From Graffiti to the Gallery, Futura Talks About Art

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#Hyperallergic #Fine Arts #Arts #Society #Visual Arts

28:52

Retailers are facing a rapidly evolving landscape where consumer expectations, AI advancements, and social media platforms like TikTok are redefining engagement. It feels like the holiday shopping season just ended, but when do retailers start planning for the next one, and some retailers already behind the curve for this season? Joining us today is Carey Cockrum, Director of Consulting at Cella by Randstad Digital, where she helps major brands and marketing teams optimize their strategies with data-driven insights, AI-powered content creation, and cutting-edge retail marketing trends. With the holidays just around the corner, she’s here to share what’s next for retail marketing, campaign optimization, and how brands can stay ahead in a hyper-competitive space. ABOUT CAREY COCKRUM Carey has been a part of the Creative Agency space for nearly 30 years. She has served as Designer, Creative Director, Creative Operations Lead and Agency Lead in both internal and external agencies (big and small). Carey has worked directly with C-suite stakeholders to understand organizational strategies that inform effective creative solutions. She is a bit of a data nerd and loves demonstrating results. Brands she’s supported include Fruit of the Loom, Wendy’s and Humana. In her free time, she enjoys going back to her creative roots through painting and drawing. She also spends her time improving upon the house she lives in today in Southern, MI - inside and out. RESOURCES Catch the future of e-commerce at eTail Boston, August 11-14, 2025. Register now: https://bit.ly/etailboston and use code PARTNER20 for 20% off for retailers and brands Don't Miss MAICON 2025, October 14-16 in Cleveland - the event bringing together the brights minds and leading voices in AI. Use Code AGILE150 for $150 off registration. Go here to register: https://bit.ly/agile150 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company…

4 years ago 1:04:43

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Born Leonard McGure, Futura made his reputation spray painting subway trains in New York City in the 1970s as “Futura 2000” — the number was dropped in 1999. He would go on to be part of the booming graffiti and street art movement in the 1980s, but was forced to depend on European venues and collectors after attention in the United States quickly dried up in the late 1980s, though he did go on to collaborate with various American fashion and music labels.

Now he’s back with his first solo New York exhibition in 32 years, which is taking place at Eric Firestone Gallery in Manhattan. In this conversation, he generously shares his insight into the mercurial art world, what motivates him to continue making work, and reflections on a scene that continues to change.

The music in this episode is Lara Sarkissian’s “A House is a Being,” from the album Grief Into Rage: A Compilation for Beirut, which is raising funds for victims of the Beirut blast last August. I’m sending love to those who continue to grapple with that horrific event.

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115 episodes

Hyperallergic

From Graffiti to the Gallery, Futura Talks About Art

Hyperallergic

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published 4 years ago

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Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

115 episodes

#Hyperallergic #Fine Arts #Arts #Society #Visual Arts

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Hyperallergic

1
Ancient Art, Wages, and Strikes: A 3000-Year-Old History of Labor 48:48

1 day ago48:48

48:48

At Hyperallergic , we take pride in covering protesting museum workers who take to the streets. But few realize that these workers are taking part in a practice that’s as old as some of the ancient artifacts in their institutions. In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, we’re joined by professor, public historian, and Hyperallergic contributor Sarah E. Bond, who shares her knowledge on labor organizing in the ancient world, which stretches back to the earliest recorded strike, which took place in 1157 BCE in the Ancient Egyptian artisan’s village of Deir el-Medina. We learn that it’s not just the overwhelmingly White and male field of Classics that is to blame for the lack of attention paid to the everyday workers of Ancient Egypt and Rome, but also the fact that the very authors they study, who tended to be extremely wealthy, often recorded striking workers as “rioters.” As Bond recently wrote , new studies are showing that the great artistic accomplishments and economic abundance of the ancient world were “heavily reliant on the collective contributions of the millions of enslaved persons laboring across the Mediterranean” — in fact, 20–25% of the Roman population at the height of the Roman Empire was enslaved. Some of America’s founding fathers would even quote philosophers like Aristotle, who supported this system, as justification for continuing slavery themselves. Bond joins Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian to talk about the stories that fill her new book, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire , from women textile workers staging a walkout in Ancient Egypt, to the emperor and empress who slaughter tens of thousands of protesters in the Constantinople hippodrome — and even how Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with Ancient Roman stoicism (or rather, “bro-icism”) informs technocrats’ inhuman sense of the value of human labor. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Watch the complete video of the conversation with images of the artworks on YouTube . Read more by Sarah Bond on Hyperallergic . Support this podcast and our journalism as a Hyperallergic Member. https://hyperallergic.com/membership…

