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    Rosa Bonheur Was One of the Most Influential Artists of Her Time. Two Centuries Later, Museums Are Giving Her Remarkable Animal Portraits New Life

    It’s been 200 years since French artist Rosa Bonheur was born and people are still talking about what she was wearing when she painted live lions and tigers and cows. 
    Bonheur was one of a handful of mid-19th century women issued a police permit allowing them to wear men’s clothes. Yes, it’s true: the accomplished Bonheur—who audaciously used the monumental scale typically reserved for history painting to depict livestock, and was likely the most commercially successful woman artist of her time—wore pants.
    But fascination with Bonheur’s persona has detracted from a closer look at her work, which portrayed animals with psychological presence and meticulous anatomical detail. 
    “There are so many things to [uncover] about Rosa Bonheur, because we study her more for her unconventional life than for her art,” said Lou Brault, assistant director of the Château de Rosa Bonheur, a museum opened in 2017 in the artist’s longtime house in the town of Thomery. To some, Bonheur is a model for women’s liberation because she never married (deciding instead to spend her life with another woman), was childless, and supported herself financially. “There are not so many studies about what she’s fighting for through her art.”
    Rosa Bonheur, Deux Lapins (1840). © Mairie de Bordeaux, musée des Beaux-Arts, photo: F.Deval.
    In honor of the bicentenary of her birth this year, a retrospective of some 200 paintings, graphic works, sculptures, and photographs reintroduces Bonheur’s work to French audiences and offers new ways to look at the artist. The show recently debuted at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, where it broke attendance records, and opens at the Musée d’Orsay later this month. 
    Exhibitions about Bonheur’s lost artworks and photography (a barely researched aspect of the artist’s work, even though she left behind her darkroom and thousands of exposures) have opened concurrently at the Château de Rosa Bonheur. Bonheur’s last show in Paris was a full century ago, and there has never been an exhibition of this scale devoted to her work in France. 
    “We were shocked by how important she was in the 19th century,” said Brault. “Here in France, in the 21st century, nobody knows her anymore.” 
    There are a few reasons why, including the fact that Bonheur’s chosen genre, animal painting, wasn’t highly regarded in France. “Being a woman artist and painting animals were two ‘mistakes,’” explained Leïla Jarbouai, chief curator at the Musée d’Orsay. “She made popular art, and her art was duplicated in prints, another mistake. And she sold most of her works abroad, in the United Kingdom and in the United States, so French visitors could not see her accomplished work.” 
    Rosa Bonheur, Têtes et encolures de bœuf brun. Château de Rosa Bonheur. Photo © musée d’Orsay /Alexis Brandt.
    Bonheur has always been more famous abroad than at home, even modeled into a popular doll for young American admirers in the 19th century.
    Bonheur’s ‘mistakes’ may have turned French art lovers off from the major canvas she did leave in her native country, such as Ploughing in the Nivernais (1849), of oxen trudging through rich dirt, but some novelties on view at the retrospective may pique their interest.
    The painting reproduced on the publicity poster for the Musée d’Orsay exhibition, The King of the Forest (1817), is of a regal stag staring piercingly at the viewer and it has never been shown in France, not even during Bonheur’s lifetime. Some recent discoveries excavated from storage at the Château de Rosa Bonheur, also never exhibited, are being debuted, including a grand preparatory sketch for her famous painting The Horse Fair (1852-55), and a cyanotype of a horse. The exhibition also includes personal things that Bonheur never meant to show, like painted pebbles and caricatures. 
    Jarbouai believes that the crowds that visited Bonheur’s retrospective in Bordeaux, and the growing curiosity about her in general, are linked to a greater interest in women artists today. There has also been a concerted effort since 2017 to revive Bonheur’s legacy in the place where she lived and worked for the last four decades of her life. 
    Rosa Bonheur, Cheval de face avec son palefrenier (ca. 1892). Château de Rosa Bonheur. Photo © musée d’Orsay /Sophie Crépy.
    Bonheur bought the Château de By near Fontainebleau with earnings from selling her monumental The Horse Fair, which was shown at the Paris Salon and ultimately donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Cornelius Vanderbilt. In By she lived among a menagerie of creatures including monkeys, tigers, and lions (the skin of Bonheur’s pet lioness, Fathma, ultimately became a rug strewn near her easel). Bonheur bequeathed the château to her companion, American painter Anna Klumpke, who in turn left it to her niece. Until 2017, the house and all its untouched contents were passed down within the same family, who they claimed that they tried to sell it to the French government but that there was no interest.
    “People didn’t care about her. She was just, like, painting cows,” said Brault, whose mother bought the château in 2017 in order to convert it into a museum. After securing funds to open it up to visitors year-round, the Château de Rosa Bonheur started inventorying her archives to encourage research. 
    “This place needs to be here to make people talk about Rosa Bonheur,” said Brault. “There was a Rosa Bonheur street, there was a famous café in Paris named Rosa Bonheur. Rosa Bonheur was a name people already knew but they didn’t know who she was. What we hope is that the bicentenary and the exhibition change this, and that afterwards people know she was a very famous artist of the 19th century and she painted animals.”

