Art
In Conversation
AI WEIWEI with Phong Bui
In 2008, Alanna Heiss, the late Won-il Rhee, and I were envisioning an immersive and full installation using all the available space in the three floors and basement of PS1, even the courtyard and rooftop, for what was to be a comprehensive survey of contemporary Asian art called Spectacle. At our presentation before MoMA’s senior staff, we proposed that “spectacle” was a prevailing feature these artists seemed to share.
In Conversation
TROY BRAUNTUCH with Allie Biswas
The photographic image has played a central role in the work of Troy Brauntuch since the beginning of his career. When he first started exhibiting in the late 1970s, the manipulation of an existing image formed the basis of his practice, and his inclusion in the now historic Pictures show at Artist’s Space, New York, in 1977, cemented his connection to the medium.
In Conversation
PRABHAVATHI MEPPAYIL with Laila Pedro
The Indian-born artist Prabhavathi Meppayil creates nuanced, rigorous paintings that reveal their structural and chromatic complexities only upon close examination and after long observation.
In Conversation
RUSSELL CONNOR with Eleanor Heartney
The fantasy of art objects having lives of their own has a long history, encompassing everything from the story of Pygmalion to the Hollywood franchise Night at the Museum. Painter Russell Connor has made a career of speculating about what characters from various iconic art historical masterpieces might do if allowed to mingle and interact.
When Artists Choose Artists
By Joyce BeckensteinFrom the late 1940s through the ’60s, New York artists, restless and in pursuit of what they had yet to discover about themselves, headed for Long Island’s East End. The titans who at the time had yet to learn they were titans—Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell—were among the visual artists who, when not sequestered in their hushed studios, hung out on the beach, smoking, drinking, cooking, canoeing, clamming, and coveting one another’s lovers and spouses.
CLOSEENCOUNTERS
SARAH SCHULMAN with Jarrett Earnest
The novelist, playwright, and critic Sarah Schulman has been chronicling bohemian life in the East Village since the late 1970s. Her work as participant and chronicler of ACT UP is the stuff of queer legend, as is her co-founding of MIX NYC, the NY Queer Experimental Film Festival in 1987 that is going into its thirtieth year.
In Conversation
Carolee Schneemann with Jarrett Earnest
I was walking on Seventh Ave last spring when I saw something like a limb, but not a limb—it could have been a frond or a vulvic sensation, which is where so much of my work originates. I spent several weeks asking my friends if they’ve seen anybody’s sculpture made up of this kind of unit, multiplied and varied? They said "No, it’s probably your idea."
