observe + collect
DESCRIPTION
Self-designed contemporary art magazine.TRANSCRIPT
1
2011
GU
TTE
R C
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OCTOBER 2011
OBSERVE COLLECTart market art world
KARA WALKERMEQUITTA AHUJAALISON SAARJOHN + SHARI BEHNKE
October 2011
October 2011
2 OBSERVE + COLLECT
CONTENTS OCTOBER 2011
PREVIEWS
TO BE OBSERVED
Dana Schutz
Gerhard Richter
pg. 4
REVIEWS
OBSERVE NOW
Jasper Johns
Tracey Emin
6
WATCH
THE MARKET
Cindy Sherman
Andy Warhol
Jeff Koons + more
at Sotheby’s
8
IN CONVERSATION
WITH KARA WALKER
Walker discusses her
most recent work.
10
3OCTOBER 2011
EXHIBITION IN PRINT
ALISON SAAR
A look at her recent
installation in Madison
Square Park.
20
THE LOCAL ELEMENT
JOHN & SHARI BEHNKE
These art enthusiasts
show their home and
their art collection.
30
SOLO SHOW
ARTIST TO WATCH
We interview painter
Mequitta Ahuja.
40
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PREVIEWS TO BE OBSERVED
GERHARD RICHTER: PANORAMA Tate Modern | October 6, 2011 – January 8, 2012 Curated by Nicholas Serota and Mark Godfrey
A decade after MOMA’s much – contested but hugely
popular Gerhard Richter retrospective, Tate Modern, in
a departure from the 2001 exhibition’s painting – only
approach, will survey the German artist’s career by looking
chronologically and comprehensively across a half century
of the artist’s practice. Including, in addition to paintings,
a selection of drawings and photographs, as well as the
largest assortment of Richter’s glass works ever assembled,
the show will also be the first outside Germany to present
the monumental Stroke, his sixty – five – foot – long painting.
Organized with an eye to the distinct historical contexts
and diversity of aesthetic modes in which Richter worked,
“Panorama” promises a new look at the artist just in time
for his eightieth birthday in February. — Graham Bader
DANA SCHUTZ: IF THE FACE HAD WHEELS Neuberger Museum of Art | September 25 – December 10 | Curated by Helaine Posner
Dana Schutz and Gerhard Richter are rarities: mavericks leading the way in the mainstream.
Dana Schutz paints with directness and expediancy, and
her work has an exhilaration the comes from giving form
to internal feelings. She is an American symbolist who is
sometimes mistaken for a realist. Her paintings often depict
scenes that are absurd, goofy, or grotesque: things seen in
the mind’s eye. A woman eating her own arm, a nude man
lying prone in the desert, someone caught midsneeze — the
pictures revel in the power of pictorial visualization. Schutz
has a winning curiosity about strange forms that the self,
and self – destruction, can take; you can imagine her saying,
“Nothing human is foreign to me.” This survey, with more
than forty paintings and drawings made over the past
decade, will prove Schutz to be that rare thing: a maverick
leading the way in the mainstream. — David Salle
BELOW: Dana Schutz, Presentation, 2005, oil on canvas, 120 x 168 in.
6 OBSERVE + COLLECT
TRACEY EMIN at Hayward GalleryLove Is What You Want
One thing about Tracey Emin: she lives her art and, to some
degree, she actually is her art. Everything that appears over
her signature or on her say – so carries the imprints and
scars left behind by her lifestyle. Her notoriety — particularly
in Britain — doesn’t just guarantee her prominence in gossip
columns, it colors the way her works exert their impact.
“Love is What You Want,” the title of this retrospective, is
quintessential Emin: a plain statement that can be read as
either pleading or defiant, self – possessed or self – centered.
It suited the show. Emin’s great achievement over the past
20 years of her professional practice has been to engage
on several levels, and in many ways, with audiences who
respond to the tirelessness with which she asserts herself
as a true original. — William Feaver
JASPER JOHNS at Matthew Marks GalleryNew Sculpture and Works on Paper
Despite my effervescing anticipation, Jasper John’s
“New Sculpture and Works on Paper” inspired but a cool
response. This owed, no doubt, to the academicism that
has crept into John’s work over several decades bow —
that is, if we think of academicism as the preservation of
the model, the paradigm case, rather than its overthrow.
But let me quickly add that even the most conservative of
John’s works still overshadows the larger field of players.
My quasi detachment from these reliefs — they are much
more reliefs than sculpture — is heightened by the memory
of the blinding enthusiasm that greeted the original
encaustic flags, targets, gridded numbers, and alphabets
that, at midcentury, established the territory this new work
still mines. — Robert Pincus ‑Witten
REVIEWS OBSERVE NOWTracey Emin and Jasper Johns both continue to pursue the themes that made them famous.
Numbers (detail), 2007, aluminum, 107 x 83 in.
Just Like Nothing, 2009, embroidered blanket, 82 x 72 in.
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Sotheby’s sale began
convincingly enough in the
scheme of these things but
never fully picked up, with
audible bids for the most
hyped works (Lot 10: Koons’s
porcelain Pink Panther, 1988,
put up by Benedikt Taschen,
and Lot 21: Warhol’s Sixteen
Jackies, 1964) staying below
the low estimates. “This is
a tough night for Tobias,”
someone in the press pack
observed sympathetically,
referring to chief auctioneer
Tobias Meyer. In the end, the sale brought $128.1 million with
premiums, just over the house’s low estimate of $120 million. “We
took slightly larger steps, anticipating a market that isn’t there quite
yet,” Anthony Grant, one of the house’s senior contemporary art
specialists, explained during the press conference.
The press pack is a kind of collective hermeneutics — a para-
society forming around a common impossible task and a similarly
restricted view of events. Members try to divine meaning from the
smallest gestures: a glance at the phone banks, a stutter in the
bids — any wrinkle in the proceedings is weighed and interpreted.
Thus, seeing is everything: “Those ladies better get out of our way,”
a writer said loudly before the proceedings. “Press don’t get many
perks, but one is a fucking sight line.”
