Starting Something New Part 2
Julie Moos Canadian, born 1965Domestic: Mae and Margaret, 2001 Chromogenic printGift of an anonymous donor2018.140Part of a series of double portraits made in Birmingham, Alabama, this photograph shows two women, one black, one white, in an anonymous studio against a tan backdrop. Mae and Margaret sit at an awkward distance from one another with the same posture—upright, hands in their lap. Both wear skirt suits and look at the camera with neutral but firm expressions.(continued below)
Matthew Day Jackson American, born 1974Sacajawea (American Martyr Series) 2005 Scorched wood, woodburned drawing, sculpey, mother of pearl, abalone, yarn, epoxy, tooled leather, skull beadGift of anonymous donor2018.74History is always selective. Some people, events, and ideas are included while others are erased. This is the lesson of British historian Raymond Williams, who is credited with launching the field of cultural studies. Jackson’s portrait of Sacajawea looks back at American history and, through the act of representing an image of her, honors her life and contribution to history.Daughter of a Shoshone chief, Sacajawea was kidnapped when she was about twelve and later sold to a Quebecois trapper, who considered her his wife. A few years later, Sacajawea helped lead Lewis and Clark through the American West and served as an important interpreter of Native American language.
Do-Ho Suh South Korean, born 1962Karma, 2002 Colored pencil on paperGifts of an anonymous donor2018.186Suh has created numerous drawings and sculptures with the title Karma, the Buddhist and Hindu concept that “the force produced by a person’s actions in one life that influences what happens to them in future lives.” While the four drawings on display are different, they all represent Karma through a human form that moves, repeats, and transforms.
Boris Orlov Russian, born 1941Small Three Headed Totem, 1989 Enamel on aluminiumPurchase with Amherst Whitney Collection of Russian Art Fund2018.06This relief sculpture—a three-dimensional form that projects from the wall—uses humor to critique the Soviet military. The artist presents silhouettes of three tiny heads atop gaudy rows of official ribbons and medals, neatly painted in national colors of red and white.Orlov’s artwork is often associated with the second generation of Sots-art in Moscow. Sots is the Soviet version of Pop art, in which artists interpreted popular culture from a variety of very distinct cultural contexts in the United States, Latin America, Germany, and Japan.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya American, born 1982Black Figure, 2017 Archival pigment print, edition 1 of 5Purchases with Richard Templeton (Class of 1931) Photography Fund2017.37Sepuya foregrounds the artist’s role as an image maker and compels viewers to consider their preconceptions and their participation in interpreting photography. He employs sumptuous black velvet, photographs within photographs, and mirrors to produce pictures that dramatize scenes. His compositions are illusive and take time to decipher. Sepuya invents a new pictorial vocabulary to narrate stories of love and Black and queer identity in photography.
Eddie Peake British, born 1981Handschmeischler 11 (Non-Diagonal Twins), 2014 Painted aluminum, timber, foam, leather, bronze, and plaster in two partsGift of anonymous donor2018.148Peake once staged a soccer match with naked players who wore different colored socks to distinguish their teams. This is a quieter, less provocative artwork in which Peake explores the way items are displayed. He creates a geometric shelf with six objects: three organic white forms, and three bronze items with teardrop shapes. A leather seat cushion adorns the left platform.Peake’s shelf displays miniature sculptures and is itself an art object. This points to the subtle ways that museum displays inform the reception of art, from sitting sculptures on pedestals to arranging works on paper in display cases. Contemporary artists frequently examine and critique crossovers between museum and commercial display.
Heather Agyepong British, born 1990Too Many Blackamoors, #1-9. Commissioned by Autograph ABP as part of "The Missing Chapter Collective", 2015, printed in 2019 Archival giclée pigment print, edition 5/7Purchase with Richard Templeton (Class of 1931) Photography Fund2019.45.1-9The photographs in this series were inspired by a portrait calling card (called a “carte de visite”) of Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta (1843–1880). Born Aina, a Yoruba princess in present-day Nigeria, Bonetta was taken captive as a child during slave-raiding wars and was later adopted as a goddaughter of Queen Victoria in England.An artist and actress, Agyepong dramatizes Bonetta’s struggle, independence, and power from a contemporary perspective. The photographs are based on the artist’s “personal experiences as a young Black woman, dealing with macro and micro traumas with racism encountered while traveling around European countries.”
