Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 275 Shares199 Views

    in Exhibitions

    A New Survey of Contemporary Midwestern Artists Doesn’t Try to Pinpoint What Makes the Region Special—But It Does So All the Same

    The Midwest, like all geographic regions, is both a place and an idea. The phrase might conjure a set of symbols as much as it does a description of physical boundaries: a casserole, a cornfield, a chicken coop. 
    In organizing “The Regional,” the first multi-museum survey of contemporary Midwestern artists now on view through March 20, 2022, at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, curators Amara Antilla and Jade Powers avoided all these and any other preconceived notions about the region or its artists. “We made a point not to go into this with a curatorial thesis or an overarching idea or set of themes in mind,” said Antilla, a senior curator at the CAC. 
    Instead, they decided, the shape of the show would rest entirely in the hands of its 23 artists, including Matthew Angelo Harrison, Devan Shimoyama, and Nikki Woods, among others. (Altogether, 14 different cities and 10 states are represented.)
    Hellen Ascoli, Touch Over Fear (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City.
    Early on in the process, the artists, along with the curators, all got together over Zoom for a group discussion. “It was an opportunity to talk about your practice, to think through how your work is related to someone else’s work who might be several states over,” said Powers, assistant curator at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, where the exhibition will travel in June of next year. She called the conversations “potent and generative.”
    Sure enough, it was there that the identity of “The Regional” really took hold, as the artists, who were initially bound together only by location, identified myriad common concerns. 
    Margo Wolowiec, Breaking News (2018). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.
    Land use, geographical borders, and the environment are major interests among the group, particularly for artists like Detroit’s Margo Wolowiec, who here turns both original and found photographs of contaminated waters into woven collages both dense and fragile; and Hellen Ascoli, a Guatemalan artist previously based in Madison, Wis., whose own patchwork textiles refer to the immigration crisis. 
    Ascoli’s efforts speak to another key theme as well: the immigrant experience. It’s overt in the work of Minnesota-based photographer Pao Houa Her, for instance, whose series Coming Off the Metal Bird (2006–09) comprises pictures of her Hmong community adjusting to life in America. “Instead of a narrative, [the project] was more about my own opinions and answering questions about life in America and what America is,” the artist explains in the exhibition’s digital catalogue.
    Meanwhile, for his part, the ceramist Jonathan Christensen Caballero, based in Lawrence, Kan., offers up an allegorical sculpture. Spanning more than 13 feet, it depicts two relatives on either side of a river sailing small boats toward one another, as if communicating across borders of both time and place.
    Pao Houa Her, Aunty Mai’s 3 daughters (2006–09). Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis.
    Antilla and Powers may have approached “The Regional” without a thematic conceit, but they weren’t without goals. In their joint essay for the catalogue, their aims were framed in the form of questions: “How might we support a regional conversation and prop up local artists?” they wrote. “How might we foster conversations between our cities and the many other vibrant hubs throughout the Midwest? What are the values of living and working outside of conventional ‘art hubs,’ financial and otherwise?” 
    In each case, the answers came back to a sense of community—something in which artists throughout the Midwest are particularly invested, the curators explained.
    “It was exciting to hear how interested these artists were in making those connections and getting to know other artists throughout the region,” said Antilla. 
    “Even though they are not on either coast, there is still a strong sense of community and artistic conversation,” Powers added. “There’s a real vibrancy in the Midwest art scene that maybe isn’t always recognized.”
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 263 Shares179 Views

    in Exhibitions

    Saudi Arabia’s Art World Has Long Been Isolated. With Its First Ever Biennial, It’s Looking to Usher in a New Chapter

