Art

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares32 Views

    ‘Paint Me a Road Out of Here’: Faith Ringgold’s Gift to Prisoners

    by

    In this documentary, the artist depicts what a more just and beautiful world might look like.In 1971, the artist Faith Ringgold received a grant to make a painting for a public institution in New York City. She decided to ask the prisoners in the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island what they wanted to see in a painting. “I want to see a road leading out of here,” one incarcerated woman told her.Ringgold took that idea and ran with it. She didn’t paint a literal road. Instead, her canvas — entitled “For the Women’s House” and installed at the prison in January 1972 — is divided into eight sections. In each, women are depicted performing jobs traditionally held by men at the time: bus driver, construction worker, basketball player, president. The road is implied: Seeing women in positions and roles they don’t always occupy can open up the viewer’s world. She might be in a prison for now, but there’s a place for her worth aspiring to beyond these walls.This was Ringgold’s imagination at work, always depicting what a more just and beautiful world might look like, particularly for the people whom the powerful prefer to ignore. Ringgold and “For the Women’s House” both appear in the documentary “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” (in theaters), directed by Catherine Gund, and hearing and seeing her talk is reason enough to see the film. Ringgold died in 2024 at 93, and is widely considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, a native New Yorker who was unflagging in her activism and commitments to dismantle racism wherever it surfaced. As a Black woman and an artist, she insisted on coupling political meaning with her work, which is suffused with curiosity and joy.“Paint Me a Road Out Of Here” is not a biographical film about Ringgold, even though you’ll learn a lot about her biography from it. The film has bigger aspirations, connecting art, prisons, activism and an expansive life. One major subject in the film is the artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, an executive producer of the film whose prison reform work often draws on her own experiences while incarcerated. Shortly after her own arrest, for example, Baxter went into labor — 43 hours while shackled to a bed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Lorraine O’Grady, Artist Who Defied Category, Is Dead at 90

      by

      She worked in collage, photography, performance, video and installation, and she dealt forthrightly with the complexities of race and gender.Lorraine O’Grady, a conceptual artist who had careers as a research economist, literary translator and rock critic before producing her first art in her 40s, and who went on to influence a generation of younger Black artists, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.Robert Ransick of the Lorraine O’Grady Trust confirmed the death.Embracingly interdisciplinary in her formal choices, Ms. O’Grady had no fixed style. She worked in collage, photography, performance, video and installation. And she dealt forthrightly with the complicated realities of race and gender, drawing on her own experience of being excluded from the white art world because she was Black and marginalized within the Black art world because she was a woman. As a result, no one knew quite what to do with her, and her art career remained little known until recently.The child of Lena and Edwin O’Grady, middle-class Jamaican immigrants who had, she said, “more education than they would be allowed to use in this country,“ Lorraine Eleanor O’Grady was born in Boston on Sept. 21, 1934, and grew up within a few blocks of the city’s main public library, where she spent much of her childhood reading and writing.In 1983, Ms. O’Grady created a participatory piece titled “Art Is …” in which performers descended into the street and invited spectators to pose for portrait photos within empty gilded frames.Lorraine O’Grady Courtesy Lorraine O’Grady TrustShe majored in economics and Spanish literature at Wellesley College and, after graduation, took a job in Washington as a research economist with the U.S. Department of Labor, focusing on labor conditions in Africa and Latin America.But her path was a restless one. After a few years, she quit her government job and moved to Europe to write a novel. She returned to the U.S., where she studied at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. For a while, to support herself, she taught high school Spanish. In 1970, she opened a commercial translation agency in Chicago that attracted clients ranging from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to Playboy magazine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again?