Pae White American, born 1963Black in Brussels, 2005 Mixed MediaGift of anonymous donor2018.195
Monk cannot resist telling art jokes no matter how obscure the visual reference and word play. Here he presents two anonymous groups in photographs that he could have found at a random yard sale. They both have the tongue-in-cheek title Keep Still, stating the obvious fact that photography freezes its subjects forever. He inserts letters spelling out “Composing on the Canvas” and “PROMISE” on the head of each person. The texts are insider references to John Baldessari (American, 1931–2020) and Ed Ruscha (American, born 1937), two figureheads of California conceptual art (art based on words and ideas).
Gregory Crewdson American, born 1962Untitled (girl in window), 1999 Laser direct chromogenic print (edition 4 of 10)Gift of anonymous donor2018.71This image could be a still from an American horror film. Using actors, Crewdson carefully composed a scene that dramatizes anxiety. A young man and woman are the protagonists, and a suburban house with a large picture window is the stage set. Look closely at the details—a blank stare, wet grass on skin, a large flashlight, insect decals, a roof vent—and imagine the story you would tell.Photographers have staged images since the invention of the medium in the mid-1800s. Yet photographs have also been used as evidence of the real. Crewdson and other artists since the late 1970s have sought to highlight photography’s impulse to tell stories—but fictional ones.
Alexis Rockman American, born 1962The Hammock, 2000 Oil on woodGift of anonymous donor2018.164This painting conjures the Midwestern joke that the mosquito is the Minnesota state bird. But this is no joke. Nature transmogrifies in Rockman’s ominous and comic scene. Illuminated by a dramatic, bug-friendly lamp in the foreground, the painting shows several human-scaled mosquitoes hovering around a person sleeping beneath a cocoon-like hammock. Only the person’s feet are exposed. Next to the hammock is a shotgun that appears to be of little help against this swarm.Well aware of the “fragility of civilizations and how many have come and gone,” Rockman is known for creating apocalyptic images of an uncertain future world.
Christopher Williams American, born 1956AGFA Color (oversaturated), 2000 Chromogenic print (artist’s proof)Gift of anonymous donor2018.197Christopher Williams would not like this label.Eschewing the idea that photographs are incomplete without words, he typically shows his works in museums and books accompanied by few or no words. He is interested in display and in calling viewers’ attention to its conventions, including how the photograph is framed, matted, installed, or presented.If you are asking why there is a picture of a dishwasher in a museum and why it is hung a little lower than the other works on view, that is a nice beginning, and Williams might forgive this label.
Cris Brodahl Belgian, born 1963Manipulator, 2003 Oil on canvasGift of anonymous donor2018.47The title of this painting prompts the question, Who is the “manipulator”?Is it the figure wearing a mask? Or the man in profile at top right, who “manipulates” a paintbrush? We could argue both. Using a mask to change or conceal identity makes the disguised figure a manipulator of one type. The painter making an image with his brush represents another.A third manipulator might be the artist Brodahl, who with this work carries on the Western tradition of painting in oils on canvas. Since the birth of one-point perspective in the fifteenth century, painting has sought to create a three-dimensional illusion or picture on a two-dimensional surface. By noting the artist’s presence, Brodahl calls attention to his own agency. Maybe he is a truth teller after all.
Moira Dryer Canadian, 1957-1992The Pleasure Principle, 1991 Acrylic on woodGift of anonymous donor2018.80Dryer helped lead the rebirth of abstract painting in the 1980s, a decade dominated by figurative painting and male artists. Her career was cut short by cancer, and she died at age thirty-two. Dryer’s early experience as a set designer is evident in the painting’s appearance as a stage prop. It is constructed with plywood in the shape of a canvas, but an unusual triangular indentation interrupts the flat surface. A thin layer of blue paint flows down and fills the surface from edge to edge, creating a subtle dramatic effect.
Mona Hatoum British/Palestinian, born in Lebanon 1952Rubber Mat, 1996 Silicone RubberGift of anonymous donor2018.108Carpets and welcoming mats are not meant to repulse visitors. But this is no ordinary mat. Based on a larger artwork, Entrails Carpet, commissioned by the Fabric Workshop in 1995, Hatoum casts intestine coils in silicon rubber to create this mat. Depending on your perspective, the coil pattern beneath the clear rubber surface may be a rhythmic design or a grotesque internal organ.The artist has said it “looks like entrails splayed out all over the floor, as if it’s the aftermath of a massacre. There’s a kind of attraction/repulsion operating here”Hatoum came of age during the 1980s, when the body was a central subject of debate and art. An essential question for Hatoum is how society controls bodies, particularly the bodies of black and brown women.
