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Art

American Federation Of Arts Leader of Travelling Exhibitions Since 1909

September 6, 2025 The Silo Leave a comment

American Federation of Arts Announces New Season
of Touring Exhibitions for Fall 2025 through 2027 ‒ Museums in over 11 cities will headline art exhibitions created by
the American Federation of Arts, with more cities to come ‒

The American Federation of Arts (AFA), the leader in traveling exhibitions worldwide since its founding in 1909, proudly announces the new season for the fall of 2025 through 2027. So far, museums in over 11 cities will headline several art exhibitions created by the AFA and its partners, with more cities to come. Throughout its celebrated 116-year history, the nonprofit institution has helped to spearhead the course of art for generations by enriching the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts.

Pauline Forlenza at the 2024 AFA Gala in New York (Photo by Alycia Kravitz)

“The AFA’s expansive panorama of new exhibitions demonstrates the importance of listening to the input of visual arts leaders nationwide, focusing on what audiences want to see, and continuing our legacy of shining a light on new artists and trends,” says Pauline Forlenza, the Director and CEO of the American Federation of Arts. “Our longstanding commitment to touring art exhibitions, publishing exhibition catalogues with scholarly research, and developing educational programs is vital – now more than ever.”

These traveling museum shows will open doors to creativity for the next sixteen months to museumgoers. Some of the shows include:

Abstract Expressionists: The Women • Alex Katz: Theater and Dance
Civic Virtue in Rembrandt’s Amsterdam: 17th-Century Group Portraits
from the Amsterdam Museum • Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder • Making American Artists: Stories from the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976 • Experimental
Ground: Modernist Printmaking in Paris & New York at Atelier 17

Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, and more.
Links to all of the AFA’s 2025 through 2027 exhibition tours may be
viewed at: current shows and upcoming tours.
Pauline Forlenza at the 2024 AFA Gala in New York (Photo by Alycia Kravitz)

Some of the museums across the country include: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Wichita Art Museum, Muscarelle Museum of Art, Southampton Arts Center, The Gibbes Museum of Art, Taubman Museum of Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art,
New Orleans Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, among others.

Since 1909, the AFA has toured more than 3,500 exhibitions that have been viewed by millions of people in museums in every U.S. state,
and in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
From the Smithsonian – “A vital part of American art history, the AFA was one of the first organizations to develop successfully the concept of traveling art exhibitions on a national and international level. Many arts organizations and museums have followed the AFA’s precedent. This national nonprofit museum service organization is recognized for
striving to unite American art institutions, collectors, artists, and museums.”

“Through the years, the AFA has also had an impact on patronage in the arts. During its 116-year history, the Federation’s exhibitions of contemporary art provided collectors with knowledge of new artists and avant-garde art forms, creating a broader demand and market for this type of work. Museums and collectors began purchasing work by
new or obscure American artists whom they learned about through AFA exhibitions and programs. The AFA also recognizes the importance of the exchange of cultural ideas.”

“Throughout its history, the organization has concentrated on its founding principle of broadening the audiences for contemporary American art, breaking down barriers of distance and language to expand the knowledge and appreciation of art. The touring exhibitions have brought before the public contemporary American artists and craftspeople, genres, and artistic forms of experimentation – exposing viewers to new ways of thinking and expression.”

Highlights from the New Season

View the full list of tours at: amfedarts.org/exhibitions/current and amfedarts.org/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/.
The complete lists of current and upcoming touring museum shows are updated regularly, as new exhibitions and new museum dates are added. Following are highlights of eight of the AFA exhibitions that will be touring during the fall of 2025 through 2027.

Abstract Expressionists: The Women

Explores the vital, under-acknowledged innovation of women artists in
the Abstract Expressionist movement, the first internationally renowned
artistic movement to originate in the U.S. • Featuring 47 works from
The Levett Collection, by more than 30 women artists who worked in
New York, California, and Paris from the early 1940s through the 1970s.