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    From Forest Dragons to Painted Bodies, Here Are the Winners of This Year’s ArtPrize

    The 12th edition of the ArtPrize—an independent, contemporary art competition held in Grand Rapids, Michigan—concluded on October 2 following a successful 19-day run across 200 local venues, including auto body shops, banks and even bridges.
    Since its inception in 2009, each edition of the open, international event has distributed around $450,000 in grants to participating artists. After a contentious cancellation in 2020 because of the pandemic, the competition returned this year with a full roster of extracurricular programming.
    “ArtPrize is all about bringing fine art into the public eye, free of charge,” ArtPrize’s Mady Ellinger told Artnet News. “It’s unorthodox, highly disruptive, and undeniably intriguing.”
    “There is still a common misconception that ArtPrize is privately funded,” Ellinger continued, when it  actually is a non-profit that relies on sponsors, donors, and grants.
    ArtPrize takes shape organically through its online portal, where venues from a three-square-mile radius in Downtown Grand Rapids connect with artist applicants to determine which projects will go where. Meanwhile, ArtPrize leadership selects the jury of comprised of curators, critics, artists and museum directors.
    “What makes ArtPrize unique is that awards and prizes are selected by both public visitors casting votes and also by jurors,” Ellinger said, revealing “the intersections and incongruities between professional and populist opinions.” Some projects have even won world records.
    Artists competing for the Popular Award can submit their work into one of five categories—two-dimensional, three-dimensional, time-based, installation, and digital art—with the public and juries both awarding prizes for their favorites in each category. Artists behind each of the ten selected projects receive $10,000 each. Jurors also choose their second-favorite works of art in each category for the Honorable Mention award, which comes with a $2,500 purse.
    ArtPrize distributes $125,000 during the event, through daily and weekly prizes, with the remaining prize money going to specialized awards. Artists can also sell their works through the online art platform AllArtWorks.
    This year, the organizers of the Grand Rapids African American Arts & Music Festival singled out William Davis’s interactive poetry piece to receive the Contemporary Black Art Award, while the West Michigan Asian American Association chose a mixed-media, 2D-piece by Stacie Tamaki for the Asian Art Award.
    Florida-based artist Florencia Clement De Grandprey took home two accolades for In My Eyes, snagging both the 2D Public Award and the Artista Latino Award, chosen by the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
    New to the 2022 edition was the Artist-to-Artist award, where participating artists could weigh in on their favorites. North Carolina brothers Brad and Bryan Caviness took home the inaugural $12,500 prize for Creation, Destruction, Reflection.
    Ellinger cited the last-minute addition of the John Ball Zoo to its list of venues as this year’s greatest thrill. There, Michigan-based artist Stacy Rhines installed an interactive disc golf course made of recycled scrap metal sculptures. When avid disc golfers caught wind of his work over social media, they flocked to the city—even from out of state.
    ArtPrize also expanded its geographic footprint beyond its traditional three-square-mile radius in Downtown Grand Rapids. This year, its Featured Public Project, Made Again, was placed at Martin Luther King Jr Park in nearby Ottawa Hills. “Swilk’s compelling and gentle works brought high art to a key neighborhood,” Ellinger said.
    Here are the incredible winning sights that graced Grand Rapids this year.
    ArtPrize 2022 Winners:
    2D Public Winner and Artista Latino Award Winner: In My Eyes by Florencia Clement De Grandprey

