Weekend
August 21, 2021 • View in browser
This week, John Yau looks at Serge Poliakoff’s shape-shifting abstract gouaches and discusses the poets and artists of the influential West Coast postwar underground, while Eileen G’Sell takes note of Pablo Larraín’s stylized melodrama, Ema, and Nolan Kelly parses the verbal stylings of “indie giant” Garielle Lutz.
From Baltimore, Barry Nemett explores the uncomfortable beauty of Tschabalala Self’s reimagined bodies, and in London, Michael Glover describes the work of Paula Rego, whose father read her Dante’s Divine Comedy as a child, in words freighted with particular resonance for this week’s events: “These paintings seem to suggest how we can be haunted by our own lives — unwelcome memories, repressed fears, the loomings of bad conscience, the road untaken …"
— Thomas Micchelli, Co-Editor, Hyperallergic Weekend
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Paula Rego’s Independent Spirit
Rego’s women are always independent spirits, and they are often raging. | Michael Glover
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Tschabalala Self’s Sensual Stories of Race, Sex, and Power
From one project to the next, Self reinvents herself and reimagines how to portray the human body. | Barry Nemett
Two West Coast Communities of Artists and Poets
One thing seems pretty clear about both groups: they separated themselves from mainstream culture, including the art world. This is practically unheard of today. | John Yau
A World Made of Words
Garielle Lutz's sentences are among the most original in modern English, their linguistic specificity making them virtually untranslatable. | Nolan Kelly
An Icon of Unconventional Abstraction
Serge Poliakoff: Gouaches 1938-1969 furthers the case for Poliakoff’s importance and continuing relevance to abstract painting, particularly for artists working outside any movement or stylistic tendency. | John Yau
Ema’s Visuals Ignite the Screen, but Its Story Ultimately Flickers Out
Director Pablo Larraín doesn’t trust his own filmographic brilliance, and lets story take over in the end. | Eileen G’Sell
Required Reading
This week, the battle over book reviews, Alice Neel's populism, Herat's history with the Taliban, considering cultural appropriation, and more. | Hrag Vartanian
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Marguerita Mergentime "Once in a While" Cloth Napkins
Based on a pattern by American textile designer Marguerita Mergentime, these napkins are formatted so that four different graphic effects can be achieved, depending on how they’re folded.
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