More stories

  • in

    Photographers Recreate Old Master Paintings in Witty and Profound Ways in a New Show at a Princeton University Art Gallery

    Knowingly or not, every artist references the history of their craft eventually. Some do it to situate their own work in the lineage of greats, others to question the monolithic canon.  
    Recently opened at the Princeton University Art Museum’s gallery Art on Hulfish is an exhibition of lens-based artists who look to Leonardo, Van Eyck, and other Old Masters for material. Their strategies and intents vary but ultimately lead to the same comforting truth.  
    If this sounds like homework, it’s not. The show, like the last gasps of summer vacation alongside which it arrives, is light and warm. The art historical easter eggs are there for the nerds, but so is Vik Muniz’s charming 1999 photograph of the Mona Lisa recreated, in Warholian fashion, with peanut butter and jelly. You don’t need a PhD to appreciate what the artist is doing with that picture.  
    Vik Muniz, Double Mona Lisa (Peanut Butter and Jelly) (1999). © Vik Muniz.
    “Some of the art is serious. But I hope people come and laugh,” said Ronni Baer, the Princeton curator who organized the show. For her and the museum, the show checks several boxes. It’s historical but also contemporary, educational but enjoyable. It’s legible, and it also serves to remind visitors of the museum’s programming while its main building is being reconstructed on campus.  
    (David Adjaye, the Ghanaian/British architect recently accused of sexual harassment and assault, designed the new Princeton University Art Museum. Though Adjaye has stepped away from numerous projects in light of the allegations, Princeton has said that the museum is too deep into construction for the school to distance itself from him now. The new museum is expected to open in 2025.) 
    Ori Gersht, Pomegranate (Off Balance) (2006). Courtesy of the artist.
    The exhibition, Baer said, points to the past but feels like the present. “The idea of searching for identity is something embedded in a lot of this work—and it’s as relevant then as today,” she said, referring to works like Yasumasa Morimura’s Daughter of Art History (Princess A) (1990), for which the older male artist recast himself as the young female subject of Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of the Infanta Margarita Aged Five (1956), and Nina Katchadourian’s “Flemish Style” self-portraits made in an airplane bathroom.  
    As with these stately Renaissance portraits, the still-life is a popular point of departure in the show. Included are pictures of bouquets by Sharon Core, who painstakingly grows her own horticultural specimens, and Bas Meeuws, who pulls examples from his personal library of floral photographs and reassembles them digitally.  
    A 2006 video by Ori Gersht recreates Juan Sánchez Cotán’s Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (circa 1600) with pomegranate substituted in—a symbol of the violence that defined the artist’s childhood in Tel Aviv. (In Hebrew, the word for “pomegranate” also means “grenade.”) Gersht also layers on a reference to Harold Edgerton as a slow-motion bullet pierces the pomegranate halfway through.
    Jeanette May, NY Tech Vanitas: Dot Matrix (2018). Courtesy of the artist.
    Nearby, Jeanette May’s NY Tech Vanitas: Dot Matrix (2018) nods to the eponymous genre of still-life paintings popularized by the Dutch in the 17th century, which employed objects of pleasure to remind viewers that our time on this mortal coil is limited and shouldn’t be wasted on indulgences. But instead of the decadent snacks and emptied wine carafes favored by Golden Agers like Willem Claesz Heda, May has filled her frame with pieces of outmoded, obsolescent tech: flip-phones, a CD-ROM, a printer that uses—gasp—perforated paper. 
    “All of it adds up to nothing, both then and now,” Baer said, somewhat jokingly, before putting a bead on the central idea of the show. “These themes,” she went on, “are centuries old. They’re human concerns about identity and the fleetingness of life and about how we choose to live.” 
    “Art about Art: Contemporary Photographers Look at Old Master Paintings” is on view August 19 through November 5, 2023, at the Princeton University Art Museum’s Art on Hulfish gallery. 
    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

  • in

    The National Mall’s First Outdoor Public Art Show Celebrates Diversity With Sculptures by Derrick Adams, Wendy Red Star, and More

