“Hi, I’m Parker Finn. I am the writer, director and one of the producers of “Smile 2.” This scene takes place in the back half of the film, and we are with the character of Skye Riley, a pop star played by Naomi Scott. She’s the main character of the film. And we are jumping into this scene when she is at a peak level of paranoia. So in this scene, Skye is encountering this group of smilers. We’d never done a full group before. It felt like a really exciting new thing to do in this film. So this moment when they are chasing down the hallway after her. My production designer, Lester Cohen, and I had designed this mirrored hallway because we knew that by sending this horde of dancers down the hallway, all the reflections was going to exponentially grow the amount of faces and arms and limbs we see. These dancers that I got to work with and my choreographer, Celia Rowlson-Hall, it was this incredible collaboration to create something that felt both like a menacing attack, but also at the same time dance. For the bulk of the scene, we had 14 dancers and they’re all performing this choreography, but they all also had to be employing the smile throughout. So it was really about coaching them, how to do the smile, but also how to hold onto it while doing all of this movement. But also how we have Naomi, who is performing choreography, but for her to make it look not like choreography, like she’s just suddenly being attacked and doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.
“Language is the bottom line of all my work,” Pedro Zylbersztajn told me over Zoom this spring, “and also the beginning of it.” From such a linguistic genesis, critical expressions have emerged in modes as varied as drawing, video, installation, and performance, but Zylbersztajn had been grappling with language and the way it moves through the world—as knowledge, as information, as rhetoric—for years before he took up art making.
Pedro Zylbersztajn: three Digestions, 2023.
Born in São Paulo in 1993, Zylbersztajn studied graphic design and printmaking before working in art publishing, which amplified his interest in discursive networks as a locus of creative potential. In 2016 he enrolled in the MIT graduate program in Art, Culture, and Technology, which he found a paradigm-shifting experience. There, Zylbersztajn learned to consider how “the materiality and discursivity” of his practice could “feed off each other,” he told me. Instead of working within circumscribed forms and familiar processes to produce objects, like publishing books or prints, he began to consider the very motions of doing, thinking through actions—like circulation, collection, and consumption—as well as the forms that these verbs produce.
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While a student, Zylbersztajn began to experiment with performance, which, by 2019, became central to his practice. That year, he staged Waiting Room at Galerie Art & Essai, in France. For the installation-performance hybrid, guests were directed to the exhibition space, a waiting room replica, by ushers who never returned to collect them, producing the banal anxiety of liminal, unstructured time. Zylbersztajn became interested in the ways we are pushed to “perform everydayness”—in this case, to behave as one would while waiting. As he puts it, “everything we do is a small gesture that is confined by a certain set of protocols that order our quotidian [experiences].” By thinking through the disciplinary norms of our social and physical environments, his work asks, “how does a gestural shift in performance change absolutely everything?”
Pedro Zylbersztajn: Waiting Room, 2019.
These everyday gestures are the focus of Zylbersztajn’s recent three-channel video Three Digestions (2023), completed during his residency last year in Switzerland at Kulturhaus Villa Sträuli. A central screen plays looped footage from an endoscopy, a camera tunneling through pixelated innards. Flanking the display are two other screens, each running a video that echoes the first screen’s action, but meandering through institutional collections in lieu of human viscera. One side shows the stacks of a national public library, the other, an ethnographic museum.
The impossible speed at which we are compelled to “digest” words and images is also the subject of his video Yesterday’s song for afterwards (2022), in which lines of text and brief, flashing images simulate a kind of quotidian, metabolic unconscious. This piece feels especially perceptive at a time when the inundation of image and text defines everyday life, even as access to such mediated stimuli is regulated by profit mechanisms beyond our control. By reminding us that what we consume through perceptual encounters is shaped by—and in turn, can shape—the protocols that define language and history, Zylbersztajn’s work asks us to confront the processes that determine our experience of reality.
My favorite Joel Shapiro sculpture is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art – an orange dancer-like structure that has made me smile since the first day I arrived in New York, now 23 year ago. That sculpture, like most of his work for the last 50+ years is radiantly joyful, defies gravity, and seems to move as you walk around it.
Joel Shapiro: Out of the Blue. 510 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10016 September 13 – October 26, 2024 Photo: Courtesy Pace Gallery
His current exhibition at Pace in New York, Joel Shapiro: Out of the Blue, is everything you want from a Shapiro with with new surprises. Presenting his largest wood sculpture to date, along with a dozen small studies and bronzes, it’s a playfully intelligent experience with color, space, material, and movement that keeps you circling.
Joel Shapiro: Out of the Blue. 510 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10016 September 13 – October 26, 2024 Photo: Courtesy Pace Gallery
The exhibition spans two rooms with generous space to experience all 360 degrees of each work. Debuting here are three new massive wood sculptures – each taller than any viewer. The central work, titled “ARK” (titles are rare for Shapiro who has long-preferred the “untitled”) is also the largest in the room, reaching nearly 12 feet tall. The structure feels like someone paused an implosion in space – as geometric shapes seem like they ignore our own gravity as they find their own central magnetism.
The three new works are an interesting shift from the two exhibitions of sculpture he presented in New York a decade ago (see them here: at Pace Gallery in 2010 and Paula Cooper Gallery in 2014) where he presented works suspended by a network of rope. Though it was undeniably thrilling to walk into the middle of a fully exploded Shapiro, the ropes also explained their “weightlessness.” However in this new work, and especially in ARK, the objection to gravity seems nearly impossible – it must be bound by physics, but it doesn’t look like it.
Joel Shapiro: Out of the Blue. 510 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10016 September 13 – October 26, 2024 Photo: Courtesy Pace Gallery
But the real treat is in the second room where a dozen small studies and bronzes pack nothing but gleeful wonder. My favorite works are the colorful wood structures that reveal their making with an abundance of visible nails, rods, or screws. It’s as if you’re witnessing the works’ creation, when Shapiro suspends an element in space and rapidly secures it with multiple shots from a pin gun.
Joel Shapiro: Out of the Blue. 510 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10016 September 13 – October 26, 2024 Photo: Courtesy Pace Gallery
A stand out is “untitled (structural study for 20 Elements)” (below) – a study for the artist’s large-scale work of a similar title that was once shown in brilliant juxtaposition at the Musée d’Orsay. Again, the screws have a sense that they’re holding the pieces down rather than up, preventing elements from floating away.
The work is on view at Pace through October 26th, 2024 and well worth viewing from every possible angle. In the meantime, the gallery produced this exceptional 3-minute interview with Shapiro inside his Queens studio. Made last year on the occasion of his exhibition in Hong Kong, Shapiro talks about his process, color, and feelings about “perfection.”
David Behringer visits over 200 galleries every month to uncover and share the most exciting contemporary art in New York today. Subscribe to his exclusive weekly newsletter at www.thetwopercent.com and learn about his private gallery tours. And be sure to check out his YouTube.
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Illinois artist and art instructor Nancie King Mertz has been painting in pastel and oil throughout her life in art, creating paintings that span a range of subjects, lighting conditions, and palettes. A few years ago, after living many years in Chicago, she and her husband, Ron, moved to Rockford, Ill., trading a condo in the city for their “dream home,” and swapping a small workspace off the kitchen for a studio that offers light from three different directions. Her new setup allows her to maintain a framing business and also features a classroom space for workshops. We asked the artist to share some photos and tell us more about her art-making practice.