The plot of Christie’s sixty – five – lot sale that night was
strategically calibrated, with the right mix of pathos, climax,
denouement. The first “moment” was Lot 6, Cindy Sherman’s
Untitled #96, 1981, one of the artist’s iconic centerfolds, first
commissioned for Artforum. Consigned by Jane Kaplowitz, wife
of the late Robert Rosenblum, the print went to adviser Philippe
Ségalot for $3.89 million (with premium): a world record not just
for Sherman but for any photograph at auction. “It’s great to see
an artist from our community, a real collector, reap some rewards,”
an exuberant Amy Cappellazzo said later.
A pair of Warhol self – portraits — a red “fright wig” from 1986
(Lot 16) and a blue quartet from 1963 – 64 (Lot 22) constituted the
pinnacle of the sale. The first went to Jose Mugrabi for $24.5 million
hammer, under its low estimate of $30 million. My neighbor in the
press pack was rooting for the second, which was “so covetable. I
really want it to go for more than ’Fright Wig.’” And it did. Auctioneer
Christopher Burge kept the bidding war going for an unheard-of
fifteen minutes, eventually landing it, to much
applause, at $38.4 million (with premium).
“That’s what you want — a little show,
some drama!” a colleague yelled.
Fischer’s Untitled was at Lot 32. It quickly
went for its high estimate — $6 million, an easy
record for the thirty-seven-year-old artist. In the
end, Christie’s raked in $301.7 million, selling 95
percent of its lots. “We broke the $300 million
barrier. You have to go back to 2007 to see
that,” a nearly giddy Brett Gorvy said during
the conference. — David Velasco
TOP: Cindy Sherman, Untitled #96, 1981,
chromogenic color print, 24 x 48 in. | LEFT: Jeff
Koons, Pink Panther, 1988, porcelain, 40 x 20.5
x 19 in. | RIGHT: Andy Warhol, Sixteen Jackies,
1964, acrylic and enamel on canvas, 80 x 64 in.
WATCH THE MARKETJeff Koons and Andy Warhol underwhelm while Cindy Sherman breaks records at Sotheby’s.
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INTERVIEW BY STEEL STILLMAN
InConversationwith
KARA WALKER
11OCTOBER 2011
Kara Walker’s rise to the top of the art world came fast and loaded with controversy. At the age of 24, three months after the artist received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), her work was included in a 1994 survey exhibition at New York’s The Drawing Center, wowing critics and viewers alike. Over the next three years, she had eight one-person
shows and became the youngest artist ever to win a MacArthur “genius” award. She also came under attack
by a group of 200 older black artists, led by Betye Saar, who mounted a vigorous letter-writing campaign seeking to prevent
the exhibition of her work, on the grounds, as artist Howardena Pindell later put it, that its representations of black people constituted
“visual terrorism.” • So singular and strong was Walker’s first publicly exhibited work — mural-sized, wall-mounted tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes depicting caricatures of antebellum slaves and slaveholders in scenes of sex, violence and dissolution — that it might well have eclipsed all that followed. But Walker had other tricks up her sleeve. Since the late ’90s, while continuing the cut-paper series, she has
developed significant bodies of work in other mediums, notably drawing, writing and filmmaking, that have deepened her multiform recasting of
tales of African-American life. Walker has been drawing since childhood — her father, Larry, is an artist and retired professor of art who moved the family from
Stockton, Calif., where Walker was born in 1969, to the suburbs of Atlanta, in 1983, to direct the art department at Georgia State University. And she’s been writing since her early 20s, typing streams of words onto 3-by-5-inch file cards
and scrawling the texts into drawings. Then, less than a decade ago, Walker began making films. Generally short — the first four were between 9 and 26 minutes long — they turn her silhouette figures into small, hand-operated puppets, and
transform the implied narratives of her wall pieces into more explicit, if still open-ended, parables. There’s a distinctly handmade quality to everything Walker does: her hand is her voice — her testimony — and its evidence is as
much the story as is any depicted event or incident. • Walker has exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world in dozens of
solo and hundreds of group shows. Her retrospective “Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love” originated in 2007 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and traveled to, among other places, the Hammer Museum in L.A., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New
York and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris. In late April, a two-gallery exhibition of new work opened in New York, with drawings and text pieces
at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in Chelsea and a new video installation at Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side location. Both will be on view until June 4. In addition, the Fondazione Merz in Italy will be hosting a survey exhibition of Walker's work until July 3. • Walker lives and works in New York and
teaches at Columbia University. We met at her studio on a sunny afternoon in February.
LEFT: Kara Walker photographed
by artist Chuck Close, 2007.
CURRENTLY ON VIEW: “Dust
Jackets for the Niggerati and
Supporting Dissertations,
Drawings submitted ruefully by
Dr. Kara E. Walker” at Sikkema
Jenkins & Co., and “Fall Frum
Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale,”
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New
York, Apr. 23 – Jun. 4, 2011. “Kara
Walker: A Project on Memory,
Identity, Myth and Stereotype,”
Fondazione Merz, Torino, Mar.
25 – Jul. 3, 2011.
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STILLMAN: I read that you made a cartoon strip when you were a kid. WALKER: I began drawing newspaperlike
strips when I was five and from then on I
wanted to be a cartoonist, inspired in part
by Charles Schulz, I developed characters
that commented, sometimes indirectly, on
my family’s life. By the time I got to middle
school I’d made plans for a multimedia
enterprise that, in addition to the strip,
included a Saturday morning TV show,
books accompanied by audio cassettes
and figurines that I’d made out of clay.
And then when you were 13, your family moved to the South. My dad was born in Georgia — his family
left when he was a child — so moving back
to a region that had supposedly changed
was, for him, something of a homecoming.
Yet, while he was interviewing for his
job at Georgia State, the Atlanta Child
Murders were at their peak. I had
actual nightmares about moving to a
place that was hostile to 13 – year – old
black children.
The Klan was alive and well in Atlanta
in the early ’80s, holding rallies and
putting fliers and American flags in
everyone’s mailbox. We spent the first
year in Decatur, but soon moved to
nearby Stone Mountain, where the public
park’s featured attraction is an enormous
stone monument commemorating the
Confederacy. We lived in a neighborhood
that changed from all white to all black
around the time we got there; James R.
Venable, an imperial Wizard of the KKK,
lived at the other end of the road.
Georgia never felt quite normal to
me; overt racism from whites was not
uncommon. And expectations for a black
girl were more limited than they had been
in California. I didn’t have the language to
understand it at first, but I could sense the
difference in the way people treated me.
