Perspective Access: Scratch Pad

Feb 03, 2021 By Karina Corona

What to read, watch and browse this month.

By Karina Corona Feb 03, 2021

Published in Perspective

WHERE TO GO

45 Stories in Jewelry: 1947 to Now

Museum of Arts and Design, New York

Ongoing

Coco Chanel knew a thing or two about design in the real world: “Jewelry is not unchanging. Life transforms it and makes it bend to its requirements.” And in this exhibit, the bends and folds of life are what makes each piece of wearable art sparkle—be it a pendant inspired by the Apollo 11 space mission or a 24K gold four-knuckle ring.

Each piece featured serves as a visually stunning glimpse into significant milestones and developments within art jewelry history since the mid-century. And it’s also just great eye candy.

Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And

Brooklyn Museum, New York

Runs through July 18, 2021

In the artist’s first retrospective exhibit, experience 12 of Lorraine O’Grady’s major artworks produced over her four-decade career, plus the debut of a much-anticipated new installation.

A significant contemporary figure in performance, conceptual, and feminist art, O’Grady’s work “sheds light on the ways Blackness has always existed at the heart of Western modernism,” while exploring her own family histories, idea of permanence, identity, legacy, and radical revisionism.

Kara Walker: A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be

Photo by Photo by Julien Gremaud courtesy of JRP|Editions

Kara Walker: A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be

Photo by Photo by Julien Gremaud courtesy of JRP|Editions

WHAT TO READ

Soviet Cities: Labour, Life & Leisure

Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell
(Fuel, October 2020)
Russian photographer Arseniy Kotov is out to document the post-Soviet world—and its architectural ghosts—before it disappears forever. To capture the real essence of the lost era, he shoots in winter, during the “blue hour,” immediately after sunset or just before sunrise. “The USSR no longer exists and in these photographs we can see what remains—the most outstanding buildings and constructions, where Soviet people lived and how Soviet cities once looked: no decoration, no bright colors and no luxury, only bare concrete and powerful forms.

Kara Walker: A Black Hole Is Everything a Star Longs to Be

Edited by Anita Haldeman
(JRP|Editions, January 2021)
For the first time in artist Kara Walker’s career, more than 700 works created between 1992 and 2020 will be gathered from her highly guarded private archive. The book features small sketches, studies, and collages juxtaposed with diaristic notes, typewritten reflections on index cards, and dream journals. The result is a poetic, introspective, and unfiltered probing into the artist’s life, career, and experience as an African American, a woman, and a mother.

WHAT TO WATCH

Black Art: In the Absence of Light (2021)

HBO
Premiering Tuesday, February 9, this documentary is produced and directed by Sam Pollard and draws from the 1976 landmark exhibition by David C. Driskell, "Two Centuries of Black American Art. The film features contemporary Black artists like Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, and Betye Saar, art historians, and scholars and is focused on racial equity in the art world. David died last summer from COVID-19 leaving behind a legacy of advocacy towards giving Black artists their due credit for contributing to the tradition and history of American art and culture.

Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art (2020)

Amazon Prime Video
For over 20 years, Banksy has reigned as the enfant terrible of politically leaning street art that inspires fans and continues to stun the institutional powers that be. In a rare series of interviews with the adamantly anonymous artist, director Elio España explores the rise of the underground art movement and how an artist whose identity has never been revealed came to be the face of a multimillion-dollar art empire.