A historic home in Rockford, Ill., offers space for studio work and home-based workshops that can accommodate lodging for a dozen participants in 3- to 4-day painting retreats.
Tell us about your new space and how it accommodates painting, framing, and teaching.
In this historic home in Rockford, which is located about 80 miles northwest of Chicago, I’m able to have a studio just off the living room that offers light from the south, west, and north. It’s such a treat to create in this space with views of a wooded yard and wildlife. I’ve got room to keep a desk and computer, as well as a set of swinging panels that offer a large selection of frame options, from which I can assist clients in frame selection for their treasures. Framing has been my side gig for 45 years. We sold our gallery/frame shop in Chicago when we moved, and now I do the framing in a large room in our basement.
The wraparound windows in Mertz’s studio offer light from three directions: south, west, and north.
Our goal, when getting ready to make the move, was to find a home that would serve as a learning center, gallery, and frame shop. It has been a long-term dream of mine to have a space to provide immersive pastel and oil instruction. Before the move, my teaching schedule involved traveling every month, sometimes twice a month, and I was ready for a change. Although I continue to do some travel-teaching, my husband and I host four to six workshops here at home. In nice weather, we work en plein air, but in winter months, we host 10 to 12 students at a time who can work in my studio and throughout our home. We’ve hosted painters from across the U.S., and Canada, as well as local students who come daily. With my husband’s assistance, we offer meals to all and can accommodate lodging for up to eight. We’ve been having a great time getting to know so many wonderful people this way.
The artist also offers custom-framing services and keeps a panel of frame options at hand for this purpose.
Mertz reserves a corner area for her computer and office supplies.
What is important to you about your work environment?
It’s important to me to keep my spaces organized, to know where supplies and reference materials are. My studio and frame space are ready at all times to do what I need to do, and that’s the advice I give to my students: to strive for a clean, well-thought out area in which to create. If a daily designated space isn’t an option, I suggest collecting supplies in a bin so that setup is simplified when space to work is available. My complete plein air setup for pastels is always ready to go in the garage, so I can just load it into the car or into the overhead bin of a plane—and go!
Mertz’s easel and pastel palette are positioned in a spot where she can look out onto the wooded backyard. She also has easy access to extra materials and supplies.
Tell us a little about your regular art-making routine.
People often ask me whether I paint every day. I do paint whenever I can, but I also have to make time for marketing, framing, conducting online demos, community involvement, in-person teaching, and maintaining our home and yard. Ron and I work as a team, and we strive to keep the place “visitor-ready” at all times, as we’re open seven days a week by appointment for art and framing needs, and for historic tours of the house.
Gallery of Artwork
About the Artist
Nancie King Mertz is a Master Pastelist in the Pastel Society of America and an Eminent Pastelist in the International Association of Pastel Societies. She has been a member of The Palette & Chisel of Fine Arts since 1988 and Plein Air Painters since 2003—two groups based in Chicago. In addition to her painting, she teaches numerous workshops in her home studio, and across the U.S. and abroad. Her work, which has appeared in numerous exhibitions, has earned many awards, and has been featured in a number of prestigious art publications.
France’s first lady flew the flag for the art world today by popping into Art Basel Paris at the Grand Palais today. Brigitte Macron was seen strolling the aisles of the fair which has brought an arty buzz to the French capital, drawing big-name collectors and curators from around the world. On hand to give advice to to Mrs Macron was the fair’s charming director Clément Delépine, alongside Klaus Biesenbach of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, who were seen escorting Mrs Macron around the blue-chip galleries.
Other notable visitors seen sashaying around the historic venue include Tate director Maria Balshaw and Serpentine supremo Hans Ulrich Obrist. Emmanuel Macron is yet to make an appearance though—will Monsieur Le Président show up this weekend?
Artist Paulina Olowska was roaming around Pace’s booth wearing a nun habit, occasionally ringing a bell inside the Grand Palais on Wednesday. It felt fitting: there is something almost holy about this venue, with its towering domed ceiling of glass and opulent steel pillars that occasionally gather in corners into florets; and certainly something ritualistic about how the art world gathers together, year over year, like a harvest festival all throughout the fall.
That is, with a small hiatus between when it comes to the Grand Palais. Art Basel is finally in the place where it set out to be several years ago, when it won a bid for the beaux-arts icon, beating out the stalwart fair FIAC. The former fair seems to be not much more than a whisper in the wind by now. But, unlike Frieze London, which flipped their floor plan this year, the Swiss fair brand kept to some of the palace traditions. Its atmosphere feels welcome and familiar, though the quality of work is certainly better than the FIAC days. Hauser and Wirth, who were regulars at FIAC like many of the dealers on the main floor, were kiddie corner to their old spot on the FIAC floor plan. Many of the other powerbrokers who loomed large at FIAC are similarly situated here in prime corner real estate. Call it continuity.
At Pace’s booth, where Olowska curated the presentation called “Mystic Sugar,” the walls are deep purple, creating a new moody feeling for a showing of several artists in the gallery’s program, including a massive painting by Olowska on offer for €250,000 ($271,820). A €750,000 ($815,460) wall piece by Louise Nevelson loomed quietly nearby a sculpture of a woman crumpled up on the floor, by Kiki Kogelnik, on offer for €950,000 ($1.03 million). More expensive works, with undisclosed prices, linger in their back room.
For its part, Hauser and Wirth has also brought a booth of works by a variety of artists in the gallery—including a titan of a Philip Guston with large drooping tears. There is a particularly intimidating Louise Bourgeois spider that is bolted to the wall, with what sounds like a very locked-in price tag of €20 million ($21.75 million). That said, it did slide down at some point, having last sold ten years ago for €33 million ($35.87 million). There was active interest from several clients around midday.
We all thought this work might be the big talking point of the booth, and it is; but it is sharing the spotlight with a “surprise” Kasimir Malevich that the gallery brought, a secondary market piece dated to 1915. Its soft cubist elements seemed to glow in the frame, which was set against a deep blue wall.
Installation view, Hauser & Wirth at Art Basel Paris, 2024. Courtesy the artists / estates and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Nicolas Brasseur
“Some people think they do not need to come because they take their decisions before,” Marc Payot, president of Hauser and Wirth, told me. Rewarding clients for coming and experiencing their art in-person was part of the motivation to not release news of the Malevich in their preview send-outs.
The small canvas, which had been in the Stedelijk collection for years, has an impeccable provenance history, said Payot, in an artist’s market that has had some historic issues with fakes. There is no price named, but, given the artist and the museum history, one can only guess. The Malevich was on hold around midday. The come-and-see approach was taken up especially creatively at Pilar Corrias, where Sophie von Hellerman painted VIP visitors’ dreams between 12 and 2 p.m. And Olowska will be doing astrology readings later this evening at Pace’s party. I can think of more than a few dealers who would like to know what the future of the market holds, should it be written in the stars.
Herein lies a takeaway: there is a noted desire to draw clients to show up in-person (and stay a while). It echoes what I heard at Sotheby’s headquarters on Monday morning, where a group of fresh-eyed executives stood amongst around $326 million worth of art, including masterworks of Surrealism and Arte Povera. Their expanded location in Faubourg Saint-Honoré has a flexible layout where they plan to host different events. To respond to the “needs of their clients in the 21st century,” the auction house is seeking to create more on-site experiences for buyers, said head of Sotheby’s France, Mario Tavella. There is, for example, a wine-tasting cellar.
