Critics Page
The Prompt
By Ralph LemonThroughout, the worldview of a (Black) artist’s Times obituary and its expectations of talent, form, worthiness, a show, a gallery, a museum or not—all particular containers—are evident. Present and posthumous success requires a comprehensive identity, a position in terms of the system’s frame.
Mr. Brown-Guy Falls To Leave
By Pope.Ljust outside the town of Little Falls, Minnesota, up a ahead the sun is setting behind me I see pill-bottle shaped clouds, thinner closer farther as I approach the horizon driving at high speed
Note on Surrender
By Fred MotenThe day that Laura Harris—my friend, comrade, and partner—first uttered the phrase “the aesthetic sociality of Blackness” in my hearing was the day that I began to surrender art
Essayons
By Will Rawls and Thomas LaxWhat did we miss in the first months of quarantine? What do we miss now? Still don’t miss the art world. Especially not the willful exclusions that those words enact together. The rehearsing of long-defunded intentions to care more and differently, while disfiguring artists’ curiosity into gaffes and apology.
Some Thoughts on a Constellation of Things Seen and Felt
By Adrienne EdwardsThis summer’s persistent melee of images and videos circulating in news reports and on social media of the extrajudicial, gratuitously violent deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the collective uprisings they incited under the mantra Black Lives Matter drew me out of the intensity of that present moment and into a descent imbricated and wedded by the beholding of the inextricable combinatory assembly that is embodied Blackness, acts of barbarity, and a yearning for intimacy.
Negroes in their prime
By Kevin BeasleyAn Ali from ’63–’74. Vietnam and the will to survive outside of an imperialistic society, and even moreso, one that thinks too highly of itself. Not Ali because he knocked niggas out for it. But this machine that Black folks slaved over.
Oceanic, porous, and monstrous thoughts
By Diane LimaWhile squeezing us in the search to give you a perfect performance, another great chance, she reminded me that today I had forgotten, both my inner child and my love for having relearned with her two years ago, to be brincante
