issue 011: new guard, old gods, and the meaning behind it all

20 standout reads on icons past and present, memory-soaked photobooks, mixed-media gems, Middle Eastern spotlights, and meaning-rich artist interviews.

Last week was a slower one for art news. I have to admit, I was hoping someone would give us an art-world twist on the Coldplay kiss cam spectacle (no takers). But alas, a few thoughtful exhibition write-ups, revisited masterpieces, and artist features still floated to the surface. Here are my picks:

New Guard

PSA: The Hockney show is only on for another 6 weeks!

Jeff Magid also gave a thoughtful video review of Cycladic Blues at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.

I revisited Toor’s show at Luhring Augustine this weekend after seeing this portrait and love how his style has evolved with more abstraction but the quiet assurance he captures is the same.

Mavis Pusey’s work and life pioneering Black abstraction is incredible. I didn’t know about her until reading this piece in the Times.

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Old Gods

“‘Cézanne 2025’ offers passing tourists the promise of a scavenger hunt between the works in the museum and the many haunts of Provence’s biggest painter.”

“…disease and insanity and death were the black angels that stood by my cradle.”

Great read on how art can capture our imagination and take on a life beyond what the artist ever intended.

I’ve always been puzzled by how anachronistic Bosch’s masterpiece is, but maybe it really isn’t?

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Representing the Middle East

MARWAN: A Soul in Exile features 150 of the artist’s figurative expressive works—intimate, intense, and totally singular.

Charbel Alkhoury’s photos grapple with instability, disorientation, and longing.

‘Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine’ shows that “Palestinian life, in all its colour, complexity, and creativity, will not be silenced by bombs or bulldozers.”

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5 Sublime Photo Series

"Stern’s work exists at the threshold between recognition and abstraction, challenging the viewer’s assumptions about representation.”

LA street photographer Estevan Oriol captures “underground cultures that they aren’t around” including a chance photo session at an Afghani prison that held Taliban prisoners.

Spectral, lambent, and full of literature and film references.

Great interview on the place Queer photography has in art and history.

Photographer Nagasawa captures the rich details of these sparsely inhabited Japanese islands.

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Mixed Media On Display

A new show traces the tragic pursuits of Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader who was lost at sea during a performance piece in 1975.

“A collection of over 150 of Rolf Sachs’ works speaks to his preoccupation with transforming everyday objects to create art that is sensory – both emotionally and physically.”

Sardinian artist Maria Lai is getting a sweeping reappraisal in her first North American museum retrospective.

“There's no part of our political world that's not touched by photography, so what does it mean that the language of photography is invented by men? That they have this monopoly on a language that we all use every single day? I think collage is uniquely poised to really take apart the kind of insidious baggage that comes with language.”

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Thanks for joining me for another artful week! And as always, you can see all the art articles I saved last week here.

‘til next time,

tld-art

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