    3D Public Winner: American Eagle by Kasey Wells

    Time-Based Public Winner: Embodied-Healing Through Body Art by Kristen Zamora

    Installation Public Winner: Twigg the Forest Dragon by Jennifer Dunahee

    Digital Public Winner: Urban Arterials by Rob Finch

    2D Juror Winner: For Dorothy Afro Harping by Harold Allen

    3D Juror Winner: Last by Mo Jauw

    Time-Based Juror Winner: Fusion by LiChtpiraten

    Installation Juror Winner: Seeking a pleasant peninsula by Maddison Chaffer

    Digital Juror Winner: Derivations of a Gothic Arch Part 2 by Gary Mesa-Gaido

    2D Juror Honorable Mention: In Bello (In Time of War) by Erica Kuhl

    3D Juror Honorable Mention: Embedded by Mark Mennin

    Time-Based Juror Honorable Mention: Ineffable Lypophrenia by Ciara Glass

    Installation Juror Honorable Mention: Who’s Next? By Brian Whitfield

    Digital Juror Honorable Mention: Algorithm + You = Art by Charles Cusack

    Artist-To-Artist Award: Creation, Destruction, Reflection by Brad and Bryan Caviness

    Contemporary Black Art Award: Poetry on Demand by William Davis

    Asian Art Award: Sold to Slaughter by Stacie Tamaki

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    From an Alice Neel Survey to a Moving Show About Still-Life Art, Here Are 9 Buzzed-About Museum Exhibitions to See in Paris

    As the debut of Paris+ prepares to unfold in the Grand Palais Éphémère, the city’s museums are presenting a rich variety of visually and intellectually stimulating exhibitions. Our round-up of nine shows confirms how artists continue to reinvent the wheel while drawing inspiration from artists born decades and centuries before them.

    “Things – A History of Still Life”LouvreUntil January 23, 2023
    Barthélémy Toguo Le Pilier des migrants disparus © Barthélémy Toguo ADAGP Paris 2022. Courtesy de lartiste et HdM Gallery © Audrey Viger Musée du Louvre.
    Soaring into I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre is a towering sculpture of fabric-covered balls by Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo. Alluding to migrants that have perished on their voyage (the piece is titled The Pillar of the Missing Migrants), the commissioned work exemplifies how curator Laurence Bertrand Dorléac has sought to extend what the genre of “still life,” or nature morte, can encompass today. “Things – A History of Still Life” assembles an incredible diversity from Bottle Rack (1914/59) by Marcel Duchamp to Georges de La Tour’s painting of Mary Magdalene in front of a candle.

    Frida Kahlo: “Au-delà des apparences”Palais GallieraUntil March 5, 2023
    Hand-painted medical corset. © Museo Frida Kahlo – Casa Azul collection – Javier Hinojosa, 2017
    Taking us behind the scenes of Frida Kahlo’s life, this insightful exhibition explores the intimate issues that informed and created the Mexican artist’s unique identity. On show are more than 200 objects from the Casa Azul, the house where Kahlo grew up, including black-and-white family photos, hand-painted orthopaedic corsets that she wore due to her disability after contracting poliomyelitis, a prosthetic leg, boots, and traditional Tehuana dresses. Kahlo’s husband, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, placed these personal items under seal after she died, and they were not discovered until 2004. Also on view are several self-portraits and a portrait of Kahlo by Dora Maar taken during Kahlo’s trip to Paris.

    Alice Neel: “Un regard engagé”Centre PompidouUntil January 16, 2023
    Alice Neel, “un regard engagé” © Centre Pompidou. Photo: Hélène Mauri.
    Mixed-race and homosexual couples, unemployed people, and pregnant women all fell under the unflinching gaze of the 20th century artist Alice Neel—a radical feminist who was also a member of the Communist party. Yet as her figurative painting went against the prevailing vogue of abstraction, pop art, minimalism, and conceptualism, Neel’s oeuvre was largely overlooked during her lifetime. This exhibition seeks to elevate her place in the history of art cannon.