Early on, I remember entering a poster
contest at school and being made to feel
that I’d stepped over a line: “None of our
girls ever enters the poster contest!”
It took me years to acknowledge how
insidious and effective the stereotyping
was within the black community. In the
meantime, I just sort of bumbled along,
trying to figure out what exactly I was in
relation to all that baggage.
You began cutting out silhouettes at RISD — what led to your discovery of their potential?
First at the Atlanta College of Art and
then at RISD, I spent much of my time
Writing is often the first stepto making drawings.
13OCTOBER 2011
trying to find something that would
have the impact of painting without
robbing me of my identity. In Atlanta
I’d run afoul of teachers who believed,
correctly enough, that I was sidling
up too close to traditional, patriarchal
modernism, and that I hadn’t come to
terms with black liberation ideas. So
when I got to Providence, in the libraries
of RISD and Brown, I began researching
what having a black body meant in art
historical terms. From there, I followed
a branching network of clues that linked
early American art, various folk or
“second – class” art traditions and work
made by black artists of the 19th and
20th centuries.
As I went along, I investigated
minstrelsy, looking especially tor evidence
of what blacks working in blackface had
experienced. And I read Thomas F. Dixon’s
1905 novel The Clansman: An Historical
Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (which
became the basis for D.W. Griffith’s The
Birth of a Nation), where I found Lydia
Brown — described as a tawny vixen, the
unruly mistress of the carpetbagger lead
character, I adopted her persona as my
own — I called her Negress — and realized
that through her I could bring historical
subject matter into my work.
At RISD I was still painting, but I was
also typing things out, appropriating
imagery and making prints. One
day while drawing, I was thinking
about physiognomy, the notion that
identity can be divined from external
appearances — when it occurred to
me that identity was more likely to
be revealed by editing away external
assumptions, I cut out a shape I’d been
drawing and then cut out a few more
before abandoning them. After one of my
professors said they looked interesting,
I tried again. The first successful ones
weren’t very big — 3 by 4 feet at most —
but they had too much detail and it was
hard to get the paper to lie flat.
Is there still a lot of drawing hidden on the back of the silhouettes?
Yes. The drawings start out furtively;
they’re not drawn from life. They develop
in a flurry of ideas and mark-making. It’s
always satisfying to find — from among
the fifty smudges that count for an arm,
say — the one that’s going to make it. The
cut is a form of editing.
Since your early large – scale piece at The Drawing Center, Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs
ABOVE: An installation view of “Dust
Jackets...”, a new series of large – scale
drawings and text pieces, now on view at
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
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of One Young Negress and Her Heart, you have deployed cut figures and motifs across large expanses of white wall. How do you choreograph their arrangement?
For Gone: An Historical Romance, I had
two or three anchoring characters and
then, as with a comic strip, I found actions
and situations that connected them. The
silhouette installations can be like three –
ring circuses: there’s this going on here,
something else in the middle, and, over
there, a clown. In 1997, I did an installation
in the round, inspired by 19th-century
cycloramas, like the 360 – degree Battle of
Atlanta. But in a more metaphorical sense,
all the cut-paper works occupy a kind of
endless panorama, their ongoing narrative
suspended between what can and cannot
be seen by the viewer.
Gone with the Wind was your starting point for that piece?
When I first read Gone with the Wind in
my early 20s, I never got much beyond
standard feminist or black studies
interpretations; but then, at RISD, I picked
it up again and loved it, swept along by
its relentless storytelling, fully aware of all
the complicated reasons that I shouldn’t
like it. The experience helped me realize
that my own conflicting reactions —
esthetic, or even physiological, on the one
hand, and political on the other could be
useful in making work.
There are facts and experiences at
the root of most race issues — hard
to get to, but there — around which
layers of hyperbole and fiction grow. It’s
often impossible to know what actually
happened, historically speaking, but
it can feel necessary to knock those
descriptions around. I’m not a historian
or a social scientist; to be an artist is to
fictionalize. Making work that connects to
Gone with the Wind or The Clansman is a
matter of weaving fictions around other
fictions — trying, by subversive means, to
approach another truth.
Your work also appropriates the language of slave testimonials. Genuine slave narratives have a rough,
manhandled quality, full of sex and violent
material, which was often cleaned up
for readers — black and white — in polite
society. I like drawing from sources
where the demand for authenticity is
satisfied before the censors show up. I’ve
adopted the testimonial format but have
abandoned nearly all its reform – minded
aspirations. Being a black girl means
that I operate as the narrator, rendering
testimonials in the language of art.
After seeing several silhouette installations, I remember being very surprised to see your watercolor drawings in the late ’90s. The content is familiar from the cutouts, but their figure – drawing style seemed to come from a different place altogether. I’d taken figure drawing classes at Georgia
State since I was 14, and I’d made lots of
drawings leading up to the cut pieces, so
it felt important to bring all that into the
open. I had a teacher at ACA who made
I spent much of my time trying to find something
that would have theimpact of painting without
robbing me of my identity.
15OCTOBER 2011
us do 100 drawings in an afternoon, and
while I’m not always as disciplined as
that, I do love to draw. Though my line is
cartoony, my gods are Goya, Daumier and
Hogarth; I’m still trying to make figures
emerge from darkness as wonderfully
as theirs do!
Your drawings often have words in them — but I was also surprised to discover your typewritten text works. I started typing on my mother’s IBM
Selectric the year I graduated from
ACA [1991]; it was kind of a lifesaver
because I didn’t talk much in those days.
Writing — which half the time is just letting
the sound of the typewriter accompany
the voice in my head — is often the first
step to making drawings. I don’t think of
myself as a writer, but I like struggling
with words; and I like the way they move
on the page. I’m always astounded by
what comes out. Occasionally, when
the phrases haven’t sounded like mine,
I’ve Googled them; but I’ve yet to find
anything that wasn’t original.
You often make drawings and text pieces in series. For example, “Do You Like Creme in Your Coffee and Chocolate in Your Milk?”, a suite of drawings, many of them bursting with words, was made as a response to
ABOVE: Untitled (detail), 2010, graphite
and pastel on paper.