    A dozen Riyadh-based dancers in cream-colored clothes moved to the blended guttural sounds of a South African Xhosa song, a Sufi chant, and a Fijiri folk song from the Arabian Gulf. Their asynchronous movements carried the explosive intensity of a simmering pot. Behind them stood a video installation of their bodies in aerial view. Marwah AlMugait, the artist who made this piece, called This Sea is Mine, looked around intrepidly at the hundreds gathered for Saudi Arabia’s inaugural Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. People seemed compelled not just by the visceral choreography of women performing live, but by the act of witnessing this historic moment in the artistic life of a country.
    Attention to the plight of women was also a strong theme at the adjacent Tuwaiq International Sculpture Symposium, one of the government-backed programs of Riyadh Art. New Zealand artist Anna Korver’s abstract sculpture evoking draped female figures won an award on December 10 and her work is a part of the city’s first public initiative to build 1,000 permanent urban sculptures.
    These were paradigm-shifting moments as the art world congregated in Saudi Arabia for the inaugural biennial, called “Feeling the Stones” and the adjacent symposium in Riyadh, as well as Misk Art Week. In Jeddah, a new art space Hayy Jameel has opened.
    A sense of urgent transformation can be felt in the Middle Eastern nation, which was culturally insulated from the world until Prince Mohammed Bin Salman laid out Vision 2030’s social and economic reforms five years ago. Through its cultural endeavors, the newly formed ministry of culture has been articulating a position focused on enriching local cultural contexts while participating in the global art discourse.
    Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale launch event. Courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennal Foundation
    A New Center for Art
    The biennial, which is on view until March 11, 2022, spans six warehouses in the JAX district in the industrial part of Diriyah on the northwest fringes of Riyadh, an area that will be refurbished into an arts hub in the coming years.
    The show title—“Feeling the Stones”—comes from a saying about crossing a river that Chinese revolutionary leader Deng Xiaoping used frequently during the 1980s. “He used it as a way of talking about economic and cultural reform, the platforms of his decade and a half in power,” said Philip Tinari, head of the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and curator of the Diriyah Biennale alongside Wejdan Reda, Shixuan Luan, and Neil Zhang. “It was a time when China was reassessing its system and opening up to the world.”
    The saying was actually first coined in 1980 by Chen Yun, a leader of the Chinese Communist Party, in relation to garnering economic stability (it later became associated with Deng as he helped China become an economic powerhouse). “I felt like [the expression] has resonances with where things are in Saudi today in the aftermath of massive changes and big dreams on the horizon,” said Tinari. “It’s an abstract way of thinking about artistic experimentation and practice.”
    Installation view, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2021. Courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
    He added that many artists included in the exhibition work with a method “that’s iterative yet experimental, tentative yet directed, going from one side to the other by charting the course as it is traveled.” He noted that the biennial came together in a similar way, by putting in place “structures and processes at the same time as doing them.”
    This approach has allowed for magical encounters within the show itself such as Zahra Al Ghamdi’s sculpture Birth of a Place (2021), which was inspired by the ruins of mud-houses in Diriyah and which appears as a clever 3D extension of Xu Bing’s lightbox Background Story: Streams and Mountains Without End (2014), which itself mimics a traditional landscape painting though it is actually sculpted from newspaper and plant detritus.
    The rules of engagement for the cultural scene in what is an extremely conservative nation are still unclear. Tinari was likely tapped for his experience in running a museum in China, which requires the fine art of dealing with the People’s Republic and censorship.
    “What’s become clear to me is that any context has things that can and can’t be said,” said Tinari. “I always look back to working on ‘Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World’ at the Guggenheim [in 2017] and finding ourselves on the wrong side of animal rights, having to deactivate the presentations of three artists in New York City…The question is less what is censorship and more what is respect for cultural mores in a context that’s not your own?”
    Abdullah Al Othman, Manifesto, The Language & City (2021). Image courtesy Diriyah Biennale Foundation and the artist.
    A Bridge to the West and East
    More than half of the 64 artworks are by Saudi or Chinese artists—and nearly half the works are newly commissioned. The works are divided into six “chapters” that flow via pathways and ramps that link each of the thematic sections of a warehouse (the exhibition design is by Saudi architecture studio and participating artists Bricklab). The color of the rooms reflects the natural landscape beyond the show, and walls are punctured, letting in natural light and views of Wadi Hanifah. It is a thoughtful and considered showcase that does not sensationalize the seismic shift Saudi Arabia is experiencing but instead pushes on boundaries without breaking them.