      by

      When “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” debuted together late last month, there was a painful attempt to call their shared box office success “Glicked” — a reference to the portmanteau of “Barbenheimer” that described the joint cultural triumph of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” in the summer of 2023.It was painful because the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon was a genuine old-fashioned Hollywood success story: Two unusual and vivid and original stories (based, yes, on real history and a famous doll, but no less creative for all that) from directors working near the peak of their powers that managed to be culturally relevant and open for interpretive debate.Whereas “Wicked” and the “Gladiator” sequel are conventional examples of how Hollywood makes almost all its money nowadays — through safe-seeming bets on famous brands and franchises that can be packaged into just-OK-enough cinematic entertainments. Neither is as egregiously mediocre as “Moana 2,” the other blockbuster of the season: The musical numbers in “Wicked” and Denzel Washington’s Roman scenery-chewing lend energy that’s absent in the Disney empire nowadays. But neither are anything like the expression of mass-market creativity that we used to call The Movies.I’ve been writing lately about how American politics seem to have moved into a new dispensation — more unsettled and extreme, but also perhaps more energetic and dynamic. One benefit of unsettlement, famously adumbrated by Orson Welles’s villainous Harry Lime in “The Third Man,” is supposed to be cultural ferment: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”There are certainly signs of ferment out there, in technology, religion and intellectual life. But I’m worried about pop culture — worried that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should, worried that even if the rest of American society starts moving, our storytelling is still going to be stuck.Or maybe not stuck so much as completely fragmented, with forms of creativity that are all intensely niche, like the podcast-splintered marketplace of news consumption.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      The Ubiquity of ‘Wicked’ Shows How Commercial Needs are Consuming Culture

      by

      Even before “Wicked” opened, the movie’s signature green and pink colors were turning up everywhere, from drinks topped with matcha foam at Starbucks to aisles lined with merch at Target. This cultural bludgeoning was, of course, orchestrated. Today, not even large marketing budgets can achieve such ubiquity without help.Attention has become fractured. Audiences, siloed in their social-media feeds and choose-your-own-adventure streaming sites, are ever harder to reach. Only by partnering up, like “Barbie” did by collaborating with 165 brands last year, can a promotional campaign become truly inescapable. “Wicked” went even bigger, teaming up with over 400 brands to ensure a saturation that would be, in the words of Universal Pictures’ chief marketing officer Michael Moses, “just short of obnoxious.”It’s just the latest example of how the culture industry has come to rely on collaborations. Brands pair up with other brands in endless permutations. Fashion companies and visual artists routinely partner, as in the case of Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami, whose landmark collaboration will soon relaunch. Around a third of Billboard’s Hot 100 songs involve a guest feature or collab (compared to under 10 percent a generation ago). At a time when culture feels stagnant, collaborations help artists and brands generate an air of originality without having to innovate.This frisson of newness has often been enough to capture media attention and entice consumers. But as commercial alliances have proliferated, their effect has diminished. Fatigue is setting in. “Wicked” participated in more than twice as many collaborations as “Barbie,” yet brought in only half its opening-weekend box-office take worldwide.Could it be that we’ve reached “peak collab?”Collaborations have become formulaic, fusing random elements from all corners of culture, until everything seems fungible: Baccarat and Hello Kitty, Louvre and “Joker: Folie à Deux,” N.H.L. and Lululemon, M&M’s and KateSpade. The ease with which such diverse offerings are lumped together only exacerbates the feeling of monotony and exhaustion. All culture is deployed in the same way, as if what distinguishes it — its history, form, industry or genre — couldn’t matter less. Collaborations appear increasingly desperate, more about profit than creative synergy or shared values. Louis Vuitton’s upcoming Murakami re-edition promises to be “a surefire sales smash,” as Highsnobiety put it, even if it’s also “a cash-conscious maneuver reflective of tumbling luxury revenues.”But the formula plays well to the algorithms that power social media and dictate what we see online. Designed to anticipate what we want, these algorithms favor content with a proven history — the safe and familiar over the experimental and untested. New content composed of pre-existing elements, like mash-ups of established artists and brands, hits the sweet spot. This preference has only amplified the incentives leading culture away from the lone visionary and toward joint authorship for decades. In hip-hop, guest features started as a means of creative exchange before proving their value as a commercial draw.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Torlonia Marbles Are Coming to Museums in Chicago, Texas and Montreal