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the attack Betye Saar and others had mounted after you won the MacArthur “genius” grant. Three major things happened that
year — in addition to the MacArthur
and the letter writing campaign, my
daughter was born, so I was mostly
at home struggling with postpartum
depression. I didn’t know at first how
to respond to the furor. But then I
embraced the 100-drawings process
and opened a notebook. Drawing (and
writing) helped me sort out what the
controversy was about and what I
wanted my work to do. Eventually,
I understood that my attackers had
turned me into a fiction; they were
vilifying me for making caricatures of
blackness by doing the same thing to
me. They were, in effect, rewriting the
narrative of my Negress character and
turning her into a whore. That irony
got lost in all the noise.
When I started making my real work
I knew I was stepping into an arena
that I didn’t want to get stuck in. I
didn’t want to take on all the baggage
that goes with being a Black Artist:
I didn’t want to have to uphold the
race. Recently, I’ve been reexamining
the New Negro movement of the ’20s, in
which Alain Locke and others admonished
black artists to make responsible,
respectable work and to proclaim our
past and struggles. The art associated
with black liberation movements tends
to be propagandistic in tone and is often
redundant — the subject matter can’t
expand and complicate.
In 2000, you began putting overhead projectors on the floor to cast colored shapes and motifs onto your cut – paper wall works. Viewers moving through these installations cast their own shadows onto silhouettes that were already there. What led to that development?
I bought a Super 8 film camera in 1999,
RIGHT: Still from “Fall Frum
Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale,“
2011, DVD, approx. 18 minutes.
RIGHT, BOTTOM: One of Walker's
world –famous silhouette pieces
installed at the Fondazione Merz
in Torino, Italy.
17OCTOBER 2011
never having held
a movie camera
before. but then
found I couldn’t
trust myself with
it. The projections
became a way of
sketching out an
approach to film
and video. I wanted
to see what it
would mean to
make works that
traveled through
space from point
A to the wall.
My projection
pieces were
on the verge of
becoming animate,
but there was
something halting about them; compared
to the viewers’ moving shadows, the
cutouts seemed particularly static. I loved
the overhead projectors, those funny,
sculptural bits of antiquated technology,
sitting on the floor, staring, like me.
And then, it seems that you got braver with Super 8. For your first
film, Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions (2004), you worked with puppets, mounting small backlit silhouette shapes on sticks, cobbling together a narrative that turned the plot of The Clansman inside out completely. In Testimony the Negress has the power.
Considering the simplicity of their means
and execution, my films have all been
difficult to make. I’m always piecing
things together on the fly, and trying not
to be too precious or romantic with the
medium. I learned how to construct the
puppets by trying to translate a German
book about shadow puppet theater and
the work of the pioneering animator
Lotte Reiniger, whose 1926 feature The
Adventures of Prince Achmed preceded
Disney’s Snow White by 11 years.
Do you think of yourself as a storyteller, in a way?
No, not really. Whenever I try to tell or
write a story all the way through I stumble
around and hesitate. It may be that I’m
only really interested in beginnings:
my second film 8 Possible Beginnings
or: The Creation of African – America, A
Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker (2005)
is a catalogue of creation stories. I
sometimes think the only tale I can tell
goes something like this: Once upon a
time there was a beginning followed by
another beginning, and another, and so
on. The primary situation in my work is
that of the African – American telling her
story. My job is just to tack onto that
existing, historicized narrative bits that
I’ve picked up along the way.
For your upcoming shows in New York, you’ve made two large – scale series of drawings on paper. One of the drawing series consists entirely of texts. I’m still trying to find a way to make large
text pieces that have the immediacy of
typewriting and the visual presence of
the silhouette work. For these new works
I cut out letters, and block printed them
on large sheets of paper. I was thinking
about the weight of words, about all the
things I had read: histories of colonialism
in America; dissertations on the black
subject in relation to X, Y or Z; and a few
things that have been written about me.
Among the text works are a number of
portraits — biographies of creative black
women, historical figures like Louise
Beavers and Nina Simone. The words I
When I started makingmy real work,
I knew I was steppinginto an arena
that I didn't want to get stuck in.
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used came from Wikipedia entries, which
are peculiarly fixated on their subjects’
personal problems, profiling legendary
black women by way of their endless bad
marriages and drug addictions. I’ve since
heard that Wikipedia is looking for more
female contributors.
The other drawings are more figurative; like the text works they cover themes and incidents from Reconstruction to the present day. The figurative drawings are loosely
situated in the period between
Reconstruction and the Jazz Age. I’m
interested in the moments when black
identity multiplied in ways that it couldn’t
when most blacks were slaves. The
process of making these large – scale
drawings sort of parallels that multiplicity,
and allowed me to work across a range
of subjects and times. Going back and
forth between the drawings and the text
pieces, alternating between intuitive and
analytical modes, seemed also to reflect
how my imagination works.
One of the most explicitly up – to – date of these drawings (He Will Be, 2011) prophesies the lynching of President Barack Obama. I’m certainly not the only person who
worries about the assassination of our
first black president. Around the time of
the election, the collective anxiety about
this was palpable, and I felt I needed to
confront my own fear directly. The text
is mostly lifted from an 1899 newspaper
article, with some additions. There will
be at least three pieces in the show at
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. that warn of this
maddening danger. My hope is that they
will function as protective talismans.
Recently, you’ve been making your films on video. What is the new one, now showing at Lehmann Maupin, about? [Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale (2011)] I’m just preparing to do the last shoot, so
I’m still working on the narrative — who
knows what will happen once editing
begins! But essentially it’s a lament,
like the Blues, about forbidden love
and inevitable, devastating loss. I have
material from a number of places,
including some things I shot in Mississippi,
which I may or may not use. I’m not yet
sure how it will come together.
A year after Hurricane Katrina, you curated a remarkable show at the Metropolitan, “After the Deluge.” Using water as a theme you wove a number of your own works into an extended conversation with pieces that had mostly come from the museum’s collection. I wonder if that show might offer an image of your practice as a whole — in which materially diverse bodies of work call out to one another, each in their own way reflecting the same undeniable subject. My sense of the whole flickers, at
best, I often feel my work is having
conversations with work by artists from
other periods. But here in the studio, the
conversations among my own pieces
can go off on deviating paths. Years ago
it struck me that I arrive at what I need
through a kind of negative process, not
unlike what I went through when I found
my way to the silhouettes. Working
from the inside out, thinking about
what isn’t visible, I can’t always see the
connections — but right now, with things
in a flow, I think I can.
