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Forbes
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Jeffrey Gibson At The Broad: The Mix That Is His Art And His Life
Installation view of entrance to Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, at The Broad Museum, Los Angeles, May 10 to September 28, 2025. Photo by Joshua White/ courtesy of The Broad Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place at me at The Broad Museum through September 28, 2025. is the culmination of many firsts: In 2024, Gibson was the first indigenous American to represent the U.S. as a solo artist at the Venice Biennale. The Broad exhibition, which brings the Venice exhibition to Los Angeles, reconfiguring and adding to it, is also Gibson's first solo Southern California museum exhibition. Gibson's work offers up a joyous explosion of color mixed in masterful patterns that incorporate indigenous craftwork and traditions as well as text and titles resonant of US history and American pop culture. More specifically, Gibson's wild mix of colors in bold repeating geometric patterns recalls Vasarely-like OpArt, while the distinctive text in his works appear like the font from 1960s psychedelic rock posters. The works appear in a multiplicity of forms: From large paintings, which have hand sewn elements and elaborate beaded frames, to beaded multi-media busts and full length figures, as well as beaded multicolored birds. An existing sculpture by another artist has been recontextualized for this exhibition. There is even a multi-media video and music installation that brings the club to the museum and is sure to make you want to dance. Installation view of Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me at The Broad, Los Angeles, May 10 to September 28, 2025. Photo by Joshua White/ courtesy of The Broad Gibson takes his titles from resonant pop cultural phrases, such as the lyric, 'Birds Flying High You Know How I Feel,' from the Newman/Bricusse song Feeling Good, made famous by Nina Simone. Some of the titles have a resonance with American history, from the iconic 'We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident,' to Congressman' Emmanuel's Celler's invocation to his colleagues about the Civil Rights Act, 'Action Now. Action Is Eloquence,' and a quote from a letter: 'The Returned Male Student Far Too Frequently Goes Back To The Reservation and Falls Into The Old Custom of Letting His Hair Grow Long,' regarding those schools to which Indigenous children were sent to erase their culture, and assimilate in ways that, 'Kill the Indian to Save the Man.' Jeffrey Gibson Image by Brian Barlow Courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio Gibson sees himself primarily as 'a collage artist,' which, while not doing justice to the power of his paintings, sculptures and installations, is a fair way of describing Gibson's life and the mix that is his art. Gibson was born in Colorado Springs, of parents of Cherokee and Choctaw heritage who themselves were separated from their families and sent to the boarding schools that sought to 'normalize' indigenous children. His father was a civil engineer for the US Department of Defense, and the family lived for periods in West Germany, South Korea, as well as in North Carolina and New Jersey. Gibson reflected that he was raised 'in a very racially mixed culture.' It was in Germany on school field trips that he first visited Dachau and learned about the Holocaust. And then moved to New Jersey where he lived in primarily an Italian and Jewish neighborhood. Gibson felt that he understood that 'my story, my family and myself, wasn't actually as different from these other stories as we might learn them in school.' In the 1990s, Gibson attended the School of Art Institute of Chicago, from which he received his BFA in 1995. Gibson was interested in studying the work and legacies of Indigenous American Artists, but his teachers did not have many such artists to recommend to him. Gibson admits that he 'felt very unsatisfied' by his art education. Installation view of Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me at The Broad, Los Angeles, May 10 to September 28, 2025. Photo by Joshua White/ courtesy of The Broad Gibson met artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and worked at the Field Museum on the very beginnings of The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which introduced Gibson to an expansive way of looking at objects that included spirituality, history, ancestry, and even ideas of what was animate versus inanimate. 