Stove, by Pat Passlof (1959). Oil on linen. © The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation. Courtesy of Eric Firestone Gallery, the Levett Collection, and FAMM. Photo: Fraser Marr.

Features a never-before-seen grouping of works by Lee Krasner, Joan
Mitchell, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Emiko Nakano,
Pat Passloff, Mercedes Matter, Sonja Sekula, and more. • The paintings
of the Abstract Expressionist movement have historically been
associated with male creativity. • Until recently, the historical and
critical reception of Abstract Expressionism has almost uniformly
marginalized its women practitioners • This exhibition upends this
gendered narrative, demonstrating that these women were not merely
acolytes or interpreters, they were ambitious innovators all their own.
Stove, by Pat Passlof (1959). Oil on linen. © The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation.
Courtesy of Eric Firestone Gallery, the Levett Collection, and FAMM. Photo: Fraser Marr.

Abstract Expressionists: The Women (continued)

“Too often, the canon of art history has relegated women artists to supporting roles in major art movements,” says Pauline Forlenza, the Director and CEO of the AFA. “This exhibition upends that narrative, asserting that women painters were critical contributors to the formulation of Abstract Expressionism from the very beginning.

Equally talented and visionary, the female artists featured in this show helped put American art on the map,” adds Forlenza. The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts from the Christian Levett Collection and FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum), France. This exhibition is curated by Ellen G. Landau, PhD,
Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emerita of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University.

17th-Century Group Portraits from the Amsterdam Museum

The large group portraits in this exhibition have rarely left
Amsterdam since they were commissioned in the 1600s, and have
never traveled in the U.S. as a group. • The show traces how life
in the largest and most important city of Holland was based on
the collective responsibility of the burghers, who combined their
mercantile wealth with political power. • Amsterdam’s economic
success, however, was the result of ruthless trade wars within
Europe, colonization and enslavement overseas. • Artists include
Adriaen van Nieulandt, Gerrit Berckheyde, Ludolf Bakhuizen,
Frederik Jansz, Dirck Santvoort, Ferdinand Bol, Bartholomeus
van der Helst, Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy, Jan Victors, and of
course, Rembrandt van Rijn. • By governing and guarding the
city, by organizing and managing a social safety net for the poor and needy, and by stimulating scientific and industrial developments, the burghers contributed to making Amsterdam the most prosperous city in Europe.

The Osteology Lesson of Dr. Sebastiaen Egbertsz, artist unknown (1619). Oil.

Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder
100 photographs by 70 artists. • Explores the concept of presence through the tenderness of portraits, the awe within landscapes, the clarity of reportage, and the spontaneity of cityscapes. • Works by Merry Alpern, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Irving Bennett Ellis, Nan Goldin, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Susan Meiselas, Helmut Newton, Ruth Orkin, Gordon Parks, Edward Steichen, Joyce Tenneson, James Van Der Zee, Todd Webb, Edward Weston, and more. • Photographs can be imprinted with the totality of human experiences, and this exhibition embraces that totality, examining the deeply
humanistic history of photography.

Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, New York, by Norman Seeff (1969). Archival pigment print. Portland Museum of Art, promised gift from the Judy Glickman Lauder Collection.

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976

Presenting more than 100 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art. • New narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color, alongside iconic works traditionally associated with PAFA. • Women artists participated in PAFA’s exhibitions as early as 1811, and
this show includes paintings by Sarah Miriam Peale, Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux, Alice Neel, and May Howard Jackson (the first African American woman to receive a scholarship to attend PAFA, in 1895). • By 1900, PAFA acquired its first work by a Black artist, Henry O. Tanner. PAFA educated African American artists and acquired their works
throughout the twentieth century, and this show features works by Joshua Johnson (one of the first professional Black artists in America), Dox Thrash, Laura Wheeler Waring, Edward Loper, and Barkley L. Hendricks.

Curated by Anna O. Marley, PhD., a scholar of American art and material culture from the colonial era to today.