RIGHT: Untitled, 2010, graphite and pastel on paper, 72 x 72 in.
My attackers turned me
vilifying me for makingcaricatures of blacknessby doing the same to me.
into a fiction; they were
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Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Mad. Sq. Art
announces Feallen and Fallow, a six-piece installation
featuring four newly commissioned works by Los
Angeles – based artist Alison Saar. Drawing inspiration
from the cyclical qualities of life and nature, Saar’s
Feallen and Fallow will take park – goers and visitors on
a journey through the four seasons as inspired by the
ancient myth of Persephone in the urban oasis that
is Madison Square Park.
EXHIBITION IN PRINT
AlisonSaarFeallen& Fallow
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The series will premiere alongside two
of the artist’s known Treesouls (1994),
standing fourteen feet amidst the Park’s
surrounding foliage. Feallen and Fallow
is a commission of the award – winning
Mad. Sq. Art program, and will remain on
view daily from September 22 through
December 31, 2011.
For the occasion of the Madison Square
Park installation, Alison Saar presents
four larger than – life works cast in bronze
featuring the seasons as embodied by
the female form at different stages of
maturation.
Spring is depicted as an adolescent girl
perched high upon an existing tree trunk.
Her wild head of roots cascade downward
to conceal her face as chrysalises in
various stages of hatching are shown
woven within her hair and covering her
body as if lively, fluttering moths emerging
from cocoons. Summer is depicted as
a pregnant woman whose womb holds
a swarm of fireflies, illuminated at the
center of the bronze sculpture. Fall is
represented by a woman of the harvest
with a head of branches extending
upwards, barring no leaves but a
smattering of pomegranates. The woman
holds her skirt in both hands catching
the fallen fruit while others descend to
the ground. Winter is shown by a curled
stone-like figure, cast in bronze in which
the seasons come to rest, only to start
anew once more.
Together the series tells of the
Greek myth of Persephone, daughter
of Demeter and Zeus, who embodied
the earth’s fertility and whose tale gave
rise to the establishment of seasons.
Abducted by Hades and forced to live
in the underworld, Demeter’s mourning
of her lost daughter lead the earth to
become barren. In turn, Zeus negotiated
Persephone’s release on the condition
no food would pass her lips though
Persephone was eventually tricked by
Hades into sharing pomegranate seeds.
In consequence, Persephone was
confined to living in the underworld for six
months, and the earth for six, giving rise
to the four seasons.
In addition to the new series, the artist
presents two Treesouls (1994) — which is
on loan to the Park from the permanent
collection of the Denver Art Museum —
to stand 14 feet high among the Park’s
existing foliage. Comprised of found and
sculpted wood with copper cladding, the
pair depicts a coupled young man and
woman whose legs dissolve into the
earth as a web of searching roots.
Spring is depicted as an adolescent girl perched high upon a tree trunk.
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Summer is depicted as a pregnant woman whose womb holds a swarm of fireflies.
25OCTOBER 2011
Summer is depicted as a pregnant woman whose womb holds a swarm of fireflies.
Fall is depicted as a woman with a head of branches extending upwards.
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27OCTOBER 2011
OBSERVE + COLLECT: How were you
approached by Madison Square Park
Conservancy’s Mad Sq. Art? Was there a
prompt for “Feallan and Fallow”? How did
you come up with the concept?
ALISON SAAR: The invitation to submit
a proposal to the Madison Square Park
Conservancy was initially in response
to my earlier work, Treesouls. I took
these works as a cue for scale and
then proposed four new works, which
also investigated natural elements as
metaphor. The Mad Sq Art installation
“Feallen and Fallow” is a continuation of
ideas I am exploring in my current body
of work, addressing the genesis myth of
the seasonal cycles and life cycles. Each
figure represents a season as well as a
phase in the development of a woman’s
life. The figures also represent the ebb
and flow of creativity.
Although the sculptures tell the myth of
Persephone, Queen of the Underworld,
did you draw inspiration from any other
Greek myths? For example, the figures
metamorphose into trees themselves,
which recalls the myth of Daphne, who
escapes love-struck Apollo by changing
into a tree. How is Demeter, Persephone’s
mother and goddess of agriculture and
fertility incorporated into the narrative?
Could the sculptures be understood as
composite figures?
The Myth of Persephone served as a
springboard for these works which
address the seasons, which came to
being a result of the legendary mourning
of Demeter and her refusal to aid in the
growing of crops until her daughter was
returned. The “Treesouls,” which were
made in 1994, do not draw from the myth
of Daphne. They represent some of the
older trees that remain in some of New
York City’s urban parks and all that these
trees have witnessed over the course of
New York City history.
How did your own experience as
a daughter and mother influence
the conception and creation of the
installation?
As my daughter prepares to graduate
from high school and leave for college, I
believe our relationship was very much an
influence for this body of work. It is also
a time in my career where I feel the work
has come full circle since the Treesouls
were created some 18 years ago. I feel
that as I approach the end of my years as
a nurturer, my work will now take on new
issues and ideas.
Is there significance as to why the
installation is occurring during the fall
and early winter?
Not really, but I like the possibility that the
works can potentially be seen in three
different seasonal settings, late summer,
fall, and winter.
How does the one male tree soul
influence the theme of the female change
of seasons and “every woman’s journey?”
Did the other commemorative statues in
Q&A with Alison Saar
28 OBSERVE + COLLECT
the park in any way effect the pieces?
I feel the female figures of “Feallan and
Fallow” create a balance against the male
centric history of the monuments within
the park.
Does the general blending of the figures
into their environment and the subtlety
of their coloring and placement, facing
into the park and obscured by its foliage,
suggest something about female nature
as a whole?
The works are about making the invisible
visible, and their subtle placement in the
plantings contribute to the quiet power of
the figures.
What inspired the installations’s title?
I suppose on one hand the title represents
my personal placement in the cycle as
a post-fertile female, but the title has
also come to signify, for me, the barren
economy over the past years.
Did the future audience of the installation
alter your vision for the works in any way?
Not really other than I saw this as an
opportunity to reach an audience that
may or may not find themselves going
to art museums.
Did the fact that the sculptures would be
in the public realm affect your approach?
What I find most compelling about New
York’s Madison Square Park as a venue for
art is the overwhelming diversity of the
viewers. I also enjoy the fact that although
these works are in a very public setting,
people are still able to have an intimate
relationship with the work, which is not
always possible in a gallery setting or an
art museum.
