Art Monthly 456: May 2022

Contents

Eric Baudelaire, When There Is No More Music to Write, 2022

Feature

Conversation Pieces

Eric Baudelaire interviewed by Colin Perry

It feels necessary to look back at previous revolutionary moments in the hope that we don’t reproduce previous errors but also to find inspiration to invent new forms of struggle, a new way to exist together on this planet. It would be irresponsible to not look back.

Mariupolnow Instagram feed

Feature

The Look of War

Julian Stallabrass argues that it is necessary to not only examine the political manipulation of images of war but also the corporate interests of social media

In Iraq, the look of war photography was also forged by the extensive manipulations of the US armed forces, who were ordered to produce specific – and indeed scripted – photo-ops to satisfy the demands of western media for positive and saleable news stories. Later, the reportage that emerged was affected by the growing hostility of Iraqis to the invaders and their media alike.

Marcel Duchamp, Hat Rack, 1917/64

Feature

Why Duchamp

Mark Prince discusses Marcel Duchamp’s continuing importance as part of the DNA of 21st-century art

Hanging a green and white chess board as a picture (Hommage à Caissa, 1966), Marcel Duchamp had art default to leisure, and abstraction to function. How prescient those realignments now appear, not only in relation to Sherrie Levine’s chequered paintings, but of how information would come to be figured in the digital era’s dematerialised stream of circulating images, with the square as pixel, that most adaptable of readymades.

Bertille Bak, You will turn to dust again, 2017

Profile

Bertille Bak

Tom Denman

In preparation for the show, Bertille Bak worked at a club frequented by cruise liner crew members, with whom she created The Tower of Babel, 2014, a video exploring the abject monotony of their lives, which oddly correlated with the bland fantasy of the holidaymakers.

Jesse Darling, Gravity Road, 2020

Profile

Jesse Darling

Adam Heardman

Humans, from saints to cyborgs, are, in Jesse Darling’s vision, damaged, augmented animals, unwittingly eating microplastics while trying to be heard over the humming machines of global capital. Over a decade, Darling has performed a witty, savvy, caustic and finally tender examination of that damaged human animal, exploring its limits and its potentials.

Editorial

For Whom the Bell Tolls

It is one of the many ghastly ironies of Russia’s war on Ukraine that it was legal academics from Lviv University who first developed the concepts of ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’, which today have a terrible new urgency in Europe.

Together Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht mapped the moral and legal terrain for future redress where before there had been none.

an anonymous artist simulates on Moscow’s streets the massacre at Bucha

Artnotes

Risk

Artists at Risk works to support refugee artists fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine; dissident Russian artists dare to make protest actions and suffer the consequences; US artists look to blockchain technology to cover the lack of resale royalty legislation; the British Museum makes an ethical decision, but gets in a tangle; plus the latest on galleries, people, prizes and more.

Obituary

Mira Calix 1970–2022

Shirley Baker, Hulme, 1965, from ‘Postwar Modern’

Exhibitions

Radio Ballads

Serpentine, London

Barking Town Hall and Learning Centre, London

Maria Walsh

The Comrades They Were Brave

44 GRS, London

Cherry Smyth

Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer with Oba: Nosferasta

Spike Island, Bristol

Jamie Sutcliffe

Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes

Rosa Tyhurst

Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945–1965

Barbican, London

Anne Massey

Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon

Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town

Emmanuel Balogun

Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Daniel Neofetou

Toronto Biennial of Art: What Water Knows, The Land Remembers

various venues

Xenia Benivolski

Concrete Poetry book cover

Books

Nancy Perloff: Concrete Poetry – A 21st-Century Anthology

David Briers

This retrospective anthology’s subtitle, ‘A 21st-Century Anthology’, is intentionally ambiguous. The book includes only six poems actually produced in this century, but the framing of its contents infers that the legacy of concrete poetry remains robust.

left: Yoruba mask; right: mask, French Congo
Folkwang Museum, Hagen
illustrated in A Mythology of Forms

Books

Charles Haxthausen: A Mythology of Forms, Selected Writings on Art – Carl Einstein

Marjorie Welish

A brilliant and brave art critic on behalf of the Modernism that we take for granted, Carl Einstein (1885–1940) has remained largely undiscovered until now – that is, until Charles Haxthausen translated his writings into English. Einstein has something to say to us: if we really want to understand sculpture (as opposed to statues), we should look no further than Africa.

Carla Lonzi transcribing interviews for her book Self-portrait, Minneapolis, 1967

Books

Carla Lonzi: Self-portrait

Lucia Farinati

A well-established Italian art historian and feminist, active between the 1960s and 1980s, Carla Lonzi (1931–1982) published Self-portrait in 1969 as the result of her disappointment with the power dynamics of the art world and the celebration of a ‘male creative manifestation’. It is now translated into English for the first time.

Anicka Yi, ‘Metaspore’, installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca

Reports

Letter from Milan and Turin

Amy Budd

What struck me most when leaving the House of Prada, but also during my 72 hours in Milan, was the shadow of influence cast by previous generations of aristocratic power and wealth funding the city and wider region.

Artlaw

Artist’s Resale Right

Henry Lydiate

Lawsuits by artists against dealers are as rare as hens’ teeth, which is why artists have pooled their resources to form collective entities to pursue their joint concerns. In March 2022 at London’s High Court, DACS and ACS jointly pursued a lawsuit on behalf of their beneficiaries against London-based modern and contemporary art dealer Ivor Braka and his limited liability company.