No. 91: Yours Truly
Noah Davis at The Hammer, A Photographic Memory documentary, Available Light by Dave Hickey, Richard Avedon at Cartier-Bresson foundation, and a work of art breakfast.
Good eve from LA —
I. an exhibition
The late Noah Davis’ first institutional survey opened last week at the Hammer in Los Angeles. Throughout the years, I’ve heard stories from friends and other Angelenos who knew him and frequented his gallery The Underground – and this retrospective finally melded all these anecdotes into a fuller picture of who he was and how he saw… it was truly beautiful.
In general, Davis’ scenes of leisure felt especially right for June in LA – I’ve always felt the city itself let out a deep exhale around the second week of June. Traffic eases up with schools on break, the rush to head home at night less pressing with the sun still out, and leisure leads the day.
Seeing so many of his works at once for the first time, I also noticed the architectural details from piece to piece. In a 2013 interview, Davis said:
“The Mies van der Rohe building in the painting next to it [The Missing Link 4, 2013] refers to Lafayette Park in Detroit, which became an interesting example of urban renewal before its time... I guess you could say I am fascinated with instances where Black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide.”
That collision is everywhere in this show.
II. a documentary
Earlier this week, my friend Dev invited me to see A Photographic Memory, a documentary by Rachel Elizabeth Seed. Rachel’s mom, Sheila, died suddenly when she was just 18 months old. Decades later, she unearthed 50 hours of audio interviews from Images of Man – Sheila’s unfinished project featuring conversations with iconic photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Gordon Parks. Through the interviews, Rachel was able to start to piece together who her mother was and a part of herself she hadn’t fully understood until she completed making the film.
Sheila was a journalist, photographer, and traveler, and from the film you can gather that she was a brave, adventurous, creative and curious woman who had a way of disarming those around her and making them feel incredibly comfortable.
In the film, Rachel asks: “Is a photograph actually a record of something, or is it meaningless without interpretation?”
Rachel worked on this film for over ten years — listening to hours of her mother speaking, interviewing Sheila’s former boss at Scholastic, traveling to connect with her college lover, even meeting with Martine Franck at the home where Sheila interviewed Henri Cartier-Bresson — but it wasn’t until the last three years of making the doc that she found her mother’s journals. The key to her interior world. This had me thinking about Rachel’s question and about how a photo (or film, book, song, painting) you’ve seen a thousand times can mean something completely different when the context shifts.
It reminded me that every expression of self is really just one version of the truth. But if that version changes how you see yourself or understand the world — does it matter if it’s not the whole truth?
III. an exhibit
Speaking of Henri Cartier-Bresson, if I were in Paris right now I’d visit his foundation to see the Richard Avedon show. Former AA guest, Lauren Daccache, posted a few photos from her visit that I immediately saved.
IV. an essay
I’m reading the late Dave Hickey’s collection of essays Feint of Heart, where he often addresses the question I posed after watching Rachel’s doc. In the first essay, Available Light, he recounts times spent with Ed Ruscha in LA in the early 80s: “We really don’t need to know the aesthetic and moral parameters of a work to love it—only to know they are there.” Later on he adds: “Someone might call it ‘camp’ but where I came from it was the act of loving something that was important, not the object’s pretentions to our affections.”
In the same essay, Ed says: “You know what they call pure research? What you’re doing when you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s what pure art is too.” Maybe Ed felt comfortable in a state of pure research because as Hickey said: “Ruscha knew it wasn’t stupid to love something dumb.” I liked the idea of letting yourself love something before judging it.
V. a repeat simple pleasure
Lastly, I stopped by LA Grocer the other day and picked up Painterland Sisters yogurt, topped it with zested lemon and chopped pistachios — been enjoying this work of art everyday. Try it :)
BULLETIN
Los Angeles
On view: Noah Davis survey at the Hammer. Oliver Clegg’s Always Right, Sometimes Left at Journal Gallery. Justin John Greene’s Particular Dish at Matthew Brown. Hannah Lee’s Dumbo’s Feathers at James Fuentes. Lucas Rubly’s Monumentos à Memória at Sea View. Kaoru Ueda at Nonaka Hill. Richard Diebenkorn: The 1993 Portfolio at Gemini G.E.L. Adam Silverman’s Seeds and Weeds, Tomoo Gokita’s Naked, Sarah Rosalena’s Unending Spiral, Wilhelm Sasnal’s AAAsphalt at Blum. Mungo Thomson’s Time Life and Nathaniel Oliver’s A Tension Worth Keeping Because the Drift is Always There at Karma. Alan Lynch’s Infinitely on the Surfaces of This Teardrop World at Chateau Shatto. Henry Churchod’s Rome Is No Longer in Rome at Clearing. JJ Manford’s Jacaranda June at Nazarian/Curcio. Maria Calandra’s Time is No Fairytale at Half Gallery. Mary Weatherford’s The Surrealist at David Kordansky. Group show The Abstract Future at Jeffrey Deitch. Group show Flower Hour at Authorized Dealer. Greta Waller’s 3 a.m. at Fernberger.
New York
On view: Sam Francis’ Where Color Begins: Works on Paper at Hollis Taggart. Group show Correspondences including Heidi Bucher, Willa Wasserman and Alix Vernet at Francois Ghebaly. Juanita McNeely’s Works on Paper at James Fuentes. Wenhui Hao’s By The Rivers Dark and group show French Fry’s Fifth at Half Gallery. Diane Arbus: Constellation at the Park Avenue Armory. Koichi Sato’s Adolescent Sanctuary at 56 Henry. Isabella Ducrot’s Visited Lands at Petzel. Carolina Fusilier’s Imago at Margot Samel. Jenny Calivas: Self Portraits While Buried and Maria Antelman’s Conjurer at Yancey Richardson. Lorna Simpson’s Source Notes at The Met. Love and Butterfly — an exhibition of works by Corita Kent — at Andrew Kreps. Toshiko Takaezu’s Bronzes at James Cohan. Alexis Ralaivao’s Éloge de l’ombre at Kasmin. Semiotics of Dressing at Jacqueline Sullivan. Austin Weiner’s Half Way Home at Levy Gorvy Dayan. Group show Circa 1995 at Zwirner. Leiko Ikemura’s Talk to the Sky, Seeking Light at Lisson. Salman Toor’s Wish Maker at Luhring Augustine. William Kentridge’s A Natural History of the Studio and Eternal Beginnings: Francis Picabia at Hauser & Wirth. Sargent and Paris at The Met. Ludmilla Balkis’ Grasp the Mountains, Then Let Them Go at Guild. Yu Nishimura’s Clearing Unfolds at David Zwirner. Picasso: Tête-à-tête at Gagosian. Claes Oldenburg and Peter Moore’s New York Streets and Signs at Paula Cooper. Jack Whitten: The Messenger at MoMa. Louise Nevelson’s Collection View at The Whitney.
From the archives, lately:
Affection Archives is a weekly look into the affections of yours truly (Arielle Eshel) & people I admire.