Joe Bucciero

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  print October 2021

  THE GREAT PRETENDER

  THE CLOSING DECADES of the nineteenth century experienced a crisis of certainty. New techniques and technologies had promised untold capacities for the verification of facts and images, and yet these new developments, such as photography, often failed their evidentiary tasks. As many discovered, photos could be faked, miscaptioned, lost, destroyed; veracity remained a matter of trust more than of objective record. Perhaps fittingly, these decades also witnessed the birth of artist Joseph E. Yoakum: likely in 1891; likely in Ash Grove, Missouri; likely to parents of French, African American, and

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  print April 2020

  OPENINGS: TREVOR SHIMIZU

  IF MUCH ART EXISTS to stimulate admiration, even lust, few artists are as up-front about it as Trevor Shimizu. Pieces throughout his career demonstrate as much: One, from 1999, begins a recent survey, “Trevor Shimizu: Performance Artist,” at the ICA Philadelphia. It’s the artist’s first “performative” self-portrait, portraying a painted avatar who resembles a Luc Tuymans figure—washed out against a light backdrop and given shape by a mop of black hair, black sunglasses, and a black shirt. Shimizu looks vintage, cool. To his right sits a red-haired woman eating sushi and peering at him with