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As part of a collaboration with Art21, hear news-making artists describe their inspirations in their own words.
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The stretch of 19th Street west of 10th Avenue was clogged with construction on a Monday in January when Honor Titus, wearing a North Face puffer and green-striped white Adidas, bounded up the steps to the Chelsea townhouse of Timothy Taylor Gallery. His first solo show in New York opens there on Thursday. A week ahead of the opening, it had already sold out.
Titus, who is 31, had on a plaid mask and asked the gallery’s director, Columbus Taylor, about what kind of tea they could give to gallery-goers coming by the all-day opening.
“Japanese tea, chamomile, green tea, mint tea,” Titus proposed.
“Do we need to get, like, teacups for everyone, like Alice in Wonderland?” Taylor asked.
“Actually—not mint,” Titus replied, thoughtful. “Mint is not an outdoor tea.”
Honor Titus, Artist Portrait. Photographer Kingsley Ifill. Courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery.
Honor Titus likes tea—he drank quite a bit of herbal tea a few nights earlier while we ate dinner at Dr. Clark—and likes playing tennis and watching matches, especially if they feature the American phenom Naomi Osaka. Particular arcana gets sucked into his insatiable creative diet and spun back into his paintings. There are eight works in his show at Timothy Taylor, “For Heaven’s Sake,” and they each bottle a world.
Priced between $12,000 and $25,000, the paintings have been snapped up by top collectors such as Beth Rudin DeWoody, as well as an Asian institution and buyers in New York and the UK. It might be the best painting show in town.
“I like work that’s almost, but not really, journalistic,” Titus said, walking through the slim, chic townhouse that the London dealer Timothy Taylor took over in 2016 as a stateside beachhead.
“With the situation we’re in, I wasn’t doing much—I was painting, and playing a lot of tennis,” Titus said. “So there’s an element of nostalgia for movement, for dancing, for embrace.”
Honor Titus, Sock Hop (2020). Photo courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery.
The paintings: a girl at a sock hop alone with other people’s unworn shoes near her pivoting ankles; a couple slow-waltzing in an apartment window; tennis players fwopping topspin-heavy forehands; a couple on the lawn of the Brand Library in Glendale, California, where Titus lives.
“I want to make paintings that a wide audience can enjoy,” Titus said. “I have a thing that I like to say: from Rikers to the Ritz. I want people to appreciate my paintings at Rikers and I want people to appreciate them at the Ritz. Those are both places that I’ve been in my personal life.”
Honor Titus. Courtesy Honor Titus.
Titus is staying at a hotel downtown. He used to live in the city, where he did frontman duties in the great spazz-punk outfit Cerebral Ballzy. (We figured out my band opened for his band once, at the Wreck Room in Bushwick, in 2008.) After working as a studio assistant for Raymond Pettibon, Titus left to begin his own practice, without an art-school degree but with a keen eye for observation in portraiture. He draws from the both the Chicago Imagists and Les Nabis—there’s a thrilling dollop of Félix Vallotton in Sock Hop. In January 2020, he had a show at Henry Taylor’s, the exhibition space the eponymous artist—a mentor of Titus’s—sometimes sets up in his downtown LA studio.
By then his style had emerged, with striking paintings of a dog in a convertible at a health food store, of two strangers in a cold movie theater on a hot summer day. Later that year, two new large paintings were among the highlights of an acclaimed floral-themed group show at Karma, “(Nothing But) Flowers.”
Honor Titus, Jazmine Perfume, shown in the Karma show “(Nothing But) Flowers.” Photo courtesy Karma.
He made these new paintings in isolation in Los Angeles, and the phantom limb experience of missing friends and family is a looming mood. One work still to be hung was a painting of a picture of his grandmother that used to be in his old house, lovingly rendered. Elsewhere, there’s a tennis player knocking a forehand and a painting of Miles Davis on a tree stump.
“Miles would just go to the woods and practice his trumpet,” Titus said. “With jazz musicians, the more common thing was practicing in the woodshed, but Miles was out in the literal woods. That image, of one the greatest musicians ever, playing alone in the woods, is a beautiful one to me.”
Honor Titus, Grounds of the Brand Library (2020)
I asked about the couple on the lawn in Glendale, white spots twinkling on the green like stars. Titus said that, about a year ago, he was dating a daughter in a prominent art-world family, and so the couple in the painting is of the artist and an old paramour.