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Lady Pink, the Queen of New York City Graffiti 1:34:44

15 days ago1:34:44

1:34:44

In 1971, a seven-year-old Sandra Fabara moved with her family from a city nestled in an Ecuadorian rainforest to the dense brick landscape of Brooklyn. By the time she was a teenager, she had gone from climbing trees to hopping the fences of the MTA train yards. Soon, she was known as the queen of New York City graffiti: the one and only Lady Pink. If you’re as mesmerized by the 1970s and ’80s world of New York City graffiti as we are, then you’ve seen her before, immortalized in classic photos by Martha Cooper and as one of the stars of Charlie Ahearn’s classic feature film Wild Style (1983) . In what appeared to be an almost exclusively male scene, these images showed Lady Pink holding her own as one of the few women recognized for their contributions to the golden age of graffiti writing. While she is adamant that she was not the first female graffiti artist — she credits others like Barbara 62, Eva 62, and Charmin 65, who she says “ got up more than most guys did,” even if those guys were “not willing to admit” it — she was one of the only women able to continue her career above ground in the gallery world. Today, her early memories of playing in the rainforests, which include killing a snake at the tender age of five, meld with the curves of her graffiti lettering and her inspirations from Antoni Gaudí, Hayao Miyazaki, and Frank Frazetta, to create uniquely fantastical worlds that perfectly depict the idea of an “urban jungle.” In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Lady Pink sat down with our Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian in our Brooklyn offices, just a few blocks away from her childhood home. They discuss everything from what it was like to be a woman in the graffiti world and her collaborations with artists like Jenny Holzer and Jean-Michel Basquiat to her relationship with graffiti legend Lee Quiñones , tracing her journey from train yards to galleries, mural walls, and museums, inspiring countless young women artists across continents. You can see some of her work on display now in Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection at the Museum of the City of New York through August 10, 2025. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Watch the complete video of the conversation with images of the artworks on YouTube .…

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Street Stories: Graffiti and the Legacy of Martin Wong 48:57

27 days ago48:57

48:57

The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) holds what is arguably the most important collection of early graffiti art and ephemera, amassed by Martin Wong, a queer Chinese-American self-taught painter who wore cowboy hats and, for a time, paid for his lodging in a dingy Lower East Side hotel room by working as a night porter. Drawn to the bustling art scene of late 1970s New York, Wong developed a tight network of friends in what may have seemed like an unexpected community at the time: graffiti writers, who would eventually be recognized as creating an entirely new style of art, emulated in every corner of the globe. At a time when society reviled graffiti artists as petty criminals, Wong began collecting their drawings, sketchbooks (or “blackbooks”), and eventually, paintings on canvas. He also painted moving,intimate portraits of the artists themselves. This was just one avenue he explored in his sprawling body of work, which ranges from detailed urbanscapes bustling with the life of the city, to surreal ceramics and scrolls influenced by traditional Chinese calligraphy. Before his death due to complications related to AIDS in the 1990s, Wong donated his beloved graffiti collection to the MCNY. Many of its prized pieces by renowned graffiti artists including Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Lady Pink, Rammelzee, DAZE, and others are on view now in the exhibition Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection . This episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast was recorded during a live panel at the MCNY on March 10 celebrating Wong’s collection and life. Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian moderated the discussion between Wong’s longtime friend and roommate Lee Quiñones , PPOW Gallery Co-Founder Wendy Osloff, and curator Sean Corcoran, who organized the exhibition. In front of a crowd of some 100 Hyperallergic Members and their friends, the panelists shared stories of the singular artist, his love of collecting, and his extravagant storytelling. As Quiñones recalls, Wong once said, “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection continues at the Museum of the City of New York (1220 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through August 10. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere you listen to podcasts . This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters This podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership .…

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1
Talking a Big Game: The Art of Sports and the Sport of Art 38:07

