Breaking down the Whitney Biennial, reviews of Sonia Delaunay and Arcmanoro Niles, and more.
| | | Comedian Julio Torres drags the New York art world in Problemista, his directorial debut about a bitter art critic played by Tilda Swinton. The film, which is narrated by Isabella Rossellini, takes a “fantastical approach to depicting the very real trials of immigration and creative work,” delivering a “scathing satire in a jester’s cap.”
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REVIEWED IN NEW YORK | | | The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art | | The Met’s Harlem Renaissance exhibition “catches its visitors in the throes of this multiplicity.” Rippling with questions of self-representation and responsibility that “continue to trouble the waters of Black artistic and intellectual work today,” art by historic figures like Aaron Douglas, Archibald Motley, and James Van Der Zee is featured alongside a nearly equal number of works by lesser-known artists, to forceful, often breathtaking, results. |
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| The City Lights Can’t Shine Quite like the Stars: Got So Far From My Raising I Forgot Where I Come From at Lehmann Maupin | | Arcmanoro Niles “evinces a kind of maturity — and a willingness to keep probing the medium — in showing oil and acrylic paintings that do something unconventional under the cloak of conventionality.” Using the materiality of the paint itself, he pulls viewers into his “lush work,” only making his brushwork visible when it serves a greater purpose. |
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Sonia Delaunay: Living Art at Bard Graduate Center | | Bard Graduate Center’s Sophia Delaunay exhibition is a “small treasure of a show” that explores the full range of the artist’s work through a chronological narrative with some clever twists. Although her paintings are underrepresented, the sections “devoted to her textile and clothing designs are beautifully assembled, and do a wonderful job of demonstrating her process.” |
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| Stan VanDerBeek: Transmissions at Magenta Plains | | The centerpiece of his retrospective at Magenta Plains, Stan VanDerBeek’s telephone art project “Panels for the Walls of the World” (1970) “radically reimagines the role of an audience in art.” While VanDerBeek is considered a “genius of experimental cinema,” the exhibition “reminds viewers that it would be foolish to dismiss his multimedia work as technologically obsolete.” |
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SPONSORED | | | | Featuring a diverse lineup of artists including Ellen Lesperance, Xylor Jane, and Melvin Way, this exhibition explores the intersection of abstract art and structural models. | Learn more |
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WHITNEY BIENNIAL BREAKDOWN |
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| | | The Whitney Biennial opened its 81st edition less than a month ago, featuring works by 76 artists. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the marquee exhibition isn’t just a harbinger of formal and thematic trends in the contemporary art world. Historically, it’s also been perceived as a sign of who “makes it” in a field that’s infamous for leaving out so many.
We set out to analyze some demographic characteristics of this year’s cohort versus those of the previous edition in 2022, focusing on age, place of origin and current location, educational background, and pronouns. Much of this information was shared with the museum voluntarily by the artists and we independently tracked down some other missing data points.
How does Even Better Than the Real Thing stack up? Read on and click through our interactive graphs. You might find a few surprises.
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| | | The Studio Museum in Harlem selected eight New York-based curators for its new program for art workers of color devoted to Black cultural production. The first-ever Garden State Art Weekend is coming to over 100 venues across New Jersey on April 19–21. The New York Antiquarian Book Fair was a bibliophile’s paradise — and great for eavesdropping. Joshua Charow looks at New York City’s artist lofts in his new book [curbed.com] Own a Home? You’ll Have to Buy Trash Bins From This One Company, Says NYC Sanitation [thecity.nyc] Fashy Posturing and Rich-Kid Juvenilia? That’s Praxis (Magazine) [hellgatenyc.com] | The inaugural class of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Arts Leadership Praxis program from left to right: Dejá Belardo, Margarita Lila Rosa, Tsige Tafesse, Carla Forbes, Meredith Breech, Gee Wesley, Imani Williford, and Jenée-Daria Strand (photo by Naima Green, courtesy the Studio Museum in Harlem) |
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