    South African artist William Kentridge’s More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015), in which celebratory music is played by shadow projections, heralds the first chapter, “Crossing the River.” Here, one will also find Maha Malluh’s wall-sized World Map (2021) of 3,840 cassette tapes bearing religious sermons remain silent relics of an analog world of conservative Islam. It lies adjacent to Richard Long’s Red Earth Circle (1989/2021) made from red clay from Saudi Arabia that was first created in 1989 for Centre Pompidou’s groundbreaking “Magicians de Terre,” considered the first exhibition of global contemporary art.
    The biennial often juxtaposes the 1980s Chinese avant-garde with the historical emergence of art in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s. Yet Tinari emphasizes that there are important differences between these moments in the two nations. “A lot of artistic production in Saudi isn’t actually just about the question of nationhood or national identity, in a way that I think burdened the artistic production in China for a long time,” he said. He added that Saudi Arabia was more connected to the global scene than China during its transformation, “for better or worse.”
    Sarah Abu Abdallah and Ghada Al Hassan, ‘Horizontal Dimensions’, 2021, courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
    Elsewhere, unexpected threads unfold: prominent Chinese artist Wang Luyan’s miniature humanoid sculptures converse with Ayman Yossri Daydban’s paintings of alienated figures from the 1990s. There are conversations between Saudi artists as well—Ahmed Mater’s video installation of life before and after the oil boom in Desert Meeting (2021) is installed nearby Mohammed Al Saleem’s modernist ode to arid topography, Desert Spring (1987).
    Comments on the family unit, which in Saudi Arabia extends to the larger tribe and is traced through patrilineality, manifest in Dania Al Saleh’s That Which Remains (2021), which blurs computer-generated archival portraits with personal footage mixing official and personal narratives. It is set against Japan’s Koki Tanaka’s provocative Abstracted/Family (2020), which stages a mock nuclear family and comments on estrangement and minority politics. Manal Al Dowayan’s brass leaf installation of matrilineal lines, on the other hand, through the drawings and recordings of 300 women from Dammam, Riyadh, and Jeddah in Tree of Guardians (2014), brings invisible histories to light.
    But one of the most urgent sections was “Brave New Worlds,” which focused on the apocalyptic present of the world as a whole. A film by Ando Wekua focuses on a burning palm tree overlaid with screeching sounds and Ayman Zedani’s recorded intonations of the endangered Arabian Sea humpback whales laments a collective environmental demise. Mohannad Shono’s tired mark-making robotic sculpture and Lawrence Lek’s envisioning of an automated hotel depict a world without humans. Also on view was Sara Ibrahim’s video performance Soft Machines/Far Away Engines (2021) which traces dancers who multiply, heave, and touch, providing a bit of solace in this grim setting.
    Sarah Ibrahim Soft Machines/Far Away Engines. Image courtesy Diriyah Biennale Foundation and the artist.
    A Dizzying Transformation
    Despite the curatorial prowess of the show, it would be a mistake to consider this biennial as completely unprecedented. Although there is now a shining focus on the capital Riyadh, Jeddah has enjoyed a thriving art scene for decades, which began underground with the independent collective Edge of Arabia in 2003 and continued with the private philanthropy of the Saudi Art Council in 2014. What is new, however, is the openness to developing deeply collaborative curatorial models at an international level. In addition to the biennial, which brought on Beijing-based Tinari and other UCCA curators from China, Hayy Jameel co-curated an exhibition on food futures called “Staple: What’s on your plate” together with the U.K.-based Delfina Foundation.
    That show was bustling like the biennial, with 1,650 visitors attending its opening on December 6. “Jeddah is a cosmopolitan city, a gateway for pilgrims,” said Antonia Carver, director of Art Jameel. She added that the exhibition, which includes artists from South Asia, Barbados, Bangladesh, and the Congo is “less about a nation-to-nation” discourse and more about “the city’s connections to elsewhere.” The history of Jeddah, she said, is “intertwined with other places, defying the stereotype as a place that’s closed off.”
    Xu Bing, Background Story Streams and Mountains Without End (2013). Image courtesy Diriyah Biennale Foundation and the artist.
    These dramatic moves in bringing both Riyadh and Jeddah onto the world stage are somewhat dizzying. While the biennial has most certainly become a catalyst for the Kingdom’s role in the region’s artistic landscape, a major question looms about the extent to which cultural production will be grounded by local government bodies and infrastructures of power as this art scene attempts to situate itself within the globalized art world.
    Rashed Al Shashai’s contribution to the biennial, Cultural Wall (2021), a spiraling sculpture of wicker and steel, alludes to the structural problems implicated in such moments of progress. Even as a local, he says the future shape of Saudi Arabia’s culture scene is anything but clear: “It’s like trying to make sense of hazy shapes out from a fast-moving car.” What is sure, in any case, is that this indeterminate present is a new starting point for Saudi Arabia, one that will usher in an artistic era that is not seen as a counterpart to the Global North but which is very much coming into its own.
    The Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale is on view in Riyadh until March 11, 2022.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Street Art