6 weeks ago38:07

38:07

We’ve been taught by high school movies and pop culture at large that art and sports are diametrical opposites. You know the trope: The sporty jocks and the nerdy theater kids are all relegated to separate lunch tables, and never the twain shall meet, save the occasional High School Musical . But a recent exhibition, Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture , takes this stereotype to the mat. In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Hrag Vartanian sits down with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) curator Jennnifer Dunlop Fletcher and independent curator and former Hyperallergic Senior Editor Seph Rodney, who designed this exhibition together with renowned art historian and SFMOMA Research Director Katie Siegel. Their conversation illuminates the striking parallels between the crafts of art and sports, whether it’s the tension between talent and persistence, the grand stages of sports arenas and museums, or countless hours of hidden labor. And, of course, people in both disciplines always talk a big game. As SFMOMA’s largest show to date, Get in the Game took up an entire floor of the museum when it was installed there, with 200 works by over 70 artists and designers meditating on themes around sports and athleticism. Over a third of these artists are either current or former athletes, from former football players like Shaun Leonardo to Olympians like Savanah Leaf. If you missed the show in San Francisco, start planning your trip to the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where it will be on view later this year , or an early 2026 trip to Florida to catch it at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The unconventional catalog that accompanies the exhibition is also on sale now , replete with vivid comic illustrations by AJ Dungo. SFMOMA is also continuing its exploration of art and sports with three current exhibitions: Count Me In and When the World Is Watching , both on view through April 2, and Unity Through Skateboarding , on view through May 4. The museum’s Bay Area Walls series also features three new murals by David Huffman, Jenifer K Wofford, and Gene Luen Yang, all meditating on the topic of sports. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere you listen to podcasts . This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters This podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership .…

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Nick Cave Is Serving You Everything 38:27

8 weeks ago38:27

38:27

One of seven brothers, Nick Cave grew up watching his family create magic out of scraps. His aunts would cut paper bags into patterns, and in just one day, make an entire new outfit to wear that night. Since then, the artist has been dedicated to studying how to lay ornamental patterns on the body. Leading the way for a current groundswell of adornment in art, Cave is known for highly decorated, maximalist works, particularly in his “Soundsuits,” which are both unapologetically joyous and respond to the deep pain of police brutality against Black people. His newest body of work, on view in Amalgams and Graphts at Jack Shainman Gallery’s large space in the Clock Tower Building through March 29, pushes and pulls the forms he’s known for playing with. Introducing needlepoint and portraiture, he flattened out his meticulous collections of objects into riotous rectangles, winking at the heritage of 19th-century floral paintings . But he’s also elongated his humanoid figures, using bronze casts of 3D scans of his own body that burst into tree forms branching toward the heavens. For this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian visited Cave at his studio in Chicago. You’ll hear them discuss how queerness informs his sensibility, his perspectives on fashion, preservation, politics, his memories of dressing in his Sunday best for church, and how the self-taught women crafters in his family planted the seeds for him to become the artist he is today. Nick Cave: Amalgams and Graphts continues at Jack Shainman (46 Lafayette Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through March 29. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere you listen to podcasts . This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters This podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership .…

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The Boys in the (Klan) Hood: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston’s Legacy 1:04:14

10 weeks ago1:04:14

1:04:14

Philip Guston, an Ashkenazi Jew, and Trenton Doyle Hancock, a Black artist with a strict Southern Christian upbringing, came from vastly different backgrounds. But a current show at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan reveals that their perspectives and sensibilities blend seamlessly. Both were maligned for their figurative, comic book-influenced styles: Guston by the elite art world that was scandalized by his abandonment of abstraction for figuration, and Doyle Hancock by the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when his mother burned his collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards and Dungeons and Dragons materials, believing that she was saving him from eternal damnation. In fact, when Doyle Hancock first came into contact with Guston, he had recently found the freedom he needed at college, away from his stringent home life, to explore new worlds of art. He told Hyperallergic that, at the time, he saw Guston “as another comic book artist.” As he honed his craft to become an editorial cartoon illustrator, he felt a kinship with Guston’s zany caricatures — and soon saw how he could continue his legacy of using comedic aesthetics to highlight the darkest aspects of American racism. Both also confronted white supremacy in various ways throughout their lives: Guston, a proud antifascist, lived through the KKK’s reign of terror in Los Angeles; Doyle Hancock would learn that the fairgrounds of his home in Paris, Texas, the place of many happy childhood memories, were once crowded with onlookers who craned their necks to view the lynching of a teenage Black boy. Further, both question if they themselves are complicit: Guston through his depiction of himself as an artist wearing the Klan hood, and Doyle Hancock through his host of surreal characters who are simultaneously perpetrators and victims of supremacy culture. In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian and Trenton Doyle Hancock come together with poet and critic John Yau, who has been writing about Guston for decades. With his deep knowledge of Guston’s life and work, Yau illuminates what almost seems like a cosmic connection between the two artists. In 2020, Guston’s work came into question over whether it was appropriate to show during a period of reckoning with racist imagery. It would be far from the first time that Guston’s work has been covered up or censored, whether it was by institutions attempting to avoid liability, the Catholic Church in Mexico being wary of standing up to authoritarianism, or anti-communist Los Angeles police units destroying his antiracist paintings. With fascism on the rise in America and around the globe, Doyle Hancock’s “confrontation” with Guston’s work shows the power of addressing white supremacy head-on, with all of its vile truths in view — and then, their power deflated, through comic relief. Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston continues at the Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue and East 92nd Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through March 30. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere you listen to podcasts . This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters This podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership .…

