by The AFC Staff on November 27, 2012
“Black artists didn’t invent assemblage.” That statement, and others like it, written by The New York Times art critic Ken Johnson, has provoked the ire of fellow critics, artists, and Times readers alike. His remarks about two recent exhibitions, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 and The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World have exploded into a tirade across Facebook—with complaints lodged by Kara Walker and Jerry Saltz among others—and now, an anonymous group has gone so far as to petition the Times to “acknowledge and address this editorial lapse and the broader issues raised by these texts.” So, what are these broader issues, and problems, if any?
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by Corinna Kirsch on November 21, 2012
In the 1960s and early 1970s, art and politics were peas in a pod. For die-hard critics like Barbara Rose, who lived through these decades in New York, that was the time to be alive. Art was good then, and now it sucks. Well, that’s how her argument goes, which which she makes in the pages of this month’s Brooklyn Rail. We disagree.
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Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director