    After years of studying public sculptures across the U.S. to better understand how these monuments tell the story of our nation’s history, Monument Lab, a public art nonprofit based in Philadelphia, has just erected six of its own on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
    Titled “Pulling Together,” the temporary exhibition, curated by Monument Lab’s Paul Farber and Rutgers University–Newark professor Salamishah Tillet, features new work by Derrick Adams, Wendy Red Star, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Vanessa German, Tiffany Chung, and Ashon T. Crawley.
    It is the first curated outdoor exhibition on the mall—and the first phase of the organization’s new public art initiative “Beyond Granite,” which hopes to bring more inclusive, equitable, and representative commemorative artworks to the heart of the capitol.
    “The mall remains a symbol of our Democratic ideals as a nation. ‘Beyond Granite: Pulling Together’ does not shy away from those aspects in our history that can be very hurtful to Americans. We must tell those untold stories fiercely,” Charles Sams, director of National Park Service, said at the exhibition’s unveiling. “We are only stronger by our diversity. Without it, ecosystems collapse.”
    Vanessa German, Of Thee We Sing (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (detail). Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
    Founded in 2012 by Farber and Ken Lum, Monuments Lab rose to new prominence in the wake of the George Floyd protests, which saw activists vandalize and forcibly remove Confederate monuments. The question of what to do with public memorials with problematic histories sparked a nationwide debate and numerous court battles—and also prompted a wider reevaluation of who is honored in town squares across the country.
    Monument Lab was the inaugural recipient for the Mellon Foundation’s “Monuments Project,” a $250 million campaign to change the face of American monuments.
    Paul Ramírez Jonas, Let Freedom Ring (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (detail). Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
    The philanthropic organization’s $4 million research grant allowed Monument Lab to conduct a comprehensive audit of national, state, and local monuments in the U.S. What it found was of the 50 most-memorialized figures, 42 were white men, and 25 owned slaves.
    In organizing “Pulling Together,” Farber and Tillet aimed to create monuments that would honor the untold stories that have been left out of America’s public landscapes, showcasing them alongside famed memorials to the Founding Fathers and those who have fought on behalf of America.
    The artist selected for the project represent a diverse group—three Black, one Latino, one Asian, one Native American, and half of them women.
    Vanessa German, Of Thee We Sing (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
    At the Lincoln Memorial, German pays homage to the renowned Black singer Marian Anderson, who famously performed in concert at the monument, back in 1939, when the nation’s capitol was still segregated. The sculpture incorporates historical photographs of the event, as well as steel Sandhof lilies, native to Africa, and blue bottles that make up the singer’s skirt, as a reference to their spiritual significance to enslaved Africans who lived on the Gullah in the Lowcountry.
    Anderson was also the point of inspiration for Jonas, who has created a carillon sculpture titled Let Freedom Ring with 32 automated bells that play “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”—part of the set list for her performance. The public is invited to ring a 600-pound bell beneath the tower to sound the final note in the song.
    Paul Ramírez Jonas, Let Freedom Ring (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by Paul Ramírez Jonas.
    Another interactive project is Adams’s America’s Playground: DC, a functional children’s jungle gym also meant to recall the history of segregation. One half of the piece is brightly colored, the other in shades of gray, bisected by a historical photograph of Black and white children playing together at a D.C. playground just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Bolling v. Sharpe declared it unconstitutional to segregate D.C. schools.
    For Adams, installing a playground at the heart of U.S. politics is also symbolic. “It’s a place where you have to learn negotiation,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s a place where you have to learn to take turns. It’s a place where you understand leadership, and take risks.”
    Derrick Adams, America’s Playground (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by Florie Hutchinson.
    For the Living, Tiffany Chung’s installation next to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is a monumental world map dedicated to Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees, tracing their diaspora due to the war.
    Red Star’s piece, The Soil You See…, draws a parallel between the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation chiefs who signed U.S. government treaties and the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence, by placing a large sculpture of a thumbprint on which she’s inscribed the names of those Indigenous leaders near the mall’s Declaration of Independence Memorial.
    Tiffany Chung, For the Living (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
    “What I noticed is that there really isn’t any color represented on the Mall,” the artist told the Post. “That was surprising to me. Everything is, like, the color of the natural materials the monuments are made of. So my thumbprint is red.”
    Finally, there is Crawley’s HOMEGOING, an audiovisual memorial to the victims of the AIDS crisis located on the site of the first display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987. A writer and musician, the artist has installed speakers amid a series of small stages that play a three-movement composition that incorporates music from Black churches, as a tribute to Black queer musicians, as well as a reading of the names of some of those who have died from AIDS.
    Ashon T. Crawley, Homegoing (2023) during installation for the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (detail). Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
    The exhibition, which runs for a month, is a collaboration between the National Capital Planning Commission and the Trust for the National Mall.
    “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” is on view at various locations on the National Mall, Washington, D.C., August 18–September 18, 2023. 
    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

  • in

    ‘I Never Wanted to Be Avant-Garde’: Heji Shin Doesn’t Claim Her Provocative Photographs Are Intellectual, But Many of Her Biggest Fans Are