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Joyce Kozloff’s Patterns of Protest 1:32:50

20 weeks ago1:32:50

1:32:50

In 1973, gallerist Tibor de Nagy gave Joyce Kozloff a call. His voice quivered as he told her that Clement Greenberg had just left the back room after giving a searing review of her latest work. Greenberg had scoffed at the artist’s “Three Facades” (1973), a painting based on the rich tapestry of interlocking bricks and tiles on Churrigueresque church facades in Mexico, and said that it “looked like ladies’ embroidery” — as if that was a bad thing. Kozloff told us that “Tibor freaked out” and asked her “to take it away.” Greenberg had unwittingly dismissed the first of the artist's paintings in a major art movement of which she was a key founding member: Pattern and Decoration , also known as “P&D,” which grew out of the flowering folk revival and feminist protest era of the 1970s. Fed up with hard-edge abstraction and minimalism favored by the White men who dominated the art world, P&D leaned into lush decorative surfaces, cultural adornment, and unapologetically crafty aesthetics. Of course, it was critics like Greenberg whom P&D was revolting against. He’s cited twice in a 1978 article Kozloff co-wrote with Valerie Jaudon, “ Art Hysterical Notions of Progress and Culture .” Published in the feminist art journal Heresies (of which Kozloff was also a founding member), they wrote that in “rereading the basic texts of Modern Art … we discovered a disturbing belief system based on the moral superiority of the art of Western civilization.” They “came to realize that the prejudice against the decorative has a long history and is based on hierarchies: fine art above decorative art, Western art above non-Western art, men’s art above women’s art.” Luckily, Kozloff’s career wasn’t up to Clement Greenberg. Kozloff went on to have dozens of shows, beautify over a dozen buildings and transit systems with public artworks over the decades, and inspire new generations of artists to unabashedly lean into ornament. Once an active member of the peace protests of the 1960s, she has also continued her political activism, which in the 21st century has become more explicit in her work. Her all-over pattern paintings have morphed into detailed maps, from Civil War battle plans exploding with viruses to aeronautical charts dotted with points that the United States has bombed. In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, you’ll hear the interview our Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian recorded with Kozloff just after the opening of With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 at Bard College’s Hessel Museum of Art, which the institution called “first full-scale scholarly North American survey” of the P&D movement. They talk about everything from her mother’s embroidery to her travels in Turkey and Iran that inspired her art. You’ll also hear from Hyperallergic Staff Writer Maya Pontone, who reported this past year about Kozloff’s iconic public artwork in Cambridge’s Harvard Square train station that’s currently at risk of disappearing. And if you’ve been listening closely this season, you’ll recognize some recurring characters: Columbia professor Stephen Greene; the Heresies collective; Joyce’s partner, writer Max Kozoff, and; of course, Clement Greenberg. Works from three of Kozloff’s latest series, Uncivil Wars , Boys’ Art , and Social Studies , are on view in the Map Room at Argosy Book Store (116 East 59th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through January 25, 2025. (00:00) - Intro (04:13) - Childhood (07:35) - Art School at Carnegie Mellon and Columbia University (22:04) - From abstraction to patterns (27:39) - Joining the feminist movement in California (41:01) - The Heresies collective (44:46) - First Pattern and Decoration painting (46:45) - Forming the Pattern and Decoration movement (55:42) - The 1980s and public art (57:03) - Maya Pontone on the deterioration of Kozloff’s Harvard Square Mural (01:05:01) - Paintings of maps (01:07:52) - Political activism in and outside the studio (01:18:11) - Civil War series (01:21:17) - Making work about war (01:28:46) - Advice for artists (01:32:01) - Outro Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere you listen to podcasts . This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters This podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership .…

