Nina Chanel Abney in ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ at The Brooklyn Museum
Just around the corner from Picasso’s etchings of muscular minotaurs hovering over vulnerable sleeping nude women in the Brooklyn Museum, Nina Chanel Abney’s ‘Forbidden Fruit’ features very different hybrid characters – some with tenacles coming from their heads, others with horns or hair. Enjoying a moment of communal relaxation, Abney’s characters adopt a picnicking pose familiar from Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe amongst other iconic artworks, while engaging a different kind of forbidden fruit – a selection of luscious watermelons, made sensitive because of their racist associations. Both Abney and Picasso’s work feature in ‘It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby,’ a group exhibition which rethinks Picasso’s oeuvre via art by twenty and twenty-first century women artists whose work disrupts traditionally masculine modernism. (On view through Sept 24th).
Nina Chanel Abney, Forbidden Fruit, acrylic on canvas, 2009 in ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ at the Brooklyn Museum, July 2023.
Merrily Kerr is an art critic and writer based in New York. For more than 20 years, Merrily has published in international art magazines including Time Out New York, Art on Paper, Flash Art, Art Asia Pacific, Art Review, and Tema Celeste in addition to writing catalogue essays and guest lecturing. Merrily teaches art appreciation at Marymount Manhattan College and has taught for Cooper Union Continuing Education.
For more than a decade Merrily has crafted personalized tours of cultural discovery in New York's galleries and museums for individuals and groups, including corporate tours, collectors, artists, advertising agencies, and student groups from Texas Woman's University, Parsons School of Design, Chicago's Moody Institute, Cooper Union Continuing Education, Hunter College Continuing Education and other institutions. Merrily's tours have been featured in The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Sydney Morning Herald and Philadelphia Magazine.
Merrily is licensed by New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs as a tour guide and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA USA)
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