFT-able digital art possible — though considering the way that market is going, I can foresee a time when that too falls victim to financialization. 

Our choices are, of course, subjective, and we invite notes from our readers about stories we may want to consider for future editions in this series. We hope you enjoy this edition in the spirit it was intended, which is as the beginning of a continuing conversation about art history and what is included, or excluded, and why.

• Jordan Karney Chaim looks at the influence of the alternative spaces of Los Angeles and how they foster artists who are today the bold-faced names of contemporary art.

• Sarah Rose Sharp, who lives in Detroit, writes about the Cass Corridor movement that influenced generations of artists emerging from that city.

• Artist Daniel Temkin writes about the open-ended, community-based, and collaborative “esolangs” that point to other threads of digital art histories not much discussed.

• Writer John Seed tells the story of Bay Area artist and teacher Sam Tchakalian, who is best known for his abstractions that introduced squeegee-like techniques into his paintings long before others popularized that visual language.

• Sadaf Padder writes about two Indo-Caribbean artists (Renluka Maharaj and Suchitra Mattai) in Colorado who situate female subjects in their art, based on ancestors, living kin, and deities.

• Scholar Serouj Aprahamian shares the final illustrated poems by PHASE 2, an artist perhaps best known as the first to create a 3D sculpture based on his graffiti work, which was once in front of the Javits Center in Manhattan until it was suddenly removed and destroyed under strange circumstances.

• Ela Bittencourt considers the innovation of Brazilian video artist Rafael França, whose art is intertwined with the early history of AIDS in the US and his home country. 

• Anne Wallentine writes about the print studio of Frances Gearhart, which was a hub of the southern California Arts and Crafts movement.

We would also like to thank the Sam Francis Foundation for their support of the articles that delve into California art history, a topic we’ve long covered in various ways over the years.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

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UNDER-RECOGNIZED ART HISTORIES

How Alternative Art Spaces Changed Los Angeles in the 1970s

Throughout the 1970s and into the ’80s, artists in Los Angeles created organizations and exhibition spaces to develop the resources they lacked. | Jordan Karney Chaim

The Cass Corridor Movement's Salvation Through Salvage

Working with what they had, Cass Corridor artists scrapped and repurposed anything they could get their hands on, attempting to find some salvation for their city through a literal process of salvage and reuse. | Sarah Rose Sharp

Programming Language Design as Art

Open-ended, community based, and collaborative, "esolangs" serve as a reminder that digital art has other histories and other futures. | Daniel Temkin

Remembering the Legacy of a Larger-Than-Life Artist, Sam Tchakalian

The Bay Area artist believed in shaping artists rather than relaying rules. | John Seed

A Tale of Two Countries: Finding Indo-Caribbean Shakti in Colorado

While the South Asian diaspora is one of the largest and most widely dispersed in the world, the Indo-Caribbean community is often overlooked and excluded from discussions of South Asian art. | Sadaf Padder

The Legacy of a Pioneering Subway Artist Lives On in a Final Art Book

PHASE 2 would emerge as an innovator in New York’s burgeoning subway art movement, creating elaborate murals that would shape the evolution of both the spray can and the art form. | Serouj Aprahamian

The Edgy and Lucid Video Art of Rafael França

Video art was something you watched “with the lights on,” as França insisted, without pretenses of high art. | Ela Bittencourt

The California Dream in the Prints of Frances Gearhart

Gearhart founded a print gallery with her sisters and was at the center of the Arts and Crafts movement in southern California. | Anne Wallentine

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