Blog
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A Recent Interview
I recently sat down with Mark Nimar, of The West Side Spirit, to discuss some of the ways my practice has evolved throughout COVID and how becoming a mom has changed my approach to teaching and art history. Read more here!
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Changes
In December of 2016, I was interviewed by Michael Shaw, an LA-based artist, for his podcast, The Conversation. You can hear the interview here. At the time, we talked about my pedagogical approach to teaching art history, giving tours to different audiences—small and large, young and old—and what I love (and hate) about living in Brooklyn and working mostly on the Upper East Side. I just re-listened as a means of reflecting upon how my work has changed over the past six years. The answer is: a lot.
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On Kawara: Killer (and Marker) of Time
On Kawara’s Guggenheim retrospective was a surprising revelation, far more powerful–and poignant–than I’d previously expected. The artist, who died last year, was born in Japan on December 24, 1932, forcing him to experience the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he was a teenager. Though he’d initially wanted to be a scientist, witnessing the dangerous side of scientific advancement changed his mind. After a brief career as a figurative surrealist, Kawara destroyed his early work, left Tokyo for Paris then New York, and landed on a practice that would endure for nearly fifty years. His subject was time, and his goal was to record its passage.
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Jeff Koons and Nostalgia
Who knew that a 1981 Hoover could induce nostalgia? Or, for that matter, a 1986 ad for Frangelico? Jeff Koons, now 59 and still working feverishly, probably did not. Nonetheless, in the many tours that I’ve led through his excellent retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American art, his object choice has proven intoxicating. Last weekend, a woman–Koons’s contemporary– mentioned that a green upright Hoover, encased in plexiglass and illuminated by florescent tubes, triggered feelings of fledgling independence. In 1982, when she had just moved into her own apartment in the East Village, her first major purchase was that vacuum cleaner. “I felt so responsible, so adult,” she mused.
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Reconsidering Futurism
Italian Futurism is often considered a hawkish movement that was, for many years, in cahoots with Fascism. This impression is not wholly unwarranted, though it does deserve some careful parsing. Futurism lasted for thirty-five years, from 1909-1944, and throughout this long tenure, it passed through many phases, some more bellicose than others.
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Feminine Mystique
I don’t consider myself an ardent feminist, but I’ve spent the last few months thinking about how gender affects one’s identity, particularly when it comes to power relations. Perhaps my favorite show of the winter attempts to answer this question, albeit from a very specific perspective.
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Border Crossings
Over the past century, many artists, architects, and designers have crossed international borders–or entire oceans–to launch, bolster, inspire, or save their careers. I am currently teaching a class entitled Border Crossings at Parsons the New School for Design. In it, my students and I are investigating how lengthy sojourns, and sometimes permanent migrations, affected the output and identities of many creative minds. Similarly, we are considering how transplanted trailblazers have acted as significant conduits for cultural exchange. Moving in a roughly chronological manner, we are focusing on four paradigms of border crossing: 1) Individuals moving within Europe for inspiration and career advancement before World War I; 2) North and South Americans migrating to European capitals for training; 3) European innovators fleeing to the Americas during and following the Second World War; and 4) contemporary stars who are simultaneously based in multiple countries, thus illustrating the permeability of geographic boundaries today.
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James Turrell’s Light Show
It took a few weeks for Aten Reign–James Turrell’s soaring piéce de résistance, now on viewat the Guggenheim–to win me over. The pre-opening hype had been immense, and when I finally saw the work, alone on a day when the museum was closed, I found myself mystified and groping for proper language. On a purely physical level, the work is impressive, ambitious, and uplifting. It is likely the most complex exhibition the Guggenheim has ever undertaken: after nearly seven years of planning, off-site construction took over three months, and on-site installation lasted five weeks. Aten Reign’s shape and dimensions correspond with Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling void, and after September 23, it will never be shown again.
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Heavy Metal
Exactly six years ago, the Ghanaian-born artist El Anatsui shimmered into the international spotlight when two of his workswere shown at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Today, critics, curators and art historians still struggle to come up with a term that aptly describes his most successful and alluring compositions–stiff, colorful sheets of discarded metal bottle tops, linked together and suspended from the wall or ceiling. These singular compositions exist somewhere between painting and sculpture, and as Robert Storr explained in 2011, a full ten years after Anatsui began making these hanging pieces, “It is a measure of El Anatsui’s originality that there remains even now no accepted term to describe the artist’s signature works.” Many art-world professionals discuss Anatsui’s oeuvre not on its own terms by in relation to the works of other artists who recycle materials or use ready-made objects (i.e. Marcel Duchamp or Kurt Schwitters).
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Turning Heads
When did artists start paying attention to fashion? The Metropolitan Museum’s fantastic exhibition Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity makes the argument that the marriage of art and fashion peaked in the late nineteenth century, but the relationship dates back much further.
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