    “Monet – Mitchell”Fondation Louis VuittonUntil February 27, 2023
    Joan Mitchell, Two Pianos, (1980). 
Private collection
© The Estate of Joan Mitchell
. Photo © Patrice Schmidt
    American artist Joan Mitchell once said that she “admired the late but not early Monet.” It is indeed with the fabulous paintings from Monet’s late period of his garden in Giverny that Mitchell’s vibrant works made with thick brushstrokes, many decades later in Vétheuil near the Seine, are juxtaposed. What’s immediately striking is how the two artists shared a similar chromatic sensitivity in their palettes and a dedication to inventing new ways to depict landscape—Monet spoke of “impression” and “sensation,” while Mitchell sought to express “feeling.”

    Mickalene Thomas: “Avec Monet”Musée de l’OrangerieUntil February 6, 2023
    Mickalene Thomas Le Jardin d’Eau de Monet (2022). Photo: © Mickalene Thomas © Adagp, Paris, 2022
    In 2011, American artist Mickalene Thomas was an artist-in-residence at Claude Monet’s home in Giverny. For this exhibition, she has revisited that experience and interpreted the Impressionist artist’s house with her own visual language—a rich collage composed from photographs of Monet’s garden as well as printed and painted elements delineated with Swarovski crystals. Another work referring to Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe features three Black women in a celebration of pride and female power. A video work shows Thomas reclining nude, interspersed with fragments of Amedeo Modigliani’s famous nudes and abstract images, as a voice narrates the hardship of growing up as a mixed-race woman.

    Kehinde WileyMusée d’OrsayUntil January 8, 2023
    Kehinde Wiley Femme Piquée Par Un Serpent (Mamadou Gueye), (2022). Kehinde Wiley / Ugo Carmeni
    In the nave of the Musée d’Orsay is Kehinde Wiley’s magnificent monumental bronze sculpture of a young man collapsed across the saddle of a galloping horse. Another sculpture portrays a resting male figure, ivy meandering over his body—the pose is duplicated in a richly detailed painting of a figure clad in a Louis Vuitton top, jeans, and white Nike sneakers, lying upon a rock in a landscape. Through revisiting stereotypes of Western art, Wiley majestically re-contextualizes classic pictorial forms while dwelling on violence, suffering and peacefulness.

    “Reversing the Eye: Arte Povera and Beyond 1960-1975: Photography, Film, Video”Jeu de Paume and Le BalUntil January 29, 2023
    Giuseppe Penone Svolgere la propria pelle (1997) © Archivio Penone.
    The title of this show is taken from the work Rovesciare i propri occhi (To reverse one’s eyes), 1970, depicting a young Giuseppe Penone—who was the youngest member of Italy’s Arte Povera group—wearing mirrored contact lenses he had custom made. Spread across two venues, the exhibition features seminal works by Arte Povera artists, such as Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Sfera di giornali, a ball made of newspapers that he rolled in the streets of Turin, and his mirror paintings. It also looks at the work of lesser-known photographers who influenced or exhibited with the Arte Povera artists, thus bringing a wider context to the radical Italian movement.

    Cyprien Gaillard: ‘Humpty Dumpty’Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette AnticipationsUntil January 8, 2023
    Reference for “Humpty/Dumpty” on view at Palais de Tokyo. © Cyprien Gaillard. Photo: Max Paul, (2021)
    Entropy and man’s quest to overcome it and failure to do so lies at the heart of Cyprien Gaillard’s double exhibition. From the restoration of the Eiffel Tower to the removal of love locks from the Pont Neuf because they were weighing down the bridge, Gaillard’s gaze is turned to Paris and the attempts to spruce up the city ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games. The second-part of the show, at Lafayette Anticipations, is focused on literally trying to make a clock sculpture work again.

    Anri Sala: ‘Time No Longer’Bourse de Commerce – Pinault CollectionUntil January 16, 2023
    Anri Sala, Time No Longer, 2021. Pinault Collection © Anri Sala / Adagp, Paris, 2022. Photo Aurélien Mole
    Projected onto a vast, curved screen in the rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce is Anri Sala’s Time No Longer (2021) – an elegy to African-American astronaut and saxophonist Ronald McNair who never fulfilled his dream to record music in space as his space shuttle exploded seconds after takeoff. As with ‘Ravel Ravel Unravel’, which the Albanian-French artist unveiled in the French Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2013, it is a mesmerizing exploration of recomposing sounds and images. Other new works by the artist are on display in the vitrines while older videos are on show in the ground-floor gallery and basement.