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Karen Wilkin: Critiquing the New Masters 1:31:19

21 weeks ago1:31:19

1:31:19

In the late 1950s, a Manhattan-born college student was running from an art history course at Barnard to a George Balanchine ballet practice at the storied School of American Ballet on 82nd Street and Broadway. Soon, she began to make connections between the old-school Russian ballet instructors who taught her “ferocious point class” and were constantly “aspiring to an abstract ideal,” if a ruthless one, and the extending lines of Anthony Caro’s sculptures striving toward an arabesque. These rigorous studies in dance informed the work of the leading critic and curator of 20th-century Modernism, Karen Wilkin. Of course, Balanchine’s presence was just one instance in which Wilkin has brushed shoulders with masters of the arts throughout her lifetime. In this episode, she discusses the influence of her parents’ close friendships with New York’s prominent literary figures, from S.J. Perelman to Ruth McKenney, and artists like Adolph Gottlieb. She tells us about touring the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) with Kenneth Noland, advising at the Triangle residency alongside Helen Frankenthaler , and attending the Spoleto Festival as composer Samuel Barber’s “beard.” Wilkin also reflects on the valuable lessons she learned from years working with the legendary critic Clement Greenberg, though she doesn’t shy away from illuminating his noxious mistreatment of women like herself. The author of monographs on a litany of these artists from Stuart Davis and David Smith to Georges Braque and Giorgio Morandi, she discusses her journey in art writing with Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian who once was her student at the University of Toronto and credits her with his introduction to the world of art criticism. Tune in to hear them discuss everything from the decline of MoMA to masters of Canadian abstraction to Wilkin’s beloved herd of Maine Coon cats . Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere else you listen to podcasts . Watch the complete video of the conversation with images of the artworks on YouTube . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters Become a member…

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Guantánamo Bay and the Art of Resistance 2:11:52

22 weeks ago2:11:52

2:11:52

This August, journalist Moustafa Bayoumi broke the story that the first photo of a detainee in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) black site had been declassified. It shows an emaciated Ammar al-Baluchi, standing shackled and naked in a starkly white room. Subjected to years of torture, according to CIA protocol, the photo of the Pakistani detainee was meant “to document his physical condition at the time of transfer.” In a recent Hyperallergic opinion piece , Bayoumi reflected on the dark history of various regimes’ use of similar “atrocity photography” — a genre of memories they create for themselves that chronicle violence, but obscure it from public view. While this photograph epitomizes dehumanization, another image shows a different perspective. Through a vortex of colored lines and dots, al-Baluchi illustrated what he saw during a spell of vertigo, which was brought on by a traumatic brain injury caused by this torture. No longer in the media spotlight, it’s all too easy for many to forget that dozens of people are still imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. The detention camp has incarcerated hundreds of detainees from around the world since it opened in the early 2000s in the wake of 9/11, and al-Baluchi is in the vast minority of those who have been charged with crimes connected to those events. While over half of the men still held there today were cleared for release years ago, they have not been freed, and it’s possible they never will. Over a decade ago, a group of these men began to create art. At first, they used what little material they could find, such as soap scratched on walls or plastic forks scraped on styrofoam cups, even drawing with powdered tea on toilet paper. If these covert artists were discovered, they were punished. But starting in 2010, after Obama-era reforms , detainees were finally allowed to attend art classes. What happened was a brief flowering of the arts in one of the least likely places, and under inhumane conditions. In this episode, we speak with Erin L. Thompson, a Hyperallergic contributor, a professor of art crime at John Jay College. She curated Ode to the Sea , a groundbreaking exhibition of artwork by detainees that debuted in 2018, and recently returned from a week-long trip to the Caribbean military prison in order to view the 9/11 trials that ended up being delayed. Thompson spoke with Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian about witnessing the strict policing of not only embattled art, but also how authorities maintain a tight control on photography taken by the media. Writer and artist Molly Crabapple, on the other hand, found a workaround. She joined us to discuss her 2013 trip to the detention center, when she was granted access to draw this surreal prison and its inhabitants, both the incarcerated men and medics, guards, and other actors that keep the machine running. Her work shows us how the craft of drawing can illuminate truths that censored photographs cannot. And finally, we spoke with writer Mansoor Adayfi, who was confined to Guantánamo Bay for almost 15 years. Like the vast majority of those imprisoned there, he was never charged with a crime. Adayfi gave us a first-hand account of hunger strikes, changes in torture tactics and confinement that came with each presidential administration, bonds formed between the men in the prison, and the flourishing of art through painting, singing, dancing, and writing among the detainees. He explains how such art became a lifeline for their survival. The author of Letters from Guantánamo and Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo , he works as an activist with CAGE toward the goal of permanently closing Guantánamo Bay. In 2022, eight current and former detainees wrote a letter urging President Biden to end a Trump-era policy that barred their work from leaving Guantánamo . Multiple men, cleared for release just that year, said that they would rather their art be freed than themselves. Adayfi told us that if given that choice, he’d say the same thing. “The art is not just art. It becomes a piece of you. You put your blood, your sweat, your memories, your time there. That art helped you to find yourself. To maintain your sanity, your humanity,” he explained. “Art from Guantánamo, we consider it one of us, like a living being. It went through the same process: the mistreatment, the abuses, the torture, the death, even. Like us, like us prisoners. It’s the same process. It went through everything we have been through.” While the Biden administration lifted the ban on art leaving Guantánamo Bay, they have not fulfilled the promise to close the prison before Donald Trump returns to office in January. His administration could usher in an expansion of similar detention camps, along with a new era of censorship and oppression in many forms. But as long as such injustices continue under any regime, stories like Adayfi’s are critical to hold on to and learn from. Even if a detainee manages to be released from Guantánamo Bay, they still encounter significant challenges. You can donate here to the Guantánamo Survivors Fund, which seeks to provide medical care, housing, and education to those released. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere you listen to podcasts . Watch the complete video of the conversations with images of the artworks on YouTube . (00:00) - Intro (05:16) - Erin L. Thompson (43:33) - Molly Crabapple (01:10:28) - Mansoor Adayfi — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters This podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership .…

