Emily Mason remembers her mother saying, “I’ll be famous when I’m dead.” Though fame may not be quite secured (yet), the artist’s first-ever monograph acts as bulwark against forgetting her legacy.
Bridget Quinn
Bridget Quinn is a writer, critic and art historian living in San Francisco. She’s the author of She Votes: How U.S. Women Won Suffrage, and What Happened Next, illustrated by 100 women artists, and Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order). You can find her on her websiteor follow her on twitter.
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An Idiosyncratic Selection of California Art Presses
California has a rich history of artful book making. Here’s a small sampling of presses old and new.
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A Gripping Memoir Dives Into LA’s Graffiti Subculture of the ’90s
Artist and scholar Stefano Bloch has written a story that is personal, but also a primer on graffiti’s history and artistic and social import.
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Meet Sylvia Fein, One of the Last Surrealists Still Painting
Fein, who turns 100 years old today, may be the last Surrealist artist still standing.
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A New Book on Women Artists Is Welcome, But Uneven
The title of Great Women Artists is complete with a strikethrough across “women,” to indicate that the artists within are “great artists” regardless of gender. Visually, it’s arresting, but its intention is murky.
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James Tissot’s Weirdly Sexy, Astonishingly Cinematic, and Spiritual Paintings
The show is essentially a love story, arranged both chronologically and thematically, and unfolds almost like a serial novel. A precursor to Proust, say, in paint.
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Inmates Annotate an Archive of Prison Photos With Their Own Stories
The results are arresting, as the writers, who are also men in prison, make anonymous images their own, speaking out of their own experiences, bringing insights and empathy that no outside critic or art historian could.
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The Astonishing Discovery of an Artist’s 9,200 Portraits of an Alternate Queer Self
The previously unknown Polaroids of April Dawn Alison were not just snatched from the jaws of oblivion, but are now in an esteemed museum collection.
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Rubens’s Exciting, Upsetting, and Shockingly Current Paintings
Much of Rubens’s Baroque bravura feels timely in its grappling with violence, terror, power, sex, and coercion.
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A New Book Culls the Favorite Museum Pieces of World-Famous Artists
For It Speaks to Me, Jori Finkel asked 50 artists, from Marina Abramović to David Hockney, “to discuss a museum piece that intrigues or inspires them from their hometown.”
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Living in a Renaissance Palace, an Art Historian Uncovers an Amazing Past
When an unexpected opportunity arose to spend her year living in the famed Palazzo Rucellai, Allison Levy seized on it.
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Suzanne Lacy’s Powerful Legacy of Feminist Collaboration
What struck me most in moving through the arc of Lacy’s career is what varied and thoughtful work she’s produced decade after decade, no doubt the result of her preference for collaboration.