According to artist Amy Sherald (b. 1973), she paints “Black people doing stuff.” Her committment to uplifting the everyday experiences of Black communities can be seen in Deliverance(2022), in which she paints Baltimore-based figures on dirt bikes in the manner of lofty equestrian portraits. Sherald appropriates the style of portraiture historically reserved for elite white sitters to glorify the bike culture of her chosen home. Caught in mid-air, her subjects lean back as if on a rearing horse, defying the laws of physics.
Photographed in the Brooklyn Museum as Part of the Exhibit Giants: Art From The Dean Collection.
“I want to be the painter of my country,“ artist Tarsila do Amaral (1886 – 1973) declared in 1923, at a moment when Brazilian artists and writers were actively developing a new, homegrown modernism. With his undulating planes, suggesting land, water, and sky, and a human-like cactus, The Moon (1928) offers the artist’s vision of a Brazilian landscape. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Tarsila do Amaral, The Moon→
Little Ghost Eating Bread (1934) depicts a mysterious scene within an other worldlylandscape. Animated by Oppenheim‘s dark sense of humor, it portrays a cartoon-like figure about to step off a ledge while merrily nibbling on a loaf of bread. A cloaked form is partially visible on the right. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Merit Oppenheim, Little Ghost Eating Bread→
Ukrainian-born artist Peter Krasnow (1886 – 1979) worked mostly in Southern California from 1922 onward, becoming an important advocate of modernism in Los Angeles. During the final years of World War II, he began a series of abstract paintings featuring interlocking rectilinear forms in candy-colored hues.
When Heath Richardson came home from his trip to South America, he began having difficulty falling asleep. As he lay in his bed in his Kensington Garden flat, he would close his eyes and try to imagine sheep, leaping over a fence like when he was a small boy. Continue reading Dreamland Sloth By Travis Louie→
