| Great news: We’re not discussing the orange tyrant this week. We deserve a short break in this long fight. Instead, we’re focusing on underrepresented craft histories and on contemporary artists including Jeffery Gibson, Nolan Oswald, Cosmo Whyte, Allan Wexler, Marie Laurencin, and many others.
For Valentine’s Day, our Staff Reporter Rhea Nayyar wrote a laugh-out-loud piece channeling her frustration with dating apps through art history. We also recommend love-themed art books and explore the forgotten genre of allegorical romance maps.
In the news, the husband of New York gallerist Brent Sikkema is charged with hiring his killer, Ai Weiwei is deported from Switzerland, Australia drops its Venice Biennale artist for contested reasons, and the American Quilter’s Society is accused of removing works about abortion and female anatomy. To lighten things up, we also report on a mysterious woman’s portrait found underneath a Picasso painting.
There’s much more, including our guide to sane alternatives to Elon Musk’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s malign social media platforms, artist Chloë Bass’s review of Imani Perry’s new book Black in Blues, and Barbara Shermund’s witty cartoons for early editions of the New Yorker. Have a lovely weekend! — Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor | | |
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| | Researchers detected the mysterious figure in the early-blue period painting “Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto” (1901). | Rhea Nayyar |
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SPONSORED | | | | | Doubling its contributions to immigrant art professionals, the foundation recognizes Oluremi C. Onabanjo, Donna Honarpisheh, Aimé Iglesias Lukin, and Bernardo Mosqueira for their curatorial work. Learn more |
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CRAFT HISTORIES | | | The Indian-American printmaker’s experimental, collaborative spirit yielded a new method for multicolored intaglio printing and inspired a generation of artists. | Shilpi Chandra
Its contemporary practice reinfuses values into ourselves and our culture, which was deemed unimportant by colonization. | Olivia Quintanilla
The 2024 Craft Archive Fellows will present their research on underrepresented craft histories in an online event hosted by the Center for Craft and moderated by Hyperallergic associate editor Lakshmi Rivera Amin. |
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| FROM OUR CRITICS | | | By blurring the line between individual and collective memory, the works demonstrate the Panafrican ideal that our experiences are part of a shared narrative. | Jen Torwudzo-Stroh
Invisibility: Powers & Perils raises exciting questions around racial, technological, and ecological invisibility, and leaves us asking for more. | Renee Reizman
In his first exhibition in nearly a decade, the artist-builder presents sculptures that are alternatively strange, optimistic, and critical. | Brecht Wright Gander |
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| | | His works are distinctly earthly endeavors, showcasing the human hand in all its striving. | Lisa Ying Zhang
The artist has a point: Why is aesthetic pleasure often relegated to the sidelines of art? Why paint rotting fish when you can paint pretty femmes? | Natalie Haddad
Nolan Oswald sees the pre- and postcolonial worlds as contemporaneous and interlocking. | Hrag Vartanian |
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MORE TO SEE IN NYC | | | From AbEx giant Cy Twombly to explorations of assimilation by Serena Chang to the politics of prettiness in the portraits of Marie Laurencin, these shows deserve close looking. | Hrag Vartanian, Natalie Haddad, and Lisa yin Zhang |
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READING RECS & REVIEWS | | | In Black in Blues, Imani Perry reaches to the height of the sky and the depth of the ocean, casting the history of blue as one of both triumph and tragedy, possibility and limitation. | Chloë Bass
This annual publication inverts the almanac form, offering art by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, writing by Naomi Klein, and poems elegizing the plants of Gaza. | Rhea Nayyar
Letter-writing, art historical affairs, Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, and more artsy titles on love in all its forms. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin |
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MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC | | | As it turns out, men have been posing with fish for hundreds of years. | Rhea Nayyar
Why bother with the so-called Gulf of America when you can dip in the Bay of Bliss or Cape Content? | Maya Pontone
Barbara Shermund’s single-panel cartoons, drawn with a seemingly off-the-cuff fluidity of line and expression, came to define the magazine’s sense of humor. | Izzy DeSantis
Pushing back against tech oligarchs, many netizens are exploring new options including decentralized platforms that give them more control over personal data. | Rhea Nayyar
This week: snarky dance criticism, a Super Bowl performer’s protest, Barbara Kingsolver builds a rehab center, Chappell Roan starts a trend, and did Rupi Kaur’s poem age well? | Lakshmi Rivera Amin |
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