|
Post by arecomicsevengood on Jan 7, 2024 2:45:34 GMT
Is it connected to comics? I suppose sometimes it must be, but I don't live in New York and don't really get out to galleries too much. When I do, I tend to like more figurative stuff, but unless I know an artist personally I don't know if they're into comics or not. I would like to think the best people in that space are at least aware of comics (I gotta go to this Shary Boyle museum show after becoming a fan via her work in Kramers) but that might not be true at all. All in all, "art" is a huge blindspot for me in my knowledge of "the arts," which is pretty deep when it comes to comics, literature, film, music, etc. I like some stuff I can access via a Nieves zine partly because that positions it close to the form I am familiar with but I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I should know about. Who do y'all like?
|
|
|
Post by eheitner on Jan 7, 2024 3:20:29 GMT
I mean, kinda? You probably know this, but "contemporary art" covers such a huge range of artists and scenes and practices.... Like there's this stuff: www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/13Or artists like Trenton Doyle Hancock, but also like, the Printed Matter Art Book Fair, which always has a decent amount of cartooning present.... Really depends what you are looking for. Figurative drawing that is still abstracted? Narrative? Sequential image making? Artists who are clearly just personally into comics but don't consider what they do to be comics? It's all there, but usually not all of those things at the same time.
|
|
|
Post by eheitner on Jan 7, 2024 3:26:48 GMT
I know some people who hold that reproduction and distribution are essential to the meaning of comics, which then is in obvious conflict with an art world whose values require singular objects, but like, not always and not all the time, y know?
I like to think I am mildly keeping an eye on a lot of stuff in "the art world", I have friends in it in various peripheral ways, I live in NYC, I like to go to art museums.
Honestly not to be dismissive of an entire ecosystem of artists and huge amounts of money and institutions, but I don't think you are missing anyone you wouldn't have already heard of, at least, none of the stuff that I've seen that's sort of tangential to comics strikes me as all that interesting from a comics vantage point, altho it may have other interesting aspects.
Would love to see some suggestions for why I'm wrong or who I'm missing out on.
|
|
|
Post by mikesheawright on Jan 7, 2024 3:45:22 GMT
"is it connected to comics" is an interesting question. the ny cheslea gallery scene is basically an intensely curated year-long tabling show but only rich people get to buy anything. i'm on the fence about whether or not the artists are to blame, or are complicit in the whole thing, but the investment component is certainly prioritized over the creative component. but there's a ton of amazing art in that area every single day of the year, so if you're just looking for inspiration chelsea's still an incredible free resource.
museums are a little different, but they're still trying to get people through the door so whatever show they put on has to be palatable on some level. but the cool/weird thing about contemporary life is that palatable now also means provocative so you do also get some neat shows from major institutions looking to stir the pot.
i think the most valuable way to approach this stuff is not what "should" you be looking for, but what are you actually interested in. get on the mailing lists and think of the shows as visual resources like IRL tumblr pages. the cognoscenti are harmful assholes but you can sneak a peek for free and roll with it however you want. but you're not "missing out" on anything by not paying attention, it's just one arena of stuff to look at.
|
|
|
Post by arecomicsevengood on Jan 7, 2024 15:57:42 GMT
I wasn't really trying to ask if contemporary art is connected to comics so much as trying to spin this conversation out of the Gull Yettin thread. I just wanted people to say artists they liked who worked primarily in the gallery space. I was assuming that because of the shared enthusiasms of this board that would most likely mean people like Raymond Pettibon, who both use text in a way that suggests narrative and sometimes releases zines that compile works in a reproducibile format. The artists of the The Hairy Who also fit into this mold. But if you're thinking in terms of zines (which I guess are called "bookworks" in the language of fine art) then we can talk about these things Nieves does, which are pretty fancy, or maybe halfway to being catalogs or monographs. No real reason one wouldn't have a few art books on the shelf with the comics. I just want to ask what's on people's shelves. Besides the aforementioned names, two of the Nieves things I've grabbed at Partners And Son while in a good mood are Andriu Deplazes' Bodies In Scattered Light and Shara Hughes' Portraits. The latter's not figurative at all, actually. Perhaps I was seduced by the beauty of the production in how it reproduced color. I have not seen these artist's paintings in person but I presume I'd like them.