    There are no naked bodies in “The Big Nudes,” Heji Shin’s new show at 52 Walker—at least not the kind implied by the title. Instead, what you’ll find are giant pictures of pigs, shot against a studio backdrop, and MRI scans of the artist’s own brain. Both subjects are technically bare, but this is not exactly the stuff of late-night sexts.
    For some, Shin inspires “emperor’s new clothes” doubts. Her irreverent, provocative pictures have found fans in bleeding-edge fashion brands and art institutions, but for others, they flummox and inflame. There’s a good chance “The Big Nudes” will generate the same range of reactions.   
    “I’m not that subtle,” the artist and editorial photographer said, deadpan, during a recent Zoom interview. She was sitting in an old farmhouse in the Hudson Valley, which she recently purchased and is trying to fix up. Born in South Korea, raised in Germany, and now mostly based in New York, Shin exudes a cosmopolitan cool that makes it hard to picture her doing housework in the sticks. “I don’t claim any intellectual approach in my art practice,” she went on. “I never wanted to be avant-garde.” 
    Heji Shin, 2023. © Heji Shin. Courtesy of the artist and 52 Walker.
    As with her 2020 exhibition “Big Cocks,” which exclusively featured photos of roosters, Shin uses the title of her new show as bait. “The Big Nudes” also nods to a 1981 portfolio of the same name by the late fashion icon Helmut Newton (which does feature a lot of naked bodies). Tellingly, Shin is an avowed admirer.
    Critics of Newton’s work point to its objectification of female bodies. Susan Sontag once called him a “misogynist” who “humiliates women.” But others see genuine affection: “The true subject of his photographs, as rooted as they were in male fantasy, was the awesomeness of feminine power,” Variety critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in 2020, echoing a common—if somewhat flimsy—pro-Newton rebuttal.
    Shin shares Newton’s wit and sense of style, and she similarly revels in the thrill of the gaze, even—or especially—if that gaze is a little prurient. But it’s not the space of “male fantasy” that her pictures explore. What she’s interested in is difficult to put a finger on, but it has something to do with the economy of images in the 21st century, where news and products and porn all blur together in the fight for real estate on our screens. 
    That’s the space where Shin’s work lives. She photographs farm animals like pinup models and lovers like documentary subjects. Her photos twinkle with a commercial polish, but what they’re selling isn’t clear.  
    Heji Shin, You’ve come a long way, baby! (2023) © Heji Shin. Courtesy of the artist and 52 Walker.
    If punny titles are one of Shin’s signatures, so are odd pairings. She’s shown appropriated images of the Kardashians next to illustrations of A.I.-generated avatars breastfeeding and pictures of monkeys next to shots of role players recreating war scenes. As with those combos, the ties between the swine and brains of “The Big Nudes” are not obvious. (The MRI scans were generated specifically for this show and did not come from a health scare, Shin pointed out.)  
    It’s easier to map these new pictures as coordinates in the broader constellation of Shin’s work, where, say, the “Big Nudes” birds relate to the “Big Cocks” pigs, which in turn point to the NYPD officers penetrating each other in her 2018 exhibition “Men Photographing Men.” “I think [they exist in] the same cosmos,” she said. “When you’re interested in certain archetypes, then one leads to another, one references the other.” 
    Heji Shin, Big Nude II (2023). © Heji Shin. Courtesy of the artist and 52 Walker.
    Shin’s current exhibition isn’t going to inspire the backlash that some her previous efforts have. The “Men Photographing Men” pictures made headlines, as did her 2017 Eckhaus Latta campaign, for which she shot real couples mid-coitus. The 2019 Whitney Biennial featured her two most infamous series: “Baby” (2016), which captured shriveled newborns emerging from their mothers, and “Kanye” (2018), for which she documented the eponymous rapper at the height of controversy and on a monumental scale.  
    In past interviews, Shin deflected questions about taste. “I thought people would have more humor,” she once said of audience responses to her 2018 Kunsthalle Zurich show, which featured the “Kanye” portraits. “They could really only see one layer of the work.” 
    Whether or not she agreed with the taboos others identified in her work, it’s clear Shin knew what she was doing. “There used to be a time when a certain kind of outrage would give meaning, in a certain context, to a work,” she said. But more recently, the artist has grown bored of provocation. “Maybe I’ve just changed,” she explained. “Back then, I think it was more interesting to see certain kinds of reactions. Now I don’t think it’s interesting.”  
    Installation view, “Heji Shin: The Big Nudes,” July 21–October 7, 2023, at 52 Walker. Courtesy of 52 Walker.
    Shin paused, eyes to the sky. “I think you choose your battles,” she continued. “I think that my battle is definitely more about doing art that interests me than going into a dialogue with people that I’m not interested in.” 
    If the artist is in dialogue with anybody in “The Big Nudes,” it might be herself. At the center of the show is a freestanding glass pyramid, inside of which floats a 3D hologram of her brain, imaged from the MRI scans. It’s a work unlike any Shin has shown before, and yet it ties everything around it together. The real pleasure of “The Big Nudes,” it turns out, is seeing an artist trust her vision enough to indulge her singular impulses. Literally and figuratively, her mind is on display.  
    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

  • in

    A Cache of Paul McCartney’s Photographs Gives an Insider’s View to the Beatles’ Meteoric Rise to Fame