Art Basel Paris 2024 at the Grand Palais. Courtesy of Art Basel
At Art Basel, wine is not for sale (yet, though a lot of other items are at the Art Basel Shop), but you can get a glass of cold Ruinart on the terrace—and you might need it. The Grand Palais—which is by some measures could be described as a very opulent greenhouse—was swelteringly hot on an unseasonably warm VIP day, a feeling heightened by what seemed like particularly crowded halls.
One dealer on the main floor lamented that she had forgotten to wear sunscreen. And VIPs all around the corridors were gladly wearing sunglasses. A delicate 1934 work by Meret Oppenheim on a canvas scroll that was on view at Michael Werner gallery was sold by midday was luckily on the north-facing wall in a quiet piece of shade. And a large heater sculpture at Lia Rumma, on sale for €700,000 ($760,900) by Arte Povera artist Gilberto Zorio, remained unplugged, turning it on only for clients who were willing to feel an extra bit of warmth.
View of Gilberto Zorio from Lia Rumma at Art Basel Paris
But the hotly attended VIP day, which made it hard to see work at moments, is generally welcome. “There is enormous energy in Paris in terms of the level of culture,” said Payot. “It is difficult to say where we are in this moment; the context [of the market] has not really changed. It is tricky, but we have seen a very strong week in London last week. And here, in Paris, there is more energy than I’ve seen in years before.”
“In a difficult moment, it is an oasis,” said Paris-based Alex Mor of Mor Charpentier (an apt metaphor, given the midday heat). “People seemed to saving up for Paris,” he added. Indeed, at the satellite fair of Paris Internationale, which had a bustling VIP day last evening one dealer told me that he “had not spoken French once today,” as evidence of the international drop-ins. While there are galleries flocking to the city, collectors are not moving here in year-round. They are visiting. And Paris is always worth a visit. Back at Pace’s booth, representatives from Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong were all there near Arne and Marc Glimcher. Capitain Petzlel also had their Asia rep on the ground. In other words, Europeans, Americans, and a powerful showing of Asian buyers are in town.
There were some good-humored groans from dealers who had been at Frieze just last week, those who basically had to spin on one heel and head across the Channel to come to Paris. Most of them reported good experiences in London and were already feeling optimistic about Paris. “We had low expectations from the fairs,” said a spokesperson from a prominent U.S. gallery in the main sector but, gladly, they said, they found out they were very wrong.
“At every fair I have done this year, the numbers have been 30 percent more than previous years—in some cases double,” said Vanessa Carlos of Carlos/Ishikawa. “And it is not just the case for our star artists. It is something I am seeing across the board, including with our younger artists. When I talk to my colleagues, they say the same thing. While we do need to analyze the closures of several galleries this year more deeply, the toxic conversations around the market are not completely connected to what I experience or hear anecdotally, and it is not helpful to the artists in the end.”
Booth view of work by Libasse Ka at Carlos/Ishikawa at Art Basel Paris.
Carlos is presenting new works by a talented young painter, the 26-year-old artist Libasse Ka, who she had met via his chance encouter with one of her artists, Oscar Murillo. Carlos showed me a selfie Murillo took with Libass, who was working at an electrical store at the time. In the picture, he is wearing a blue shop uniform. After glancing at his work, Murillo gave him money for a year, no strings attached, to make more of it. The booth was entirely sold out.
Martin Wong Our Lady of the Lower East Side (1990). Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P·P·O·W, New York Copyright Martin Wong Foundation. Photo: Ian Edquist
At P.P.O.W. is a particularly special painting by Martin Wong, a secondary market work that was happily hanging out in the shade too, with an undisclosed price. The New York gallery skipped Frieze for the first time in a decade. They seemed sure that Wong would meet a knowing audience in Europe, thanks to an extensive retrospective of his work that went from Berlin to London in 2023. But if you want to see it (no, you cannot have it, because it was sold to a European collection by midday), you best go by tomorrow—the gallery is participating in the inaugural Oh La La, which sees 35 galleries transform their booth hangs entirely on Friday and Saturday.
As the sun did a welcome dip below the perimeter of the domed glass, things cooled off and guests began to filter back out into the early evening to various seated dinners and cocktail hours. Dealers had tired smiles on their faces, even if things were still to be determined. The Grand Palais was a return to form for the art world, even if the world at large feels like it has shifted greatly in recent years. “There is a real appetite for quality,” Payot mentioned, “And, for non-cynical comments. That is on a global level.”
In 1960, the twenty-nine-year-old Alvin Ailey premièred his landmark work, “Revelations,” with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, the company he’d founded to showcase Black culture through dance. This marked the end of his apprenticeship as a young choreographer who’d grown up revering Katherine Dunham, Lester Horton, Martha Graham, and Jack Cole—American masters with an international perspective. It also launched him into critical purgatory.
From the start, the thirty-six-minute piece, which depicts Black resilience and Christian faith, and is set to various spirituals, was a hit with audiences, both because of Ailey’s preternatural talent for constructing graphic stage pictures and because it took us to church without our having to go to church. You do not need to have been raised in the South, as Ailey was, or to have attended Baptist services, as he did with his mother, in order to understand what he is doing here, particularly in the final section of the piece, set to the triumphant “Wade in the Water.” The dancers, clad in light colors, step high, their backs straight and heads held high, as they walk across baptismal waters toward their own glory. (Stretches of fluttering fabric simulate the water, an effect that Ailey, a magpie by nature, no doubt borrowed from Jerome Robbins, who did something similar to create a river in “The King and I,” in 1951.) But what you are watching is not just a parade of “vertical saints,” as James Baldwin described his churchgoing brethren, but the work of a choreographer who aims to show us how the metaphysical moves.
In “Revelations,” Ailey turns away from Martha Graham’s anxious world of men and women and myth, from George Balanchine’s plotless ballets, and from Merce Cunningham’s brilliant abstract explorations of the body. Here and in his subsequent work, Ailey tells a different story, one in which the music, the Black dancers’ inner lives, and the choreographer’s memories are the narrative. This shift was especially potent—vital—at a time when the Civil Rights Act was still four years away and activists and protesters were being beaten and burned to death. Without pandering to white tastes or shutting white people out, “Revelations” is resolute in its insistence on portraying Black life and community. The only stage performance from that time that is remotely analogous to “Revelations” is Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959)—the story of a Black family that doesn’t give up, a story for all families.
After “Revelations,” Ailey continued working for almost three decades—until his death, in 1989—choreographing more than seventy dances. You can see some of them live or in archival footage or photographs, and in dialogue with art that Adrienne Edwards, the protean senior curator and director of curatorial programs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, has gathered, in “Edges of Ailey,” the largest and most comprehensive examination of Ailey’s life, work, influences, and inspirations ever assembled. On the museum’s eighteen-thousand-square-foot fifth floor are works by eighty-two artists, including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lorna Simpson, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, and Alma Thomas, which illustrate and intersect with Ailey’s themes. There are videos of historic performances, and live stagings by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Ailey II in the third-floor theatre. It took Edwards six and a half years to put the show together, but, as she told me this summer, it was a lifetime in the making.
