ator Luis Pérez-Oramas considers the roots of the classicizing and modernist impulses in the work of Joaquín Torres-García. The essay examines a driving paradox of the artist’s work—the will to be modern while working against the grain of modernity—following episodes in his life, writings, and works.
This essay is adapted from a lecture on the strategies of dissidence in East German art by curator Christoph Tannert, who met with members of the C-MAP Central and Eastern European group on June 3, 2016 during a research trip to Berlin.
Curator Luis Pérez-Oramas considers the roots of the classicizing and modernist impulses in the work of Joaquín Torres-García. The essay examines a driving paradox of the artist’s work–the will to be modern while working against the grain of modernity–following episodes in his life, writings, and works. This is the second part of three. Torres’s first…
Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães discusses the disillusionment that led Modernist painter Joaquín Torres-García to leave New York as well as the city’s lasting influence on his artmaking and his continued ties to North America in this biographical essay. Second part of two. Despite these exhibitions, his circle of prosperous friends, and his significant connections to artists and…
Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães recounts Modernist painter Joaquín Torres-García’s years in New York, the strong influence of the metropolis on the development of his style, and his connections and successes in the American art scene in this biographical essay. First part of two. Each era has its own art. All of the classics have been contemporary in…
In this video, Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator in the Department of Photography, interviews artist Olga Chernysheva at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow during the C-MAP Central and Eastern European group trip in June 2015. Olga Chernysehva is a mid-career artist based in Moscow who works across media. Born in the Soviet Union…
Jorge Schwartz discusses the prominence of the urban in Joaquín Torres-García’s visual and literary works. A major retrospective at MoMA, The Arcadian Modern, reveals a totalizing and structural vision of Joaquín Torres-García’s thinking, mainly through his painting, sculpture, objects, and, of particular interest to me, bibliographic production: his theoretical texts about Constructivism, autobiographical texts, manifestos,…
Artist and critic Luis Camnitzer discusses his personal relationship to the work and legacy of Joaquín Torres-García with special attention to his influential Taller and the recent exhibition at MoMA. I am at a point in my life when I have made complete peace with Joaquín Torres-García. It took a long time. Growing up in…
“A Conversation with Yang Jiechang” is available in Chinese and English. Yang talks about his “art education” during the Cultural Revolution, when he served as a Red Guard in a small village, and describes how the study of calligraphy extinguished his enthusiasm for revolution and political propaganda. Read the English translation here. 巴黎楊詰蒼工作室 24 June 2014…
For the artist Yang Jiechang (b. 1956, Foshan), there is a certain similarity betweencontemporary artists and China’s Red Guards of the 1970s: namely, their performance of arbitrary tasks. In this conversation, Yang talks about his “art education” during the Cultural Revolution, when he served as a Red Guard in a small village, and describes how…
On June 22, Dr. Sonal Khullar visited with C-MAP and viewed Bhupen Khakhar’s painting Kali (1965). This painting, which MoMA purchased in 1967, is one of the artist’s early works. Less researched, it was made when he was still developing his vernacular language for what would later be considered Indian Pop art. In this video,…
Yu Youhan (b. Shanghai, 1943) is widely considered the father of abstract painting and Political Pop in China. A longtime teacher of art in Shanghai, Yu has no wish to pursue an interdisciplinary or international practice, as many artists of his generation do. In this conversation, he talks about his life during the Cultural Revolution…
