Meghan Dailey

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  previews January 2004

  Vivienne Westwood

  God save the queen—of fashion, that is.

  God save the queen—of fashion, that is. Ever since she and Malcolm McLaren swung open the doors of their London boutique Let it Rock in 1971, the name Vivienne Westwood has been synonymous with British style. This retrospective of about 150 works from the ’70s to the present is the most complete to date: It covers everything from the punk T-shirts she created for the Sex Pistols to her latest high-concept runway shows. The V&A has long accumulated Westwood’s designs, and she has gleefully pillaged their collection of historical dress as inspiration for her outrageous

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  previews January 2004

  Júlia Ventura

  Júlia Ventura has been a steady presence in the Netherlands, where she lives, and in her native Portugal, but she’s less known outside Europe. One wonders why, given the length of her career and the potency of her photographs.

  Júlia Ventura has been a steady presence in the Netherlands, where she lives, and in her native Portugal (this is her second show at the Fundação de Serralves), but she’s less known outside Europe. One wonders why, given the length of her career (over twenty years) and the potency of her photographs; in a piercing self-portrait from 1985 Ventura snarls slightly, holding a blooming rose in one hand and making a fist with the other. That work and about sixty others from 1982 to the present are on view. The catalogue boasts contributions by curator Christian Bernard as

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  previews January 2004

  Luisa Lambri

  Luisa Lambri’s elegant, often monochromatic photographs of isolated architectural details like facades, corridors, and venetian blind–covered windows could represent any number of buildings anywhere.

  Luisa Lambri’s elegant, often monochromatic photographs of isolated architectural details like facades, corridors, and venetian blind–covered windows could represent any number of buildings anywhere. That they are always untitled adds to the mystery. But Lambri is engaged in a dialogue with the iconic, not the anonymous—the subjects of her photographic investigations include Corbusier, Niemeyer, and Neutra. And now Philip Johnson: A photograph of the Houston residence he designed for John and Dominique de Menil was commissioned on the occasion of this solo exhibition,

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  previews January 2004

  Jean Arp

  Arp’s abstract reliefs and collages may not have upended the bourgeois, but they were certainly conducive to a formal revolution.

  In Europe in 1915, making art was nothing less than staging a revolt: As Jean Arp later wrote remembering those heady days in Zurich, “While the thunder of the batteries rumbled in the distance . . . we aspired to a new order that might restore the balance between heaven and hell.” Arp’s abstract reliefs and collages may not have upended the bourgeois, but they were certainly conducive to a formal revolution. Independent curator Maria Lluïsa Borràs has revamped the checklist of her 2001 Arp show at Barcelona’s Fundació Joan Miró, bringing Belgium its first-ever

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  print November 2003

  Senga Nengudi

  In the ’70s and ’80s Senga Nengudi was at the forefront of the African-American avant-garde in Los Angeles and New York. Along with artists like David Hammons and Suzanne Jackson, she exhibited at Linda Goode Bryant’s Just Above Midtown, or JAM, Gallery, which was the first African American–run space in the Fifty-seventh Street area. (Before closing in the mid-’80s, Bryant also introduced Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, Lorna Simpson, and Fred Wilson to a New York audience.) Nengudi caused quite a buzz with her JAM solo debut: a group of nylon-stocking works called “Répondez S’il Vous Plait

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  print October 2003

  Philippe Parreno

  In December 2002, Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe retired Annlee, the Japanese anime character they’d bought the rights to in 1999 and who’d embodied personalities, narratives, and ideas for them and a slew of other artists. Her final incarnation as a fireworks display—sad-eyed head-and-shoulders only—took place at an art fair, the perfect place for a commercially acquired icon to bid us adieu.