|
|
|
Post by wigshop on Jan 7, 2024 16:24:37 GMT
Dan Nadel's a great example of a figure who has feet in both comics and contemporary art. Fun to see things he's curated at museums/galleries and always nice to keep an eye on his essay output. He's contributed to a bunch of nice monographs. You'll find Hairy Who stuff and more with his stamp on it. Personally - as for comics-leaning contemporary artists, Joe Brainard all the way. he's having a market boom, too, which is long overdue. Marcel Dzama's delighted me for years, ever since I was a McSweeney's dork back in the mid-2000s. Been really neat watching him grow/refine/expand as an artist over the years. Peter Saul's very comics-y and always a treat. But I'm also partial to a big beautiful abstract painting - mind was BLOWN by the Cecily Brown show at the Met last year. Nice to be reminded how painting can still get cracked open. On a more straightforward tack, my wife and I are super into an artist named Hayley Barker who is just an impeccably good landscape-y painter. Lots of moody gardens
|
|
|
Post by BubblesZine on Jan 7, 2024 16:25:37 GMT
I work at a contemporary art museum. Not often do I feel like anyone really respects comics there, but doesn't bother me. I did take the head curator to the nearby comic shop once to help buy stuff for her boyfriend. That was fun. We recently had a Paul Chan show and it was cool to talk to him about books and publishing, he was nice and has done some cool stuff. But I really do wish I followed the Contemporary art world a little more. While there's tons of bullshit and red tape and money crap, there's some great creative people making rad stuff. I'm interested in contemporary painting. Maybe I should try and find some websites to follow this year and look at it more. I'll shout out one painter I love and that's Kat Lyons: http://instagram.com/p/CpitJ0EOHrH
|
|
|
Post by BubblesZine on Jan 7, 2024 16:27:25 GMT
Dan Nadel's a great example of a figure who has feet in both comics and contemporary art. Fun to see things he's curated at museums/galleries and always nice to keep an eye on his essay output. He's contributed to a bunch of nice monographs. You'll find Hairy Who stuff and more with his stamp on it. Yeah totally, I always like seeing what he's boosting on instagram. Usually it's some cool art shows I know nothing about.
|
|
|
Post by arecomicsevengood on Jan 7, 2024 16:27:32 GMT
Oh yeah, Nadel also just curated a set of zines for Nieves: Frank Santoro, and three artists I'm unfamiliar with but should investigate. The set of all four sold out at Copacetic, but that's how I learned about it. copaceticcomics.com/comics/nieves-zines-set-all-four
|
|
|
Post by mikesheawright on Jan 8, 2024 0:41:57 GMT
oh woops i misunderstood the question haha. i love Mu Pan, that guy is nuts. the Hipkiss duo, Bjarni Porarinsson, Stella Geppert, Lionel Favre, are all cool kind of obsessive geometricy. Aleah Chapin is a friend, she's incredible and just switched her whole style up in a neat way.
i have a lot of pages bookmarked in FUKT magazines and i have a few of those Vitamin P (painting) and Vitamin D (drawing) books of contemporary stuff. I'm not great with remembering names but those are amazing resources.
|
|
|
Post by whitecomics on Jan 8, 2024 14:37:11 GMT
I think I've complained on here before about how with any contemporary or even older fine artists I like, it's frustratingly hard or cost-prohibitive to get nice collections of their work in print. Then anything you do find is often as full of dumb essays as it is actual art. Nieves is a nice counterpoint to that trend, one way in which it's a more accessible publisher for comics people as Brian says. Plus most of their publications seem have at least some consideration for sequence, which helps me find my way into the work. I hadn't heard of the Vitamin D/P books Mike mentions, those sound close to what I'm looking for... wigshop can you say more about Brainard having a market boom? Just curious, as a fellow fan but with no real insight into that world
|
|
|
Post by manoopuesta on Jan 8, 2024 16:51:24 GMT
I think I've complained on here before about how with any contemporary or even older fine artists I like, it's frustratingly hard or cost-prohibitive to get nice collections of their work in print. Then anything you do find is often as full of dumb essays as it is actual art. This made me remember how much I love for example Aleksandra Waliszewska (a painter whose work I find it's close to comics, in fact her work appeared at least in a Spanish comics anthology not long ago). I've been wanting to buy some collection of her paintings but the books I've come across are extremely expensive.