Every curator is a storyteller. And the story that Edwards aims to tell in “Edges of Ailey” is that of Ailey’s many permutations and trajectories—his desire to keep moving forward as a dancer, a choreographer, a teacher, a writer. In the process, she reveals him to have been more culturally important than he is generally given credit for being. Edwards relied greatly on Ailey’s voluminous notebooks and diaries to chart his story, which could not be recounted in a linear way. “What I could do,” she told me, “was relate to things that I found to be illuminating about him, trying to get into a headspace of what it would be like to be a gay man in the nineteen-forties and nineteen-fifties, especially during this moment in his life where you’re founding this thing and coming of age.” Edwards sees Ailey’s literary, theatrical, and intellectual loves as a form of company. In his notebooks, we see him planning and imagining possible projects: a ballet inspired by the life and work of Hart Crane, say, or an exploration of the genius of Federico García Lorca, or of Tennessee Williams—all queer artists who don’t directly appear in Ailey’s dances but who formed a kind of brotherhood in his mind. A lifelong autodidact, he had a deep admiration for writers who were able to speak of their queerness, at least through metaphor. The ultimate metaphor for Ailey was the body, and his work was the language with which to articulate it.
In Ailey’s career, “Revelations” was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it kept audiences coming back, and a curse because his subsequent attempts to push against the perimeters of dance—or, more specifically, Black dance—were often measured against that masterpiece and found wanting. Arlene Croce, in her review, in this magazine, of Ailey’s winter 1974 season at City Center—which included “Revelations” and “Masekela Langage” (1969), a work set to the music of the South African composer Hugh Masekela which addresses apartheid—expresses her frustration with Ailey, with his tendency, as she writes, to be “remarkably consistent in trying to capitalize on ‘Revelations’ as if it were a formula success.” She goes on:
The Ailey company is . . . loading up on religious and secular song suites, feeding its audience with a particular kind of material when all that matters is how that material—or any material—is assembled. With musicals slipping badly in recent years, the Ailey has been drawing a lot of people who think of it as a higher substitute for Broadway. They find what they are looking for in only one piece. It doesn’t take them long to discover that “Revelations” is the higher substitute for the Ailey.
Joan Acocella, also writing here, nearly forty years later, observed:
The dancers of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre are thrilling, and the dances they do are mostly sentimental and conventional. There are exceptions, notably the company’s signature work, “Revelations.” . . . This piece is relentlessly programmed by the Ailey troupe. During the present season . . . it closes nearly two-thirds of the performances. The spectators wouldn’t have it any other way. They clap along; they vocalize. At the end, they jump to their feet and shout, and demand an encore (which they get).
In both reviews, it’s the “they” that concerns me; there’s a whole lot of othering going on, like when white people ask why Black people talk to the screen so much during a movie. There’s also the assumption that a work this popular must be easy. Judith Jamison, Ailey’s great star, made this mistake, too. When she first saw the company rehearsing “Revelations,” in 1963, she said, “Oh, I can do that!” Later, as she writes in her autobiography, “Dancing Spirit,” she changed her tune: “Guess what? You try it sometime. The dancers made the movement look easy. It’s not. It takes unbelievable coordination. It takes passion, commitment, dedication, and love to know that every step you do should be infused with 100 percent of yourself.”
The dance world has always been a segregated place, divided as much by class as by European cultural history. Ailey was an uneven choreographer, for sure, but what he wanted to promote with his company was the idea that Black audiences—general Black audiences, like the folks Acocella probably saw applauding “Revelations”—should connect not only with their “ ’buked” and “scorned” selves onstage but with the feeling that performance can be a kind of balm, an embrace.
“Revelations” grew in part out of memories—of the people who made up Ailey’s community, and thus of Ailey himself. He was born in 1931. His birthplace: a little Texas town called Rogers, between Austin and Waco. This is the territory you’ll find in a Katherine Anne Porter story—“He” (1927), say, or “Noon Wine” (1937)—a world that consists of hard earth and mean poverty, a world where Jim Crow is a defining factor. And so is Jesus. Ailey’s parents, Alvin, Sr., and the beautiful and theatrical Lula, met in church and married when Lula was fourteen. Four years later, their only child was born, but the marriage wasn’t working. When Alvin was three months old, his father took off. Then he returned. He was feckless. “He just didn’t have the education to take care of a family,” Lula says in Jennifer Dunning’s rich biography “Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance” (1996). When Lula expressed her discontent to her father, he told her to stay married; nevertheless, Lula used her sharecropper’s wages to buy train tickets that got her and her son about a hundred and fifty miles away, to Wharton, where Lula picked cotton for a time, accompanied, on occasion, by Alvin. These were years of closeness, of Lula sharing stories from books that she bought on the cheap, and Alvin showing her a house that he dreamed of living in. There was also violence. As Ailey recounts in his autobiography, “Revelations,” which was published posthumously, in 1995:
When I was about five years old, my mother was raped by four white men. She never admitted to me that it happened. She only recently found out that I knew about it. One night she didn’t come home until ten p.m. She usually came home at three or four in the afternoon. She probably had been working in some white people’s kitchen. That was the other kind of work, along with picking cotton, available to black people. It was very clear to me that my mother was crying. She had bruises all over her body. I don’t think she ever told anyone about it except maybe her sisters or friends from church.
Violence can beget violence. The rage that was burned into Lula’s skin—the rage of poverty and abuse—was sometimes turned on Alvin. He recalls in his book that when Lula drank she’d beat him. Alvin’s tears when that happened were evidence not only of physical hurt but of longing: a longing to express how it feels to be wounded, to be loveless. Lula did love him, though, and it showed in all the menial jobs and the small and big humiliations that she endured to support him.
In 1936, she saw a newspaper ad for a job preparing meals for a highway crew eighty miles away, in Navasota. While the five-year-old Alvin stayed with a relative in Wharton, she secured the job, and also found romance with Amos Alexander, a churchgoing Black businessman who was well respected by both Black and white townspeople. Eventually, Lula and Alvin went to live in Alexander’s house.
When Ailey writes, in his autobiography, about his gratitude for the stability of that home and his love for Alexander, who became like a father to him, he seems to rest in a kind of languid joy—the same emotion that one sees and feels at times when watching “Revelations,” which is presented partly from a child’s perspective, particularly in the last section, set on the Sabbath. A big Texas sun shines down on a congregation. Church ladies, sitting on stools in their Sunday best, wave their fans and nod in acknowledgment. These “correct” ladies are joined by their Christian brothers, gentlemen in smart vests, who are a willing, proud audience to the women as they get the spirit and cast off the trials and tribulations of the week. In “Revelations,” Ailey glorifies not only the female body, which most choreographers do, but also the male body, and, more specifically, the Black male dancer, who moves differently onstage than, say, a dancer like Baryshnikov (an Ailey admirer, who appeared in his 1976 piece “Pas de Duke” with Judith Jamison). You can feel that the spotlight is often on the men in Ailey’s work, and his early queer experiences clearly play a part in his artistic story.
Cartoon by Mick Stevens
In his book, Ailey talks about a twelve-year-old named Chauncey, his best friend when he was eight, and how, one summer afternoon, he and Chauncey were playing by a water tank behind Alexander’s house. It “must have been twenty feet deep,” Ailey writes, “and very slick at the edges.”
“We’ve got lots of old Victorian statues of men, particularly in Leeds, and I think there was an ambition to redress this gender imbalance in public art in the city.” – The Guardian (UK)
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Although Amazon’s second Prime Day event of the year has come and gone, you can still get great deals on their site. You can also find bargains at other retailers like Walmart, Target, and Adorama, where we are seeing some great prices on tech for artists and galleries. Check them out below.