Nick Mauss American, born 1980Before, 2005 Oil on canvasGift of anonymous donor2018.132
Jonathan Monk British, born 1969Restaurant Drawing (Aeb a brilliant idea), 2019 Pencil and watercolor on thermal paperPurchase with Wise Fund for Fine Arts2019.51This is one of hundreds of drawings that Monk made during an artist’s residency in Italy. He used them to pay for meals with his family while traveling. Produced on restaurant receipts, the finished works combine graphic design, the server’s handwriting, and a Monk drawing based on a famous artwork. This one is in the style of Alighiero Boetti (Italian, 1940-1994).Each drawing is sold for the amount of the receipt. If you are curious, the total cost the Mead paid was $336.70: $159.24 for the drawing, $150.00 for framing, and $27.46 for NYC tax. Monk would appreciate that the framing and tax amounted to more than the drawing.
Tim Parchikov Russian, born 1983Burning News 01, 2009–12; printed in 2017 Chromogenic color printPurchase with Richard Templeton (Class of 1931) Photography Fund2018.03Against the backdrop of a snowy Russian landscape, a man holds a flaming newspaper. He is consuming the news while the flames consume the paper. He cannot possibly read every page without getting burned. Parchikov staged this precarious scene to make a statement about the fleeting nature of news.The photograph is part of Parchikov’s Burning News series, which critiques the numbing nature of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. He said that “overstimulated by this flow of information, the mind sinks into an anabiosis. Into a state like winter hibernation.”
Sarah Braman American, born 1970Good With Houseplants, 2003 Colored plexiglass, acrylic paint, and sticker paperGift of anonymous donor2018.42This sculpture resembles an amateur organic chemistry model. As the title suggests, this assemblage of multicolor plexiglass is intended to be playful. Paint and tape add touch and texture to the otherwise slick plexi surfaces. The work seems to declare that shapes can be funny, sculptures do not have to be grand and heroic, and art can be modest and pleasurable.Braman, like several other artists in this exhibition, uses unconventional and everyday materials to make her sculpture. She also does not carve or mold form like a traditional sculptor. Instead, she selects, pieces together, and balances shapes in relationship to one another.
Betty Woodman American, born 1930Santa Chiara, 1991 Glazed and Fired ClayGift of Ronald F Daitz (Class of 1961) and Linda F Daitz2004.258
Keegan McHargue American, born 1982Ease of Extraction I, II, III (Resources, Quarries, Refinement), 2006 Acrylic on panel in 5 partsGift of anonymous donor2018.136.1-5
Peter Halley American, born 1953Silver Prison, 2000 Acrylic and Roll-A-Tex on canvasGift of Anonymous donor 2018.103Halley is best known for creating geometric paintings of cells. These are made with fluorescent Day-Glo colors and a Roll-A-Tex industrial material that adds texture and an “architectural feature” to the painting’s surface.In the 1980s, Halley described his cells as circuits and conduits within a self-contained system, representing expanding global communications as a prison in which all human activity is watched and monitored. More recently, Halley has proposed a more personal interpretation, telling The Observer that the paintings represent “the imprisonment of even myself as an individual, as I related to myself as a middle-class male.”
Laurie Simmons American, born 1949The Instant Decorator (Black and White Living Room), 2002 Flex print (artist’s proof of 2)Gift of an anonymous donor2018.180Frances Joslin Gold’s publication The Instant Decorator (1976) inspired Simmons to create this photograph of a domestic interior chockablock with furniture and art, including a painting by her husband, Carroll Dunham. (See if you can find another Dunham painting in the exhibition.)Gold’s book offered crafty readers templates of various rooms that they could hand design with swatches of cut-out fabric and color. Made over two decades later, Simmons’s photograph is a pastiche of mismatched objects borrowed from media. While embracing slick Photoshop technology to knit this scene together, Simmons’s overscale objects pay homage to hand-pasted interiors of the past.