    As Beatlemania spread across the globe during the early 1960s, the Beatles found themselves in a whirlwind of flashing cameras and suddenly their faces were everywhere. Until now, however, we have relatively little idea of what the experience was like from their perspective. For the first time, Paul McCartney is showing the public over 250 photographs that he took between November 1963 to February 1964 in a show that has inaugurated the temporary exhibition galleries at the newly renovated National Portrait Gallery.
    Most of the photographs are either of McCartney himself or his bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and were taken at a time when the Beatles shot to fame in the United States. In one series, they are shown rehearsing for a pivotal TV appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 that was watched by an audience of 73 million. That same month, frenzied fans are caught on camera chasing the group’s car down West 58th Street in New York and McCartney also recorded a series of personal mementos from a beach holiday in Miami.
    “Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” said McCartney in a press statement. “Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today. They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of the many reasons I love them all, and know that they will always fire my imagination.”
    Many of the photographs were recently printed for the first time, having been left as negatives in McCartney’s personal archive and only rediscovered by the musician in 2020. Presented alongside McCartney’s own reflections, they offer a fresh behind-the-scenes lens on the famous story of how four young men from Liverpool became global superstars and redefined the meaning of celebrity for the modern era.
    “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” runs through October 1 before traveling across the pond to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, where it will run from December 5, 2023, to April 7, 2024. A book of photographs paired with McCartney’s recollections from the period has also been published by Penguin Press in the U.K. and W.W. Norton in the U.S.
    Check out images from the exhibition below.
    Paul McCartney, George looking young, handsome and relaxed. Living the life. Miami Beach, February 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
    A visitor looks at photographs taken by Paul McCartney in Miami. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
    Paul McCartney, John and George, Paris. 1964 Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
    A visitor looks at photographs taken by Paul McCartney while rehearsing for The Ed Sullivan Show. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
    Paul McCartney, Self-portraits in a mirror, Paris, 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
    “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
    Paul McCartney, Photographers, Central Park, New York, February 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
    A visitor to the National Portrait Gallery looks at photographs taken by Paul McCartney in Paris, 1963-64. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
    Paul McCartney, The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day’s Night were based on moments like this. Taken out of the back of our car on West Fifty-Eight, crossing the Avenue of the Americas. New York, February 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
    “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
    More Trending Stories:  
    What Opulence Lay Behind Marie Antoinette’s Secret Bedroom Door? The Palace of Versailles Has Just Reopened the Queen’s Hidden Chambers 
    An Ornate Viking-Era Relic Unearthed by a Metal Detectorist in the U.K. Could Fetch More Than $30,000 at Auction 
    A Rediscovered Portrait of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s Sixth Wife, Fetches Four Times Its High Estimate at Sotheby’s 
    Art Industry News: More Museums Distance Themselves From David Adjaye After Allegations + Other Stories 
    For Their First U.S. Museum Show, Artist Wynnie Mynerva Has Reimagined the Creation Myth as an Act of Rebellion Against the Patriarchy 
    An Israeli First-Grader Stumbled on a 3,500-Year-Old Egyptian Amulet on a School Trip 
    Why Hasn’t Atlanta’s Art Scene Flourished Like Other Cities in the South? A Tragic Tale May Hold the Answer 
    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

  • in

    See Inside Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Spectacular Installation That Spins Art Out of Its Atmosphere

    Its been a long time since art was restricted to walls and pedestals, but artists at the cutting-edge of immersive experiences are still finding new ways to create layered encounters with sound, movement, and touch. These elements have made Atmospheric Memory by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer an international hit with audiences.
    The Mexican-Canadian artist invites visitors to step into a physical concept that was once just an idea in the mind of 19th century British philosopher and inventor Charles Babbage. “The air itself is one vast library on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said or woman whispered,” wrote Babbage, marveling at how the atmosphere around us captures our every gesture and utterance, however small or mumbled. He even believed that air molecules stored this information, and that they could be the key to rewind the passage of time and experience these moments again.
    Inspired by how this “vast library” might work in reality, Lozano-Hemmer has brought together a collection of interactive installations that each make use of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics. One is Cloud Display, a screen made of 1,600 ultrasonic atomizers that uses water vapor to write any word spoken into its voice recognition system. Another, Atmosphonia, is a sound environment that plays waves of familiar sounds like wind, fire, water, birdsong, and bells while visualizing these tonal changes with LED lights.
    Lozano-Hemmer is known for his “anti-monument” to victims of Covid-19 and a light show over the U.S.-Mexico border, but he believes that this work may be his most ambitious. “Atmospheric Memory explores [Babbage’s] idea today, when the dream of perfect recollection is one of the defining conditions of our digital life, and the air that we breathe has become a battleground for the future of our planet,” he said.
    The work debuted in the U.K. at Manchester International Festival in 2019 and has since traveled to the Carolina Performing Arts theatre in the U.S. The latest stop on its global tour is Australia, where it is headlining the Sydney Science Festival at the Powerhouse Museum until August 20.
    See more images from the installation below.
    Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
    Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
    Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
    Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
    Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
    Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
    Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.