AMAZON DEALS
Sennheiser Consumer Audio MOMENTUM True Wireless 3 Earbuds Buy for $154.95 and save 45%
These wireless earbuds are designed with adaptive noise cancellation, which means you can listen to audio and be completely immersed in the music or audio without distractions, or you can use the transparency mode to stay in touch with the world around. They also have an IPX4 rating, which means they have some water resistance, and a very good battery life of up to 7 hours.
***Limited time deal!*** Kasa Smart Video Doorbell Buy for $37.99 and save 37%
If you’re looking for a high-quality wired video doorbell, this Kasa Smart Video Doorbell offers a lot for the money. It provides very good 2K-video resolution video, a 160-degree diagonal field of view, and two-way audio via a single tap on the Kasa mobile app. It’s also compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant technologies.
Sony Alpha 7C Full-frame Mirrorless Camera – Silver (ILCE7C/S) Buy for $1298.00 and save 19%
There’s a lot to love about the Sony Alpha 7C: For starters, it’s one of the smallest and lightest full-frame mirrorless cameras on the market, but still has a 24.2-megapixel, full-frame CMOS sensor. It has an excellent battery life, a flexible display, versatile autofocus modes, 5-axis in-body image stabilization, and it can capture both photos and video.
GoPro HERO12 Black and Accessories Bundle Buy for $299.99 and save 33%
The GoPro HERO12 Black action cam is lightweight and very portable, but it packs a lot of great technology. It can shoot 5.3-resolution video (which provides more detail than 4K and 1080p) and capture 27-megapixel still photos. High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology which offers better detail in shadow areas and highlights, and GoPro’s HyperSmooth 6.0 stabilization minimizes jitter and shake in video footage. It’s also rugged: waterproof to a depth of 33 feet. This bundle includes a handler, head strap, Enduro battery, and carrying case.
AT WALMART
Apple AirPods with Charging Case (2nd Generation) Buy for $89.00 and save 31%
These older, second-generation AirPods come with the standard lightning charging case, are lightweight, and are easy to set up. When listening to audio, just double-tap to play or skip forward. They also charge quickly in the case.
Lenovo IdeaPad 3i 15 inch Windows II Laptop Buy for $479.00 and save 45%.
This Lenovo IdeaPad Windows laptop offers a lot of value, and it now 45% percent off at Walmart. It comes with an Intel Core i7-1255U processor, a Windows 11 Home OS, and a 15.6-inch FHD IPS touchscreen display, with is also LED backlit and has anti-glare coating. Not to mention 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 memory and a 512GB solid state drive for internal storage.
AT BEST BUY
Apple 10.2-Inch iPad (9th Generation, Space Gray) with Wi-Fi Buy for $199.99 and save 39%
This Wi-Fi only version of Apple iPad comes with 64 GBs, has a 10.2-inch Retina display, A13 Bionic chip with Neural Engine, and stereo speakers. You get up to 10 hours of battery life and it has a Lightning connector for charging and accessories. This model comes with an 8-megapixel back camera and a 12-megapixel, ultra-wide front camera.
AT ADORAMA
Lexar Silver Series Professional 1066x 512GB UHS-I SDXC Memory Card Buy for $59.95 and save 40 percent
This Lexar Silver Professional 1066x SD memory card is now 40 percent off, which is great if you need a great memory card for photography or videography. With this card, you should be able to capture video resolutions in Full-HD or at 4K UHD. It’s engineered for high-speed performance, has a capacity of 512GBs, is reliable and durable, and is compatible with many mirrorless cameras, DSLRs, and point-and-shoots.
Nikon Z 7II Mirrorless Camera bundle Buy for $1996.95 and save 33%
This is the second-generation model of Nikon’s second full-frame mirrorless cameras, the Z 7. The Nikon Z 7II offers a high-resolution 45.7-megapixel sensor, a 493-point Hybrid autofocus system for precise focus, and in-body image stabilization. It can also capture 4K ultra HD video capture at multiple frame rates. This special deal not only gives you a third off, but adds a 128GB SD memory card, an extra battery. and a cleaning kit.
AT TARGET
***SALE ENDS TODAY!*** Canon EOS R100 RF-S18-45mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM Lens Kit Buy for $499.99 and save 17%
While many artists and photographers lust after full-frame mirrorless cameras, there are many excellent mirrorless cameras out there with smaller sensors. Among them is the Canon EOS R100, which has a smaller-than-full-frame APC-C-size sensor. In addition, it has a DIGIC 8 processor, Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus (which is super fast), the ability to fire off a burst of photos at 6.5 frames per second and capture 4K-resolution video up to 24 fps or Full-HD videos up to 60 fps (although the videos are cropped). This is a quality tool for a reasonable price, especially at 17% off.
A self-described mad scientist, Erica Sellers has merged art and design since she was a child. She invented contraptions and imaginary worlds, drawing or painting to let her many ideas take shape.
While the product designer and builder has had many supporters, none was more influential than her grandmother Elsa, or “Nonni” to Sellers. Eccentric and generous, Elsa taught Sellers how to play five-card poker, telling her it would come in handy one day. She also nurtured her granddaughter’s love of architecture. “I have fond memories of her driving me around her neighborhood in Palm Beach, Florida to look at all the mansions,” Sellers says. “She’d park right out in front of them so I could sit and sketch.”
After earning a degree in industrial design from Rhode Island School of Design, Sellers’ ventures included a stint as head of production for conceptual artist Tavares Strachan, a fellow RISD alum. Her vision for his installations at the Venice Biennale and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art garnered international acclaim.
Sellers and longtime collaborator Jeremy Silberberg founded Studio S II in 2020. The pair works on a range of projects, from interiors to exhibition design. Whether experimenting with glass, aluminum, or maple wood, Sellers incorporates elements of kink, queerness, and a dash of science fiction into her work. She continues to push boundaries, always striving to challenge conventions with furniture and spaces that are distinctly cinematic.
There’s plenty to keep Sellers busy, but physical activity like boxing helps to center her. She’s also passionate about snowboarding, and wishes she had more time to devote to developing that particular skill. Even though she sometimes struggles to achieve a manageable balance, she enjoys consistent creative momentum. “My personal life and work life are pretty intertwined, which can be positive and negative,” Sellers notes. “The lack of boundaries can get exhausting, but I am constantly inspired and ready to hit the ground running.”
This photo of my grandmother Elsa (“Nonni”) always resonated with me. She had three husbands throughout her life and she traveled the world. She loved adventure. She loved glamour and living life to the fullest!
Nancy Grossman, Untitled, 1968. Leather, wood, epoxy and metal hardware. 16 ⅞” x 7 ½” x 8 ¾” Photo: Erica Sellers
I first discovered Grossman’s work at Art Basel 2019 and was immediately floored. There were two bondaged male heads made from elaborately stitched leather and zippers. They were simultaneously chilling and compelling. When I read that these were made in the late 1960s, that just blew my mind. They felt so contemporary and spoke to real subjects I experience today – masculinity, abuse, and identity. They’re radical. Her work embodies a beautiful mix of the sensual and the grotesque. According to Grossman, “your head, which is the seat of your hang-ups, is also your most powerful organ.”
There is a wonderful interview with Nancy Grossman from The Modern Art Notes Podcast you can listen to here.
