this week in art

MARTA MINUJÍN: ARTE! ARTE! ARTE! / PAYMENT OF THE ARGENTINE FOREIGN DEBT TO ANDY WARHOL WITH CORN, THE LATIN AMERICAN GOLD

Marta Minujín and Andy Warhol, El pago de la deuda externa argentina con maíz, “el oro latinoamericano” (Paying Off the Argentine Foreign Debt with Corn, “the Latin American Gold”), chromogenic color print, the Factory, New York, 1985 / 2011 (collection of the artist / © Marta Minujín, courtesy of Henrique Faria, New York and Herlitzka & Co., Buenos Aires)

PAYMENT OF THE ARGENTINE FOREIGN DEBT TO ANDY WARHOL WITH CORN, THE LATIN AMERICAN GOLD
Americas Society
680 Park Ave. at Sixty-Eighth St.
Tuesday, March 26, free with advance RSVP, 6:30
www.as-coa.org

In 1985, multidisciplinary artist Marta Minujín went to the Factory to participate in a unique performance with Andy Warhol. The Argentine-born Minujín and the Pittsburgh-born Warhol sat back-to-back in red folding chairs amid one thousand ears of corn; each artist was dressed all in black, except for the platinum blond Minujín’s yellow and orange socks and the silver-wigged Warhol’s grayish-white sneakers. Titled Payment of the Argentine Foreign Debt to Andy Warhol with Corn, the Latin American Gold, the conceptual performance piece, printed in 2011 in a six-photo grid against a white background, involved the forty-two-year-old Minujín, wearing dark sunglasses, presenting the fifty-six-year-old Warhol with the international food staple maize, which had been painted yellow and orange. Over the course of the photographs, they turn to each other, look directly at the camera, and exchange a handful of ears. After the performance, Minujín and Warhol signed the corn and handed ears out to people in front of the Empire State Building, the subject of one of Warhol’s most famous films, Empire.

“Simply put, Argentina’s always owed money to the International Monetary Fund. Always. Then I thought, ‘This country’s fed the entire world by now,’ because during World War II, Argentine ships would sail out laden with seeds and corn for people to make bread and everything. So many ships sailed out, in fact, that their lives were extended by what they received from Argentina. So, for me, the dollar debt had already been settled,” Minujín says on the audioguide that accompanies the Jewish Museum exhibition “Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!,” where Payment is part of an exciting career survey of the artist through April 1. “I wanted to be done with the subject and figured I’d pay Andy Warhol. He was a friend of mine, and our intentions, way of living, everything was aligned. So, I paid off Argentina’s foreign debt to him in Latin American gold — corn. That was the idea behind this piece. Now, many issues still remain around the dollar, but it’s as though I’ve paid off this debt. For me, it’s settled. Even for Argentina, it’s settled — it has been for many years now.” One of the photos was also on view in the recent Americas Society show “El Dorado: Myths of Gold Part I.”

On March 26, Minujín will restage the event at Americas Society; admission is free with advance registration. Americas Society director and chief curator of art Aimé Iglesias Lukin and Jewish Museum associate curator Rebecca Shaykin will introduce the performance, which will be followed by a reception.

MARTA MINUJÍN: ARTE! ARTE! ARTE!
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday – Monday through April 1, free – $18
thejewishmuseum.org

“Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!” is the artist’s first comprehensive US museum survey, and it’s a revelation. Five years ago, she restaged her labyrinthine Menesunda Reloaded at the New Museum, drawing long lines. She deserves long lines again for the Jewish Museum exhibition, which includes nearly one hundred paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, and installations, alive with bright colors and immersive experiences. Conceptos entrelazados (Intertwined Concepts) is an inviting foam-stuffed mattress bursting with bold colors and patterns. Congelación a lo largo (Autorretrato de espaldas) (Long-Term Freeze [Self-Portrait with Back Turned]) at first appears to be a gentle landscape but is actually an elongated nude body that is part of Minujín’s “Frozen Sex” series. Pandemia (Pandemic) is a canvas of 27,900 pieces of hand-painted and glued mattress fabric created during the coronavirus crisis. El Partenón de libros (The Parthenon of Books) is an examination of a 1983 performance piece in which the artist built a Parthenon-shaped tower of banned books, now accompanied by contemporary American banned books. Soliloquio de emociones encontradas (Soliloquy of Mixed Emotions) undulates with enticing shapes and colors. And Implosión! is a dazzling, dizzying immersive room exploding in a whirlwind of 3D-like projections and sound.