'That made it difficult to go back and just make art in the way that we might know it,' Gibson said. In 1998, he received his Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art in London. For many years early in his career, Gibson struggled to find his voice and mode of expression. The turning point was when Gibson learned about the Museum of Modern Art's 1941 exhibition, Indian Art of the United States, curated by Frederic Huntington Douglas of the Denver Art Museum and Rene d 'Harnoncourt, director of the Indian Crafts Board. Gibson researched the exhibition in the archives of the Denver Art Museum and MoMA. To Gibson, that exhibition became a challenge 'to pick up that unfinished thread and try to continue making something from it.' At the press preview, Gibson said, 'I realized, wow, I get to be the steward to make people aware of the diversity of Native America. And that became a responsibility to do it with a degree of ethics, but also in, in conversation with native communities. But, really, we still have yet to scratch the surface of how diverse Native American [Art] really is. ' Other artists have found the burden of representation crushing or limiting but Gibson saw it as artistic real estate that wasn't being used, and that was his to claim. Gibson's work is a vibrant expression whose subject matter is less about how the Native American population was murdered and their culture disappeared, but more a celebration of how they lived, their knowledge, their traditions, their crafts. In this way, Indigenous knowledge remains a living thing. 'I think what I do attempts to be more reflective of the world we live in' Gibson said. 'I'm continually surprised why that's even a challenge for people to understand.' However, Gibson very much believes that in depicting the specific, one arrives at the universal. 'I'm telling my story, which is kind of a collaged hybrid narrative of how I became who I'm today. But I truly believe that [everyone] has their own version of that…What I know best is my story, but I also have to trust that my story is reflective of some version of everyone else's story.' In her opening comments at the press preview, Joanne Heyler, founding director and president of the Broad, said, 'The works in the show resist the erasure and marginalization of indigenous and many other communities by being irresistibly joyous [in ways that] I would argue induce endorphins.' Some critics have rejected Gibson's work as too colorful or his mix of colors as being too garish. I can only analogize this wrongheaded critique to calling any individual Gay person too flamboyant. It misses the point (and is besides the point). The colors are Gibson's alphabet, his language, his culture (as a gay, indigenous, American artist), and his mix requires mastery to work. Gibson shared with me that he has learned so much about color over his decades of experience that in his studio, he has to create a system of painted pieces of paper to catalogue the colors for which there is no name. Installation view of "The Dying Indian," at Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me at the Broad Museum, Los Angeles, May 10 to September 28, 2025. Photo by Joshua White/ courtesy of The Broad Beyond the paintings and beaded busts and birds, I want to single out two works. The first, which was not part of the Venice installation, is a monumental bronze sculpture made at the turn of the 20th century by Charles Carey Ramsey, titled The Dying Indian, which belongs to a tradition of works that seemed to speak to a level of nobility among the vanquished Native Americans. With the emphasis of vanquished, or as the title indicates, dying. Gibson's simple yet moving intervention was to commission beaded moccasins by the Nee Cree artist, John Little Sun, which bear the words of Roberta Flack's lyric, 'I'm Gonna Run with Every Minute I Can Borrow' which when placed on Indigenous warrior's of the sculptures feet, add a whole new dimension of compassion and caring to the work. To that point, at the opening press preview Joan Hyler commented: 'Jeffrey's work tells us how beauty and cultural traditions comprise some of the strongest survival tools for combating oppression.' Installation view of Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me at The Broad, Los Angeles, May 10 to September 28, 2025. Photo by Joshua White/ courtesy of The Broad The other work that stands very much as a statement of Gibson's world view is his work, We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident, in which Gibson has transformed a punching bag that hangs from the ceiling, whose top half has beaded color patterns and the famous words from the Declaration of Independence while the bottom half has s series of skirts that go the floor and splay out in a circle. This works speaks very much to Gibson's worldview that while we may live through difficult times (and be a punching bag during them), we absorb those blows, and continue living our lives in all their collaged beauty. Or as Gibson told me, 'Times of war, times of extreme violence and inequity have happened throughout history. Even before there were non-North American indigenous people on this land, there was violence on this continent. In many ways it's a part of human nature and it is painful.' 'The more I ponder those moments in history and the moments that we're currently in,' Gibson said, 'What I think about is our fear and how we handle fear and looking at the circumstances that cause that fear. Even before this moment, we have manufactured a culture that produces anxiety… [and] a sense of instability. And in moments like this, that instability can be amplified through the media in a very easy way. ' Let me give the last word to Gibson, who told me, 'If we forget how phenomenal we are as living, engaged, imperfect beings, — that's what really marries me to craft in the way that we make things in the studio. '