Rick Owens and Michele Lamy, 2015 Photo: Danielle Levitt, courtesy of Rizzoli
I love Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy as collaborators and independent artists. To me, they are the most inspiring duo. I’ve closely followed their work and I adore how their work is their life. They live it, they respect the process of making, and they respect each other. From what I can tell, they also have good ethics and a sense of responsibility in belonging to the creative industry. It always surprised me that Rick Owens’ fashion didn’t hit it big until he was 40. It reminds me that showing yourself to the world can take a very long time, even when you’re highly devoted. I really look up to them.
Klára Hosnedlová is my favorite contemporary artist right now. I saw an Instagram post about her show GROWTH in Basel, Switzerland on my feed, and I was instantly absorbed and transported by her surreal work. Her performances embody everything I aim to understand and feel. I want Studio S II’s work to do the same.
“Can’t Help Myself” de Sun Yuan et Peng Yu (Biennale de Venise 2019). Installation des artistes chinois Sun Yuan et Peng Yu, 2016. Robot industriel KUKA, divers matériaux et capteurs, cage de verre dans une structure d’aluminium. Courtesy the Artists. Pavillon international dans les Giardini (Biennale d’art de Venise 2019) Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra
This is probably one of the single best pieces of art I’ve ever seen in person. I saw this in May 2019 at the 58th Venice Biennale. “Can’t Help Myself” features a robotic arm that continuously sweeps a deep red liquid back and forth, perpetually failing to neaten it. The arm’s erratic movements express near hysteria, as if it’s meant to portray a human who’s overcome with anxiety.
There are infinite ways to interpret this piece, but it makes me sympathize with the robot’s infinite loop. To me, it’s as if it is experiencing the intense stress of responsibilities and expectations. It just doesn’t know how to go on. This feels especially relevant with the advent of A.I. and the continuation of the combined mix between man and machine. I see this machine as almost human in its pursuit. Or is humanity just becoming more like machines?
EHT Mirror , 2023 The Event Horizon Mirror seems like an ordinary looking glass, however, turning its right-hand knob, causes all reflectivity to vanish, revealing fiery undulations reminiscent of a massive black hole. Activating the piece results in a mesmerizing, consuming phenomenon that causes one’s identity and reflection to be lost and replaced by an endless abyss. This 3D-dimensional illuminated artwork is inspired by images captured only last year of black hole M87 by the Event Horizon Telescope. This “telescope”, which is a network of globally synchronized observatories, is exclusively working towards understanding all things associated with black holes. As we continue to unpack black holes to better understand the universe, perhaps we will learn a little more about our own essence.
Tremor Dining Table, 2024 The Tremor Dining Table elicits the theory of plate tectonics with shifting metal planes. The chrome side of the table and the rubbed steel side of the table intersect at mirrored angles, suggesting a perpetual subterranean state of movement.
DV Chairs Chrome & Verdigris Edition, 2023 Inspired by a myriad of indulgent nights, this chair is meant to share the feeling and effect of “double vision,” the phenomenon of perceiving two images, usually overlapping, as one holistic object. Double vision is often the result of impaired function of the extraocular muscles, in which both eyes are still functional, but cannot target the desired object. In this series, the objects simultaneously pull apart and come together. These new adaptations integrate reflective and patinated materials against the rich browns of american walnut. The new, curvilinear elements render the chrome-plated chair even more disorienting, while the verdigris chair suggests the chrome’s eventual decay.
Chastity Sconce, 2023 With restraint comes anticipated pleasure. Such is the philosophy behind our Chastity Sconces. Rippled glass lies underneath a cage of stainless steel to juxtapose sinuousness and rigidity. The glow of the underlying light accentuates the layering of materials, inviting the sensual and the severe.
Artio Floor Lamp, 2023 The Artio Floor Lamp features two standing cylindrical loops of illuminated fur. They glow from the inside of their contours, creating twin pockets of light that accentuate their symmetry and ricochet throughout a room. The lamp is inspired by the curvature of animal horns and celebrates the unbridled, sometimes humorous nature of the wild. An artiodactyl is an order of mammals to which many horned creatures belong.
Anna Zappia is a New York City-based writer and editor with a passion for textiles, and she can often be found at a fashion exhibit or shopping for more books. Anna writes the Friday Five column, as well as commercial content.
✓Showcase your talent and win big in Artists Network prestigious art competitions! Discover competitions in a variety of media and enter for your chance to win cash prizes, publication in leading art magazines, global exposure, and rewards for your hard work. Plus, gain valuable feedback from renowned jurors. Let your passion shine through - enter an art competition today!
12 inspiring books to gift to the art-friendly people in your life this holiday season.
When considering gift ideas, a book—and not the digital kind, but a printed book with weight and texture that you can feel in your hands — will never go out of style. You can wrap a book in colorful paper and tie it up with ribbon. For artists and art lovers—and the parents or grandparents of future art appreciators—books remain a popular gift, both to give and receive. To make your holiday shopping easier this year, we’ve put together a list of book suggestions to suit all sorts of readers on your shopping list!
Art Books for Youngsters
A reading list for little folks with creative minds!
The Art Book for Children (Phaidon, 2024) is serious about art and assumes the parents or grandparents or other adults who buy this book for their kids are also dedicated to the subject. Phaidon, one of the most esteemed publishers of books on art, has released a newly revised edition of this popular series, which first published 20 years ago. It includes beautiful reproductions of iconic works of art like self-portraits by Frida Kahlo (1907–54) and Botticelli’s Primavera (1482). This is a book intended for adults and kids to read together. The publisher targets the content toward 7– to 12-year-olds, but adults will also find it fascinating and informative. It’s a gift under $25 that can make a lasting impact on a child’s imagination.
Dot, Scribble, Go (Chronicle Books, 2024) is a new hands-on activity book for kids by Herv Tullet, who has authored more than 80 books on art. Tullet starts with the premise that it’s part of human nature to want to make marks on paper (or any other surface for that matter), and that those marks, dots and scribbles can be a gateway to the imagination. His lighthearted and whimsical approach, while targeting the kindergarten and preschool age group, might also encourage adults to think about what it means to make art. At under $20, this gift is both fun and affordable.
What Is Color? The Global and Sometimes Gross Story of Pigments, Paint, and the Wondrous World of Art (Roaring Brook Press, 2024), by noted author and illustrator Steven Weinberg, is a delightful and educational mash-up of science, art, history, geology and anthropology, all in the service of helping us understand and appreciate the origins and meaning of color in our lives. Although targeted to 6- to 10-year-olds, you may want a copy to keep for yourself.
Books for Art History Lovers
Art history is a slow-moving story. These books are recent, but not brand new, and some are classics that have held up over time.
Traditionally art history has been taught chronologically, and most often from a European, male-dominated perspective. Thematically arranged by the staff at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, Art = Discovering Infinite Connections in Art History from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Phaidon, 2020) uses more than 800 objects from the museum’s own collection to shake up our thinking about what art is and how it’s integrated in our lives. At $75, this is a high-end gift book that can be passed on and used as reference for years to come.
Women, Art and Society (Thames & Hudson, 2020), by author Whitney Chadwick, was one of the first books to present art history from a woman’s point of view. Now in its sixth revised edition, it reexamines the impact that new feminism has had on the way art history is taught and the way art is collected and exhibited in museums. It includes lots of color images of work by women artists from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance to today. Curator and professor Flavia Frigeri, a rising star in art history circles and a curator at the National Portrait Gallery, London, is an important contributor. A paperback edition is available for under $25.
Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) was an Italian Renaissance artist and biographer best known for the publication of The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World’s Classics), which is considered the bedrock reference for all art historical writing that has followed. This translation, re-issued in 1998, is a must-read for anyone interested in the way some of the greatest artists of the Renaissance period lived and worked. It includes details of the lives of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Michelangelo (1475–1564), among others. Now also available in kindle, audio and paperback editions for as little as $5, it could make a useful gift for the budding art historian in your life.
Books for Your Artist Friends
For your friends who know their way around a paintbrush, here are few instructional and career-minded reads to encourage their art practice.
Become a Great Artist: Gain Confidence in Your Art, Find Your Creative Voice and Launch a Thriving Career (Page Street Publishing, 2024) is a new book by Kristy Gordon, an accomplished painter and adjunct professor at New York Academy of Art. With a goal of helping artists overcome some of most challenging issues blocking their path to success, this is a guidebook for practicing creatives in all media. Learn how to develop long-lasting habits, incorporate techniques from prolific artists into your craft, pitch to art galleries, make a career from your art, and more! Available in kindle and paperback for under $25, this gift could be a game-changer for artists who want to grow.
Artists Lynn Sures and Michelle Samour partnered up to write Radical Paper: Art and Invention with Colored Pulp (The Legacy Press, 2024), a 440-page hardcover presentation of the many ways paper pulp has been used in art-making over the years. It includes intimate looks at the studio practice of many artists who’ve explored the varied uses of paper as a surface and as a medium, inventing new methods of art-making. It’s a pricey book, at $75, but includes more than 200 works of art by 73 groundbreaking visual artists, making it an exciting resource for artists, curators, collectors, art historians, and anyone who finds inspiration in the endless possibilities offered by paper.
Drawing has been an expressive outlet and a path of creativity for humans since we first traced our hands on cave walls. In Drawing Thought: How Drawing Helps Us Observe, Discover, and Invent (Penguin Random House, 2022), author Andrea Kantrowitz, who holds an MFA in Painting from Yale and was a teaching-artist in the New York City public schools for many years, encourages readers to explore the development of their own ideas through the exercise of drawing. A paperback edition is available and priced under $25.
Artsy Books for Anyone
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood (Thames and Hudson, 2024), by author/critic Hettie Judah, explores the image of motherhood created by artists throughout art history, while also delving into the real-life issues artists face in becoming parents. Judah includes the thoughts and work of modern and contemporary artists, such as Berthe Morisot (1841–95), Barbara Hepworth (1903–75), Jenny Saville (b. 1970), Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), Betye Saar (b. 1926), Suzanne Valadon (1865–1938), Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953), and many other artists whose views of motherhood (positive, ambivalent or outright hostile) infused their work. Mothers and fathers alike who are juggling creative careers while raising a family will find much to ponder in this groundbreaking book. A hardcover edition is available for under $40.
The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World (Pegasus Books, 2024), by Australian writer Jennifer Higgie, explores the lives of previously marginalized women, like the early 20th-century Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), who has recently seen a surge of new interest, causing her work to be reevaluated by museums and collectors alike. Higgie, who also wrote The Mirror and the Pallette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience–Five Hundred Years of Women’s Self Portraits, is an author whose work has changed the way I perceive the history of art. The Other Side discusses the solace of ritual, the impact of myth and the relationship of spiritualism to feminism in art, giving readers much to ponder. A hardcover version is available for under $20.
In The Artist’s Studio: A Cultural History (Thames and Hudson, 2023), author James Hall traces the history of art-making from the Renaissance to the present day by taking readers inside that mythical place, an artist’s most private domain—their studio. A color photo of the nearly unimaginable chaos of Francis Bacon’s (1909-1992) London studio, taken in 1998, precedes the introduction—a hint to the many surprises to come. The book provides a unique way to think about the way artists live in their own time. A hardcover edition is priced under $25.
About the Author
Cynthia Close earned an MFA from Boston University and worked in various art-related roles before becoming a writer and editor. She is a regular contributing writer to Artists Magazine.
When looking for emerging artists making extraordinary work, there is often no better place to start than with the opinions of other more established artists. Frieze discovered this last year through the success of its Artist-to-Artist initiative, which saw six renowned artistic figures, including Tracey Emin and Simone Leigh, nominate the next generation of talent for solo exhibitions at the fair.
Frieze has brought Artist-to-Artist back this year, inviting another six leading artists—Hurvin Anderson, Lubaina Himid, Rashid Johnson, Glenn Ligon, Zineb Sedira and Yinka Shonibare—to put forward their selections. “All of our nominators have a longstanding commitment to supporting other artists in their own practice, through teaching, curating or setting up spaces to support artists,” says Frieze London’s director, Eva Langret, noting that for many this will be their fair debut. Here, the nominating artists tell The Art Newspaper about their choices.
Lubaina Himid on Magda Stawarska
I’ve known Magda Stawarska for over two decades. Although our work contrasts aesthetically and differs in subject matter, we’re both interested in revealing the hidden aspects of the memories and histories we explore. I selected her for Frieze because I greatly admire her and her gallery, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix.
Magda is a person who layers things, and I find how she does this endlessly fascinating as it’s different from my practice. Artistically, I’m interested in the layers of history you can peel back, but that’s not how I paint. One of Magda’s pieces in Frieze, for example, is a 20m by 20m print made with 12 layers of patterns. Similarly, when she makes sound works, there could be a field, a voice, and an archive recording composed one on top of another.
We’re both interested in revealing the hidden aspects of the memories and histories we explore
Lubaina Himid, artist
Picking her for this project is also an opportunity to commemorate the many things I’ve learned from working with her in various ways. She was one of the first people to help me make prints. Then, in 2017, I was asked to restage my artwork Naming The Money, which, at the time, had a soundtrack that I made in 2004 in a shoddy way. She remade and recomposed the sound so it matched the quality of the artwork. I’ve also participated in some of her sound pieces. I think more people should know about her.
Rashid Johnson on Rob Davis
Rob Davis is from a fairly under-resourced background and his work explores images and signifiers from this. I first met the New York-based artist around 25 years ago when we were both in Chicago. He was in a curatorial collective with another painter, Michael Langlois, working on an exhibition that included me and a few others. I fell in love with Robert and Michael’s practice because it was out of step with the times. Their representational paintings spoke this candid language around pictures, exploring themes and concepts that were not de rigueur at the time. I became very intrigued by the sophistication of their approach.
Rob eventually began making work on his own, which carried on the sensibility of what he had been doing in the collaboration, but with more of a relation to nostalgia and the exploration of his own experiences. I’ve watched his practice mature and become more complicated, and I think he’s making some of the most interesting and honest pictures of any artist I know today. I’m in deep gratitude for the seat I’ve had in watching his work unfold and evolve.
Peter Uka Kai Schmidt; courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim
Hurvin Anderson on Peter Uka
I came across Peter Uka’s paintings through a combination of general research and a friend’s recommendation. I have yet to meet Peter [in person], but we’ve had a few conversations and I’m particularly interested in his use of colour, especially its depth and boldness.
His work centres around the Black figure, which feels more important to me now than ever. While it’s fantastic that there have been many prominent exhibitions that have focused on the Black experience recently, I don’t think the momentum should change in that respect. So, if I get the chance to celebrate the work of a Black artist I admire, I take it.