Marcin Maciejowski Polish, born 1974Still-Life with Pitcher, 2003 Oil on linenGift of anonymous donor2018.128
Pae White American, born 1963Web Sampler No. 51, 2001 Spider web on Perfect PaperGift of anonymous donor2018.196
Ingrid Calame American, born 1965CgONG!, 2002 made from "#70 3/4 Working Drawing"Enamel paint on aluminum Gift of anonymous donor2018.59Random markings found in everyday life inspire Calame’s art. In this painting, a stain serves as map to create abstract shapes.Calame’s paintings can be seen as a response to American abstract painters of the 1940s and 1950s who emphasized originality, individualism, and heroism in painting. Made mostly by men, these paintings celebrated the complex and even the obscure. In short, they did not actively seek to connect audiences. While Calame is just as serious an artist, she adds the mundane and the living to abstraction. This humanizes abstraction for audiences.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya American, born 1982Mirror Study (Self-Portrait), 2017 Archival pigment print, edition 5 of 7Purchases with Richard Templeton (Class of 1931) Photography Fund2017.36Using the artist’s studio as a stage, Sepuya composes his self-portrait as a Black male artist and captures an erotic scene with his White male partner. These subjects—the Black male artist and Black queer love—are rarely seen in photography’s history.
Carroll Dunham American, born 1949Particular Aspects (three), 2003Mixed media on canvasGift of anonymous donor2018.83Dunham uses the heavy black outline of a cartoon to create this caricature of a male figure in this painting. After painting non-figure works in the 1980s and ’90s, Dunham introduced the figure, and this particular persona, around 2000. He still appears in Dunham’s work today.A bold black line splits the composition in two, with the lower half showing a blue shirt and collar. A thin neck moves into the upper half of the composition and balances a very large head. The head has two small ears, a large half-circle mouth with grinning teeth, and, to the upper right, two large testicles. The mouth is open, loud, and aggressive.
Analia Saban American, born 1980 in ArgentinaOne-Armed, Three-Legged Chair (with Coil Spring Rubbings), 2014 Oil crayon on linen on chairGift of anonymous donor2018.174
Founding Narratives
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By providing no information about the sitters’ personal and working relationship other than the title, Domestic, Moos plays with our assumptions about their historical and racial relationship. She frames our reading of these two women in the context of American history and a city that is known as an epicenter of both white supremacist violence, including the infamous bombing that killed four children at the 16th Street Baptist Church, and activism for black freedom. Moos calls attention to the broader context of racial inequity in US history through a carefully constructed and powerful image.
Steven Gontarski American, born 1972Blood III, 2000 Fiberglass and acrylic paint and plinthGift of Anonymous donor2018.99If not for the title, this sculpture might be described as “recognizable but not identifiable.” Irregular, fluid, bright red rings seem ready to fall apart, yet are conjoined at their edges, giving a quality of inseparability. Blood III conjures images of many things in the world: blood cells, smoke rings, cereal, and even organs.Gontarski used fiberglass to create organic, seemingly shifting sculptures that leave much to the viewer’s interpretation. His works are displayed across the world, from public plazas in London to sports stadiums in France and galleries in South Korea.Yosen Wang, Class of 2022
Cris Brodahl Belgian, born 1963Sin Sick, 2007 Oil on linenGift of anonymous donor2018.48Brodahl based his painting on a selection of photographs collaged together, with a monochromatic palette borrowed from black-and-white film. One might even consider the work a painted form of film noir.The realism of the scene is clear, but the narrative is not. On the left side, a woman wears a white sheet and dark scarf. With eyes closed and a provocative expression, she rests her head against an object that is difficult to make out. It might be a cross. To her right, another woman holds up a sheet, perhaps the same one wrapped around the first woman. Each of these scenes appear to occupy separate spaces and narratives.
Ulrich Lamsfuss German, born 1971Untitled (Andy 1), 2002 Oil on canvasGift of anonymous donor2018.119American artist Andy Warhol, the subject of this painting, famously quipped in the 1960s that “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Long before the advent of selfies and social media, Warhol identified the impact of mass culture and media on society.It’s fitting that Lamsfuss based this painting on an image of Warhol that he found on the internet. Warhol looks directly at the viewer with a deadpan expression and a rather disheveled appearance. He wears a visitor pass. Warhol liked to be behind the camera, not in front of it. According to peers, he was surprisingly shy and quiet; but he was always watching and photographing others.This painting is a testament to Warhol’s lasting fame and inspiration to artists.