Alex Katz: Theater and Dance

Above: Paul Taylor Dance Company’s Sunset, with set design by Alex Katz (1983). Photo by Johan Elbers. © 2025 Alex Katz/Licensed
by VAGA at Artists Rights Society. Courtesy of the Paul Taylor Archives and American Federation of Arts.

The first comprehensive museum presentation of Katzʼs highly collaborative and playful work with choreographers, dancers, and members of avant-garde theater ensembles over six decades. • Showcases Katz’s deep and lasting influence on the history of the American performing arts. • Rare archival materials, major sets
and paintings, and previously unexhibited sketches from more than two dozen productions. • Spotlights fifteen productions that Katz produced with Paul Taylor, exploring their creative partnership that generated some of the most significant postmodern dance and art of the twentieth century. • Artworks from the show are drawn from the Alex Katz holdings at the Colby College Museum of Art (home to a collection of nearly 900 works by the artist), from Paul Taylor Dance Archives, and from the artist’s studio.

• Provides an innovative kind of retrospective: that of an artistic sensibility. • Attesting to the intertwined histories of painting and stage design in Katzʼs works. • Curated by Levi Prombaum, former Katz Consulting Curator, Colby College Museum of Art.

Willie Birch: Stories to Tell

Chronicles Birch’s unique vision of the Black American experience and examines the interconnected nature of global art forms. • The first ever career retrospective brings together groundbreaking works from the early 1970s to the present.

Throughout his career, the artist has explored how African traditions have been retained in music, art, and culture in America and beyond. • Birch was raised in New Orleans and trained in Europe, Baltimore, and New York. • His work as an artist, community organizer, and cultural provocateur questions why certain things are retained and not others,
unearthing uncomfortable truths about American identity, but also offering possibilities for greater cultural awareness.  

Left to-right: Memories of the 60’s, by Willie Birch (1992). Papier mâché, mixed media. Courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans. • Uptown Memories (A Day in the Life of the Magnolia Project), by Willie Birch (1995). Painted papier-mâché and mixed media. New Orleans Museum of Art, Gift of Frederick R. Weisman.
Image Copyright of New Orleans Museum of Art / Photo: Roman Alokhin.

Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection

Reveals the intergenerational relationships fostered among women artists over the last eight decades, assembling over 70 works made by 60 women artists between 1946 and today. • Sculpture, painting, installation, textiles, pottery, and mixed media works all converge. • Pioneering examples of post-war abstraction —including early works by Janet Sobel, Judy Chicago, and Mary Corse — are shown alongside compositions by leading contemporary artists such as Julie Mehretu, Lorna Simpson, and Aria Dean. • Paintings and mixed media works by Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self, and Firelei Báez blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration. • Connections between the handmade and digital emerge in the various forms of piecework employed in Faith Ringgold’s quilts, Howardena Pindell’s collages,
and the pixelated, hypermediated canvases made by Jacqueline Humphries and Anicka Yi.

Works by the Freedom Quilting Bee, Françoise Grossen, and Sheila Hicks explore irregular geometries and eccentric abstractions via fabric and fiber. • Curated by Cecilia Alemani of High Line Arts in New York City. Sisters, by Tschabalala Self (2021). Velvet, felt, tulle, marbleized cotton, craft paper, fabric, and digitally printed, hand-printed, and painted canvas on canvas. Collection of the Shah Garg Foundation.
Crisscross, by Sarah Sze (2021). Oil, acrylic, acrylic polymer, and ink on composite aluminum panel, with wood support. Collection of the
Shah Garg Foundation. Counterculture B, by Rose B. Simpson (2022).
Carved New Mexico pine, twine, clay and acrylic. Collection of the Shah Garg Foundation.

Experimental Ground: Modernist Printmaking

In Paris & New York at Atelier 17
The first large-scale survey of original prints made at Atelier 17 to tour
the U.S. in 50 years. • This revolutionary printmaking workshop (1927
to 1988) was famous for its impact on the development of modern art.