“I don’t have origins. I have my own planet,” Minujín says in one of the above videos. The exhibition at the Jewish Museum ably displays that, as will the live performance at Americas Society.

EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION: SITES OF IMPERMANENCE

Sanford Biggers, The Cantor, pink Portuguese marble, 2022 (copyright Sanford Biggers / courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery)

SITES OF IMPERMANENCE
National Academy of Design
519 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., second floor
Thursday, February 8, free with recommended RSVP, 6:00-8:00
Exhibition continues through May 11
nationalacademy.org

“By beginning with the analysis of form’s impermanence, the Buddha appeals to the direct experience of our body,” the Dalai Lama and Ven. Thubten Chodron write in the January 2022 Tricycle article “An Unbroken Sequence.” “We know our body is constantly changing; we know it is aging and will eventually cease to exist. This is a comparatively gross form of impermanence, whereas the understanding of subtle impermanence frees us from the illusion of the body being permanent.”

Impermanence is a difficult concept to embrace, as we’ve just learned with the announcement that the Rubin Museum, the treasure trove of Himalayan art since 2004 in the former Barney’s space in Chelsea, is closing its doors in favor of a virtual presence.

In 2019, the National Academy of Design left its longtime home in the elegant Huntington mansion on Museum Mile, where it had resided since 1942. In August 2022, incoming executive director Gregory Wessner told the Art Newspaper, “Absolutely an exhibition space is in the future. Will it be a Beaux-Arts townhouse on Fifth Avenue? No. But it will be a New York space.” The organization’s new gallery is on West Twenty-Sixth St. in Chelsea.

On February 8, NAD will open its latest show, the appropriately titled “Sites of Impermanence,” consisting of art and architectural works addressing temporal and spatial concerns, by 2023 National Academicians Alice Adams, Sanford Biggers, Willie Cole, Torkwase Dyson, Richard Gluckman, Carlos Jiménez, Mel Kendrick, and Sarah Oppenheimer. Advance reservations are requested here. Cocurated by Sara Reisman and Natalia Viera Salgado, the exhibition continues Tuesday – Saturday through May 11.

In the article, the Dalai Lama and Ven. Thubten Chodron also note, “The experience of a pleasant feeling is dependent on an object, the sense faculty, consciousness, and contact, but once the feeling arises, could it be permanent during the time it endures?” You can find out at NAD.

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising) is part of QNYIAF (photo by Silvija Dogan)

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
February 7 – 17, $25
212-945-2600
nyuskirball.org

After a six-year break, the Queer New York International Arts Festival returns to the city, taking place February 7-17 at NYU Skirball. Started by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović in 2012 at Abrons Arts Center, the fest consists of works that address queerness in today’s society, this year with presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany, including live performances, installations, and public talks.

The 2024 QNYIAF kicks off February 7 with Croatian artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih’s From5to95, a hybrid video installation and online project in which Croatian women from the ages of five to ninety-five share their personal stories about gender inequality. On February 7 and 8, Croatian artists Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising), which premiered in Argentina in 2019, is performed by sex workers Juan Ejemplo, Leandra Atenea Levine Hidalgo, Pichón Reyna, and Sofía Tramazaygues, exploring the relationship between client and sex worker.

Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar’s Kill B. reimagines the Bride from Quentin Tarantino films (photo by Hrvoje Zalukar)

Isaković collaborates with fellow choreographer and dancer Mia Zalukar on Kill B., inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Playing February 9 and 10, the piece focuses on the character of the Bride as well as artistic hierarchical structures and their own professional partnership. On February 13, Toronto-based performance artist Clayton Lee goes through his sexual history in The Goldberg Variations, which mashes up Johann Sebastian Bach with WCW and WWE wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg, host of the 2018-19 competition series Forged in Fire: Knife or Death and a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice. Some iterations have included smells and live snakes, so be ready.

On February 15, Argentinian interdisciplinary artist Tiziano Cruz will deliver the autobiographical performance lecture Conference, followed by a discussion. His piece Soliloquy — I woke up and hit my head against the wall was about his mother; in Conference he turns his attention to his ancestors and his late sister. On February 16, Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz’s performance lecture La Bête is an interactive solo in which he activates a plastic replica of one of Lygia Clark’s rearrangeable hinged metal sculptures known as bichos, or “beasts,” and then the audience does the same, except with Schwartz’s naked body.