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    A New Mural by Pref in Liège, Belgium

    Pref is a British graffiti fine artist and muralist. He is known for his multi-layered typographic style graffiti, incorporating an exploration of common words and key vernacular phrases.He has developed his role and reputation as a graffiti artist over 20 years, and trained initially at Chelsea College of Arts before going on to work in graphic design. Pref’s multi-layered style means that an element of deciphering is introduced, the viewer being asked to disentangle images and meanings from the artwork.The project was a collaboration with SILVERSQUARE to celebrate the recent first phase of the opening of SQ Guillemins (Liège), to create a gigantic mural right in front of the coworking space.The idea proposed by the artist is based on the phrase “shake hands” in a woven style.Anyone who gets off the train and arrives in Liege is now greeted by this colourful giant mural.Take a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates.Photo credit: Jules Césure More

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    How the Mystic Seaport Museum Is Making Waves in Visual Art, From Hosting a Smithsonian Show to Commissioning New Artwork

    What do the port cities of Venice and Mystic in Connecticut have in common? Both share a long seafaring history and world-class art. On October 15, Mystic Seaport Museum opens “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano,” an exhibition organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum that features more than 115 artworks from over 40 institutions and private collections that explore how Venetian arts influenced American artists. The show debuted in Washington, DC, and stopped in Fort Worth before docking in Mystic, where it will remain through February 27, 2023.
    Christina Brophy, Senior Vice President of Curatorial Affairs, told Artnet News that she had collaborated with the Smithsonian on a previous show, and jumped at the opportunity to host this art exhibition at the maritime museum.
    The Mystic edition of “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass” shifts the show’s sequence to highlight cultural connections between Venice, Mystic, and greater New England. For this edition, Rhode Island’s Tomaquag Museum is loaning a trade bead necklace and beaded top hat, both by Indigenous artists, to emphasize “the incorporation of Venetian and other trade glass into the vernacular of traditional work, which also includes elements of wampum, bone, and porcupine quill,” Brophy said.
    Mystic Seaport Museum has also pulled rarely-seen works from its own collection, including glass-plate negatives taken in Venice by the whaler, merchant, and diplomat Henry Hiller, along with a diary documenting one mariner’s Venetian adventures. Lino Tagliapietra, a glass maestro from Murano, appears alongside other living legends he inspired, including Debora Czeresko, Dale Chihuly, and Kim Harty.
    Local glass artist Jeffrey P’an also makes an appearance—museum members will have the opportunity to visit his studio for a live glassblowing demonstration. Other programming for the general public includes on-site tours and talks by glass and lacework experts. Throughout the duration of the show, visitors entering the lobby will be greeted by a 35.5-foot Venetian gondola from La Gondola in Providence. The Rhode Island-based specialist gondola tour company will also offer rides on the Mystic River in another of its vessels during the show’s opening weekend.
    Since 1929, Mystic Seaport Museum has dedicated its 19 acres to America’s maritime past. Facilities include a 75,000-volume research library, a recreation of a 19th-century seafaring village, and the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. It also has an extensive collection of film, photography, and over 500 different types of watercraft, as well as a choice selection of prints and paintings.
    The museum has plans both to show more of its permanent art collection and to increase its engagement with living artists by commissioning site-specific works that address issues such as climate change and ecology. Rhode Island artist Sue McNally was commissioned to paint an on-site mural called Mystic Blue, and the museum has also commissioned Alexis Rockman to produce 11 paintings around the theme of climate change in the maritime industry for a show called “Oceanus”, which will premiere in May 2023 before traveling domestically and abroad—in true seafaring fashion. Brophy also mentioned a forthcoming call for artists to create an installation for its planned exhibition “Entwined”, slated for 2024, “on Indigenous, African, and African American Maritime Social History.”
    Below is a preview of works to be featured in “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass” before the exhibition sets sail.
    Attributed to Società Veneziana per l’Industria delle Conterie (SVC), “Sample Cord with Flameworked Beads”, (Late 19th century—1904). Image courtesy of Illinois State Museum.
    Maxfield Parrish, “Venetian Lamplighters” (1922). Image courtesy of National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, RI, and American Illustrators Gallery, New York, NY.

    Francesco Toso Borella, Vittorio Toso Borella and Compagnia di Venezia e Murano, “Replica of a Renaissance Goblet (Campanile Cup)” (1903—12). Image courtesy of Iris and Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.