Jeff Elrod American, born 1966R.S.V.P., 1997 Acrylic on canvasGift of anonymous donor2018.88Elrod explores how images are mediated in our era from the virtual to the real world.His process begins with what he calls a “frictionless drawing,” an image produced through the movement of a cursor on a computer screen. The phrase itself—frictionless drawing—speaks to the ease of drawing in the virtual world versus the physical labor of painting in the real one.Using the resulting virtual drawing as a template, Elrod translates the image onto canvas with paint. He also translates frictionless to friction when he paints the image.Now that you know about the technique, the question remains: How are the large and small letters combined and what do they say?
Brian Calvin American, born 1969Sundown, 2002 Acrylic on canvasGift of anonymous donor2018.60The famous American artist Andy Warhol once quipped, “I want to be a machine.” Calvin aspired to be a painting machine. This woman is a subject repeated throughout his paintings. Always seen close-up, she has a large head, long black hair, almond-shaped eyes, narrow nose, simple broad lips, and a skinny neck. She is set against a blue sky and ocean. A small sun, represented as a simple red dot, floats above the horizon in the background. With his cartoonish painting and happy colors, Calvin embraces banality as a positive outcome of repetition. It’s machine-produced pleasure.
The title Too Many Blackamoors derives from an anti-immigration edict issued by Queen Elizabeth I in 1596: “Her Majesty understanding that several blackamoors have lately been brought into this realm, of which kind of people there are already too many here . . . her Majesty’s pleasure therefore is that those kind of people should be expelled from the land.”
Roe Ethridge American, 1969Untitled (Saratoga Springs), 2001 Chromogenic PrintGift of Sam Orlofsky (Class of 1988)2018.262Photography exists in many guises—commercial, snapshot, fashion, vernacular, selfie, fine art, and many more—each with its own subjects, styles, and even cameras. Commercial portrait photographers, for example, tend to shoot in studios with large format cameras, while the mobile phone is the selfie camera of choice.Ethridge is a commercial photographer for popular magazines, and he exhibits widely as an artist in galleries and museums. His works explore the subtle differences among genres. He would be pleased if you think this photograph looks like an overexposed snapshot from a tourist brochure. He intentionally exaggerates photographic qualities that make an image commercial: subject, perspective, film exposure, and framing.
Adam Pendleton American, born 1984City of Night, 2004 Silkscreen on canvasGift of anonymous donor2018.149Pendleton creates texts on canvases that shape images and express ideas. He borrowed here from John Rechy’s first novel, City of Night, and reshaped it as part of the printing process. The New York Times described the book as a meditation on the “homosexual night life” of male hustlers on Hollywood Boulevard.Since the 1960s, artists have frequently used texts to express philosophical ideas about art and experience. Pendleton’s appropriation of a text to directly communicate a narrative, in this case about America and sexuality, is representative of a tendency in contemporary art that emerged in the 1990s.
Dario Escobar Guatemalan, born 1971Turbulence II, 2008 Wood and polyurethane paintGift of anonymous donor2018.89Escobar brings together sports and art in his sculpture. He paints twelve baseball bats to create a fire-red and yellow landscape. This relief sculpture appeared in his first solo exhibition in New York called Play Offs, which also included works made from pool sticks and soccer balls.Escobar has said, “By rethinking objects as we know them and re-contextualizing them in the gallery space, I seek to challenge our relations to the objects and the way they shape our everyday lives. Of particular interest is the process of utilizing unused objects and converting them into works of art.”
Jonathan Monk British, born 1969LEFT TO RIGHT Keep Still (Baldessari), 2001 Keep Still (Ed ‘66), 2002 Found photographs with Letraset typeGifts of an anonymous donor2018.138–.139Monk is a scavenger of art and ideas who creates through the act of borrowing. He said in 2009, “Appropriation is something I have used or worked with in my art since starting art school in 1987. At that time (and still now) I realized that being original was almost impossible.”(continued below)
Sarah Morris American, born in England 1967Please, 1997 Gloss household paint on canvasGift of anonymous donorAC 2018.141Please is from a series of one-word paintings that Morris created in the 1990s based on news headlines from New York newspapers. In addition to Please, Morris produced paintings called Guilty, Liar, Nothing, Girls, Never, Hell, and Sorry. Her works possess an industrial and urban feel with their hard-edged geometry and billboard-like graphic design.