“It didn’t end happily, but we had a moment at the Brand Library that was really perfect, self-contained,” Titus said. “I’m not one for self-portraiture, but maybe this is the closest I’ve come.”
Titus and I were staring at the impossibly sunny California landscape when one of his friends walked in from the New York chill to check out the show. After lunch, and more tea, we started a long walk east. At Fifth Avenue, we saw the arch at Washington Square Park in the distance. Some 15 blocks away, Titus remembered the quote on the top verbatim: “Let Us Raise a Standard to Which the Wise and Honest Can Repair.”
“Should we try to play tennis tonight?” Titus asked, taking strides by the fountain. There was a bubble in Midtown where he could get a court for cheap.
We popped into Punjabi Deli on Houston Street to get chai, then walked up Avenue A to Mast Books. Titus bought a book of work by Pierre Bonnard and a small chapbook of Richard Brautigan poems, and we left the store to dump empty Anthora cups in the bin on East 5th Street.
Mid-stroll, Titus took out his bounty and recited to all on the street a particularly bawdy Brautigan poem. He laughed loudly enough to be heard in Soho. Then, he decided he’d head back to his hotel instead of playing tennis get some sleep.
“I want the show to convey a certain warmth, a certain joie de vivre,” Titus said. Rather than capturing a pre-lockdown past, “it’s about being hopeful. The title of the show is ‘For Heaven’s Sake,’ and it’s all about the intonation in how you say it. The phrase can be a profanity. It can be an appeal to something higher. Or it can be about, ‘let’s get through this.’”
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“Mernet Larsen”at James Cohan Gallerythrough January 23, 2021
What the gallery says: “For over six decades, Mernet Larsen has created narrative paintings depicting hard-edged, enigmatic characters that inhabit an uncanny parallel world filled with tension and wry humor. Larsen employs various spatial systems that often contradict: combining reverse, isometric, and conventional perspectives, she casts everyday scenarios into a vertigo-inducing version of reality akin to our own.”
Why it’s worth a look: In the topsy-turvy vortex Larsen composes, the constructivist themes of El Lissitzky are pushed to an almost farcical level. In mixed-up narratives, cartoon-like characters, all hard edges and angled features, populate a world of bisecting planes and surreal situations. Every straight line, from the spokes of a wheelchair to a sidewalk crack create individual paths that traverse the canvas. Stems of flowers, stems of wineglasses, scissor blades, all are points of departure in a world turned upside down.
What it looks like:
Mernet Larsen, Solar System, Explained (after El Lissitzky) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Solar System, Explained (after El Lissitzky) [detail] (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Astronaut: Sunrise (after El Lissitzky) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Astronauts: Sunset (after El Lissitzky) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Beach (after El Lissitzky) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Gurney (after El Lissitzky) (2019). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Departure (after El Lissitzky) (2019). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Intersection (after El Lissitzky) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Deliverance (after El Lissitzky) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Spy (after El Lissitzky) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
Mernet Larsen, Dawn (after El Lissitzky) (2012). Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery.
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When it comes to making his work, the Kurdish-Iraqi artist Hiwa K has no interest in the flashiest, most expensive equipment or in expounding on the most complex theory. In fact, the artist says his measure of success is whether or not his mother can understand his work.
In an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s new season, the artist explains the process of making the video The Bell Project (2007-15), which was included in the exhibition “Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991–2011” at MoMA PS1 in 2020.
In the video, the artist explains how he worked with a Kurdish man named Nazhad who owns a scrap yard. Nazhad was melting down cast-off weapons from the US and European militaries into bricks of metal, which he then catalogued and recorded, noting where and when each weapon had been brought into the country.
“These weapons are made by the West and sent to our countries,” Hiwa says in the video. “Nazhad is somehow melting it into possibilities of transformation.”
Production still from the Art21 “Extended Play” film, “Hiwa K: ‘The Bell Project.’” © Art21, Inc. 2020.
Inspired by this process of converting one object into another, the artist decided to do the opposite and melt weapons down to turn them into a church bell. In pre-industrial Europe, the reverse happened: Church bells were made into cannons for war.
“I was thinking about the circulation of materials,” Hiwa tells Art21.
