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☆ When Zines Walked the Earth
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-21 | by ( Martha Schwendener | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Before the internet, before the spicy comments sections on Instagram and Twitter or the outré subcultures on TikTok, like-minded strangers connected through zines. The curators of “Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines” at the Brooklyn Museum, the art historians Branden Joseph and Drew Sawyer, define them as low-budget, limited-circulation publications (short for “magazine” or “fanzine”) that are not political pamphlets or countercultural newspapers. The show’s territory starts in 1969, coinciding with the widening availability of photocopy machines, and runs to the present. The selection of zines, posters, films, videos, paintings, garments and other curios is pretty great, and you see many repeat visitors (like myself) wandering the galleries. There is an enormous amount of material to take in.

Persons: Branden Joseph, Drew Sawyer Organizations: Twitter, Brooklyn Museum

☆ For Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Hair Is Rooted in Pride
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-16 | by ( Martha Schwendener | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Black hair has been a rousing topic for politicians, comedians and artists for decades. Malcolm X argued that straightening Black hair to conform to white beauty standards was a form of racist brainwashing. Regina Kimbell made a documentary with the brilliant title “My Nappy Roots: A Journey Through Black Hair-itage” (2010) and the comedian Chris Rock made a similar documentary, “Good Hair” (2009), about the Black hair industry (and, of course, got in trouble at the Oscars for mentioning a Black actress’s lack of hair). Now a Broadway play, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” written by Jocelyn Bioh, celebrates the “masterpieces” created by West African immigrants on women’s heads in a Harlem braiding shop. What’s often missing from the Black hair narrative is the experience of Black nonbinary people.

Persons: Malcolm X, Regina Kimbell, ”, Chris Rock, “, Jocelyn Bioh, What’s, Black, Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s Organizations: West Locations: Harlem, Philadelphia

☆ Yoko Ono and the Women of Fluxus Changed the Rules in Art and Life
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Martha Schwendener | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Sitting onstage at Carnegie Hall while audience members come up to snip her clothing off with scissors. These are some of the actions taken in the name of art in “Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus” at the Japan Society, an exhibition that focuses on four revolutionary women, Shigeko Kubota, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, and one you’ve probably heard of before, Yoko Ono. Fluxus was founded in the early 1960s and paved the way for Conceptual art, Minimalism, performance and video. But by focusing on four Japanese women, the show asks: Who stands the test of time? Was Fluxus really a blueprint for the future?

Persons: Shigeko Kubota, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Yoko Ono, John Cage, Midori Yoshimoto, Tiffany Lambert, Ayaka Iida Organizations: Carnegie Hall, Artists, Fluxus, Japan Society

In order to face either one head on, you must stand on a small, uneven platform of homemade adobe bricks. This is a message from the artist: He’s not interested in a seamless viewing experience. It recalls his contribution to the 2017 Whitney Biennial, where he created a room of adobe bricks. Here, a winding path of bricks connects life-size portraits of members of esparza’s largely queer community. The paintings are also on adobe, referencing his Mexican heritage and accentuating his subjects’ brown skin.

Persons: rafa esparza’s, He’s, JILLIAN STEINHAUER Organizations: Art Basel Miami Beach, Biennial Locations: Los Angeles, New York

☆ In Moving Images, Michael Snow Teases the Eye and the Mind
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-03 | by ( Martha Schwendener | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Our attention spans have shrunk over the last half century. Consider Michael Snow’s “Wavelength” (1967), a rigorous 45-minute film made by the Canadian artist that stands as a monument of experimental cinema. Snow understood what he was up against: In 2003 he made a video called “WVLNT: WAVELENGTH for Those Who Don’t Have the Time: Originally 45 Minutes, Now 15!” It wasn’t merely a joke or a concession. Knowing that people were choosing to watch his film digitally sped-up, Snow used the occasion to create a brand-new work, superimposing 15-minute segments of the original onto one another like gauzy layers of celluloid film. What really fascinated him was the question of how we see, hear and perceive reality and how art, language and technology continue to shape this experience.

Persons: Michael, Snow, “ Michael Snow, Jack Organizations: Survey, The Locations: Canadian, “, Kinderhook, N.Y

Almost any of the 16 Giorgio de Chirico paintings in “Horses: The Death of a Rider” could sustain an exhibition by itself. A couple from the late 1920s are less polished, and you could reasonably call “Two Horses on a Seashore,” 1970, a little glib. As the exhibition title suggests, every canvas also holds one or more horses, often backed by one of the mysterious landscapes he’s known for. The majestic white steed in the title piece, “Death of a Rider,” rears up on a twilit beach, letting its rider tumble off like Icarus behind it. In the distance stands a city on a hill; nearby, two voyagers or gods watch from a rowboat.

Persons: Giorgio de Chirico, de Chirico, It’s, Chirico, ”, HEINRICH

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