    More Trending Stories:  
    The British Museum Has Reached a Settlement With a Translator Whose Work Was Used in an Exhibition Without Her Permission 
    Known as a Deep-Pocketed, ‘Aggressive’ Chinese Collector, Ding Yixiao Has Now Been Blacklisted by the Art Market. What Happened? 
    A German Court Rules That Martin Kippenberger’s Estate Must Name a Painter Who Executed His Works as a Co-Author 
    Can a Digital Artwork Outlast a 19th-Century Painting? The Answer Is Complicated as Artists, Dealers, and Conservators Battle Obsolescence in the Field 
    A Sculptor’s Lawsuit Against Kevin Costner Over Artwork She Created for His Planned Luxury Resort Will Finally Go to Trial 
    Creepily, the Woody Allen Romp ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ Channels the Book That Outed Picasso’s Treatment of Women 
    JTT, the New York Gallery Known for Minting Star Artists, Is Closing After More Than a Decade 
    The British Library Has Discovered Scandalous Details Censored From the Official Account of Elizabeth I’s Reign 
    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

  • in

    Meet Real Estate Developer-Turned-Artist Abbott Stillman Whose Abstract Paintings Are Making Their Gallery Debut

    It’s an unlikely scenario for any aspiring artist: an artist who has never publicly displayed his paintings and who turns down offers to buy his works, has a dealer proactively visit his studio out of curiosity. (I personally don’t know of an art-world journalist or veteran who has not fielded multiple artists’ requests about getting their foot in the door of a New York gallery.)
    But such was the case for Abbott Stillman, a successful New York real estate developer who first took up a paintbrush nearly three decades ago, initially creating representational work—much of it still lifes and portraits—before eventually switching to abstract painting.
    In a phone interview with Artnet News, Stillman explained the process of channeling his creativity. “I built a career as a real estate developer and one of the things that’s important in that field, is there are times when it makes no sense to develop buildings. I thought, if I don’t find some other way of being creative, I’m going to do something stupid and create a building when the market doesn’t really need it. So I started painting,” he said.
    Abbott Stillman. Photo: Steve Benisty.
    Though he never took formal art classes, Stillman did attend graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he took architecture and city planning courses. “I guess that was some type of training,” he noted.
    Over the years, he only showed his work to a small handful of family and friends, and, despite enthusiastic responses, declined to share it with a wider audience.
    That changed recently when Soho dealer Georges Berges visited Stillman’s studio in Scarsdale, New York. Now, Stillman’s work (roughly half a dozen pieces) is a major component of the gallery’s summer group show, opening August 17, aptly titled “Urban Summer.” Stillman said that in addition to being busy, he just wasn’t all that familiar with the art world but that Berges “struck the right note” when they met.
    Stillman has built several monumental buildings in New York City such as the one-million-square-foot Juilliard complex and the landmark Schumacher building on Bleecker Street. He will be rebuilding the Times Square Theater, a project estimated at $100 million.
    LowRez HiFi, Full-scale LED matrices in glass vitrines (Lo-Rez) and a grove of touch-sensitive stalks (Hi Fi) Cooper Hewitt (Smithsonian) Museum in collaboration with Höweler + Yoon Architecture. Photo: Alan Karchmer.
    Though the Georges Beres group show marks his first foray into the gallery world, his real estate endeavors brought him into the realm of public art when he collaborated on an installation for a building he was developing in 2006.
    Low Rez/Hi Fi combined a sound-and-light grove and LED-based building signage. It was selected by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum as one of the best designs of any kind in the U.S. and displayed at its 2007 Triennial. The work was later displayed at both the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston.
    As for his love of art, Stillman credits his mother with frequent—he calls them “insistent”—visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a child, where she would create games and challenges such as by asking him: “How fast can you find paintings that combine red and blue?”
    “Little by little, I learned to see. That was really what got me interested in art,” he said.
    Abbott Stillman, Summer Meander (2023). Photo: Steve Benisty
    And now that his work is on view at a gallery, there is no more room for excuses when it comes to sales. In fact, several works are already pre-sold with prices ranging from about $100,00 to $200,000, an impressive level for an artist who has never technically engaged with the market before.
    “I realize I’m very fortunate,” said Stillman. “For years, friends kept saying, ‘You’ve got to sell me one of your paintings’ and I said, ‘Well, they’re not for sale.’ When they found out I was doing this show, they said, ‘Well, now you can’t say no because you’re a professional artist.’”
    Stillman pointed out that what’s important to him and is perhaps most interesting about his artwork: “I’ve worked a little bit against the Zeitgeist because I’m not an angry person. I’m actually quite grateful for my life. I’ve had a wonderful, fortunate life. A lot of what seems to be au courant is confrontational and questioning of the culture. I’ve been around long enough that I think I’ve reached the point where I said to myself: ‘We’re here for a relatively short time between bouts of being stardust eternally and I’m pretty grateful for this life.’ I think most people ought to be grateful for their lives. I really try to create a sense of harmony and a little bit of quietude in my painting.”
    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

