March 12, 2022 • View in browser

This week, the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to be in the headlines, and we continued to report on the evolving story with a graphic account by two artists in Ukrainian bomb shelters, an opinion piece by Dario Badior about how Russia continues to benefit from Soviet imperialism in the realm of culture, a report about the action at the Guggenheim Museum in support of a no-fly zone, and how some Ukrainian artists are helping the war effort by constructing anti-tank obstacles.

We also reported on the surprising (and welcome) decision by the Smithsonian to return the majority of its looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, while archeologists in Egypt have uncovered the largest-ever trove of ancient embalming materials, and one writer visits Sri Lanka to write about the continuing desecration of holy sites in that country.

We have a thoughtful article by Naz Cuguoğlu on the art world’s obsession to “discover” artists outside of the mainstream. Enjoy this week’s edition of our newsletter.

Also, if anyone is interested in a worthwhile exhibition that comes down this weekend in New York City, check out my review of Yatika Starr Fields’s “Fear Not” exhibition at Garth Greenan gallery. Fields is someone I first met at the Standing Rock protests in 2016, and his current show grapples with some of that legacy, as well as the January 6th insurrection. Highly recommended.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

documenta (13), installation view, Kassel (2012) (© documenta archive, photo by Ryszard Kasiewicz)

Why We Need a Post-Colonial Lens to Look at Ukraine and Russia
In this post-Soviet era, Daria Badior urges us to consider how Russians continue to benefit from colonialism and imperialism in the realm of culture.

The “Great Russian Culture” everyone is referring to today is great precisely because of its diverse representatives from Ukraine and other communities, captured throughout Russia’s imperial history. So today the conversation about Western stances on Russian culture simply demands post-colonial optics.

NEWS THIS WEEK

Ukrainian artists and other civilian volunteers are building anti-tank obstacles to help the war effort. (image by and courtesy of Victoria Pidust)

• Ukrainian artists help construct anti-tank obstacles known as “hedgehogs” in an old metal workshop in Lviv.

• Flyers calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine were launched by a group of 15 artists and activists at the Guggenheim Museum.

• The Smithsonian Institution announces its decision to repatriate the majority of the Benin bronzes in its collection to Nigeria.

• A possible settlement agreement will allow for museums to remove the Sackler name without penalty.

• Archaeologists in Egypt uncovered the largest-ever trove of embalming materials from a site near Cairo.

• Artifacts stolen from the Kotawehera Rajamaha temple in Sri Lanka are the latest victims of longstanding looting and trafficking.

LATEST IN ART

documenta (13), installation view, Kassel (2012) (© documenta archive, photo by Ryszard Kasiewicz)

The Art World’s Tainted Love for “Discovering” Artists: The Case of Etel Adnan
Naz Cuguoğlu expands on the art world’s obsession with reintroducing marginalized artists.

Although rediscovering overlooked artists might be helpful for widening our knowledge of their achievements in art history, it might not be enough. It is equally urgent to acknowledge the earlier discouraging and exclusionary methodologies of the very institutional structures which later produced the discovery narrative.

Was Jacques-Louis David Really That Radical?
Billy Anania examines how the Met’s new exhibition makes Jacques-Louis David a compelling case study in opportunism and survival.

Vienna’s Belvedere Museum Highlights Three Early Modernists Who Straddled Europe and Asia
Avedis Hadjian takes a closer look at the museum's displaying of works with no connection to Austria for the first time in centuries.

Ulysses Jenkins, “Without Your Interpretation rehearsal documentation” (1984), color print, 3 1/2 × 5 inches (image courtesy the artist)

Ulysses Jenkins, a Daring Video Artist, Expanded Ideas of Blackness
Allison Conner on Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation at the Hammer Museum.

What stands out most to me about Jenkins’s practice is his unwavering belief in creating your own forms of art and storytelling. His images jam signals, finding space to broadcast pirate frequencies that widen our sense of time and space. Without Your Interpretation transmits you to other worlds, making us question what we’re consuming through our computers, phones, and other technological tools. 

“Women’s Work” as an Aesthetic Provocation
Ela Bittencourt on Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction at the Museum of Modern Art.

Alone in the Dying of the Light
John Yau on Rackstraw Downes: Drawings at Betty Cuningham Gallery.

Elizabeth Glaessner, “Strange Loop” (2021), water dispersed pigments with binders on canvas, 72 x 72 inches

Elizabeth Glaessner’s Wonderfully Weird Menagerie
Cassie Packard on Elizabeth Glaessner: Phantom Tail at P·P·O·W.

Approaching her relationship with this lost appendage slantwise, Glaessner explores chimerical, hybridized, shapeshifting, or otherwise non-normative bodies and archetypes that come to us — in a glitchy, protean form — through the endless retellings of myths.

Suchitra Mattai Probes the Monstrous Misperceptions Around Immigrant Identity
Aaron Mok on Suchitra Mattai: Herself as Another at Hollis Taggart.

Reading Anne Ryan’s Poetic Collages
Tim Keane on Anne Ryan Collages at Washburn Gallery.

ALSO ON HYPERALLERGIC

Julia Morgan, Berkeley City Club (image from Julia Morgan by Victoria Kastner, published by Chronicle Books, 2022)

Julia Morgan, California’s First Licensed Female Architect
Lauren Moya Ford highlights a new book that resurrects Julia Morgan’s impact on the field of architecture and on the California landscape.

Who was Cleopatra Really?
Carly Silver asks, "what makes the final Ptolemaic pharaoh of Egypt so timeless?"

The Comics That Influenced The Batman
Kambole Campbell highlights a number of key graphic texts to understanding the newly-released film.

How the Hermitage Museum Artwashes Russian Aggression
Rachel Spence explains how collaborations with the State Hermitage Museum are problematic seeing its director's close relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Lynching Postcards Explores a Dark Corner of US History
Dan Schindel speaks with Christine Turner about how her documentary short interrogates the white gaze and seeks to reaffirm ugly truths about the past.

Required Reading
This week, the oldest mummies in the world, whitewashing an autocrat, a useful reading list about Ukraine, SPLC released their new report on hate, seeking a new language around race, and more.

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COMICS

“We Are Safe, the Bomb Shelter Is Fine,” Ukrainian Cartoonists Draw Under Siege

Artists Anya Ivanenko and Jenya Polosina share their experiences from the start of the Russian invasion.

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