Each figure represents a season as well as a phase in the development of a woman’s life. The figures also represent the ebb and flow of an artist’s creativity.
29OCTOBER 2011
30 OBSERVE + COLLECT
the expansions weren’t enough to
accommodate their growing collection.
“Living with art kind of took over.” Another
drawback: The place was dark.
“There wasn’t sun until late afternoon,
and living in Seattle you really do crave
the sun.”
Once they had decided to build
a new house, the selection of the
Seattle – based architect Tom Kundig was
easy. He has made a name for himself
with conceptually oriented structures
in glass, steel, and concrete that reveal
a fascination with both the mechanical
and the natural. John explains that
they had seen other houses Kundig
had done and liked the combination
of industrial and airy. In January 2010,
after a more – than – two – year design
and building process, they moved into
their 5,500 – square – foot new home, just
a block from the old one. The rusting
unfinished – steel façade — a Kundig
trademark — distinguishes it dramatically
from the Craftsman and Tudor dwellings
that dominate Laurelhurst, where,
the Behnkes suggest, not everyone
appreciates the latest architectural
innovations. “It’s a risk to build a house
like this within a neighborhood where
people have very traditional houses,” says
Shari. “Nobody likes change.”
The main entrance is on the side of the
house, reached by a wooden dock that
traverses a shallow pool — a clever allusion
to the boat landing on Lake Washington
down a hill at the back of the house. Once
past the metal entry door, a visitor is struck
by the light. Even when it’s cloudy out, Shari
says, it’s light inside. That is because, in
contrast to the somewhat opaque front, the
back wall overlooking the lake is a virtually
uninterrupted expanse of glass on all three
levels. The views help integrate the structure
with the environment, something else Kundig
is known for.
In the foyer the visitor is also struck by the
art. The Behnkes call this space their portrait
gallery and have installed it salon – style.
Many of the works depict women, and nearly
all are photographs. “We were surprised
by how much photography we have,”
says Shari. There is a 2001 Cindy Sherman
self – portrait; “Meredith” and “Claire,” two
of Tanyth Berkeley’s pictures of women in
nature; a Sophie Calle self – portrait at the top
of the Eiffel Tower; and one of Valérie Belin’s
large – scale images from her “Black Women”
series. There’s also a portrait of Shari by
Jason Salavon.
In the middle of the foyer is Tara
Donovan’s pin cube, a massive block of
31OCTOBER 2011
THE LOCAL ELEMENTInside the Seattle home of art collectors John and Shari Behnke. by Meghan Dailey
32 OBSERVE + COLLECT
David Levinthal primarily
uses large – format Polaroid
photography. His works touch
upon many aspects of American
culture, from Barbie to baseball
to X – rated dolls. Levinthal uses
small toys with dramatic lighting
to construct mini environments
of subject matters varying from
war scenes to voyeurism to
racial and political references
to American pop culture.
Sophie Calle is a French writer,
photographer, installation artist,
and conceptual artist. Calle’s
work is distinguished by its use
of arbitrary sets of constraints,
and evokes the French literary
movement of the 1960s known
as Oulipo. Her work frequently
depicts human vulnerability, and
examines identity and intimacy.
She is recognized for her
detective – like ability to follow
strangers and investigate their
private lives. Her photographic
work often includes panels of
text of her own writing.
Valérie Belin’s photographs
elude simple representation or
description, even though she
often chooses to photograph
simple objects. Instead she is
attempting to unveil the very
essence of her subjects and to
delve into the deepest secrets
of things, of matter and of light,
almost independent of the
objects themselves.
33OCTOBER 2011
Moving into a new
house has a way of
changing things —
what kind of art you
collect, how you view
a familiar neighborhood — in subtle and
shocking ways. For 26 years, Shari and
John Behnke lived in a 1929 Tudor – style
home in Laurelhurst, a quiet residential
area of Seattle that may be best known
as the place where Bill Gates grew up.
“We remodeled constantly,” says Shari,
but the expansions weren’t enough to
accommodate their growing collection.
“Living with art kind of took over.” Another
drawback: The place was dark. “There
wasn’t sun until late afternoon, and living
in Seattle you really do crave the sun.”
Once they had decided to build a
new house, choosing the Seattle – based
architect Tom Kundig was easy. He
has made a name for himself with
conceptually oriented structures in
glass, steel, and concrete that reveal a
fascination with both the mechanical
and the natural. John explains that
they had seen other houses Kundig
had done and liked the combination
of industrial and airy. In January 2010,
after a more – than – two – year design
and building process, they moved into
their 5,500 – square – foot new home, just
a block from the old one. The rusting
unfinished – steel façade — a Kundig
trademark — distinguishes it dramatically
from the Craftsman and Tudor dwellings
that dominate Laurelhurst, where,
the Behnkes suggest, not everyone
appreciates the latest architectural
innovations. “It’s a risk to build a house
like this within a neighborhood where
people have very traditional houses,”
says Shari. “Nobody likes change.”
The main entrance is on the side of
the house, reached by a wooden dock
that traverses a shallow pool — a clever
allusion to the boat landing on Lake
Washington down a hill at the back of the
house. Once past the metal entry door, a
visitor is struck by the light. Even when it’s
cloudy out, Shari says, it’s light inside. That
is because, in contrast to the somewhat
opaque front, the back wall overlooking
the lake is a virtually uninterrupted
expanse of glass on all three levels.
The views help integrate the structure
with the environment, something else
Kundig is known for.
In the foyer the visitor is also struck
by the art. The Behnkes call this space
their portrait gallery and have installed
it salon – style. Many of the works depict
women, and nearly all are photographs.
“We were surprised by how much
photography we have,” says Shari. There
is a 2001 Cindy Sherman self – portrait;
“Meredith” and “Claire,” two of Tanyth
Berkeley’s pictures of women in nature;
a Sophie Calle self – portrait at the top
of the Eiffel Tower; and one of Valérie
Belin’s large – scale images from her “Black
Women” series. There’s also a portrait of
Shari by Jason Salavon.
In the middle of the foyer is Tara
Donovan’s pin cube, a massive block of
ordinary stainless – steel straight pins held
together by the force of gravity. The piece
was acquired with the house in mind: it
weighs 800 pounds and requires adequate
floor support. “We want to take it apart
and reinstall it,” says Shari. “It needs to
be redone — everybody touches it.” John
adds: “It’s going to shed no matter what.”