QNYIAF concludes February 17 with Raimund Hoghe Company members Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte’s An Evening with Raimund, a tribute to German choreographer, dancer, and journalist Raimund Hoghe, who died in 2021 at the age of seventy-two; excerpts from his works will be performed by seven dancers. “To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important — not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects,” Hoghe said. “On the question of success: It is important to be able to work and to go your own way — with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SOHO’S GOT SEOUL

SOHO’S GOT SEOUL
Park West Gallery
411 West Broadway between Prince & Spring Sts.
February 1 – March 4, free
www.parkwestgallery.com

On February 1 at 6:00, Park West Gallery is opening its latest show, “SoHo’s Got Seoul,” highlighting five Korean artists hailing from different disciplines. The K-Pop auction and exhibition features paintings by contemporary conceptual sculptor Yongjae Choi, photographer and music video director Jun Shim (aka Negativ), singer and television personality Kwon Jian (aka SolBi), actor and director Jun Ko, and Lee Min-woo (aka M) from the South Korean boy band Shinhwa.

“These artists have devoted decades to perfecting their original art form, such as acting or performing,” exhibition curator Dr. Stephanie Seungmin Kim said in a statement. “These paintings allowed the artists to express something more intimate. The maturity and commitment to the art and brilliance deeply moved me to tell their stories.”

Several of the artists, known in Korea as artainers, have been painting since they were children, while others only picked it up a few years ago.

“I’m not a painter — just beginner!” Jun Ko declares in the above video. “I still can’t think of myself as an artist.”

Negativ adds, “Sometimes you get tired of working with a bunch of staff. When I paint, I can focus on myself.”

And SolBi explains, “Initially, I started drawing for the purpose of psychological therapy. Drawing not only brings healing but also allows me to convey the stories and messages I want to share through art.”

HENRY TAYLOR: B SIDE

Henry Taylor, THE TIMES THAY AINT A CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH!, acrylic on canvas, 2017 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Jonathan Sobel & Marcia Dunn / © Henry Taylor)

HENRY TAYLOR: B SIDE
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Through January 28, $24-$30
212-570-3600
whitney.org

Among the many joys of the Whitney exhibit “Henry Taylor: B Side,” one of the best exhibitions of 2023 — catch it before it closes January 28 — is the audio guide. The work itself is extraordinary: stunning portraits, installations, assembled sculptures, early drawings, painted objects. Taylor, who was born in 1958 in Oxnard, California, and lives in Los Angeles, shares intimate details of his process on the guide, as do several subjects of his, artists themselves.

Regarding the above painting, a depiction of the murder of Philando Castile based on video taken by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, Taylor says, “It was definitely emotional. . . . I do have a habit. I was a journalism major. Articles and things permeate. And then you say, no,I don’t want to do it. So, you have this ambivalence. But it’s not like I’m grabbing certain headlines. Sometimes we become, sort of, nonchalant is not the word, but when something happens over and over, we become sort of immune to it. But I think I just really reacted, you know what I mean?”

Below are six more works, with highlights from the audio.

Henry Taylor, i’m yours, acrylic on canvas, 2015 (courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth / photo by Sam Kahn)

Henry Taylor: I don’t always work from photographs, but this was a photograph taken by Andrea Bowers, and I liked it. . . . In the original photograph was just my son and I. And I added my daughter. Sometimes I might have material in the studio that I just grab or gravitate to. Sometimes it’s just there for a long time. So, you just put it to use, so to speak.

Henry Taylor, Cora (cornbread), acrylic on canvas, 2008 (courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth / © Henry Taylor; photo by Jeff McLane

Andrea Bowers: It’s a beautiful old stove. And when Henry was living in downtown Los Angeles, near Chinatown, he had this beautiful old stove, very similar to this, and he cooked constantly. And his meals were fantastic. And he always said that his mother taught him how to cook. And so, I love that he found her name, “Cora,” in the word “cornbread.” And I think this was always a painting that Henry always had hanging wherever he lived. Seemed to be really meaningful to him, like a really special painting. . . . I think that Henry has painted almost every day of his life. . . . When you start working with materials, there’s things that are going to come up, that’s a whole different kind of knowledge or communication. And I think that’s where Henry’s brilliance lies, just the day-to-day working. He loves to do it. And he paints all the time, and that’s beautiful.

Henry Taylor, Andrea Bowers, acrylic on canvas, 2010 (courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth / photo by Robert Bean)

Andrea Bowers: Henry and I are friends, so I was over there all the time. So it was like, “Okay, I’m going to sit here.” I don’t know, it was probably, like, probably five sessions or something, but for kind of long periods, he kept working on it. I’m sure everyone has told you that he makes really funny faces when he draws? Oh, okay. So, Henry’s really famous for that, the intensity that he gets on the face and the speed at which he’s looking and recording, looking, recording, looking and recording, with this kind of squint, and real intensity with one eye. And the other he’s squinting with. So that’s really fun, because he’s so in it, and he’s so focused. And you can see it. You’re just constantly aware of being recorded, This is real work he’s doing. It’s really interesting and fun.