  • in

    See Highlights From a New Show on the History of Women’s Work—From Indigenous Crafts to Artifacts of Female Empowerment

    The long, unsung history of so-called “Women’s Work” takes center stage at the New-York Historical Society in a new show organized by the institution’s Center for Women’s History.
    A selection of 45 objects drawn from the museum’s collection showcase the various roles—both paid and unpaid—women have served in New York City society over the centuries, and how a wide range of different activities have been considered “women’s work” during different periods of time.
    “We wanted to look at at our collections and find and tell the stories and histories of diverse women,” Anna Danziger Halperin, the exhibition’s co-curator and the associate director of the Center for Women’s History, told Artnet News. “But the show’s title, ‘Women’s Work,’ is kind of a provocative one.”
    “On one hand, we are looking at these historical examples of women’s labor of women’s work,” she said. “But then we’re also playing with the idea of women’s work as a stereotype of what people imagine is appropriate within cultural norms for women to do. It’s about the public sphere versus the private sphere, or men’s work versus women’s work, and really blurring those distinctions and showing how women have always worked.”
    We spoke with Danziger Halperin about five key objects in the show and what they can teach us about how women’s work has evolved in New York City over the last 300 years. Here is what she had to say.

    19th-Century Mahogany Cradle
    Mahogany cradle (ca. 1820–30). Collection of the New-York Historical Society, gift of Mrs. Willis Reese.
    This is one of the objects that make the biggest impact when you walk into the gallery, and it’s the biggest one physically in the exhibition. It’s a really gorgeous mahogany cradle from 1820 to 1830, with a wide arch over where the infant would have been rocked, draped with a prop veil—it’s very dramatic-looking.
    It was really important for us to show examples of care work near the beginning of the exhibition, because that’s often what people think of when they hear the words “women’s work.” Yes, women are considered to be natural caregivers because female bodies can have babies, but caregiving is work whether it’s paid or unpaid, performed by mothers or other kinds of caregivers.
    This cradle belonged to a family named the Gallatin who were wealthy and well-connected, very politically influential. [The donors were descendants of Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and founder of New York University.]
    The infants who were cared for in this cradle were likely tended to by Black nurses in the 1820s. Because of the history of gradual emancipation in both New York and Pennsylvania, where the family lived, we believe that they were most likely indentured, rather than enslaved. And although that means that they were legally free, women laboring under indentures had to work for many years without wages or salaries. So, it’s a different kind of unfree labor.

    National Welfare Rights Organization Pin
    National Welfare Rights Organization pin-back button (ca. 1966–75). Collection of the New-York Historical Society, gift of Jim Lodge.
    This a pin back button from the National Welfare Rights Organization. This is 100 and 50 years later, and I think there’s some really interesting connections. The organization was active from the late 1960s to the early ’70s. It was a movement that was really coming together at the intersection of the civil rights movement and women’s liberation and antipoverty activism.
    Most of the leaders of the movement were single women of color, and they were pushing against social policies that were forcing recipients of different benefits to work in the pay market place rather than taking care of their own families.
    The leading activist of the organization, Johnnie Tillmon, wrote an amazing essay for the inaugural issue of Ms magazine [in 1972], “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue.” We included this great quote on the label that in some ways, speaks to the exhibition as a whole: “If I were president, I would solve this so-called welfare crisis… I’d just issue a proclamation that ‘women’s’ work is real work.”
    In the ’60s and ’70s, there were different competing kinds of cultural messages about women in the workplace. There were ideas that if you were a middle class or elite white woman, you were expected to stay home, but Black women and women of color were often forced to work for elite, wealthy white families.
    There was a movement of feminists starting to say, “we shouldn’t be forced to stay home,” but then you had activists who were Black women saying, “yes, but we also shouldn’t be forced to go out to work. We should be able to be seen as respectable mothers and have our care work recognized as work. And our work of caring for our own babies is just as valuable to society as our work caring for white babies.”