    Scuola dei Merletti di Burano, “Lace Panel with Lion of St. Mark” (20th century). Image courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

    Thomas Moran, “A View of Venice” (1891). Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

    John Singer Sargent, “A Venetian Woman” (1882). Image courtesy of Cincinnati Art Museum.

    Louise Howland King Cox, “May Flowers” (1911). Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.

    Roman Empire, “Mosaic Glass Bowl”, (1st century B.C.E. – 1st century C.E.). Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.

    Giovanni Boldini, “Portrait of James McNeill Whistler” (1897). Image courtesy of Brooklyn Museum.
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    Elton John Curated a Show of Peter Hujar’s Photographs. See What the Selection Reveals About Both Artists’ Visions

    An old chest sits open on the floor of a storage room in Peter Hujar’s 1973 photograph, Clown’s Trunk. Piled inside the container are balled socks and boxes full of makeup. A dog-eared biography of Buster Keaton sits on the yawning lid like a bible atop an altar. 
    “That’s a picture I had seen before, but I had not paid as much attention to it as it deserved,” recalled San Francisco gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel, who has represented Hujar’s estate since the mid-2000s. 
    That the unassuming photograph went overlooked amongst Hujar’s many sensuous studies of writers, rockstars, and fellow artists makes sense; it feels, at first blush, like an outlier. But when the shot happened to be among the 50 pictures chosen by pop icon Elton John for a new exhibition at Fraenkel’s gallery, the dealer looked again. 
    Encoded in the trunk tableau, he realized, was a portrait of a person whose rich onstage life left them with little when the curtains went down.
    “This is a picture about a performer who goes out in front of an audience in god knows whatever town, does his best to entertain them, then comes back to his dressing room, packs everything into the trunk, and moves on to the next little town,” Fraenkel explained. “And I thought, ‘Wow, Elton John is somebody who would understand the deeper meanings of this picture.’” 
    Tellingly, Clown’s Trunk is one of many portraits of performers included in “Peter Hujar: Curated by Elton John,” an exhibition that highlights both artists’ visions.
    Peter Hujar, Cockette Kreemah Ritz (I) (1971). © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    John, who is now on the road in a yearlong farewell tour, has quietly become one of the world’s preeminent photography collectors over the last three decades. In the Rocket Man’s personal collection are prints by Nan Goldin, Tina Modotti, Man Ray, and Cindy Sherman, among others. 
    Hujar’s name didn’t join that list until 2011, John explained, in a forward he wrote for the Fraenkel show catalogue, but he has been a favorite of the pop star ever since. 
    “In the years since acquiring that first Hujar, I’ve added 14 more into my personal collection,” John wrote. (Many of those were sold by Fraenkel, the gallerist confirmed.) “Hujar’s humanity, depth, and sensual insights aren’t for everyone, and don’t need to be, but once his pictures get into your bloodstream, they are impossible to shake.”
    Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger as Auntie Belle Emme (1979).© 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    That’s a loaded metaphor for an artist who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1987. But John is right that Hujar’s best work lingers with its viewers—often to ineffable effect. “His pictures share, in place of a style, an unfailing rigor that can only be experienced, not described,” New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl once wrote.
    A sense of sorrow pervades the Fraenkel Gallery show, as many presentations of Hujar’s work often do. His early death, and the death of so many of his subjects, casts a shadow hard to escape. John, to his credit, embraces it.
    Elsewhere in the exhibition is a 1974 picture of Warhol star Jackie Curtis, laid up in the hospital. Stripped of her usual gaudy makeup, she looks thin and pale. On an adjacent wall is another portrait of Curtis, this one taken after she died of a drug overdose. She lies prostrate in a coffin, and the makeup she has on is the uncanny kind they put on corpses for a funeral. 
    A picture of her onstage persona is perched behind her like the Buster Keaton biography in the Clown’s Trunk. It’s a connection only John could see. 
    “After all these years, it’s so clear to me that the most interesting way to learn something new about an artist is to look at their work through the eyes of another artist,” Fraenkel said.
    See more Hujar photographs from the exhibition below.
    Peter Hujar, Don Mahoney and Peter Hujar Painting 189 Second Avenue, October 14 (1983). © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Peter Hujar, Waves, Fire Island (1966). © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Peter Hujar, Peggy Lee (1974). © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Peter Hujar, Nude from Behind (date unknown). © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Peter Hujar, Skippy (Boa Constrictor) (1985). © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Peter Hujar, Drag Queen with flower, Halloween (1980). © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    “Peter Hujar: Curated by Elton John” is on view now through October 22, 2022 at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.
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    In Pictures: The Hop-Hop Architecture Movement Gets Its Due in an Illuminating Atlanta Show