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Lucy Lippard’s Life on the Frontlines of Art 1:11:22

23 weeks ago1:11:22

1:11:22

When Lucy Lippard left New York City for the tiny village of Galisteo, New Mexico, some were shocked: How could this giant of 20th-century art criticism, this leader in the fight for feminism and equitable representation in museums, leave the so-called “center of the art world” for such a rural area? Lippard is renowned not only for her strident activism but also for changing the game of art criticism itself. The author of a whopping 26 books, Lippard was a co-founder of both the standby press for artist books, Printed Matter, and the legendary feminist Heresies Collective. She broke down barriers between art writers and artists, letting her writing flow free in a type of “proto-blog” that inspired publications like ours. When we asked her what brought her to the dusty hills of Galisteo, she simply said, “Feminists.” Other legendary feminist art figures, from Harmony Hammond to Agnes Martin, had also made it their home. She refuses, however, the idea that ex-urbanites are the only source of brilliance in the town. She now writes the newsletter for what she found to be a fascinating and flourishing historic community, as well as the Indigenous genius found in the Chaco Canyon, sacred to Hopi and Pueblo peoples. While scores of artists and critics alike keep Lippard’s volumes stacked high on their shelves, she is fairly enigmatic as a figure. In this episode, she sat down with Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian to give a rare recorded interview about her life in art. To better understand her work, we also talked with the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Senior Curator of Feminist Art Catherine Morris, who put together a show on Lippard’s work from 2012 to 2013 entitled Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art . We also interviewed editor, book artist, and painter Susan Bee, a member of Brooklyn’s A.I.R. Gallery, which was the first space in the city dedicated to women artists. She had a front-row seat to Lippard’s influence in the emerging 1960s and ’70s feminist art scene of which were both a part. She also spoke to a little-known part of Lippard’s legacy: her fiction. In fact, Lippard told us that she wanted to be a fiction writer first, but chose to pursue nonfiction instead, believing she “was really bad at writing the kind of fiction anybody would want to publish.” That’s no longer the case: Much of her short fiction is being published by New Documents for the first time this December in a volume titled Headwaters (and Other Short Fictions) . From our vantage point in the 2020s, it’s easy to take women’s representation in museums for granted. But, as Bee reminds us, “None of this stuff happened . It was really a fight.” Now, as women’s rights begin to slip away once again, we can learn from these stories to better prepare for the fight ahead. A special thanks to Loghaven Artist Residency , where much of the research for this podcast was conducted with the help of the collection of the library at the University of Tennessee. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere else you listen to podcasts . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters Become a member…