      by

      For the first time, the ancient marbles are traveling out of Europe to the United States and Canada, for a prolonged stint.Stashed away in a cavernous Roman deposit, hidden from the world for the better part of the last century, the Torlonia Collection — the largest collection of classical sculpture still in private hands — now appears to be continuing its jet-set itinerary that started in 2020.After a glittering debut in Rome, and star turns in Milan and the Louvre Museum in Paris, 58 of the sculptures belonging to the Torlonia family, based in Rome, will be showcased at the Art Institute of Chicago in March, and will then travel to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Dating from approximately the fifth century B.C. to the early fourth century, the works on view will include highlights of the Torlonia Collection, but also 24 sculptures that were specifically selected for the North American run by the co-curators Lisa Ayla Cakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago, after “multiple trips” to the Torlonia laboratory in Rome where the collection is being restored. (“A magical, once in a lifetime experience,” Cakmak said during a video interview.)Titled “Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture From the Torlonia Collection,” the exhibition will “feel very different from the European presentations,” Cakmak said. For the curators, it has been important to make it clear “that this is a completely new project,” not just in how it “was presented in our interpretation and storytelling but also the checklist” of works, she added.The Torlonia Nile, formerly Barberini-Albani. Sculptures from the collection had been visible, off and on, until World War II. Then they fell out of sight.Lorenzo De Masi; via Torlonia FoundationIt is “intended to be for non-specialists,” people who “might not know much about the ancient world,” but would be interested in seeing what Marcus Aurelius, known to modern audiences through the first “Gladiator” film, actually looked like, said Cakmak. She added that a scholars day limited to experts was “in the planning stages.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Met Museum Unveils Design for New Modern Wing

      by

      The architect Frida Escobedo has drawn on her Mexican heritage in reimagining the galleries for Modern and contemporary art.The metaphor of weaving has informed Frida Escobedo’s design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s long-awaited new wing for Modern and contemporary art, which was unveiled on Tuesday.It is present in the architectural screen of limestone lattice that wraps the new wing’s exterior on the museum’s southwest corner, creating a diaphanous surface that will change as the sun moves through it during the day. It is present in the placement of windows, offering glimpses of the city and the park. And it is present in the way that the new wing will connect to the adjacent galleries, emphasizing the connectivity between different regions, disciplines and civilizations.“How can we start understanding the rhythm and the cadence that the museum has?” Escobedo said in a recent joint interview with Max Hollein, the museum’s director, in his Met office.“The challenge was to weave these connections with the existing museum and adjacent wings and also to make connections with the park in a very subtle way,” she continued. The current campus “is very complex — it looks like a medieval town with plazas and towns and squares and little alleys, where you can get lost, which could be fascinating, but also very disorienting.”The architect Frida Escobedo and Max Hollein, director of the Met, looking over a model of the new Tang Wing for Modern and contemporary art that Escobedo is designing.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt a time when museums all over the world are rethinking how they present art for a modern audience, Escobedo’s design marks a significant step forward for the long-delayed Met project. It also represents a do-over; a previous design by the architect David Chipperfield, who was selected for the job in 2015, was jettisoned after ballooning in cost to as much as $800 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Storm King to Begin 2025 With Nora Lawrence as Executive Director