Kaleidoscopic Organism, by Fred Becker (1946). Softground etching.
Courtesy of O’Brien Art Project Foundation.

It served as a hub of artistic and intellectual exchange — first for
Surrealists in interwar Paris, and after World War II for the exploration of abstraction and other modernist styles. • Commemorates 100 years since the founding of the studio. • Presents works by notable artists who
gained formative skills at Atelier 17, such as Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy,
Louise Bourgeois, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson, and
Krishna Reddy, among many other artists who participated in intense
collaborations at the studio. • Atelier 17 attracted hundreds of
international artists, drawn to the radical vision of printmaking as a mode for experimentation rather than reproduction.

About the American Federation of Arts

The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is the leader in traveling exhibitions in the U.S. and worldwide. One of the first to successfully tour art exhibitions on a national and international level, the organization unites American art institutions, collectors, artists, and museums.
The AFA has toured more than 3,500 exhibitions that have been viewed
by millions of people in museums in every U.S. state, and in Canada,
Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

A nonprofit organization founded in 1909, AFA is dedicated to enriching
the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts through
organizing and touring art exhibitions for presentation in museums
around the world, publishing exhibition catalogues featuring important
scholarly research, and developing educational programs.

Abstract Expressionists: The Women is organized by the American Federation of Arts from the Christian Levett Collection and
FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum), France. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Ellen G. Landau. It is generously supported by Berry Campbell Gallery, Betsy Shack Barbanell, Monique Schoen Warshaw, Christian Levett, and Clare McKeon and the Clare McKeon Charitable Trust. Additional support has been provided by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Every Page Foundation.

Making Art, Making History: 200 Years of American Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Lead support was provided to PAFA by the William Penn Foundation, with additional support from the Richard C. von Hess Foundation and donors to PAFA’s Special Exhibitions Fund. In-Kind support is provided by Christie’s and Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frames, New York. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Alex Katz: Theater and Dance is organized by the American Federation of Arts and Colby College Museum of Art. This exhibition is curated by Levi Prombaum, former Katz Consulting Curator, Colby College Museum of Art. The 2022 presentation of Alex Katz: Theater and Dance was organized by the Colby Museum with curatorial guidance
from Robert Storr.

Willie Birch: Stories to Tell is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Major support for the exhibition and catalogue is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation, Wyeth Foundation for American Arts, and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Shah Garg Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director and Chief Curator of High Line Arts in New York City.

Experimental Ground: Modernist Printmaking in Paris & New York at Atelier 17 is organized by the American Federation of Arts. This exhibition is curated by Ann Shafer and Christina Weyl. Civic Virtue in Rembrandt’s Amsterdam: 17th-Century Group Portraits from the Amsterdam Museum is organized by the American Federation of Arts.

Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder is co-organized by the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, and the American Federation of Arts.

Untitled. abstract expressionism- oil on canvas Jarrod Barker 2021

For the Silo, Jarrod Barker.

Art

Artist Torkwase Dyson Uses Black Compositional Thought In Latest Exhibit At Gray

November 2, 2024 The Silo Leave a comment

Installation view of Torkwase Dyson, Errantry, 2024, at Art Basel Unlimited. Image courtesy Gary Yeh / ArtDrunk.

Chicago Gallery

GRAY is pleased to present Torkwase Dyson: Of Line and Memory, the artist’s first solo exhibition in GRAY’s Chicago gallery. Installed over three distinct spaces, the exhibition debuts a monumental sculpture in steel and painted wood, an immersive installation of new paintings, and new cast glass and wood constructions. Of Line and Memory opens at GRAY Chicago with a public reception for the artist on November 8 and remains on view through January 25, 2025.

