#BongDaddy in Nicole Eisenman’s “Dysfunctional Family” (2000)
Two prominent US artists, Nicole Eisenman and LaToya Ruby Frazier, are among the 24 winners of this year’s John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowships, often referred to as “genius grants.” The MacArthur Fellows Program awards $625,000 annually to recipients over the course of five years. Eisenman and Frazier were the only contemporary visual artists selected for this year’s honor. Among the other 2015 MacArthur winners are journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, choreographer Michelle Dorrance, writer Ben Lerner, and poet Ellen Bryant Voigt. A complete list of fellows is available on the foundation website.
Artists Nicole Eisenman and LaToya Ruby Frazier Among 2015 MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winners
Nicole Eisenman’s painting “Seder” puts the viewer at the center of a formal Passover family gathering. Standing in front of the canvas, one is invited to the table. Commissioned in 2010 by the Jewish Museum, “Seder” appears in the exhibit Masterpieces & Curiosities, where Eisenman’s painting resonates in different ways with the permanent collection of portraits and Judaica.
It doesn’t take much for an abstract arrangement of shapes to look like a face. There are Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram feeds devoted to this phenomenon, which is formally known as “pareidolia.” While looking at Sophie Hirsch‘s solo show Autokorrekt at Brooklyn’s Signal gallery last weekend — which features intensely sensual abstract sculptures made of silicone, plaster, resin, Plexiglas, bubble wrap, and other hardware store supplies — I got an acute pang of pareidolia from two pieces made from molds of peeled pomegranates.
As talk of art fairs and Björk took the spotlight at the beginning of the month, I lingered on the Museum of Modern Art’s The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, up through early April. In mulling over its status as either a landmark statement on contemporary painting that demonstrates the museum’s cultural leadership, a taste-making stunt for collectors, or just another group show, I turn to six thoughtful reviews out of the many written about the exhibition. Four are by painters: Sharon Butler, Brian Dupont,Thomas Micchelli, and David Salle; two are by critics: Jason Farago and Christian Viveros-Fauné. There are several possible entry points into the debate: the show’s premise — “atemporality … in which, courtesy of the internet, all eras seem to exist at once,” as eagerly laid out by curator Laura Hoptman in the hardcover-only catalogue; the works themselves; or the show’s timing and venue.
The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, the new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, prompted thoughts of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, though I’m not sure how much acceptance there is in the end.