Amel Larrieux - Get Up
Hopeless Romantic { The Series }
6 years ago
10 June 2009
farewell, colescott.
Artist Robert Colescott passed yesterday. You can check out the obituary, written by art critic Roberta Smith in the New York Times here.
15 May 2009
smile w/yo eyes
Teyona wins America's Next Top Model! I know you're probably thinking, "What does ANTM have to do with Visualité?"
News flash: You cannot tell me that the judging process is not a form of visual analysis and critique!
Anywho, congrats to Teyona! I'm just happy Celia the centurion stylist was booted off of the show...
Image courtesy of CWTV.com
14 May 2009
scene of the day
Lykke Li live performance of Little Bit. Toronto-based rapper Drake has a great rendition on his mixtape So Far Gone.
12 May 2009
10 May 2009
window shopping
We live in a consumer society, thus, even visual culture can't escape the consumption function. Check out the Manolos Sarah Jessica Parker donned in Sex and the City, the movie. Nothing like window shopping in Safari. The Manolo Blahnik Hangisi pumps can be purchased from barneys.com for $945.00, roughly $400 more than priced in the film.
20 April 2009
30 March 2009
alphabet street
One of my favorite artists of all time, Prince, has released his new album Lotusflow3r exclusively with Target. It includes 3 separate discs, and I have provided an iMeem Playlist so that you can preview before you buy it!
Prince - LotusFlow3r 3Cd
29 March 2009
linked
Art Forum Picks: Michael Rackowitz: The Invisible Enemy
Studio Museum in Harlem: Kalup Linzy, If It Don't Fit...
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Cézanne and Beyond
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago: Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York: Mickalene Thomas, She's Come UnDone!
Roberts and Tilton Los Angeles: Kehinde Wiley, World Stage Brazil
sweet music
A compilation of songs from Chicago-based rap group, The Cool Kids, including my favorite, "Mikey Rocks."
The Cool Kids Playlist
24 March 2009
sweet music
So Keri Hilson's debut album "In A Perfect World" premieres today. Check it out, let me know what you think! Btw, I've also embedded her fiesty new video "Knock You Down" feat. Kanye West and Ne-Yo.
In a Perfect World...
22 March 2009
things that make u go "hmm..."
So I've been thinking a lot about the body, femininity, and black female sexuality...and the wheels in my head are constantly turning. Apparently, the black female body is on a lot of people's (and company's) minds, including Old Navy, and painter/photographer extraordinaire Mickalene Thomas.
While sitting at the dinner table, my partner and I were watching Family Guy's satire of Fox News (how ironic?), when the scene ended and a spanking new 30-second commercial from Old Navy appeared on the screen. In this particular episode entitled "Mid-Town Flash with the Supermodelquins", a dialogue between three multicultural female and anthropomorphized mannequins and their male counterparts goes a little something like this:
Black Male Mannequin: "Look Buddy! Doesn't mom look pretty in her new midtown gown!?"
Son Mannequin: "You go, Mom!"
White Female Mannequin: "These Midtown gowns are so cute!"
Latina Mannequin: "Especially if I had your legs!" [Looks over at a random pair of white female legs in a box in a corner]
White Female Mannequin: "There's an extra pair in the back room..."
Latina Mannequin: "At $15 these dresses are gonna fly!"
[Live white little girl snatches the dress off of the black Mannequin, named Michelle] [WTF!!!??]
White Female Mannequin: [expresses shock]
Dog barks.
White Male Mannequin: "Sweet!"
Black Father to White Male Mannequin: "Hey man, keep your painted on eyes off my wife!" [puts hand up to White Male Mannequin's face]
White Male Mannequin: "I can't! Your fingers don't close."
Michelle: [with prototypical black girl attitude] "Oh what! Like you've never seen plastic before!"
END SCENE.
Son Mannequin: "You go, Mom!"
White Female Mannequin: "These Midtown gowns are so cute!"
Latina Mannequin: "Especially if I had your legs!" [Looks over at a random pair of white female legs in a box in a corner]
White Female Mannequin: "There's an extra pair in the back room..."
Latina Mannequin: "At $15 these dresses are gonna fly!"
[Live white little girl snatches the dress off of the black Mannequin, named Michelle] [WTF!!!??]
White Female Mannequin: [expresses shock]
Dog barks.
White Male Mannequin: "Sweet!"