|
|
|
Post by wigshop on Jan 8, 2024 20:27:59 GMT
I think I've complained on here before about how with any contemporary or even older fine artists I like, it's frustratingly hard or cost-prohibitive to get nice collections of their work in print. Then anything you do find is often as full of dumb essays as it is actual art. Nieves is a nice counterpoint to that trend, one way in which it's a more accessible publisher for comics people as Brian says. Plus most of their publications seem have at least some consideration for sequence, which helps me find my way into the work. I hadn't heard of the Vitamin D/P books Mike mentions, those sound close to what I'm looking for... wigshop can you say more about Brainard having a market boom? Just curious, as a fellow fan but with no real insight into that world About ten years ago, if you kept your eyes peeled, you could get original collages for about $1500 a piece. There were hardly any books out on him - just that Siglio Nancy book and Granary's I Remember. High-end fashion designer LOEWE has a line of menswear that they do in collaboration with artists (or inspired by them) - about 4 years ago they did an amazing, absolutely cost-prohibitive line of Joe Brainard items -- $1000 hoodies and leather handbags with his pansy motifs, stuff like that. I think it alone put Brainard back in the spotlight and rich folks noticed how wonderful his body of work is. Parallel to that, his estate has started to be more lax with reprint rights for small presses -- Nieves did a book, the Song Cave did the Bolinas Journal, there was a C Comics reissue. And then works started popping up again on the secondary market, and getting crazy prices at auction. This "Nancy Landscape" sold for $13,000, and this sailor tattoo guy hammered at $36k! Brainard's in this curious spot where he's weirdly available for the scrappy poetry fans for the first time in ages, and, simultaneously, (finally) sought after by the more spendy collectors.
|
|
|
Post by pentimento on Jan 8, 2024 20:39:23 GMT
I liked that lady who stuck yams up her hooch a few decades back, and the dude who let a friend shoot him in the arm, and the frog (sorry, probably Italian) who canned his own shit early in the 20th century. That's my jam. Top that, stay-at-home-dads!
|
|
GHO
Full Member
(✿ò ⍙ ́O)
Posts: 197
|
Post by GHO on Jan 9, 2024 18:27:23 GMT
not really contemporary, but a few artists that I always thought should get more play in the comics community are margaret kilgallen and barry mcgee. the amount these two have influenced my work, comics and not comics would be a never ending list. especially margaret, her handling of typography and the way she juxtaposes images and text is 1000% comics adjacent in my opinion. also their connection to zine culture and handmade books is very "comics" to me. Don't hear either of them talk too much about comics in their interviews aside from an off handed mention that's usually brought up by the interviewer. But i see instead the influence that comics have had on american vernacular I.E. sign painting, folk art, hobo train graffiti, etc, it gets in there one way or another. I do hear underground comics brought up a lot when talking about them but I think that's more of a product of them being from SF and drawing the subjects they do. I see more of a connection with strip cartoonists. the only downside is that their books are extremely out of print. the barry mcgee fondazione prada book isn't too expensive but it covers mostly his earlier work, which I think isn't his best IMO. especially compared to his later work which is like knock my socks off amazing but that book is still amazing and only around 50$. the book to get is the BAM/PFA book distributed by DAP, But alas it is very expensive. All of margaret's two books are laughably out of print and each 300$ or so online (one came out in 2018 and it is that much money now). online, there are lots of good interviews with barry on youtube especially any videos on his SFMOCA exhibit and an inactive instagram called "margaret kilgallen" is a pretty good archive of her work, also a few good videos on youtube about her as well. I would 10000000% recommend watching the art 21 interview with the both of them. it's on youtube I believe and there's a few supplement videos as well. I have watched these videos (no exageration) upwards of 30 times since I was 17. this is probably my favorite margaret piece I can think of. its a sugar lift etching. I don't know exactly what that means. if someone does can they please inform me.
|
|