    New Mural by Elian Chali in Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Contemporary artist Elian Chali is back with a fresh, new mural in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The mural entitled “Más allá del clamor pegajoso/más acá de la prórroga indefinida” is painted over a 28 x 15 meter facade. It showcases Elian’s signature style with bold colors, clear-cut shapes and flat surfaces.Elian’s work focuses on creating a dialogue with the urban structure, allowing the characteristics of each wall to participate in the mural. He identifies with urbanism and architecture more than with muralism and graffiti.His aesthetics are inspired by the Pop-Art, minimalism, Russian constructivism, and neoplasticism. Through his work, the artist seeks to open a discussion that goes from the social problems to the poetry of the habitat in which he creates. Always working with a sketch in hand, Elian’s art has evolved from 3D graffiti to flat images. His works are composed through basic geometry and abstraction, and influenced by architecture, climate, and the current socio-political situations.Through numerous travels around the world, Elian is constantly exposed to both the beauty and ugliness which surrounds us in equal measure in every day life and invites the viewer to process these issues with him through his paintings.Check out below for more photos of his latest work in Buenos Aires. More

  • 38 Shares169 Views

    in Street Art

    Artist Retrospective: Blu

    BLU is a talented street artist from Bologna, Italy. He has been active in street style scene since 1999. Blu began painting graffiti with spray paint. He quickly gained recognition and fame by painting a graffiti series in the suburbs of Bologna. When he started painting walls he worked with spray paint, but as his appetite for beautifying industrial sites grew, so did his tools.Over the next few years into the early 2000s, Blu’s graffiti style transformed thanks to his growing use of house paint. He makes massive murals all over the world. In doing what he loves, BLU tries as much as possible, to emphasize the message he’s sending. Art is important, not recognition.A name is nothing in comparison to the artistic value of a painted wall. Many of his murals were never signed, many of them were destroyed by the artist himself, but his integrity is incorruptible. He believes in freedom of information and stands firmly on his system of open source belief“La Pandemia” in Campobasso, Italy, 2020“La Pandemia” depicts a dystopian scenario of giant pandas that invade a city and destroy everything. It is located on the façade of the Alphaville cinema. “La Pandemia” was made in collaboration with Draw The Line 2020, a street art festival in Italy organized by Malatesta Associati.Mural in Quarticciolo, Rome, 2019Mural in La Punta, Valencia, Spain, 2018La Punta is a pedestrian garden located in the south of the city of Valencia, where, for more than 15 years, the port of Valencia sealed one of the darkest chapters in the history of the destruction of the Valencia district with the deportation of a hundred families, depriving them of their way of life and sweeping through fields and houses, to give the port an enormous development land.The Italian artist brought to life another of his signature artworks to life. The piece shows containers being built as a pyramid by local families from La Punta. Another striking work by Blu which shows the power of Urban Art.“No TAV” in Susa, Italy, 2016“La Cuccagna” in Campobasso, Italy, 2017“La Cuccagna”, this title of the work shows Blu creating one of his personal criticism of our society and our modern life system. BLU proposes a strong representation of the systems that move modern society which are triggering an incredible narrative sequence, full of problems and different issues hidden within every layer.Mural in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2016Mural in Via Del Porto Fluviale, Rome, Italy, 2014The Italian artist painted this largest and one of his most complex pieces with this majestic mural showing a series of heads. As usual with the Italian artist, the piece is filled with a million of details and tiny characters which can only be appreciated in the flesh.Mural in Mexico, 2015Mural in Casa Dei Pazzi in Rome, Italy, 2015Mural in Porto Torres, Italy, 2016The mural on Porto Torres shows a large head breaking away as a puzzle and morphing into human forms. The pieces are falling back into place which gives a glimpse of hope with a potential unity that can be achieved for the human race.“A House For Everyone” in Bergamo, Italy, 2016For more updates on the talented Italian artist, make sure to check out and follow our #BLU page! More

  • 275 Shares189 Views

    in Exhibitions

    The U.K.’s First Permanent Immersive Digital Art Gallery Will Open Next Year With a Show of A.I. Space Imagery, Courtesy of NASA

    The U.K. is getting its first permanent immersive digital art gallery. The space, which opens in Coventry in April 2022, arrives as experiential light shows like the Van Gogh Experience are drawing millions of visitors around the globe. Eager to get in on the action, local officials and the national government are backing The Reel Store, which will occupy the former home of the Coventry Evening Telegraph newspaper.
    The Reel Store’s inaugural exhibition will present a project by the fast-rising digital art star Refik Anadol. The show, “Machine Memoirs: Space,” is the product of a long-term collaboration with NASA. Its arrival coincides with Coventry’s term as the U.K. City of Culture and the host of this year’s Turner Prize exhibition.
    To create the work, Anadol uses A.I. to sort and analyze two million publicly available images of space taken by NASA satellites, telescopes, and the International Space Station. Then, his A.I. produces new digital interpretations of the furthest reaches of outer space. The resulting imagery will be presented in a “360 cinematic experience” accompanied by “3D audio,” according to organizers.
    “‘Machine Memoirs: Space’ invites us to dream of an alternative universe where machines collaborate with humans to speculate our existence and create an alternative future,” the artist said in a statement. “This is a hopeful future where machines and humanity, in combination, are agents for healing.”
    The Telegraph Hotel, home of The Reel Store. Courtesy The Telegraph Hotel
    The Reel Store takes its name from the building’s former life (newspaper reels were stored there before being printed). The postwar building is typical of the 1960s architecture that comprises much of Coventry’s city center. The gallery will house a spatially adaptive sound system and an 800-square-meter (8,610-square-foot) fixed projection mapping canvas with 14 4K laser projectors.
    While many emerging artists are working with NFTs, non-commercial spaces with the capacity to display their technically demanding work are few and far between. The support for the gallery, which has the backing of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and Coventry City Council, is a testament to authorities’ growing belief that such projects can serve as an economic engine for a region.
    “The key for me,” said David Welsh, a cabinet member in charge of the arts at Coventry City Council, “is that although we know it will be a fabulous attraction for visitors, all of our communities in Coventry will also have a completely unique arts venue on their doorstep.”
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 75 Shares179 Views