    Haudenosaunee Beaded Cushion
    Unidentified Native American artist, Haudenosaunee beaded pincushion (ca. 1890–1910. Collection of the New-York Historical Society, gift of Arnold and Dora Stern.
    This kind of beadwork work was often associated with women’s work in Indigenous groups. In the later half of the 19th century, when white settlers were really pushing them out of their historic lands, a really sophisticated kind of business model began to spring up, adapting this traditional bead work for a new souvenir market place.
    This pin cushion is an example of that, made for white tourists coming to visit Niagara Falls, for example. It has a bird holding two American flags in its wings, and beaded fringe and leaves. It’s this sort of Americana decoration, like something that you would get at a gift shop for a presidential library.
    It really shows this traditionally feminine form of craft being used in an entrepreneurial and creative kind of way. They are adapting because they can’t survive off of hunting and fishing and trapping in their homelands, and they need income. Indigenous women would sort of set up an assembly line within their home, and different family members would contribute.
    But these things were sold as trinkets, little souvenirs. They were not very valuable. One of the points that we wanted to make is that often when work is identified as something that women do, its wages become depressed, and the professions that women were thought to pursue were more and more lowly paid.
    And there’s connections here too to the work women were doing for the garment industry at the same time. We also have on display a hat that has silk flowers. Flower-making was something that women would often do at home with their children, as a way to get around, various labor laws and child labor laws.

    Jessie Tarbox Beals, Portrait of Ann Haviland
    Jessie Tarbox Beals, Portrait of Ann Haviland, perfumer, (ca. 1915–28). Collection of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
    I love this photograph because we use it to tell both the story of two different professional women who were doing really interesting, creative work: Jessie Tarbox Beals, a photographer, and Ann Haviland, a professional perfumer. We might think of them as the new woman of the late-19th century, early-20th century, entering the professional world in new ways. And both of these women are artistic.
    Ann is posed in the photograph surrounded by all the different tools of her profession. It really looks like she’s a chemist. So it’s really emphasizing the scientific expertise she had to have to create perfumes.
    An early example of a professional perfumer, Ann ran a mainstream fragrance business at the early stages of the beauty industry—this new field where something that was seen as feminine was now being sold to a mass audience. She also marketed herself in really clever ways, by partnering with early film actresses and writing advice columns in fashion magazines. She was putting herself out there as the expert.
    And Jessie Tarbox Beals was a professional photojournalist at the time that photography was really taking off. Beals bought her first camera from selling magazine subscriptions. She took a lot of photographs of different people at work, not just women, but men as well. We have a lot of those images in our collection, and several on display because they are so amazing.
    In the exhibition labels, we quote from something that Beals wrote in 1904, that “all a woman needed to succeed as a photographer was her health and strength, a fair photographic outfit, and the ability to hustle.”

    Mary Dickson’s Tavern license
    Tavern license of New York City inn owner Mary Dickson (1784). Collection of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
    This is a license that dates to 1784 that was held by a woman named Mary Dixon for a tavern on Moore Street in the South Ward. She was an innkeeper, and she was officially licensed to serve food and drink as well. Women are traditionally housekeepers. So, in some ways it’s an extension of work that would have fallen under women’s purview. It was seen as acceptable for women to be cooking.
    Another one of the examples of women business owners that we have is a page of fabric swatches from an account book that was held by a woman merchant named Mary Alexander from the 1740s. Two women who had their own businesses in the 18th century!
    We wanted to subvert what people would have expected from the time period about women in public-facing roles. Although under the British laws that would have governed the New York as a British colony, women were the property of either their fathers or their husbands, there was also a legacy of Dutch law that treated spouses as more equal economic partners. So there were women who worked within family businesses, as well as other women who supported themselves.
    We included this license to show that women are not just making a clear, linear march towards progress and equality across the 300 years that we cover in the exhibition. It’s really much more complicated than that. But it shows that women’s work is everywhere, and underpins New York society and American society.
    “Women’s Work” is on view at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (West 77th Street), New York, New York, through August 18, 2024.
    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

  • in

    Textile Designer Dorothy Liebes, Whose Masterful Use of Color Transformed American Interiors, Finally Gets Her Due at a Major Museum Show