They’re sanguine, however, about its
devolution. As Shari says, the piece “only
exists because of gravity and friction. It
makes sense that it falls apart.”
INSIDE THE COLLECTION
At the other end of the foyer a wide
hallway is lined with artworks by Mel
Bochner, Jim Hodges, Jenny Holzer,
and Gregory Kucera; Olafur Eliasson’s
“Turbosphere” hangs high overhead. This
central axis runs from the front of the
house nearly to the back, linking different
levels and helping to give a sense of
openness despite the numerous dividing
structures Kundig incorporated to make
sure the Behnkes had a maximum amount
of wall space for their collection.
The Behnke family has long been
a fixture in Seattle’s business and
philanthropic communities. John’s late
father, Robert, was a major contributor to
the University of Washington’s Henry Art
Gallery, where John was chairman. The
Behnke Foundation has given grants to
numerous nonprofit social, educational,
and cultural agencies around town, and
the family’s investment company, REB
Enterprises, owns the Seattle – based Sur
la Table chain of high – end kitchen stores.
John, who grew up in Medina, just across
Lake Washington, and Shari, originally
from Scarsdale, New York, met in Seattle
through a friend and married in 1980.
The couple’s experience in the art
world is likewise intertwined with the city
of Seattle. Although the Behnkes most
directly support local artists through
their extensive acquisitions, they are also
responsible for two important grants.
Recently, Shari and John launched the
Brink, a biannual award given to a regional
artist striving to push his or her career
to the next phase. The first recipient, in
2009, was the Vancouver – based video
artist Isabelle Pauwels, whose work was
featured in a show at the Henry.
Fifteen years ago, through the family
foundation, Shari established the Neddy,
named for John’s brother Ned, an artist
who died of aids in 1989. Two winners
each year, one of whom is always a
painter, receive $15,000 apiece and have
shows at the Tacoma Art Museum, where
Shari has served as a trustee. “The Neddy
really changed things, really began my
involvement in the field,” she says. “We
wanted to extend Ned’s legacy through
art. And through running the grant, we
really started to get to know local artists,
to go their studios, see their work.”
Soon they were venturing further afield.
They got hooked on fairs — “It’s so easy
to talk to 20 galleries in two days,” says
John — about the time the international
There is a different response to our collection because of the structure of this house.
34 OBSERVE + COLLECT
35OCTOBER 2011
We really built this house to showcase our art collection.
circuit was heating up in the late 1990s
and attended their first Art Basel in 2000.
But they never abandoned younger local
artists, who are well represented in the
house. There are some arresting video
pieces, including a stop – motion animation
work by Cat Clifford and another, by Tivon
Rice, of a dog baring its teeth (it’s actually
asleep), both installed in a bathroom
with black steel walls. There is a painting
by Joseph Park (a Neddy recipient) of
says Shari. But they also used their move
as an excuse to adjust their collecting
habits. “While we were building the
house, we decided we would only buy art
for around $3,000 to $4,000,” says Shari.
“It was our austerity program.” They found
the two years of buying less – expensive
art freeing, and the budget suited their
commitment to locals.
Since completing the house and
installing their collection, they have been
bunnies and elephants in a harem and
a Steve Davis photograph depicting
inmates at a juvenile detention center.
There is also humor, as in Jenny C. Jones’s
“Breathless” — unraveled audiotape of
a Kenny G album — and Isaac Layman’s
photograph of frozen Otter Pop treats.
By the boom years, the couple had
grown weary of the feeding frenzy at the
fairs. “John and I decided some time ago
that we’re not going to play that game,”
LEFT: Visitors navigate a wooden dock that spans a shallow reflecting pool to reach the main entrance, a metal door located on the side of the
house. ABOVE: Shari and John Behnke’s house in Seattle designed by Tom Kundig. The glass walls flood the interior with light and integrate the
structure with the environment, while also offering a spectacular view of Lake Washington.
36 OBSERVE + COLLECT
reconsidering the works’ placement.
Most pieces will stay put for now, but a
few changes have already been made.
They recently sold a James Rosenquist
painting, Shari says, “because we owned
two of them, and because we wanted
to buy different art.” In its former spot in
the living room is a mixed – media piece
by MadeIn, the Chinese collective formed
by the artist Xu Zhen in reaction to his
own fast – growing fame. “It’s actually the
first Chinese contemporary work we’ve
still wet. “It’ll take like 10 years before it
dries completely,” says John.
Although John acknowledges that the
house is “built to really showcase art,”
he stresses that it “is not a museum.”
But, says Shari, “since we’ve lived here,
people have responded that way when
they come in, even though we’ve had
a lot of this art for many years.” She
bought,” says Shari. “We got it at Frieze
in London last October.”
They’re smitten with a work by local
painter Andrew Dadson — who happens
to be this year’s Brink winner and was
a sensation at the 2010 Art Basel Miami
Beach (they bought their Dadson before
then, from the Seattle dealer Scott
Lawrimore). The canvas actually isn’t hung
but leans against the wall, all the better
to convey a sense of the weight of the
thick black globs of pigment, which are
ABOVE: Tara Donovan, Untitled (detail), 2001,
nickel – plated steel pins, 35 x 35 x 35 in.
37OCTOBER 2011
Last summer, there was a giant black
square on the lawn of the Olympic
Sculpture Park — it looked like something
had attacked, or something had formerly
lived there and been removed, or like
Seattle had a posthumous visit from
Kasimir Malevich.
That art was by Andrew Dadson, who
has just now been announced as the
winner of this biennium’s Brink Award.
The Henry Art Gallery is delighted to
announce that artist Andrew Dadson is
the recipient of The Brink award for 2011.
The Brink is a biennial award granted
to an early – career artist working in
Washington, Oregon, or British Columbia
whose work shows artistic promise and
who appears to be on “the brink” of a
promising career. Dadson will receive a
prize of $12,500 and a solo exhibition
at the Henry. A work of his art will be
acquired for the permanent collection.