    in Street Art

    Asalto Festival 2021 in Zaragoza, Spain

    Zaragoza, 12nd December 2021. Asis Percales, Berni Puig, Dani Hache, Ecosaurio, Letsornot, Maite Rosende, Mina Hamada, Nelio, Olga de Dios and Twee Muizen are the artists who participated in the 16th edition of the Asalto Festival and who have left a series of works that, far of the large format, they have been integrated into the daily tours of the neighbors.These artists have treated with great sensitivity the history of the neighborhood of the Arrabal de Zaragoza and the relationship with its people, as well as the structure and dimensions of the environment and its historical structure.In addition, in this edition the festival has recovered part of its rhythm and reason to be with the participation of citizens, educational centers and associations in workshops or in the creation of some of the works.With this edition, it is sixteen years of Asalto, a pioneering festival that has toured the city with the participation of more than 300 artists.LETSORNOT’s work is a vindication of fountains as a meeting and observation point, where everything happens. The work is conceived to be observed from the circular perimeter of the Fountain, where all the pieces fit together.“If you want to eat cookies, sow wheat” is the ASIS PERCALES mural made with the collaboration of GECO GEC0. This is a sincere tribute to the industrial past of the neighborhoods of Arrabal and Jesús in Zaragoza, to the working-class origin of these neighborhoods on the riverbank. This is a work to get lost in all the details, winks and intersections between the history of the city and the iconography of Asis itself.DANIHACHE pays tribute to jazz, Bob Destiny, the ‘Jazz al Margen’ festival and the musicians and groups related to the movement and origins of Jazz music in the neighborhood, such as the Harlem Blues Brass Band.MINA HAMADA’s work is a poetic intervention in a wall of smaller dimensions than usual. With abstract and organic shapes and a bright color palette it has lit up a narrow street in the neighborhood.The illustrator MAITE ROSENDE, with her flat shapes, has created a story of persecution and friendship through the most significant episodes and places in the neighborhood.The intervention of OLGA DE DIOS in the playground of a school, with its characters and fluorescent colors, has created paths and new places to play for the little ones.The Puerto Rican EKOSAURIO, author of the tallest mural in this edition, is creating a large garden with magnolias, olives and plants from his land and the surroundings of the Huerva River in a building. The artist has also worked with the little ones in the neighborhood, who are very involved in environmental projects.NELIO is the French artist who has painted the facade of the neighborhood health center. With colors full of subtle nuances that change with the passing of the day, it has given new life to a facade of straight and angular lines. In addition, he has intervened in surrounding streets with small mural works in which he has expressed his new artistic concerns.TWEE MUIZEN evoke the mountain as a refuge. The artists Cris and Denís have painted a series of very personal small murals in which they tell us about the refuge they want to be in and that it is in the mountains or in themselves, a source of inspiration for their work.To these, there are 15 artists who are part of the Asalto 15/15 project, which has put 15 residents of the neighborhood in contact with 15 artists from all over Spain to create unique works inspired by their stories. Artists: Begoña Simón, Cranco Estudio, Daniel Martín, Diego Nicolás, Elena González, Emilio López, Héctor Vidal, Javier Garanto, Jorge González – Akosart, Laura Gracia, Marta Boza, Pilar Martín, Sara Escribano, Stella Rubio, Víctor Pastor.The Asalto Festival has the support of the Zaragoza City Council and the collaboration of Tranvías de Zaragoza, Ambar, Montana Colors, Japan Foundation and the Caja Inmaculada Foundation. Check out below for more photos from Asalto Festival. More

  • 213 Shares99 Views

    in Exhibitions

    Idol Worship: The Brooklyn Museum’s Important New Warhol Show Casts the Pop Artist in a Spiritual Light