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The Broad to open the largest-ever Robert Therrien show: L.A. arts and culture this weekend
The sculptor Robert Therrien had a deep connection with the Broad museum. He was among the first L.A. artists that founders Eli and Edythe Broad began collecting almost half a century ago, and the museum holds 18 of his works in its collection. Those pieces, along with more than 100 others, will go on view at the Broad beginning in November in 'Robert Therrien: This Is a Story,' the largest-ever solo museum show of the artist's work. Therrien, who died of complications from cancer in 2019, is best-known for his monumental sculptures of everyday objects. His sculpture of a giant table and chairs, 'Under the Table,' is among the Broad's most photographed — and Instagrammed — pieces. Intimate work — drawings of birds, snowmen and chapels — will be on view, as will a reconstruction of Therrien's downtown L.A. studio. The Broad's founding director Joanne Heyler once told The Times that Therrien's studio was among the most fascinating she had ever visited. In an email shortly after Therrien's death, she described the ground floor as 'the ultimate tinkerer's den, with endless tools, parts and found objects awaiting their role in his work, while upstairs were these perfectly composed galleries, every surface painted a warm, creamy white, including the floor, which charged the sculptures, paintings and drawings he'd install there with a dreamy, floating, hallucinogenic effect. That studio was his dreamland.' Like his studio, Therrien's work exists in a liminal space — where memory fades into time. Standing beneath one of his giant tables evokes vague recollections of what it feels like to be a very small child in a world of legs and muffled adult activity above. A ruminative melancholy arises when viewing a precarious stack of white enamel plates. Therrien's artistic voice is at once singular and universal — and specific to art history in L.A. Exhibition curator Ed Schad summed up Therrien's importance to this city in an email. 'Los Angeles is one of the most dynamic places in the world to make sculpture, and for 40 years, Robert Therrien was vital to that story while also hiding in plain sight,' Schad wrote. 'From the spirit of experimentation and freedom in the 1970s, to the rise of fabrication and the expansion of scale in the 1980s and 1990, to Los Angeles's ascendant presence on the global stage of contemporary art in recent decades, Therrien's work has not only mirrored every shift but also has maintained a singular, unmistakable voice. This exhibition aims to show both the Therrien people know and love — his outsize sculptures, tables and chairs, and pots and pans, rooted in memory — and the Therrien that is less often seen: the brilliant draftsman, photographer, and thinker, whose work in these quieter forms is just as enchanting.' I'm arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, remembering the time I spent an entire meal hiding under a table in Nogales, Ariz., when I was five. Or was that a dream? Here's this weekend's arts headlines. Times theater critic Charles McNulty sat down in New York City with the directing powerhouse Michael Arden, 42. In a wide-ranging profile, McNulty discusses Arden's path to becoming among the most sought-after directors on Broadway — and why his latest Tony-nominated musical, 'Maybe Happy Ending,' is the season's 'most surprising and heartwarming.' He also writes about Arden's new company, At Rise Creative, which he founded with scenic designer Dane Laffrey. Their production of 'Parade' begins performances at the Ahmanson Theatre on June 17. McNulty also checks in with L.A. Theatre Works, which celebrated its 50th anniversary and has found fresh opportunities for its radio plays through the rise of podcasts and on-demand streaming. 'Currently, LATW's program airs weekly on KPFK 90.7 in Southern California and on station affiliates serving over 50 markets nationwide. But the heart and soul of the operation is the archive of play recordings,' writes McNulty. This archive has almost 600 titles that can be accessed via a recently launched monthly subscription service. Times art critic Christopher Knight examines the curious case of the art museum that wasn't. Despite having a social media presence and a webpage, the Joshua Tree Art Museum has not manifested as an actual space for art. This is because, writes Knight, 'the charitable foundation sponsoring the project was issued a cease and desist order two years ago by the California attorney general's office. All charitable activity was halted, a prohibition that has not been lifted.' Along with other organizations across the country, the Huntington recently lost its National Endowment for the Humanities grants. The money funded the Huntington's research programs, and the institution is nonetheless determined to honor its awards to this year's recipients. The Huntington will welcome more than 150 scholars from around the world this year and next, granting nearly $1.8 million in fellowships — a notable achievement in a climate of shrinking opportunity for research and innovation. 