Tag: james baldwin

Njideka Akunyili Crosby in ‘God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin’ at David Zwirner Gallery

James Baldwin’s intellectual legacy and his powerful impact on contemporary culture is the subject of David Zwirner Gallery’s current group exhibition, or ‘collective portrait,’ of the late writer and thinker.  By displaying the work of other artists alongside documents and ephemera related to Baldwin, curator Hilton Als considers how the writer may have continued to make art had his career developed differently after the seminal ‘The Fire Next Time.’  In one of the show’s highlights, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s collaged photo draws on images from Nigerian and U.S. West Coast cultures, creating a provocative hybridity. (On view in Chelsea on 19th Street through Feb 16th).

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Nyado: The Thing Around Her Neck, acrylic, photographic transfers, color pencil, charcoal and collage on paper, 81 ½ x 81 ¾ inches, 2011.

Richard Avedon at Pace Gallery

Commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar in 1961, Richard Avedon photographed over thirty weddings at New York City’s Town Hall, recording hopeful beginnings. These images became the opening photos in his 1964 collaboration with James Baldwin, ‘Nothing Personal,’ a photographic portrait of the USA in which joy gives way to darker social realities. Now on view at Pace Gallery, the series is stunningly relevant to contemporary life. (On view at Pace Gallery’s 24th Street location through Jan 13th).

Richard Avedon, Wedding of Mr and Mrs Joseph Sacca, City Hall, New York City, May 6, 1961, vintage gelatin silver print, image: 16 x 15 ¾ inches.

Glenn Ligon at Luhring Augustine Gallery

Glenn Ligon turns his well-worn copy of James Baldwin’s 1953 essay, ‘Stranger in the Village,’ into a suite of prints, each more or less obscured by paint and fingerprints left behind by years of reference use in Ligon’s studio. Ligon’s marks testify to the personal importance of Baldwin’s text, while the parts that remain visible leap out as a kind of charged concrete poetry. (At Luhring Augustine through April 2nd).

Glenn Ligon, Untitled, from a suite of 17 archival pigment prints, 71 x 49 inches, 2016.
Glenn Ligon, Untitled, from a suite of 17 archival pigment prints, 71 x 49 inches, 2016.

Leslie Hewitt at Sikkema, Jenkins & Co

To some, Leslie Hewitt’s conceptual photography will be maddeningly vague, to others, enticingly elusive.  Propped against the wall as if it were an object or sculpture, it displays one book with its spine facing us – James Baldwin’s essays on race, ‘The Fire Next Time.’  This incendiary text rests next to a cooling lemon, an art historical symbol of mortality and moderation.  (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co in Chelsea, through Oct 5th).  

Leslie Hewitt, Untitled (Perception), Still Life Series, digital c-print in custom maple frame, 2013.