    Andy Warhol famously instructed an interviewer to “just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” But it’s been a long time since the pioneering Pop artist has been seen simply as an empty cipher.  In the years since his death in 1987 Warhol has been reborn many times. The ever-multiplying Andys include social critic Andy, queer Andy, proto-postmodern Andy, reality TV Andy, and commercial Andy.
    “Andy Warhol: Revelation,” currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, homes in on Catholic Andy. Originally organized for the Warhol Museum by its chief curator José Carlos Diaz and overseen in its Brooklyn incarnation Carmen Hermo, the exhibition draws a line from Warhol’s religious upbringing as a Byzantine Catholic (he later took up Roman Catholicism) through the twists and turns of his career to his last major undertaking, a set of over 100 paintings based on Leonardo’s Last Supper.
    This is touted as the first exhibition to explore this aspect of Warhol’s work. However, it is not exactly a new take—the catalogue references both art historian John Richardson’s paean to Warhol’s “secret piety” in his 1987 eulogy and Jane Daggett Dillenberger’s 1998 tome The Religious Art of Andy Warhol. I will modestly add here the chapter I devoted to Warhol’s Catholicism in my 2004 book Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art. Another precursor is Arthur Danto, whose ideas about the transfiguration of the commonplace hover without attribution in labels that discuss Warhol’s sculptures of Heinz Ketchup and Delmonte Peaches boxes.
    Installation view for “Andy Warhol: Revelation, at the Brooklyn Museum, November 19, 2021-June 19, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum. Artworks by Andy Warhol © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
    But if the idea of a Warhol immersed in spiritual concerns has been around for some time, newly unearthed materials from the archives of the Warhol Museum have deepened the case. Discoveries include an unfinished film that would have been funded by the Catholic Church, a never completed series of images of nursing mothers, a set of drawings of angels by Warhol’s mother Julia Warhola, as well as religious objects, letters, and clippings that give context to the snippets of text and found images that appear in Warhol’s paintings.
    In addition, the show leans heavily on recent scholarship by Warhol Museum curator Jessica Beck that places Warhol’s late Last Supper paintings in the context of his terrified response to the concurrent AIDS Epidemic. These materials, combined with revelations first made by Richardson of Warhol’s regular church attendance, his financial support of a nephew’s studies for the priesthood, and his participation in a soup kitchen provide a picture of Warhol much at odds with more familiar representations of the artist as an indifferent societal mirror or cultural sieve.
    Installation view for “Andy Warhol: Revelation, at the Brooklyn Museum, November 19, 2021-June 19, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum. Artworks by Andy Warhol © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    The show opens with a wealth of materials that underscore the degree to which religion saturated Warhol’s childhood. On display are holy cards, religious statuettes, and crucifixes from his home, several religious paintings borrowed from his childhood church, and even a painting by a very young Warhol in which his childhood living room is presided over by a prominent cross.
    The show then builds its case with thematic sections that consider other aspects of Warhol’s debt to Catholicism. One set of works and ephemera consider his rather problematic relationship with women. These include his obsession with Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, whose portraits have long been seen as counterparts to the Byzantine icons of his childhood; his friendship with Candy Darling, Warhol superstar and transgender icon; and his near assassination by Valerie Solanas, the Factory hanger-on and author of the SCUM Manifesto (a piquant acronym for the Society for Cutting up Men). More surprising are drawings and photographs depicting breastfeeding mothers. Inspired, presumably, by the countless Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child, these were intended for a never realized painting series.
    Installation view for “Andy Warhol: Revelation, at the Brooklyn Museum, November 19, 2021-June 19, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum. Artworks by Andy Warhol © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Another section documents Warhol’s 1980 visit to the Vatican and his five-second meeting with Pope John Paul II amid a throng of other worshipers. The exhibition ties this to a number of Warhol drawings of huge crowd scenes. A section documenting his borrowings from various Renaissance paintings (and pointing toward the late Last Supper paintings) tries to make the case for Warhol as a latter-day Renaissance man. A section of an unfinished film originally destined for a 1968 World’s Fair in San Antonio is comprised of poetic images of the setting sun accompanied by a crooning voiceover by Factory chanteuse Nico. Commissioned by the Catholic Church, it bears a striking resemblance to Paul Pfeiffer’s 2001 film Study for Morning after the Deluge, in which the rising and setting sun also becomes a metaphor for the cycle of life and death.
    But most crucial for the exhibition’s argument is a section titled “The Catholic Body.” Here the show ties the essential carnality of Catholicism, a religion whose doctrines, art, and literature center on very literal representations of the “Word Made Flesh,” to Warhol’s bodily obsessions and his conflicted existence as a gay man in a faith that condemns homosexuality.
    Installation view for “Andy Warhol: Revelation, at the Brooklyn Museum, November 19, 2021-June 19, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum. Artworks by Andy Warhol © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Two works introduce these ideas. Richard Avedon’s iconic photograph of Warhol’s bared torso riven with the scars left by Solanas’s attack becomes, in this context, a modern-day version of the many Renaissance representations of the martyr Saint Sebastian, whose muscular arrow riddled torso has made him a gay icon. A lesser known Warhol silkscreen painting from 1985-86 titled The Last Supper (Be a Somebody with a Body) also presents a juxtaposition of religious and homoerotic imagery, this time by layering images of the Christ from the Last Supper and an image, clipped from a newspaper ad, of a buff, half-dressed body builder.