    You might not know the name Dorothy Liebes (1897–1972), but the American textile designer and weaver was a hugely influential figure, with her work in fashion, film, transportation, and interior and industrial design helping define 20th-century taste in the U.S.
    Now, she’s back in the spotlight with her first posthumous solo show—her first in more than 50 years—at New York’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The exhibition, titled “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes,” is a celebration of the artist’s many accomplishments, her skills as a designer, and her considerable business acumen.
    “Her career was so vast,” Susan Brown, associate curator and acting head of textiles at Cooper Hewitt, who co-curated the show with Alexa Griffith Winton, the museum’s manager of content and curriculum, told Artnet News. “She did so many different things, from being a Californian hand weaver, to her very prestigious commissions with important architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, to her work with fashion designers and on film sets.”
    Born in Santa Rosa, California, Liebes got her start in textiles with a two-week stint at Chicago’s Hull House in the summer of 1920, taking weaving and dyeing classes. Three years later, she graduated from University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor of arts in decorative art, architecture, and applied and textile design. (She already had a degree in art education from the State Teachers College at San Jose.)
    Dorothy Liebes in her Powell Street studio, San Francisco, California (1938). Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, courtesy of the Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, ©Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.
    By 1928, Liebes had a commission to design draperies for the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and by 1930 she had opened the Dorothy Liebes Studio in San Francisco. Although she collaborated on major architectural projects, including designing the drapery and upholstery for the 1938 New York World’s Fair, the designer also felt it was important that the average person could experience the “Liebes Look,” as her bold blends of vibrant colors accented with shiny metallic thread came to be known.
    “She was very acutely aware that her textiles were extraordinarily expensive and could only be afforded by the one percent of the one percent, and she wanted to make them more widely available,” Brown said.
    To that end, Liebes forged industry partnerships with companies like Goodall, DuPont, and Dobeckmun. (The latter were the the makers of Lurex, a synthetic metallic yarn that became a Liebes signature and that she helped expand to a wide range of colors beyond the typical gold and silver, including black and pastels.) She worked closely with manufacturers to replicate the results of her hand-weaving techniques on machine looms, helping bring her designs to the masses.
    Dorothy Liebes, Mexican Plaid textile (ca. 1938). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
    As a result, in the Postwar period, Liebes was able to move beyond high-profile commissions, which typically required a more restrained, subtle color palette to meet the client’s specifications, Winton said, and finally embrace “the virtuoso use of color that she was famous for.”
    “The ‘Liebes Look,’ which was very frequently expressed in public spaces like nightclubs, restaurants, ballrooms, and luxury passenger liners, combined very saturated colors, often in unusual sophisticated combinations,” Brown said. “It had this textured, handwoven look with an abundant use of metallics.”
    Dorothy Liebes, Sample card (ca. 1953). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
    It was an aesthetic that continues to influence 21st-century design choices to this day—Liebes was a major proponent of decorative pillows, and of livening up a room with an unexpected pop of color.
    During her lifetime, Liebes was widely recognized in the press, and exhibited her work at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, which hosted her career retrospective in 1942. But, like so many women artists, her achievements quickly faded into obscurity, with the Liebes studio shuttering soon after her death, and no children to try and keep her memory alive.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Most of what was written about Liebes was in craft and women’s publications, which haven’t been widely digitized—and even when they have, photography rarely does justice to her gifted sense of color. And some of her most high-profile projects, like the New York interiors such as the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel, the Marco Polo Club at the Waldorf Astoria, and the Usonian Exhibition House, are now almost solely associated with their male architects (Henry Dreyfuss, Donald Deskey, and Wright, respectively).
    Another part of the issue was that Liebes’s relatively fragile textiles were meant to be lived with. Drapes faded in the sunlight, and upholstered furniture got damaged by cigarette smoke. Very few objects are still with us today in good condition.
    Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel, New York City (1950). Interior design by Henry Dreyfuss; drapes laced with tiny electric lightbulbs designed by Dorothy Liebes. Photo courtesy of the Henry Dreyfuss Archive, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
    Fortunately, the Cooper Hewitt is one of a number of U.S. museums blessed with a collection of showroom samples and exhibition pieces gifted by the Liebes studio after her death. And when Brown and Griffith were organizing this exhibition, they were able to turn to the recently digitized archives of the Liebes papers—which include over 40,000 items—at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.
    The two believe the show—which features over 175 photographs, documents, and textiles, including clothing, furniture, and samples—has the power to reestablish Liebes’s legacy, restoring her to the pantheon of U.S. design history.
    “This exhibition changes what you thought you knew about mid-century design,” Brown said. “There’s been so many monographs written about all of Dorothy Liebes’s major collaborators—Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Dreyfuss, and Samuel Marx. Now, hopefully people will realize there’s been a very important story missing all along. Her work was very impactful and broad-reaching, and touches on so many different aspects of 20th-century design.”
    See more photos of the exhibition and the works on view below.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Dorothy Liebes, Sample card, Chinese Ribbons (ca. 1947). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of Mrs. Morris D.C. Crawford. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Dorothy Liebes, Handwoven panel for the Observation Lounge of the SS United States (1952). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Dorothy Liebes, Sample card (ca. 1945). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Dorothy Liebes, Sample card for Eagle Ottawa Leather Corp. (1958). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Dorothy Liebes, Sample card (1945). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
    Loom with shuttles at the Dorothy Liebes Studio (ca. 1947). Photo courtesy of the Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
    Dorothy Liebes Studio, New York City, as photographed for House Beautiful, October 1966. Photo courtesy of the Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
    Dorothy Liebes, sample for a window blind (1955). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Dorothy Liebes Design, Inc. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource New York.
    Donald Deskey, armchair, (1938). Manufactured by Royal Metal Manufacturing Company; Upholstery designed by Dorothy Liebes. Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Florene M. Schoenborn. Photo courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, New York.
    Dorothy Liebes, Power­-loomed drapery fabric for the Persian Room, Plaza Hotel, New York City (ca. 1960). Collection of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Photo by Jacklyn Nash.
    “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” is on view at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, New York, New York, July 7–February 4, 2024.
    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