There aren’t that many parallels between Peter’s work and mine, apart from maybe our ideas around memory and the fact that we are both trying to recapture the essence of something from the past. That said, like me and many others, Peter has painted the barbershop. It’s a culturally significant space, so that’s no surprise. But it’s always interesting to see another artist’s interpretation of it.
I hope that Peter’s display at Frieze will introduce many other people to his work and that visitors will see the skill he has with his palette and the refreshing perception in his storytelling and composition.
Nengi Omuku Photo: Full House Partners; courtesy the artist, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery and Kasmin, New York
Yinka Shonibare on Nengi Omuku
I met the Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku just over ten years ago when she was a student at Slade School of Fine Art, and I’ve been watching her progress ever since. Instead of working on canvas, she paints on Sanyan cloth, a traditional Yoruba fabric, where she creates beautiful images that combine aspects of Nigerian and Western heritage.
Growing up, Nengi worked with her mother, a florist and horticulturist, during school holidays, and she has brought this experience into her work in a multifaceted way. In her paintings, you can see nature, landscapes and figuration, referencing her upbringing, as well as the climate. Her figures are also somewhat anonymous looking because she doesn’t want them to have any pronounced racial features, allowing them to be seen more as universal people.
Nengi’s pieces are sometimes displayed unconventionally, too, with some hung away from the wall so viewers can walk around them. This gives people the opportunity to see the skill that goes into making these fabrics, breaking the boundaries between art and craft while also championing women’s work. In 2022, she went on an artists’ residency in Senegal, where she worked with women who weave such fabrics.
It’s important for people to see alternative perspectives, different stories, and different people. And as someone with an African British background, she has a voice that needs to be heard.
Glenn Ligon on Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom
Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom’s work is multifaceted, using performance, photography, video and sound. I chose him because platforms like Frieze allow artists to get their work out to a wider audience. I think it’s hard to find institutional spaces to accommodate the variety of his practice, which Frieze will allow him to do.
We often imagine that artists are fully formed, and I like that his work is about the desire to learn and the process of learning in public, as well as the desire to collaborate. I’m also impressed with his ability to think through what it means to make in and with the public. The most important aspect of this is the risk. To learn in public is to fail in public, too, and I think that’s a generosity his practice offers—letting the artistic process be visible.
I like that Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom’s work is about the desire to learn and the process of learning in public
Glenn Ligon, artist
Over the years, his ambitions have become more complex. He’s diving into his works in many different forms and considering their implications. He is thinking deeply about how he wants to engage audiences and who he is collaborating with. We’re not simply watching him learn, we’re learning too because we get insight into how artists think and how they make work. That is what makes him stand out to me.
Massinissa Selmani Julie Ansiau for Centre Pompidou
Zineb Sedira on Massinissa Selmani
I chose Massinissa Selmani because he’s an artist I respect. Like me, he is from Algeria, and his work deals with many aspects of the country’s politics and culture, which I can connect to.
There is only a small community of artists coming out of Algeria, so we tend to know each other, either physically or through each other’s art. His work took me aback because it was very witty and had a sense of humour specific to the country. I also did a big project on humour from the 1990s, and I remember having a very long conversation with him about the caricature, jokes and humour used to fight against what we call the “black decade” in Algeria. Massinissa and I are similar in that we are both interested in researching and pulling out histories from Algeria that could disappear if nobody mentions them.
In my decision, I also considered the space where the works would be shown. I see Frieze more as booths than exhibition spaces, and I felt he could do something interesting with that. He uses animations, drawings and installations. He shows drawings on the walls framed in a very classical manner but also goes beyond that by displaying objects and animations on small screens and tables. I wanted to choose an artist who wouldn’t just slap things on the walls like many galleries do.
Amy Sherald shot to superstardom when her portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama debuted in 2018, and now the artist will have a homecoming of sorts at a major museum show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Opening in September 2025, “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” constitutes the most expansive exhibition of the artist to date. Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art, the show will debut in California this November before moving to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and later to the Portrait Gallery. It is sure to be a blockbuster, when the dual portraits of Michelle and Barack Obama were unveiled at the Portrait Gallery in 2018, the showing nearly doubled the museum’s attendance.
Amy Sherald in the studio with For love,and for country (2022). Photo: Kelvin Bulluck. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
The New York-based artist explores the African American experience in the United States through her intimate portraits of Black Americans—primarily women—set against strikingly colorful, minimalist backgrounds. Over the course of her 15-year-long career, Sherald’s paintings have often commemorated the highs and lows of America’s recent history. In addition to the Obama portrait, the exhibition includes her powerful 2020 portrait of Breonna Taylor, created to honor Taylor’s life after she was tragically killed in her Louisville, Kentucky, home. The portrait became a significant symbol in protests across the country and the world, and achieved even greater notice when it was used as the cover for Vanity Fair. Another highlight of the show is the debut of For Love, and for Country (2022), recently acquired for SFMoMA’s permanent collection.
The cover of Vanity Fair‘s September 2020 issue, featuring a portrait of Breonna Taylor by Amy Sherald. Courtesy of Vanity Fair.
Sherald’s work captures Black Americans’ everyday lives, transcending time and place by removing details that could situate her subjects in a specific context. Her process often begins with photographing individuals she meets by chance or in passing, allowing her to transform each subject into a painted canvas that invites viewers to contemplate their complex interiority and stories beyond the visible.
A distinctive aspect of Sherald’s work is her use of a grayscale palette for skin tones, through a process called grisaille—a Renaissance-era technique where paintings are nearly monochromatic. By depicting her subjects in shades of grey, Sherald emphasizes race as a social construct rather than an absolute identity, challenging viewers to engage with the individuals she portrays without assumptions based on skin color. This technique has become a hallmark of her style, positioning her work as an exploration of identity, representation, and selfhood within contemporary America.
Curated by Rhea L. Combs, director of curatorial affairs at the National Portrait Gallery, American Sublime is a celebration of Sherald’s precise technical skill and her ability to convey emotional depth through her art. “The Portrait Gallery’s presentation of American Sublime celebrates a full circle of sorts,” Combs states, reflecting on Sherald’s journey as the first woman and the first African-American the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the museum in 2016 to becoming a globally recognized artist represented by Hauser & Wirth, with her work in public collections from Baltimore Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Columbus Museum, Long Museum, Shanghai and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, amongst many more. Combs emphasizes Sherald’s capability to draw viewers in through both her technical acumen and the empathy that radiates from her portraits, prompting audiences to consider her subjects’ identities and experiences in an entirely new way.
Accompanying the exhibition is a new publication by SFMOMA, in association with Yale University Press, which chronicles Sherald’s career, artistic influences, and significant impact on the contemporary art landscape.
Amy Sherald: American Sublime is a landmark exhibition that represents Sherald’s most ambitious exploration of American identity, history, and portraiture to date. Her work places Black experiences firmly within the canon of American art, challenging conventional portrayals and offering an intimate view of contemporary life. This mid-career survey underscores Sherald’s influence, blending empathy, historical awareness, and a visionary approach to portraiture that continues to captivate audiences.
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” will be on view at SFMoMA from November 16, 2024 to March 9, 2025; at the Whitney Museum from April 9 to August 3, 2025; and at the Portrait Gallery from September 19, 2025 to February 22, 2026.