Ultimately, the artist sourced the metal bricks from Nazhad and sent them to a small Italian foundry where they were cast into a bell inscribed with Assyrian imagery. The project encompasses a complicated and fraught history related to the transfer of weapons and power, international relations, and the affect on localized businesses—not to mention the scores of individuals whose lives are affected by geopolitical wars.
“I don’t want to overdose my work with philosophy” the artist says, “When my mom understands, I am happy.”
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org.
[embedded content]
This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org
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What’s the most ludicrous art-world marketing campaign of all time? Is it Maurizio Cattelan’s $120,000 banana, duct-taped to a wall at Art Basel Miami Beach? Is it the sale of Salvator Mundi, the portrait of Jesus supposedly by Leonardo da Vinci that sold for an absurd $450.3 million at Christie’s in late 2017?
Or is it the one unveiled today at Grand Central Terminal in New York?
That campaign, titled Da Vinci of Debt, is made up of a suspended mass of 2,600 authentic college diplomas provided by real college graduates across the US.
Confused? The idea is that, with the cost of an average four-year college education at about $180,000, the cumulative value of the diploma display rings in at near $470 million, surpassing the cost of the record-shattering Salvator Mundi.
Even more surprising is the force behind the show: Natural Light, the cheap and popular beer brand affectionately dubbed “Natty Light” by its fans—mainly college students drawn to its lower calorie count and, most importantly, its lower price point.
Natty Light’s “art installation.” Courtesy of Natural Light.
The brand is now in the fourth year of a 10-year, $10 million commitment to distribute $1 million annually to students and graduates “who are weighed down by the burden of debt,” said Daniel Blake, vice president of value brands at Anheuser-Busch, which owns Natural Light.
Those interested in getting some of that money must tell their story for why they attended college by March 21. Forty winners will each receive $25,000.
“College debt is one of the most important social issues in the country today,” Blake said in a phone interview with Artnet News. “More than 45 million Americans have college debt. The total debt amount is more than $1.7 trillion and is continuing to grow. We felt strongly about putting a stake in the ground and supporting those people who really need it.”
So why call the project an artwork?
“The art world is filled with absurd price tags that most people find impossible to justify,” Blake said. “That’s what made it the perfect medium for this campaign.”
The diplomas are suspended in mid-air “as if a gale of wind had just scattered all 2,600 of them throughout the cavernous, 6,000-square-foot space,” according to a press release.
Natty Light’s “art installation.” Courtesy of Natural Light. . Courtesy of Natural Light.
The installation is meant to stress the enormous scale of student debt, and the chaos it creates for those saddled with it.
Blake told Artnet News that the brand was surprised at the eager response they got from graduates who sent in their diplomas—especially considering the company never told them how the certificates would be used. (Students received $100 in exchange for “renting” their diplomas.)
As part of the stunt, Natural Light said in a release that it is “calling on the deep pockets of the fine-art world” to considering bidding “on the historic artwork.”
So is it for sale? And what about those students who temporarily leased their diplomas and are expecting them back?
“If it means giving more people the opportunity to enjoy the college experience without the debt that follows, we’re all ears,” Blake said.
“Natty is dedicated to doing everything we can to provide real solutions to college debt, and if there is a serious bidder, you know where to find us. If there is a bidder willing to pay $470 million for the piece, we’ll consult with every participant who loaned their diploma to us to see if they would be open to selling this piece.”
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Like many artists, the Brooklyn-based photographer Daniel Gordon sometimes has trouble keeping things interesting. You’d think he would have a wealth of source material since his work involves a maximalist combination of collage, photography, and sculpture—but hey, he’s only human.
In an exclusive interview aired as part of Art21’s “New York Close Up” series back in 2016, Gordon reminisced about how his approach had changed since his early days as an artist.
“Back then, I was trying to figure out what my voice was,” he says. “I really was trying to mimic reality.” Now, however, mimesis “is something that I have become less and less interested in.”
The artist, whose work looks like a cross between Matisse and Jonas Wood, builds two- and three-dimensional props from source material he finds on the internet. He photographs these tableaux—surreal still lifes populated by fish, colorful plants, and gaudy patterns—to make his lively images.
At the beginning, Gordon notes, he was trying to hide the hand-crafted aspect of his work. Now, he welcomes those cracks in the facade of perfection.
Production still from the Art21 “New York Close Up” film, “Daniel Gordon Looks Back.” © Art21, Inc. 2016.