Black Father to White Male Mannequin: "Hey man, keep your painted on eyes off my wife!" [puts hand up to White Male Mannequin's face]
White Male Mannequin: "I can't! Your fingers don't close."
Michelle: [with prototypical black girl attitude] "Oh what! Like you've never seen plastic before!"
END SCENE.
As I sit here at the breakfast bar in my partner's kitchen, I'm at a complete loss for words. Okay...not really but seriously... I don't know what to say first. So below I've posted a picture of some of the comments that the commercial has garnered.
Has Michelle Obama's ubiquitous celebrity and visibility made advertisers and the industry, mostly dominated by white men, mad? What does it mean for an image or representation of a black woman, vis-a-vis a mannequin, to be normalized, or even, humorized, as a naked derivative of sexual pleasure and voyeurism with "attitude" a la mode?The Youtube comments from the video speak volumes to the ways in which tidbits of popular culture and consumerism become conduits for propagating racialized and misogynistic fantasy within the American public imagination and consciousness. Yes, this commercial bares undertones of racializing stereotypes. Yes, it was probably intended to be lighthearted, contemporary, and humorous. And Yes, by participating in the dialogue that the Supermodelquins have started, I am reproducing the effects that this commercial garners.
However, as a black woman, I also understand that even though publicly, access to my own body and my own sexuality may be usurped from me and plastered all over TV and magazines and the internet, through every medium from Old Navy commercials to Smooth Magazine to Manet's Olympia, I determine when and where I enter. Which is why I admire such projects like those of artist Mickalene Thomas.
Her large scale photographs, prints, and paintings picturing black female subjects are the perfect segue way to engage in a dialogue about reclaiming and complicating so-called representations of black women, their bodies, and sexuality. Her first solo-exhibition, entitled Mickalene Thomas: She's Come UnDone! will debut at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City this Thursday, and will run until May 2, 2009.
Thomas's work is far from the panecea for distasteful and demode depictions of black women. In fact, it beckons us as viewers to ponder notions of celebrity, control, lust, exploitation, and emulation. Pieces like "Put something on it" remind us that there is no "right" or "wrong" representation of black women, but it is the way in which black female bodies are framed, in nuance, that reify the notion that well, presentation is everything.
Image: Mickalene Thomas, Put something down on it, mounted c-print, 30 x 24 inches, 76.2 x 61 cm, 2009. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin gallery.
video cult(ure)
The Kid Cudi who cried wolf. Music news from this past week's South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin Texas.
18 March 2009
video cult(ure)
R.I.P. to Kid Cudi's music career. From his A Kid Named Cudi Mixtape, "Day N Nite"
To check out the MTV news coverage of his retirement from music, click here.
Click here to access Kid Cudi's blog.
To check out the MTV news coverage of his retirement from music, click here.
Click here to access Kid Cudi's blog.
17 March 2009
intruder alert
Okay, I can deal with Paris Fashion Week. I can even deal with the Metropolitan Opera's 125th Anniversary Gala. But if Kanye West and Amber Rose continue to infiltrate my most sacred place of refuge, le monde du l'art, I am going to give up my aspirations of becoming an art historian and apply for a job at American Apparel selling spandex disco pants. Image courtesy of Scene and Heard, ArtForum.com.
Top: Jeffrey Deitch, renowned international art dealer, and Amber Rose, former exotic dancer and video vixen. Bottom: Kanye West and artist Vanessa Beescroft.
12 March 2009
06 March 2009
abstract landscapes
Before I first encountered the work of painter Richard Mayhew, I never quite understood the notion that large-scale color field paintings operate as a form of landscape. Clearly, Mayhew incorporates the rhapsody and the elusiveness of abstraction while utilizing layered colors and light to recreate horizon lines and natural forms. You can check out more of Mayhew's work at G.R. N'Namdi Gallery in Chicago.
Image: Richard Mayhew, Untitled, oil on canvas.
05 March 2009
scene of the day
Move over Beyoncé and Rih Rih. First Lady Michelle Obama on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in late 2008. Take note of the brushing off of the shoulders...
04 March 2009
compare/contrast
In this rendition of rapper Ludacris' album cover for "Theatre of the Mind," graphic designer Joe Buck is taking cues from OSPAAAL, the Organization of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. OSPAAAL has been active since the 1960s, housing one of the most sophisticated workshops for poster production in the world. Artist and late Black Panther Party Minister of Culture Emory Douglass once collaborated with OSPAAAL in efforts to speak out against the subjugation of people of color all over the world. Contemporary artists like Shepard Fairey and Joe Buck are drawing upon a legacy of image production that even today still resonates with society.