      by

      The family-run Hudson Valley sculpture park inaugurates its 65th anniversary year with fresh leadership, a $53-million upgrade and new acquisitions.Storm King Art Center, the 500-acre outdoor museum, announced on Tuesday that Nora Lawrence, its artistic director and chief curator, will succeed its president, John P. Stern, as the institution’s leader in January. It also announced a series of commissions and acquisitions, and a solo show by the Brazilian visual artist Sonia Gomes.It is the first time that Storm King — founded in 1960 by Stern’s grandfather, Ralph E. Ogden, and father, H. Peter Stern, in New Windsor, N.Y. — will be stewarded by someone from outside their family.In choosing Storm King’s inaugural executive director, the board decided to forgo a typical search and unanimously select Lawrence, who rose through the ranks over 13 years, starting as an associate curator.From left, the artist Sarah Sze and Lawrence on the grounds of Storm King in 2021.Lila Barth for The New York Times“There is no one more qualified to take the helm than Nora Lawrence, with whom I’ve had the privilege of working closely and whose artistic vision has helped make Storm King the international destination that it is today,” Stern wrote in a statement. He took the reins from his father in 2008 and now, at age 64, will transition to a position as the board’s president and senior adviser; his two sisters also serve on the board of the nonprofit organization.The generational change — Lawrence is 45 — is part of the “transformation from Storm King being a wonderful, family-led organization to becoming increasingly a more public-facing organization in every way,” said Adam D. Weinberg, a Storm King board member, who stepped down as director of the Whitney Museum last year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Cai Guo-Qiang: A.I. Will Revolutionize How We See the World

      by

      Artificial intelligence, though shrouded in risk, promises a revolution in how we see the world.This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.The following is an artist’s interpretation of the year — how it was or how it might be, through the lens of art.An Eiffel Tower hangs upside-down in a mirrored sky, like salvation from heaven — a convergence of sadness and joy. This gunpowder painting on glass and mirror, and another similar one on canvas, draws inspiration from a scene in a proposal I developed in collaboration with the Pompidou Center for the 2024 Paris Olympics.Lasting for about six minutes, and accompanied by the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2 in C minor,” the sky painting “Resurrection” would have used around 3,000 drones equipped with small colored firework nozzles to paint the sky alongside daytime fireworks from the Eiffel Tower. The magnificent scene would have created growing flowers, the cosmic sky, white wings and a white flag beneath the Olympic rings.Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, China), “Resurrection: Proposal for the 2024 Paris Olympics,” 2024. Gunpowder on canvas, 183 cm x 152.5 cm.Photo by Mengjia Zhao, courtesy Cai StudioWhen I conceived the project in 2022, the world was slowly emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, gradually finding its footing after two years of disorder. It was also the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. The project’s tone took in both of those realities. It was one of regeneration and rebirth, echoing the peaceful, antiwar and unified spirit of the Olympics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Jewish Museum Acquires Never-Shown Entry to Venice Biennale

      by

      Ruth Patir refused to display her video installation at the Israel pavilion until a cease-fire and hostage agreement was reached. “(M)otherland” will debut in Tel Aviv.The Jewish Museum in New York has acquired a video installation by the artist Ruth Patir that was commissioned for the Venice Biennale. It was never displayed, since Patir and the curators insisted that Israel’s pavilion not open until an agreement was reached for the return of hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023 and for a cease-fire in the Gaza war.Patir’s “(M)otherland” will debut in March at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum announced Monday, and then will travel to New York after the Jewish Museum’s collection galleries are reinstalled later next year.The museum declined to disclose the price it paid for “(M)otherland,” which comprises five videos, one made in reaction to the Gaza war and offering a personal view of global tragedy. Four video pieces use ancient female figurines retrieved by archaeologists from the eastern Mediterranean to dramatize Patir’s decision to freeze her eggs after learning that she carries the BRCA gene mutation — an odyssey through an Israeli social system that encourages childbearing and aggressively funds fertility procedures. The small figurines, blown up to life-size dimensions and digitally animated, walk the halls of Israeli clinics, check their iPhones in the waiting rooms, and inject themselves with hormones.The exhibit also includes a fifth video piece, “Keening,” in which the figurines — some now shattered — are reimagined as participants in a display of public mourning following last year’s attack.Still from Ruth Patir’s video “Intake,” 2024.Ruth Patir; via Braverman Gallery, Tel AvivRuth Patir, “Petach Tikva (Waiting),” 2024, video still.Ruth Patir; via Braverman Gallery, Tel AvivStill from Ruth Patir’s video, ”(M)otherland,” 2024.Ruth Patir; via Braverman Gallery, Tel AvivWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More