Like the generation from which he hails, Gordon’s work straddles two worlds: one is rooted firmly in the analog, the other fully invested in digital technologies. He describes his focus as on the “in-between things” that question the boundaries between photography, painting, and sculpture.
A new book published by Aperture—a work of art in itself—delightfully spans these mediums, featuring pop-ups of Gordon’s images. If a rut forces him to rethink his approach, he’s open to change—but “right now,” he says, “I’m just asking the questions.”
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series New York Close Up, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org.
[embedded content]
This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org
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
With 2020 in the rear-view mirror, we hope health-related exhibition delays and cancellations are a thing of the past (though you never know).
Below, take a look at our picks of US shows opening in the early part of 2021 you won’t want to miss.
“David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History“High Museum of Art, AtlantaFebruary 6–May 9
David Driskell, Homage to Romare (1975). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment.
Before his death at the age of 88 in April, David Driskell earned respect as a versatile artist and curator who helped raise the profile of African American artists and those of the African Diaspora. This first exhibition since his death is also the first to bring together his works on paper with his paintings.
The High Museum of Art is located at 1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta
“Goya’s Graphic Imagination”The Metropolitan Museum of ArtFebruary 12–May 2
Francisco de Goya, Bullfight in a Divided Ring (1825). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This broad, chronological exhibition of roughly 100 works delves into Goya’s graphic works and explores how he used drawings and prints to elaborate complex ideas, as well to document his responses to turbulent social and political events occurring around him. It is in these works that Goya’s political liberalism, disdain for superstition, and opposition to intellectual oppression shine through.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York
“KAWS: What Party”The Brooklyn MuseumFebruary 12–September 5
KAWS, WHAT PARTY (2020). © KAWS. (Photo: Michael Biondo).
The artist’s 25-year career has made an indelible mark on the contemporary art scene (and the market) and this year’s KAWS célèbre (had to) is surely his debut museum survey. Artnet News’s Gray Market scribe Tim Schneider even predicts KAWS’s works will outsell most every Old Master work by value in 2021.
The Brooklyn Museum is located at 200 Eastern Parkway, New York
“Hockney–Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature”Museum of Fine Arts, HoustonFebruary 21–June 20 More
After 2020’s crush of postponements and cancellations, we are hopeful that 2021 will be different.
While a lot still remains to be confirmed, we have plucked out the most highly anticipated exhibitions to see in Europe in 2021.
“Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty”Dulwich Picture Gallery, LondonMay 27–November 28
Helen Frankenthaler, Madame Butterfly (2000). One-hundred-two color woodcut. ©2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / DACS / Tyler Graphic Ltd., Mount Kisco, NY.
This major print retrospective of Helen Frankenthaler includes 30 works on loan from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, spanning from her first-ever woodcut, in 1973, to her final work, published in 2009. The show will examine the artist’s innovative approach to printmaking, defying the woodcut medium’s supposed limitations to create new dimensions of beauty.
“Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Green Coconuts and Other Inadmissible Evidence“Vienna Secession, ViennaThrough February 7
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Once Removed (2019). Exhibition view Secession 2020, Photo: Iris Ranzinger.
This exhibition of the Turner Prize-winning artist’s work investigates sound, speech, memory, and their role in the quest for truth. A key tenet of the artist’s practice is his analysis of acoustic clues and earwitness testimony, and the exhibition will include four works from two series that investigate this, as well as other forms of witnessing. Included will be Abu Hamdan’s audiovisual inquiry into the Syrian torture prison Saydnaya, After SFX (2018), as well as a new series of prints titled For the Otherwise Unaccounted, which is inspired by birthmarks.
“Untitled: Art on the Conditions of Our Time“Kettle’s Yard, CambridgeFebruary 6–April 5
Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Finding Fanon Part One,(2015), courtesy of Copperfield Gallery & Seventeen Gallery, London. Image: Claire Barrett.
This group show will bring together 10 British artists who are part of the African diaspora whose work probes key cultural and political questions of our time. It will include new commissions and recent works by by Barby Asante, Phoebe Boswell, Kimathi Donkor, and others. Curator Paul Goodwin says the exhibition will center the works, instead of focusing on Blackness itself. “Questions of Blackness, race, and identity are shown to be entangled in the multitude of concerns—aesthetic, material, and political—that viewers can encounter without the curatorial voice obscuring the works,” he says.