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Robber Barons, Marcel Duchamp, and Big Museums’ Dirty Little Secrets 58:14

24 weeks ago58:14

58:14

In 1915, Marcel Duchamp bought a snow shovel at a hardware store in New York City. He inscribed his signature and the date on its wooden handle. On the evening this episode is released, the fourth version of this classic “ready-made,” which he titled “In Advance of the Broken Arm,” will be auctioned off at Christie’s during their 20th Century Evening Sale . It’s estimated to sell for $2 million to $3 million. How could a simple snow shovel be valued at such a steep price? Was Duchamp an unmatched genius, or a product of some of the biggest museums’ dirtiest little secrets: the results of pure, unadulterated capitalism? Northeastern University professor, essayist, poet, and editor Eunsong Kim has illuminated the underlying influences of industrial capitalism and racism behind some of the most prized museum collections in her new book, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property . She traces how Duchamp was brought to prominence through the patronage of collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg , heirs of a fortune wrought by the steel industry. Their family operated steel mills in the same setting as titans such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, whose wealth also underlies their own valuable art collections. And as it turns out, the “death of the author,” celebrated in conceptual art like that of Duchamp, is a convenient idea for the ultrawealthy. Devaluing labor pairs well with violent crackdowns on striking workers to deny them adequate pay. Or even Frederick Winslow Taylor's development of “ scientific management ,” a system that is still cited today but is based on the idealization of the slave plantation . How much of the Modernist archive was canonized by union-busting bosses? How much of conceptual art in the 20th and 21st centuries has been buoyed by the reverence of scientific management? In this episode, Editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian sits down to talk with Kim about her new volume, which challenges generations of unquestioned received knowledge and advocates for a new vision of art beyond cultural institutions. In the process, they discuss the craft of writing, how a White artist was counted as a Black artist at the 2014 Whitney Biennial , and how Marcel Duchamp got away with selling bags of air. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere else you listen to podcasts . — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters Become a member…

Hyperallergic

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Silver Skeleton Deities and Political Mind Games: What’s Happening at the Venice Biennale? 42:55

41 weeks ago42:55

42:55

The sports world may be on the edge of their seats as we draw close to the 2024 Olympics in Paris. But the “Olympics of the art world” is already well underway in Italy: Hundreds of thousands of art lovers are flocking to the Venice Biennale, which runs through November 24. This massive exhibition has been held every two years with very few exceptions since 1895, when it was inaugurated as the world’s first art biennial. Visitors who devote a whole week of their time will still only be able to take in a sliver of the art on display, whether it’s at the central exhibition , the collateral events , or the dozens of storied national pavilions in the Giardini and around the city. But that’s not all the exhibition has in store. The politics of the art world are also on full display, whether in the form of protests or the curators’ decisions about how their countries — with all their past and present controversies — will be represented. This year's included Russia offering its pavilion up to Indigenous artists from Bolivia, Brazil renaming its pavilion “Hãhãwpuá” after the Indigenous Patxohã term for the land, Poland welcoming an art collective from Ukraine, the United States featuring Jeffrey Gibson as the first Native American artist to have a solo exhibition at the pavilion, and Israel canceling its exhibition … which perhaps wasn't really canceled after all. Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian and longtime contributor AX Mina sat down to reflect on the aesthetic successes, political failures, and long-awaited representation they saw displayed at the world’s biggest contemporary art show. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere else you listen to podcasts . (00:00) - Intro (04:24) - First Impressions of the Biennale and the Main Exhibition (06:33) - India: Aravani Art Project (07:48) - Singapore: Charmaine Poh (08:58) - Lebanon: Omar Mismar (09:42) - “Italians Everywhere” (11:06) - Morocco: Bouchra Khalili (13:16) - The National Pavilions (14:21) - Benin Pavilion (16:12) - Lebanon Pavilion (18:19) - Italy Pavilion (20:14) - UK Pavilion (22:44) - US Pavilion (25:29) - Israel Pavilion (28:51) - Saudi Arabia Pavilion (30:07) - Nigeria Pavilion (32:11) - Egypt Pavilion (34:07) - Taiwan Pavilion (35:57) - Australia Pavilion (38:16) - Mongolia Pavilion (40:06) - “South West Bank,” collateral event (42:23) - Outro — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters Become a member…