Left: Revised album cover, Ludacris, Theatre of the Mind.
Right: Cuban Film Week Poster, 1969.
video cult(ure)
Feeling very mainstream/futuristic today. Common's "Universal Mind Control" and Lupe Fiasco's "Daydreaming" featuring Jill Scott. Robots anyone?
03 March 2009
27 February 2009
26 February 2009
blacklisted, 2.0
HBO premieres Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell's The Black List Vol. 2 tonight at 9pm EST. If you haven't seen the first volume, you will be in for a treat! To check out the New York Times review of the documentary, click here.
I am most certainly looking forward to the interview of world renowned artist Kara Walker.
Image: Kara Walker, Burn, cut paper and adhesive on wall, 92 1/8 x 48 inches, 1998.
Image: Kara Walker, Burn, cut paper and adhesive on wall, 92 1/8 x 48 inches, 1998.
25 February 2009
hip-hop/dont stop
This Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation and poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph are giving a highly anticipated talk on the "power of hip-hop to reshape the American and global cultural landscape at this historic moment in US politics."
As a budding cultural critic and art-historian who is excited to see cultural producers and scholars break down the barriers and reveal the intersectionality between both worlds, I will undoubtedly be in attendance.
You can check out the discussion and performance at mcachicago.org
Image: Kori Newkirk, Hip-hop from Home (Fake that Floss) 2001.
22 February 2009
scene of the day
Outkast, Sleepy Brown, and the Morris Brown College marching band in Morris Brown. Peep Janelle Monae's cameo!
18 February 2009
spotted: michelle o
1. Where was I when the news broke that the New Museum exhibited Elizabeth Peyton's painting of Michelle Obama?
And 2. Why can't American Vogue (vis-a-vis Annie Leibowitz) get on board with Peyton and choose a more flattering/visually intriguing portrait of the First Lady for its March issue?
scene of the day
I knew there was a reason why I was apprehensive posting Kanye's new video for Welcome to Heartbreak. According to friends of Visualité, Ye was taking cues from rock group Chairlift and their video, Evident Utensil. Tisk, tisk, tisk...
17 February 2009
80s...baby
New York Fashion Week has left me feeling inspired, and I'm not the only one. Is it just me, or is eccentric designer Marc Jacobs channeling model Grace Jones in his this snapshot of model Georgie Badiel walking in his Fall 2009 Women's Ready-to- Wear Collection?
11 February 2009
blocked.
Suffering from an acute case of bloggers block. bbs. (be back soon). Send along inspiring works to write about!
Image: Tara Donovan, Untitled (Pins) 2003, Size #17 straight pins, 42 x 42 x 42 in.
10 February 2009
scene of the day
A scene taken from Douglas Sirk's 1959 version of Imitation of Life, then contemporary remix of the tale of the "tragic mulatto"
08 February 2009
wordUp
Today's Word of the Day is Irascible, meaning, marked by hot temper and easily provoked anger. Immediately, I thought of the 1951 cover of Life Magazine featuring the Abstract Expressionists (de Kooning, Rothko, Sterne, Pollock, etc.) and their protest of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The irony of the photograph, entitled The Irascibles, operates twofold. On one hand, these artists are making a statement against what art institutions considered "advanced American art." And on the other, these institutions would eventually utilize this particular art movement as the ubiquitous poster-child of U.S. cultural world dominance. How iconic/ironic.
Image: Nina Leen, The Irascibles, 1950. Life magazine. Front row, left to right: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko. Middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin. Back row: Willem De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne.
gratuitous sidenote...
The image of Hedda Sterne (above) clutching her purse reminds me of this video clip/unPC PSA ...completely gratuitous, but hilarious nonetheless.
video cult(ure)
Because I'm in a glittery mood... from Michael Jackson's classic album Off the Wall and perhaps my favorite MJ single of all time, Rock With You.
Michael Jackson - Rock with You
Jackson's glittery ensemble is vaguely reminiscent of Nick Cave's elusive yet phantasmagorical soundsuits. You can check out some of Cave's recent work at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City.
Image: Nick Cave, Soundsuit,Mixed Media, 98 x 16 x 20 inches, 2008.