    This week, the Museum of Design in Atlanta unveils “Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture,” a survey of temporal, reactive, and improvisational architecture, designed by scholar and architect Sekou Cooke.
    “Hip-hop architecture had been talked about and debated at Cornell University in the mid-90s, after the legendary thesis project by Nathan Williams,” Cooke told Artnet News. The curator has since written a book on the topic, hosted a symposium, and organized this touring show. “Close to the Edge” outlines the movement’s 25-year rise through facade studies, urban development proposals, installation strategies, and building designs.
    While on the surface hip-hop and architecture might appear at odds—one celebrates spontaneity, the other relies on structure—the combination of the two is an “anti-style” design movement that riffs off the music’s playful pastimes: deejaying, emceeing, b-boy dancing, and graffiti.
    Sekou Cooke. Photo: Michael Barletta. Courtesy of Sekou Cooke Studio
    Cooke has identified three categories that are particularly important to the movement: Identity, Process, and Image. Together, he said, these categories hold space for “designers with deeply rooted, hip-hop identities, those committed to processes extracted from hip-hop elements, and reflecting an image that may somehow be tied back to aspects of public consciousness attributed to hip-hop.”
    Designing the show specifically for MODA’s sprawling galleries, Cooke sought to create intimacy through wall text and sonic environments. He met the museum’s mandate for interactivity with a turntable feature “where visitors can manipulate 3D prints in action.” He has also expanded the traveling show’s “If Ya Don’t Know…” glossary wall with “historical images of hip-hop’s elements, grounding them back to a Southern context.”
    Altogether, the show asks how call and response can become an architectural imperative, in the same way hip-hop and its entourage activities are all based on flow.
    “Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip Hop Architecture” is on view October 15 through January 29, 2023 at the Museum of Design in Atlanta. Take a sneak peek of the exhibition below.
    “Close to the Edge” at the Center for Architecture in New York, late 2018. Photo: Erik Bardin, courtesy of MODA.
    Ujijji Davis, The Bottega project (2015). Photo: courtesy of Sekou Cooke Studio.
    Boris Delta Tellegen, Barlagelaan (2011). Photo: courtesy of Sekou Cooke Studio.
    Wildstyle, a proposed new design for the Museum of Hip Hop in Brooklyn, New York by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students Jessie Christensen, Kate Greskoviak, Claudia Lu, and Michael Muchmore. Photo: courtesy of MODA.
    ITN Architects, construction photograph from “The End to End Building” in Melbourne, Australia (2015). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
    A view of City Thread by design duo SPORTS (Molly Hunker, Greg Corso), in Chattanooga, Tennessee (2018). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
    Studio Malka Architecture, Bow-House in Heerlen, Netherlands (2014). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
    Lauren Halsey, Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project (2016). Photo: courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery.
    4RM+ULA Architects, exterior perspective rendering of JXTA Arts Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota (2010). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
    Maurer United Architects, Zedzbeton 3.0, with Zedz, project poster (2002). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
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    “Let Only the Verb Remain in the Middle of the Jungle” by Milu Correch in Bueu, Galicia, Spain

    Milagros Correch  (born 1991, Villla Urquiza, Buenos Aires), better known as Milu Correch, is an Argentine painter and muralist recognized internationally for her large scale murals and illustrations. Her work can be found in cities in Argentina and around the world.Correch began her career as an artist in 2011 painting a street mural in Buenos Aires as she saw her home town getting filled with murals and fell in love with the format. She attended a workshop to learn the basic skills of mural painting led by Emy Mariani and Lean Frizzera, two Argentinian street artists from Buenos Aires. From the beginning, she decided to signe her works with her full name instead of using a pseudonym.A mural “Let Only the Verb Remain in the Middle of the Jungle”  was made in Bueu, Galicia, Spain.Take a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More