“Ad Minoliti“BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, GatesheadApril 1–March 13
Ad Minoliti, Cubes (2019). Image courtesy Ben Davis.
This is the Argentinian artist’s biggest exhibition, and first institutional UK show, to date. The artist, whose work was included in the 2019 Venice Biennale, is known for making colorful paintings and installations that grapple with queer theory and feminism. The show is conceived as space of respite away from the constaints of gender binary, human-centered art and life, in what the artist calls an “alien lounge.” It will host bi-weekly workshops as part of Minoliti’s Feminist School of Painting, which will tackle traditional painting genres in an effort to reimagine historical narratives from feminist, intersectional, and queer perspectives.
“A Fire in My Belly”Julia Stoschek Collection, BerlinFebruary 6–December 12
Laure Prouvost They Parlaient Idéale (2019). Courtesy of the artist und carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid.
Curator Lisa Long is planning a major exhibition drawing on Stoschek’s collection, which includes challenging and cathartic pieces by artists including Barbara Hammer, Anne Imhof, Adrian Piper, and Arthur Jafa. The viewer will be positioned as a witness to acts of violence in a brave look at how it is represented, distributed, and circulated. Rarely seen pieces and several new works that were recently purchased will be on view. The show’s title, “A Fire in My Belly,” is an homage to the seminal work of the same name by American artist and activist David Wojnarowicz, which will also be on view.
“Hito Steyerl”Centre Pompidou, Paris, FranceFebruary 3–June 7
How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic EducationalHito Steyerl (2013). Image courtesy of the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin .
The acclaimed German artist’s largest-ever show in France was pushed back from its original date last summer. The exhibition, which was first presented last fall at K21 in Düsseldorf, includes a best-of of Steyerl’s major works, including her break-out 2013 piece, How not to be seen, and Factory of the Sun from the 2015 Venice Biennale, as well a new production. Part of the show will incorporate the unique architecture of the Centre Pompidou as a point of departure.
“Beuys: 2021”Various Venues in EuropeThroughout 2021
Joseph Beuys Photo: Behr/ullstein bild via Getty Images.
The conceptual artists is the subject of a major blockbuster program next year that will take place in 12 German cities, as well as in Warsaw, Poland, Vienna, Austria, and Manresa, Spain. We are particularly looking forward to the exhibition at K20 in Düsseldorf, called “Everyone Is an Artist: Cosmopolitan Exercises With Joseph Beuys,” which opens on March 27. The show will presents many contemporary artists in dialogue with Beuys, questioning or expanding on the practice of this most enigmatic artist. In October 2021, the Krefeld Museum will offer the first exhibition ever to juxtaposition Beuys with Marcel Duchamp.
“Slavery”The Rijksmuseum, AmsterdamFebruary 12–May 30
Unknown, Multiple leg cuffs for chaining enslaved people, with 6 loose shackles, ca. 1600-1800. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, schenking van de heer J.W. de Keijzer, Gouda.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is planning a major show that looks at the history of slavery across the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. The show will look at the Dutch involvement in the slave trade, taking up 10 true stories of individuals who were either victims or profiteers of the trade. More than 100 objects and artworks will be on view from the Rijksmuseum collection and elsewhere. “This past has long been insufficiently examined,” museum director Taco Dibbits said.
“Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective”Gropius Bau, BerlinMarch 19–August 1
Yayoi Kusama, Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show (1963). Courtesy: Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
This major survey show will focus on the early development of Yayoi Kusama’s work, including the early paintings and sculptures that eventually led to her immersive environments, which will also be on view. The show is curated by the museum’s director, Stephanie Rosenthal, in collaboration with Kusama’s studio, and charts the Japanese artist’s often overlooked activities in Europe and Germany from the 1960s onward. The show will travel to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in late 2021.
“Sonsbeek”Various Venues, ArnemApril 10–June 21
Sonsbeek’s curatorial team. Courtesy sonsbeek. Photo: Julius Thissen
Taking place about every four years, “Sonsbeek” brings international artists to the small town of Arnem in the Netherlands. This edition is helmed by the Berlin-based curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, who has turned the concept for the exhibition on its head: it will now open in 2021 and will unfold over the next four years. Topics including race, gender, and the state of the working class will be central to the show, which includes artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Laure Prouvost, Oscar Murillo, and Willem de Rooij, among others.
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