  But it’s hard to imagine such a useful tool (or “shell,” as Annlee was called, and gloomily called herself ) disappearing completely. And because repetition with alteration is a constant in Parreno’s

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  print October 2003

  Carlo Mollino

  Carlo Mollino earned his place in the history of design long ago. Lately, however, his idiosyncratic interiors have been discussed less than his stash of nearly 1,500 erotic photographs found in a drawer after his death. Who knew this eccentric modern had a passion for hookers and Polaroids? In this exhibition, about twenty photos of dolled-up and carefully posed Turinese prostitutes taken by Mollino himself were encased in deeply recessed frames that suggested tiny windows onto the mind of a pervy romantic.

  Mollino (1905–73), the son of a prominent engineer, studied architecture, then engineering,

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  previews September 2003

  Black Belt

  For a generation of artists, the kung fu phenomenon of the ’70s left an indelible impression: “I was struck by just how many people are making work about it,” says the Studio Museum’s Christine Y. Kim.

  It’s 1974. “Kung Fu Fighting” is number one on the charts, the TV show Kung Fu airs every Thursday on ABC, and Bruce Lee (who died the previous year) is a box-office draw. As a nonwhite hero battling The Man, Lee’s popularity extended to African Americans as well as Asian audiences. For a generation of artists, the kung fu phenomenon of the ’70s left an indelible impression: “I was struck by just how many people are making work about it,” says the Studio Museum’s Christine Y. Kim. The curator has selected twenty artists, including Sanford Biggers, Ellen Gallagher, Luis Gispert, Michael Joo, and

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  previews September 2003

  The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960–1982

  Is this show—with forty artists, 100 works, an extensive catalogue, and a great title—Walker curator Douglas Fogle’s follow-up to his “Painting at the Edge of the World”?

  Is this show—with forty artists, 100 works, an extensive catalogue, and a great title—Walker curator Douglas Fogle’s follow-up to his “Painting at the Edge of the World”? That exhibition explored the way artists used paint not in the manner of traditional painters but to see what it could do. Likewise, the exploitation of photography’s potential as a tool in the ’60s and ’70s pushed the medium in the direction of Conceptualism; pure aesthetics gave way to the Bechers, Baldessari, and the Pictures artists, not to mention explorations of identity, performativity, and the postindustrial

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  print Summer 2003

  Jean-François Moriceau + Petra Mrzyk

  The art world is having a love affair with drawing. In the span of a year, we’ve had MoMA’s “Drawing Now,” the UCLA Hammer’s “International Paper,” and the traveling exhibition comprising Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber, and the rest of the Royal Art Lodge gang. And now, with a collective spirit and Surrealist-inspired wit similar to Dzama et al. comes Jean-François Moriceau and Petra Mrzyk’s multidrawing project “Only for Your Eyes.” From the marvelous combined imaginations of these young French artists sprang 120 ink-on-paper works and three drawings done directly on the wall (all works untitled,

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  picks May 27, 2003

  Javier Piñón/Charles Thomas

  Javier Piñón grew up in Texas, which may partially account for the cowboy theme in his works. But he’s tapping into an iconography that cuts across regional lines. In Piñón’s latest collagelike paintings, the cowboy goes head to head in the boxing ring with another mythic masculine character, the Minotaur. Each painting has a block-lettered taunt as a backdrop (i.e., "Stop crying you fucking baby”): These fights are as much about psychological as physical domination. Executed on metal panels and canvas mail bags, Piñón’s paintings are vigorous yet poetic reflections on the denial of vulnerability,

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  picks May 20, 2003

  Michael Lazarus

  Those familiar with Michael Lazarus’s work won’t be surprised at his simplified “happy face”—it’s become kind of a signature. What’s remarkable is how he connects the emblem's endless potential for variation to his painterly concerns. The smiley motif can be doubled or repeated tenfold in a single work (and looks quite wicked when multiplied); it can also border or “hold” other patterns, such as a subtly abstracted collage of naked flesh (Untitled, 2002–03).

  In Taken Back, 2002, Lazarus creates a latticework of smiles by cutting directly into a piece of wood, enhancing the objectlike quality of