Hyperallergic

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Shelley Niro's 500 Year Itch 1:00:48

49 weeks ago1:00:48

1:00:48

Shelley Niro (Kanien’kehaka) grew up watching her father craft faux tomahawks to sell to tourists who flocked to her birthplace, Niagara Falls. In this episode of the Hyperallergic podcast, she reflects on how witnessing him create these objects planted the seeds for her brilliant multidisciplinary art practice spanning film, sculpture, beading, and photography. She joined us in our Brooklyn studio for an interview, where she reflected on growing up in the Six Nations of the Grand River, the Native artists she discovered on her dentist’s wall but rarely encountered in a museum before the mid-’90s, and her latest obsession with 500 million-year-old fossils. An expansive review of her work is currently featured in a traveling retrospective, Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch , which was organized by Canada’s Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH), with support from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). The exhibition was co-curated by Melissa Bennett, senior curator of Contemporary Art at AGH; Greg Hill, an independent curator who is a former senior curator of Indigenous Art at the NGC; and David Penney, associate director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the NMAI). When this interview was recorded, the show was on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. It was on display from February 10 to May 26 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and will be exhibited next from June 21 to August 25 at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. The music and sound effects in this episode are from the films “Honey Moccasin” and “Tree” by Shelley Niro, courtesy of the artist. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere else you listen to podcasts . (00:00) - Intro (03:02) - Beginnings of “500 Year Itch” Retrospective (04:18) - About “Honey Moccasin” (06:47) - Early Life (08:42) - The Six Nations of the Grand River (12:12) - Going to Art School and Native Representation in Museums (19:12) - Work in Painting (22:32) - Work in Photography (24:53) - On Niagara Falls (26:29) - History Behind Grand River Reserve (27:58) - The 1990s and Institutional Perspectives on Native American Art (31:12) - “Mohawks and Beehives” Series (34:51) - Why “500 Year Itch”? (39:47) - Art Schools Today (42:54) - Humor (47:27) - “In Her Lifetime” Series (49:57) - The Grand River (53:52) - Newest Works and Ancient Fossils (57:05) - Outro — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters Become a member…

Hyperallergic

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Lee Quiñones: Graffiti and the Gallery 57:57

1 year ago57:57

57:57

Anyone who remembers New York City’s “ golden age ” of graffiti in the late ’70s and early ’80s knows about the lion spray-painted on the handball court at Corlears Junior High School, roaring next to metallic blue letters spelling the word “Lee.” In this episode of the Hyperallergic podcast, we speak with its creator, Lee Quiñones, whose paintings of dragons, lions, and Howard the Duck on over 120 MTA train cars were part of the movement that brought light and color to the otherwise dingy, dark, and drastically underfunded subway system. Quiñones’s paintings caught the attention of art collectors and gallerists. By the time he was 19, he was showing his work at Galleria La Medusa in Rome, alongside fellow graffiti writer Fred Brathwaite, also known as “Fab 5 Freddy.” Among other writers, the following years would bring his graffiti art to more shows, both at home in New York City and in the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and even Documenta 7 in 1982 in Kassel, Germany. Quiñones is the rare graffiti writer from this era who maintained a successful career in the gallery space. Today, he continues to experiment through paintings, drawings, and collages in an ever-changing range of styles. His art is in the collections of several major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art. In this episode, Quiñones reflects on the monster movies that inspired him as a kid, running the tracks as a graffiti-writing teen, making art alongside Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Jenny Holzer in the 1980s East Village scene, and much more. He also discusses the new book documenting his life and work, Lee Quiñones: Fifty Years of New York Graffiti Art and Beyond , which was published by Damiani on April 30. A solo show of his recent work, titled Quinquagenary , will be on display at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles until May 25, 2024. The music in this episode is courtesy of Soundstripe. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts , and anywhere else you listen to podcasts . (00:00) - Intro (03:04) - Early life and work (08:06) - Cinema (19:43) - “Howard the Duck” (27:17) - Lee is “WANTED” by the police (28:58) - “Lion’s Den” (38:57) - The East Village scene (47:29) - “The buff” in the 80s (53:03) - The 21st century (57:00) - Outro — Subscribe to Hyperallergic Newsletters Become a member…

Hyperallergic

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From Blog to Book 1:07:16

1 year ago1:07:16