Michael Jackson - Rock with You
Jackson's glittery ensemble is vaguely reminiscent of Nick Cave's elusive yet phantasmagorical soundsuits. You can check out some of Cave's recent work at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City.Image: Nick Cave, Soundsuit,Mixed Media, 98 x 16 x 20 inches, 2008.
05 February 2009
white walls
Rachel Mason: I Rule with A Broken Heart opens tomorrow @ Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago.
This excerpt was taken from a press release on behalf of the gallery:
"Since 2004, Mason has been sculpting political figures and imagining herself as one of them. The project has extended to live performances, video, albums, and writing. The body of figures began as a project called The Ambassadors, as Mason sculpted herself as an imagined ambassador to wars in her lifetime. For this exhibition, we present a literal timeline of Mason's life as a fictional ambassador to conflicts, in figurines set on a shelf that wraps around the perimeter of the gallery. Mason is interested in using her own personal experiences to address the public experience of these historical, and very real, human beings. Reading a passage in a Shambala Buddhist text led her to think of the leaders as being heartbroken, and her own interpretation is deeply empathetic, attempting to imagine what it might be like to be Saddam Hussein, Jimmy Carter, or Deng Xiaopeng."
Mason will be present to talk about her first solo exhibition in Chicago as well as the release of her new book, I Rule with a Broken Heart and she will be giving a performance on Saturday, February 7th. Click here to view the entire press release.
In addition to Mason's exhibition, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund opens today at the Spertus Museum.The works of artists such as Hale Woodruff, Elizabeth Catlett, and Aaron Douglass will be displayed. Here is an excerpt from the description of the exhibition:
"A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund is the first exhibition to explore the legacy of the Julius Rosenwald Fund created by the Chicago businessman and philanthropist to foster black leadership through the arts, literature, and scholarship. From 1928 to 1948, the Fund awarded stipends to hundreds of prominent and emerging African Americans artists, writers, and scholars across such disciplines as history, sociology, literature, and the visual and performing arts. A Force for Change will present the artistic and scholarly products of Julius Rosenwald’s support, and will include more than sixty paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by twenty-two Rosenwald fellows, as well as a selection of documentary and archival materials."
On Sunday, February 8th, renowned art historian Richard J. Powell (Duke) will be giving a lecture pertaining to African American art and collecting. The exhibition will be on display until August 2009.
04 February 2009
03 February 2009
stolen memories
The preservation of cultural memory has long-standing been a product of nationalism and integral to demonstrating the artistic and socio-political legacies of peoples of the world. So what happens when institutions that facilitate the preservation of such objects are completely ransacked and obliterated? You get what's left of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
In 2003, as a consequence of the U.S. invasion into Iraq and the War on Terror, the Iraq Museum was looted, and thousands of ancient artifacts were stolen, many of which are currently circulating on the black market. This devastating occurrence has garnered international attention from the museum world, as well as key figures in international law. It has also captured the attention of artist Michael Rakowitz, who recreates art objects and artifacts lost upon the looting of the museum with sculptures made of found pieces of paper and trash from Iraq, which function as replicas/place holders until the items are recovered.
One of Rakowitz's artistic signatures are a confluence between seemingly simple solutions to real and extremely complicated problems and recreating a sense of urgency in addressing them. (He is well-known for providing inflatable and heated shelters for the homeless in New York)
You can find out more about the lost objects from the Iraq Museum at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, and you can check out more of Michael Rakowitz's work here.
Image: Michael Rakowitz, Male with short coat and kilted skirt, middle eastern packaging paper and glue, 2007.
scene of the day
Performance and installation artist Mona Hatoum delivers a powerful representation of war, family, sexuality and the monotony of everyday life in Measures of Distance, which features letters of correspondence between Hatoum and her mother in and out of Beirut. You can check out more of Hatoum's work at White Cube in London.
30 January 2009
REmix
Today Visualité will reach 1000 hits! A small milestone, but a milestone nonetheless. Thanks for your continued support!!Meanwhile, check out Sam Gilliam's 1969 draped canvas painting Light Depth, and one of Chicago artist Rashid Johnson's unconventional adaptations, often garnered with Q-tips, black-eyed peas, and chicken bones, Grand Galactic Cloak. If you like what you see, you can find Johnson's work at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago, as well as Gilliam's work in major art institutions across the country.
Top: Sam Gilliam, Light Depth, 1969, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 75 ft.
Bottom: Rashid Johnson, Grand Galactic Cloak, 2007.
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