Andrew Dadson, of Vancouver B.C.,
creates paintings of intensely worked
layers of oil paint, pushed unidirectionally
across the painting’s support, allowing
a thick blur to settle on the picture
plane while excesses of color build
up at the edges. Combining multiple
canvases in small groups that often sit
on the floor and and lean on each other,
he emphasizes the physicality of his
process and the object – like nature of the
results. Through these paintings and his
ANDREW DADSON: ON THE BRINK
38 OBSERVE + COLLECT
39OCTOBER 2011
This painting will take about 10 years to dry completely.
equally characteristic series of landscape
photographs altered by monochromatic
applications of paint, Dadson explores his
assertion that “everything has boundaries;
the delimitations between such can be
static and opaque or permeable and
imagined. In my practice, I search for the
spaces where society manifests these
invisible distinctions, and how they can
be indiscernibly breached and stretched.”
Dadson received a BFA from the Emily
Carr Institute of Art and Design. He is
represented by Galleria Franco Noero.
Andrew Dadson and many of the other
short – listed nominees for the award and
jurors will take part in a public program
at the Henry. The artists will share images
of their work, and members of The Brink
selection committee will respond to their
presentations. The event is designed to be
an open – ended, free – wheeling discussion
about contemporary art, and will be an
opportunity for dialogue between artists,
arts professionals, collectors, and the
general public.
The Brink Award, now in its second
biennial cycle, is given to an early – career
artist in Washington, Oregon, or British
Columbia whose work shows artistic
promise and who appears to be on
“the brink” of a promising career. The
selection committee considers artists
whose work explores a range of ideas
beyond the surface of mainstream
culture and demonstrates innovation and
high artistic quality. Evidence of some
professional achievement is required as a
demonstration of the artist’s commitment,
but the artist does not need to possess
an extensive record of accomplishments
(exhibitions, critical reviews, commissions,
grants, residencies, etc.). Appropriate
benchmarks include a first significant
exhibition, the receipt of an MFA or
equivalent degree, or other evidence
within the last five years indicative of the
beginning of a professional artistic career.
The Brink Award, now in its second
biennial cycle, was established by
long – time Henry Art Gallery benefactors
and Seattle art supporters John and Shari
Behnke. In developing the idea of The
Brink, John and Shari Behnke sought a
name that would evoke a critical point
in an artist’s career, described by the
Behnkes as “a crucial moment, the
point at which something is likely to
begin.” The award reflects the Behnkes’
adventuresome art collecting interests as
well as their desire to support artists in
the region and purchase their works.
The Brink complements the Henry Art
Gallery’s role as a catalyst for the creation
of new work, while still demonstrating the
museum’s commitment to artists working
in our region. Said Henry Director Sylvia
Wolf, “Since its founding in 1927, the
Henry has advanced the art, artists and
ideas of its time. Today, John and Shari
Behnke are building upon that mission
with the Brink Award. All of us at the
Henry are deeply grateful for the Behnkes’
extraordinary generosity and support of
artists in the Cascadia region.”
The selection committee completed the
review of artists’ submissions in March.
For this year’s award, 62 nominations
were received from arts professionals
across the Pacific Northwest. Of those
nominated, 43 artists submitted materials
for consideration. The 2011 selection
committee comprised Henry director
Sylvia Wolf and curators Elizabeth Brown
and Sara Krajewski; Seattle artist Victoria
Haven; Vancouver artist Ken Lum; Reed
College’s Cooley Art Gallery (Portland, OR)
curator and director, Stephanie Snyder;
and John and Shari Behnke.
In addition to Andrew Dadson, six other
artists were chosen as finalists: Grant
Barnhart (Seattle, WA); Debra Baxter
(Seattle, WA); Dawn Cerny (Seattle, WA);
Tannaz Farsi (Eugene, OR); Allison Hrabluik
(Vancouver, BC); and artist team Anna
Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen (Portland,
OR). The committee conducted studio
visits with all of the finalists before
selecting the award winner. Henry Art
Gallery Curator Sara Krajewski remarked,
“Evaluating this year’s Brink artists was
a compelling and delightful process. The
work of emerging artists in our region is
thriving, strong, and provocative. The jury
appreciated all the entrants’ efforts in
submitting work for our review.”
LEFT: Andrew Dadson, August, 2001, oil on canvas, 72 x 96 in.
40 OBSERVE + COLLECT
SOLO SHOW ARTIST TO WATCH
Ahuja’s layered musings on race and identity have made their
way into museums around the country. She had a solo show at
Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005, and her work
was included in the Brooklyn Museum’s groundbreaking “Global
Feminisms” show in 2007. Recently the Philadelphia Museum of
Art and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts acquired some of her
pieces, which range in price from $5,000 to $20,000. She moved
from Houston to New York last fall to start her residency at the
Studio Museum in Harlem, and she is considering staying in the
city for a few years once her residency is finished.
With this in mind, Ahuja has long focused on depictions of her
hair. In paintings and waxy chalk – on – paper drawings, strands
come to life as tangled masses, folding in colors and shapes
suggestive of the artist’s African American and Indian heritage.
It’s a powerful symbol and, for Ahuja, a way to work through
her personal issues of race. “At some point, I kind of confronted
Mequitta Ahuja’s portraits are large –scale abstractions and symbols of a multiethnic mix.
LEFT: The artist in her studio at the Studio Museum in Harlem, 2010.
RIGHT: Forge (detail), 2009, oil on canvas, 84 x 72 in.
my parents about the fact that they never really addressed our
having this multiethnic background, and our living in a mostly
white town,” Ahuja says, referring to Weston, Connecticut.
Her father was born in New Delhi, and her mother came from
Cincinnati. “It was pretty confusing because each group — white,
Indian, black — had certain expectations of me that I never really
fit. Through my work, I get to be involved with these different
communities on my own terms.”
Her latest works — mainly self – portraits, as well as some large
paintings that hover between landscape and abstraction — will
be exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem this July. In one, a
nude with just the slightest hint of facial features wields a sword,
hacking her way through crosshatched brushstrokes resembling
branches on a dark forest floor. A figure dressed in a bright
orange ensemble that evokes the artist’s Indian roots strikes a
strong stance atop a tree. Some densely textured patches create
a ripple across a few canvases — a pleasant byproduct of the
artist’s tendency to paint over her work. “It allows for the sort of
things you wouldn’t plan for,” she explains. “I have started seeing
a failed painting as an opportunity.” — Rachel Wolff
I’ve started seeing a failed painting as an opportunity.