    Which brings us to the exhibition’s centerpiece. “Andy Warhol: Revelation” pivots on Warhol’s Last Supper paintings. Arranged like a horseshoe, the layout leads one through the above-mentioned material to a voluminous quantity of Last Supper imagery. The Last Supper paintings were commissioned in 1984 by art dealer Alexander Iolas for display in a space in Milan across the street from Leonardo’s masterwork. But Warhol went far beyond the confines of the original commission. He collected multiple images of the Last Supper, including a lenticular version and a very kitschy sculptural rendition documented here in polaroid photographs. And he used the imagery in many ways, including on a series of punching bags that were collaborations with Jean Michel Basquiat and in paintings emblazoned with logos or comprised of fragments of Leonardo’s mural.
    Installation view for “Andy Warhol: Revelation, at the Brooklyn Museum, November 19, 2021-June 19, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum. Artworks by Andy Warhol © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    At the Brooklyn Museum, two full-scale versions of Warhol’s Last Supper are presented in an almost chapel-like space. They spread over opposite walls separated by a bench where, on the day I visited, visitors were obediently sitting in contemplative silence.  This is a reminder of the ambiguity embedded in this work—and for that matter, all of Warhol’s work. Depending on which Andy they are highlighting, critics have tended to locate Warhol’s imagery on a scale that runs from blank irony to heartfelt sincerity. The Last Supper paintings pose a particular problem. Are they just another pop culture image, not unlike the like soup cans, dollar signs, or portraits of Chairman Mao, appropriated precisely because of their ubiquity and banality? Or are they vessels full of personal meaning? In an essay referenced in the catalogue, Jessica Beck makes the case for the latter, arguing that these late paintings were created in an atmosphere suffused with the threat of AIDS.  Many of Warhol’s friends and associates were dying of the disease. In response, Beck maintains that Warhol “gave AIDS a face—the mournful face of Christ.”
    And yet, as the exhibition now moves down the other prong of the horseshoe layout, closing the show out with works that provide a Catholic context for some of Warhol’s more familiar imagery, one can’t help feeling that interpretation is a little too pat. The exhibition consciously resists the tendency, evident both in the Richardson eulogy and the Dillenberger study, to present an overly sanctified Warhol free of the bedeviling contradictions that continue to make him such an elusive subject. But at the same time the approach here seems overly hermeneutic.
    Installation view for “Andy Warhol: Revelation, at the Brooklyn Museum, November 19, 2021-June 19, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum. Artworks by Andy Warhol © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    By that I mean that texts and images are treated like hidden messages to be deciphered as one might the theological exegeses embedded in Renaissance religious paintings or medieval manuscripts. Such an approach seems to dismiss the deliberate insouciance of Warhol’s own commentaries as well as the obvious ironies that underlie so many works. And it makes it necessary, to use just one example, to reframe the overtly blasphemous and sacrilegious references in Warhol’s film Chelsea Girls, screened in full here, as modernizations of Christ’s embrace of outcasts and misfits.
    It seems more true to the Last Supper paintings to acknowledge that they exist, like all Warhol’s works, in a continuum between irony and sincerity, partaking simultaneously of both. Warhol could be both vulnerable and cruel, spiritual and profane. Perhaps it might have helped to delve a bit more into the contradictions between the carnal and the spiritual inherent in Catholicism itself. The section “The Catholic Body” starts to do this, but doesn’t touch on the homoerotic overtones of Catholic stories and imagery that would have fired Warhol’s imagination. This is, after all, a religion whose central image is a near naked man on a cross.
    Warhol was not alone in finding the mix of ritual, sensuality, and homoeroticism in Catholicism irresistible, even as its official dogma condemned his sexual being. Robert Mapplethorpe, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and David Wojnorowicz are three gay artists whose work is increasingly being considered in terms of their Catholic upbringing. Of particular relevance to this exhibition is the way that Wojnarowicz used the face and body of the crucified Christ to denote suffering and to evoke society’s callous disregard for the ravages of AIDS while also roundly condemning the Catholic Church’s complicity in the crisis.
    Installation view for “Andy Warhol: Revelation, at the Brooklyn Museum, November 19, 2021-June 19, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum. Artworks by Andy Warhol © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
    Moving on from the Last Supper sanctuary, the show winds down with sections that bring us some of the more familiar aspects of Warhol’s work. In light of what has gone before, these now also take on a Catholic tinge. The “Skulls,” “Shadows,” “Electric Chairs,” and “Death and Disasters” evoke Warhol’s death obsession. A section titled “The Material World: What We Worship” offers a nod to his valorization of consumption, now seeing Warhol as the chronicler of “the desires, hopes, and prayers of modern life.” One series, “Guns, Knives, and Crosses” from 1981-81, makes a particularly ambiguous statement about the relationship of religiosity and violence.
     Whatever its shortcomings, this is a thought-provoking and deeply researched show. And, given the way it foregrounds the tension between Warhol’s homosexuality and his Catholic faith, it must be added that it is also a brave one. These days it is easy to raise the censorious hackles of cultural arbiters from both ends of the political spectrum. By presenting a frank acknowledgement of the complexities of sexuality and faith, Andy Warhol: Revelation opens up new avenues in the often fraught discussion of the relation of art and religion.
    “Andy Warhol: Revelation” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, through June 19, 2022.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 238 Shares139 Views