Installation view of “Henry Taylor: B Side,“ including Y’ALL STARTED THIS SHIT ANYWAY, mixed media, 2021 (photo by Ron Amstutz)

Henry Taylor: You hear writers who talk about, oh, I wrote that song in twenty minutes, and it was a hit. This one just came together. And it seemed to have a nice compact little story — for me anyway. There’s a head, a decapitated . . . or just a mannequin’s head. And maybe I was thinking of just putting everything together or some of the materials like, oh, I had a bull. I have the head. I’m thinking about Native Americans. I’m thinking about green pastures and I’m thinking about golf, and I’m thinking about land and you know the white golf thing. I just thought that the buffalo and everything just kind of worked for me. And the cowboy boots, you know, that kind of goes. The buffalo, the boots. Buffalo Bill. Hey!

Henry Taylor: My brother was about five years older than me, four grades, when I was in the ninth he was in twelfth. So, he made me aware of things like Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson. And so, I was thinking about a leather jacket. I had an idea to make only one jacket. But huge, because I didn’t know anything about this space [at LACMA]. But I was given another space. So, I was experimenting, say like closet-size. So, maybe I had eight jackets. So, it just took off from there. And I thought about the [January 6] insurrection. That is scary to me. But I don’t think — the Panthers weren’t trying to be intimidating. This was trying to save people.

Henry Taylor, Deana Lawson in the Lionel Hamptons, acrylic on canvas, 2013 (courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth / photo by Sam Kahn)

Henry Taylor: Deana [Lawson] is a photographer, a really good one, and a dear friend. And I was fortunate enough to go to Haiti with her and watch her in action. I guess this is something I did when I was visiting A. C. Hudgins, who was a collector out in the Hamptons. But, and that’s what we’d do out there, or I would do out there. I’d always have canvas there. I think I’m one of those people that just travels with material and likes to engage with nature and with people. And musicians often carry their guitar and play and collaborate and so, I look at it like that. It’s just something I enjoy doing. I love to paint.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

POETIC TRIGONOMETRY

Who: Clara Joy, K. Porcelain, Ed Pankov
What: Music and poetry in conjunction with the exhibit “Bey, Nkem & Elechi: A Triangulation”
Where: ChaShaMa Gallery, 340 East Sixty-Fourth St. between First & Second Aves.
When: Wednesday, January 10, suggested donation $10-$20, 6:00
Why: In conjunction with the Gallery Particulier show “Bey, Nkem & Elechi: A Triangulation” at ChaShaMa on the Upper East Side, which closes on January 13, a special celebratory event is being held on January 10 at 6:00, “Poetic Trigonometry,” featuring musician and artist Clara Joy, musician K. Porcelain, and poet, mystic, musician, and ordained minister Ed Pankov. The exhibition, curated by Grace Nkem and Arabella von Arx, puts works by Nkem, Amir Bey, and Obinna Elechi in conversation, exploring cultural identity and colonialism via the African diaspora through paintings, drawings, and sculpture, including Figure in a Corridor by Nkem, Purple Mask by Bey, and The Everything by Elechi.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: PORTRAITS AT THE FRICK

Barkley L. Hendricks, Lagos Ladies (Gbemi, Bisi, Niki, Christy), oil, acrylic, and Magna on canvas, 1978 (private collection / © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: PORTRAITS AT THE FRICK
Frick Madison
945 Madison Avenue at Seventy-Fifth St.
Thursday – Sunday through January 7, $12-$22, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.frick.org

My favorite specific spot in New York City museums right now is near the center of the larger of the rooms at Frick Madison containing the stunning exhibition “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick.” Facing south, about ten or twelve steps from an inner doorway, you can see a pair of James McNeill Whistler full-size portraits in the small space, Harmony in Pink and Grey: Portrait of Lady Meux, from 1881–82, and Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland, from 1871–74.

But on either side of the entrance to the Whistler room are two works by Hendricks, who was born in 1945 in Philadelphia and died in Connecticut in 2017 at the age of seventy-two. (Whistler was born in 1834 in Massachusetts and died in London in 1903 at the age of sixty-nine.) To the right is Ma Petite Kumquat, a 1983 portrait of Hendricks’s wife, Susan, while on the left is Miss T, a 1969 portrait of Hendricks’s girlfriend at the time, Robin Taylor. (Lady Meux was a working-class woman who married a brewery fortune heir and was never accepted by his family; Mrs. Leyland was a close friend of Whistler’s who was married to a Liverpool shipping magnate.)