'Supporting humanities scholars is central to the Huntington's research mission. Here, scholars find the time, space, and resources to pursue ambitious questions across disciplines. The work that begins here continues to shape conversations in classrooms, publications, and public discourse for years to come,' Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence said in a statement. Skirball Cultural Center has announced its 2025 season of Sunset Concerts. The popular series began in 1997 and takes place at the Skirball's Taper Courtyard. This summer will feature two acts each night, including Brazilian singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante, the Colombia-based all-female trio La Perla and the Dominican band MULA. Click here for the full lineup and schedule. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced that it has acquired Cynthia Daignault's 'Twenty-Six Seconds.' The artwork is a series of frame-by-frame paintings based on Abraham Zapruder's famous 26-second 8mm color film capturing the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Through 486 painted frames, Daignault's work further interrogates the tragedy, imbuing it with modern context. This past weekend I took my daughter to the Summer Corgi Nationals at Santa Anita Park. It was more adorable and more ridiculous than you could imagine — with the short-legged dogs racing for the finish line in a chaotic competition that sometimes found contenders chasing one another back to the starting line.
CBS News
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami opens exhibit in Ohio museum with more than 100 works
Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami has never been limited to one medium, creating paintings, sculptures, luxury goods with fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, album covers and an exclusive merchandising collection with Major League Baseball. Now, he has filled a U.S. museum hall with portraits in every color as part of an exhibit opening Sunday at the Cleveland Museum of Art. "Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow," an update of an exhibit first shown in Los Angeles, features more than 100 works. Murakami, known for his smiling rainbow-colored flower icon, intentionally layered light-hearted themes with historical events linked to trauma, he told The Associated Press. The art explores the impact of trauma on people and culture, said Ed Schad, curator and publications manager at the contemporary art museum The Broad in Los Angeles. The portraits "have historical roots and that they could actually tell you a lot about what a society is doing, how healthy a society is, what a society is responding to," Schad said. "What society is responding to most often in this exhibition is the idea of trauma." One sculpture depicts Murakami and his dog with half of their bodies in anatomical form, showing their bones and organs, while the other half is their outward appearances. The sculpture, Pom and Me, is described as Murakami's interpretation of his experience in the West through the lens of his Japanese identity. Square portraits featuring cartoonish flowers with facial expressions cover one wall of the exhibit, organized by background color to create a rainbow effect. One flower is wiping a tear from its eye, while another appears to be a zombie. One has blood dripping from its mouth. One appears to be in awe, watching fireworks. Though there are no obviously direct visual references to historical events, the museum said the art can be seen through the lens of three events in Japanese history: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during World War II, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, leading to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Murakami said it's a bit of a misunderstanding that his work "is very easy and very popular." "But this is okay because this is one of my tricks," he said. What someone might admire about his art as a child, Murakami said, would likely not be what is admired by an adult. Before entering the exhibit on the lower floor of the museum, visitors can walk through a version of the Yumedono, the octagonal-shaped building at Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan. Murakami said he was inspired to create the structure after viewing the 2024 television series "Shōgun." Inside the structure are four new paintings — "Blue Dragon Kyoto," "Vermillion Bird Kyoto," "White Tiger Kyoto," and "Black Tortoise Kyoto" — created between 2023 and 2025. The ticketed exhibit runs until early September.
