Dec 15, 2020

Weekly: Artists Send Marfa Tourists a Message, How Scientists Use and Abuse Portraiture

Weekly

Dec 15, 2020 • View in browser

Happy Tuesday! ☁️ Today, the use and abuse of portraiture, monolith-mania continues across the globe, and reviews of Clyfford Still, Amy Sillman, George Condo, Virginia Jaramillo, and more.

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– Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief

“Everyone Here Hates You”

The night before Thanksgiving, artists Chris Ramming and Rob Brill put up the sign "Everyone Here Hates You" outside the Z Ranch exhibition space in Marfa (photo by Rob Brill)

The night before Thanksgiving, an electric sign appeared in the window of a crumbling adobe structure in Marfa, Texas. “Everyone here hates you,” the sign scolded, specifically addressing the tourists who had traveled to the art oasis despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Other News

Leaders in arts education are calling for the resignation of senior executives at Americans for the Arts, citing failures to address racial equity and claims of harassment within the organization.
Harvard University is removing Philip Johnson’s name from a private residence he designed as a graduate thesis project after a group denounced his “widely documented white supremacist views.”

Divya Mehra, There is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away (photo by Sarah Fuller, image courtesy the artist and Georgia Scherman Projects)

Canadian artist Divya Mehra uncovered the colonial history behind a misidentified 18th-century statue in the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s collection.
A devastating six-alarm fire destroyed the Middle Collegiate Church, a 128-year-old Gothic Revival church in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood.
Monolith-mania continues across the globe, with more shiny stainless steel pillars popping up in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Colombia, California, Las Vegas, New Mexico, and the Isle Of Wight off the coast of England.

Latest Reviews

Clyfford Still’s Questionable Attempts at “Preserving” Indigenous Culture

In the 1930s, Still co-founded the Nespelem Art Colony, through which he and other faculty and students observed a precarious Indigenous community in Washington.

Billy Anania

Poking Fun at Art History, Amy Sillman Makes a Case for Awkwardness

A collection of relatable but often erudite texts, Sillman’s Faux Pas: Selected Writings and Drawings muses on the unwieldy question of painting’s status in a world preoccupied with bigger problems.

Andrea Gyorody

George Condo’s Cutism

Condo’s paintings play to his viewers’ sense of superiority; it gives them something to smile at without thinking too deeply into the work.

John Yau

Meet Virginia Jaramillo, a Pioneering Minimalist Who Fuses Cosmology and Science Fiction

Despite a career spanning six decades, Jaramillo’s rigorous, original work has largely been overlooked by museums and markets — until now.

Lauren Moya Ford

More from Hyperallergic

How Scientists Use and Abuse Portraiture

Many scientific studies assume that the features of painted faces are the facts of the flesh-and-blood countenances to which they refer. This assumption is not only false; it is preposterous.

Yael Rice, Sonja Primmer

Andrew Cuomo Got an Emmy for Literally Just Showing Up

The New York governor receiving the Founders Award for his COVID-19 press briefings marks a new nadir in politics as style over actual results.

Dan Schindel

A Goodbye to the Uncomfortable Holiday Work Party

Alex Prager’s Farewell, Work Holiday Parties at LACMA captures the awkwardness that ensues when a room full of intoxicated, mostly white people get together during the holidays.

Lexis Olivier-Ray

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