    in Exhibitions

    The Biggest Survey of Bob Dylan’s Visual Art to Hit the U.S. Is Now Open in Miami—See Images Here

    “Got to hurry on back to my hotel room where I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece,” Bob Dylan sang in 1971. “She promised that she’d be right there with me when I paint my masterpiece.”
    It’s unclear if the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter ever got around to that masterpiece, but if he did, it’s almost certainly on view now in “Retrospectrum,” a survey of Dylan’s artistic output from the late 1960s through to today, which opened last month at Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum in Miami.
    More than 180 paintings, drawings, and sculptures make up the show, much of which has never been seen by the public before. And that’s what makes the show special: The artist is one of the most famous humans on the planet, but its offerings will be largely new to audiences, especially in the U.S. The show marks the first time the artworks have been shown together stateside. (A previous version of the show was held at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2019.)
    Bob Dylan, Rainy Night in Grand Forks (2021). Courtesy of the artist.
    “Seeing many of my works years after I completed them is a fascinating experience,” Dylan said in a statement about the retrospective (a straightforward reflection from a man who, now in his sixth decade of making idiosyncratic music and art, rarely offers them). 
    The insight gets even more Dylanesque from there: “I don’t really associate them with any particular time or place or state of mind, but view them as part of a long arc; a continuing of the way we go forth in the world and the way our perceptions are shaped and altered by life. One can be as profoundly influenced by events in Morretes, Brazil, as they can be by the man who sells El País in Madrid.” 
    Much like his music, Dylan’s visual oeuvre spans a broad swath of styles and genres. But whereas his nasal voice would give away even the most out-there tune as a Dylan original, no such clue connects his artwork. From painted depictions of cramped urban cityscapes (think Edward Hopper) and yawning Western vistas, to a series of sculptural gates made from welding together a hodgepodge of metal materials, they don’t necessarily seem to be from one man’s hand.
    Bob Dylan, Night Time in St. Louis (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
    “I think what distinguishes Dylan as a songwriter is his willingness to take disparate literary and musical strains and incorporate them into his unique vision. You can see the same kind of open-mindedness and willingness to experiment in Dylan’s visual work,” the exhibition’s curator, Shai Baitel, told ARTnews last month. (Baitel is the artistic director of the Modern Art Museum Shanghai and organized Dylan’s 2019 show there.) 
    “I am convinced that creativity, no matter in which field or context, comes from the same deep place within us,” she went on. “And the difference in its articulation through different art forms only serves to deepen our understanding of that creativity.”
    Also on display is Dylan’s newest body of work, a series of paintings inspired by famous movie scenes called Deep Focus. 
    “All these images come from films,” the artist explained. “They try to highlight the different predicaments that people find themselves in. Whether it’s James Cagney or Margaret Rutherford, the dreams and schemes are the same—life as it’s coming at you in all its forms and shapes.”
    Bob Dylan, Abandoned Motel, Eureka (2015–16). Courtesy of the artist.
    “Retrospectrum: Bob Dylan” is on view now through April 22, 2022 at the Frost Art Museum in Miami.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More