The differences among these four large-scale vertical portraits are striking; grouping them together this way at the prestigious Frick, home to myriad masterpieces from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century, is an ingenious decision by curator Aimee Ng and consulting curator Antwaun Sargent.

“The Frick Collection was one of [Hendricks’s] favorite museums, to which he returned again and again to visit paintings by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Bronzino, and many others. All three floors of Frick Madison are the context for this special exhibition; though Hendricks’s paintings are installed only here, on the fourth floor,” Ng said in a statement.

Sargent added, “When Aimee and I first began speaking about the Frick and its place in today’s world, I suggested an exhibition on Barkley L. Hendricks — obviously because of his interest in historic art as he developed his own style of portraiture of Black subjects, but also because the quality, dignity, and visual impact of his paintings are what I would think Henry Clay Frick might be drawn to if he were collecting now, thinking of future visitors to the museum in another hundred years. . . . Presenting Hendricks’s art at a storied institution like the Frick pays due tribute to the historic significance of Barkley L. Hendricks, and it also honors the evolving role of the Frick in modern American culture.”

Mrs. Leyland and Lady Meux each wear long, light-colored elegant gowns that spread onto the floor: The former stands with her back to us, hands clasped, the flower designs on her dress matching the flowers in front of her as she looks wistfully off to the side; the latter, in a hat with a flower on it, is looking right at the viewer as her body faces away, one hand grasping her dress, making sure we understand her station.

About one hundred years later, Taylor, in all-black except for a metallic chain around her waist, is looking wistfully off to the side, her body facing us, hands behind her back, her afro a modern contrast to Mrs. Leyland’s up-do. Meanwhile, Susan is also facing us, but her eyes are closed; she is wearing a black outfit with a red flower on it, a bow tie, a green curtain pull across her shoulder (evoking the background of Hans Holbein’s Frick masterwork, his portrait of Sir Thomas More), woolly leg warmers, and red and green bows on her open-toed shoes, her nails painted, a leopard skin pillbox muff in her left hand.

The two pairs of paintings encapsulate hundreds of years of art history dominated by race, gender, and class, as Hendricks uses his early influences to capture a more honest present. “I wasn’t a part of any ‘school,’” he said in 2017. “The association I had with artists in Philadelphia didn’t inspire me in any direction other than my own. I spent my time looking to the Old Masters.” He also insisted, “It had to be done Barkley Hendricks style — no copies.”

Barkley L. Hendricks, Woody, oil and acrylic on canvas, 1973 (Baz Family Collection / © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)

The exhibition features five canvases in which the Black subjects — October’s Gone . . . Goodnight, Steve, Lagos Ladies (Gbemi, Bisi, Niki, Christy), Slick, Omarr — are wearing white against a white background so their skin and hair color seem to be floating in space; in Woody, Jamaican American dancer Woodruff (Woody) Wilson has his two arms and one leg stretched out, in yellow leotards against a yellow background. In Lawdy Mama, Hendricks sets his relative Kathy William against a gold-leaf background with a rounded top, echoing Italian Renaissance gold-leaf works, of which many are currently on view at the Frick.

In conjunction with the exhibit, Nasher Museum of Art director Trevor Schoonmaker has compiled a special 1960s/1970s playlist, with a specific song for each painting as well as intro and outro tunes; for example, Rotary Connection’s “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun” for Lawdy Mama, Don Cherry’s “Birdboy” for Woody, Gil Scott-Heron’s “I Think I’ll Call It Morning” for Miss T, Roy Ayers’s “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” for October’s Gone . . . Goodnight, and Bob Marley’s “Natural Mystic” for Omarr.

The Frick has been moving into the twenty-first century for several years now, beginning with “Elective Affinities: Edmund de Waal at the Frick Collection” in 2019, in which the author and ceramicist created site-specific vitrines of objects made of porcelain, steel, gold, alabaster, and aluminum and placed them throughout the museum, and continued during the pandemic at Frick Madison with “Olafur Eliasson and Claude Monet,” “Propagazioni: Giuseppe Penone at Sèvres,” “Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters,” and the current “Nicolas Party and Rosalba Carriera.” Here’s hoping the trend continues once the Frick moves back to its renovated home on Fifth Ave. later this year.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]