Asharq Al-Awsat
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Japanese Artist Takashi Murakami Opens Exhibit in Ohio Museum with More than 100 Works
Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami has never been limited to one medium, creating paintings, sculptures, luxury goods with fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, album covers and an exclusive merchandising collection with Major League Baseball. Now, he has filled a US museum hall with portraits in every color as part of an exhibit opening Sunday at the Cleveland Museum of Art. "Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow," an update of an exhibit first shown in Los Angeles, features more than 100 ranging works. Murakami, known for his smiling rainbow-colored flower icon, intentionally layered light-hearted themes with historical events linked to trauma, he told The Associated Press. The art explores the impact of trauma on people and culture, said Ed Schad, curator and publications manager at contemporary art museum The Broad in Los Angeles. The portraits "have historical roots and that they could actually tell you a lot about what a society is doing, how healthy a society is, what a society is responding to," Schad said. "What society is responding to most often in this exhibition is the idea of trauma." One sculpture depicts Murakami and his dog with half of their bodies in anatomical form, showing their bones and organs, while the other half is their outward appearances. The sculpture, Pom and Me, is described as Murakami's interpretation of his experience in the West through the lens of his Japanese identity. Square portraits featuring cartoonish flowers with facial expressions cover one wall of the exhibit, organized by background color to create a rainbow effect. One flower is wiping a tear from its eye, while another appears to be a zombie. One has blood dripping from its mouth. One appears to be in awe watching fireworks. Though there are no obviously direct visual references to historical events, the museum said the art can be seen through the lens of three events in Japanese history: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during World War II, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, leading to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Murakami said it's a bit of a misunderstanding that his work "is very easy and very popular." "But this is okay because this is one of my tricks," he said. What someone might admire about his art as a child, Murakami said, would likely not be what is admired by an adult. Before entering the exhibit on the lower floor of the museum, visitors can walk through a version of the Yumedono, the octagonal-shaped building at Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan. Murakami said he was inspired to create the structure after viewing the 2024 television series "Shōgun." Inside the structure are four new paintings, "Blue Dragon Kyoto,Vermillion Bird Kyoto,White Tiger Kyoto" and "Black Tortoise Kyoto", created between 2023 and 2025. The ticketed exhibit runs until early September.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami opens exhibit in Ohio museum with more than 100 works
CLEVELAND (AP) — Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami has never been limited to one medium, creating paintings, sculptures, luxury goods with fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, album covers and an exclusive merchandising collection with Major League Baseball. Now, he has filled a U.S. museum hall with portraits in every color as part of an exhibit opening Sunday at the Cleveland Museum of Art. 'Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow,' an update of an exhibit first shown in Los Angeles, features more than 100 ranging works. Murakami, known for his smiling rainbow-colored flower icon, intentionally layered light-hearted themes with historical events linked to trauma, he told The Associated Press. The art explores the impact of trauma on people and culture, said Ed Schad, curator and publications manager at contemporary art museum The Broad in Los Angeles. The portraits "have historical roots and that they could actually tell you a lot about what a society is doing, how healthy a society is, what a society is responding to,' Schad said. 'What society is responding to most often in this exhibition is the idea of trauma.' One sculpture depicts Murakami and his dog with half of their bodies in anatomical form, showing their bones and organs, while the other half is their outward appearances. The sculpture, Pom and Me, is described as Murakami's interpretation of his experience in the West through the lens of his Japanese identity. Square portraits featuring cartoonish flowers with facial expressions cover one wall of the exhibit, organized by background color to create a rainbow effect. One flower is wiping a tear from its eye, while another appears to be a zombie. One has blood dripping from its mouth. One appears to be in awe watching fireworks. Though there are no obviously direct visual references to historical events, the museum said the art can be seen through the lens of three events in Japanese history: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during World War II, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, leading to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Murakami said it's a bit of a misunderstanding that his work 'is very easy and very popular." "But this is okay because this is one of my tricks,' he said. What someone might admire about his art as a child, Murakami said, would likely not be what is admired by an adult. Before entering the exhibit on the lower floor of the museum, visitors can walk through a version of the Yumedono, the octagonal-shaped building at Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan. Murakami said he was inspired to create the structure after viewing the 2024 television series 'Shōgun.' Inside the structure are four new paintings — 'Blue Dragon Kyoto,' 'Vermillion Bird Kyoto,' 'White Tiger Kyoto' and 'Black Tortoise Kyoto' — created between 2023 and 2025. The ticketed exhibit runs until early September. By Patrick Aftoora-orsagos, The Associated Press