Dyson works across the disciplines of painting, drawing, installation, and sculpture, distilling the spatial and affective residues of diasporic histories to envision new modes of environmental liberation. Through an improvisational process of mindful abstraction, which she calls “Black Compositional Thought,” Dyson seeks to create work that is fluid, abstract, poetic, and open to possibility. “If there is systemic oppression, there must be systemic liberation,” says the artist, “and I am in that zone… trying to condition myself in this relationship of a transhistorical liberation practice.”1

Of Line and Memory draws from years of research and Dyson’s own spatial memory of navigating the waterways and urban architecture of Chicago. Using the South Shore Cultural Center, a lakeshore landmark with rich historical and architectural significance, as a point of departure, Dyson extracts, reduces, and refines architectural and visual cues into geometric shapes and painterly abstractions. According to the artist, “Of Line and Memory asks, as we move through dramatic and ever-changing geographies, what memories are stored in these new and improvisational choreographies?”

Down-down, 2018
Exhibited inTorkwase Dyson, 2021-22 Hall Art Foundation
Schloss Derneberg Museum, Holle, Germany

An immersive, dynamic interplay of materials emerges throughout the exhibition. The Clearing, a cantilevered steel, wood, and graphite sculpture in two parts, balances monumental, curved shapes upon the weight of rectangular steel bases. Dyson’s new paintings unlock a sense of “state change” between thinly poured layers of deep blues and reds, opaque blacks, and the shapes and lines of geometric abstraction. Likewise, her Hypershape constructions in glass and graphite-coated wood balance the solidity of wood and graphite with the translucence of cast glass.

Of Line and Memory underscores Torkwase Dyson’s deep commitment to transforming complex histories of diasporic and urban landscapes into powerful abstractions. The artist states: “the topography echoes familiar and enigmatic ecologies in my consciousness without the promise of stability. Embracing this indeterminacy, I think through how the transhistorical ethos of infrastructure space, both visible and invisible, resonates in liberation and world-building.”

ABOUT TORKWASE DYSON

American interdisciplinary artist Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973 Chicago) combines expressive mark-making and geometric abstraction to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Working across the disciplines of painting, sculpture and architecture, Dyson deconstructs, distills, and interrogates the built environment, exploring how individuals, particularly black and brown people, negotiate, negate, and transform systems and spatial order. Throughout her work and research, Dyson confronts issues of environmental liberation and envisions a path toward a more equitable future.

One of today’s most innovative artists, Dyson’s work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at ‘T’ Space Rhinebeck, New York; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Colby College Museum of Art, Maine; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago, Illinois; Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery, Bennington, Vermont; Hall Art Foundation, Derneburg, Germany; and Serpentine Galleries, London, UK.

Group exhibitions and biennials include the Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK; Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil; Desert X, California; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Drawing Center, New York; Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, Washington DC; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, among others. Her architectural sculpture Liquid Shadows, Solid Dreams (A Monastic Playground), commissioned for the 2024 Whitney Biennial, is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s fifth floor terrace through February 9, 2025. Torkwase Dyson will create the conceptual design for The Costume Institute’s Spring 2025 exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Public collections include the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Hall Art Foundation, Reading, Vermont; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Long Museum, Shanghai, China; Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington, DC; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Williams College Museum of Art, Massachusetts. Dyson studied sociology and social work at Tougaloo College, Mississippi, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Yale School of Art. Dyson lives and works in Beacon, New York.

PUBLICATION
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, to be published in 2025.

ABOUT GRAY

GRAY is a globally recognized team of art professionals devoted to fostering the development of historically important artists’ careers and to building outstanding art collections. Founded in 1963, GRAY has established its reputation as a resource for Modern, Postwar, and Contemporary art with prominent private and institutional clients worldwide. Known for producing critically acclaimed exhibitions and programming from its galleries in Chicago and New York, GRAY represents a roster of internationally recognized artists such
as McArthur Binion, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates, David Hockney, Rashid Johnson, Alex Katz, Ellen Lanyon, Jaume Plensa, Leon Polk Smith, and Evelyn Statsinger.

1 Torkwase Dyson, lecture, SAIC Visiting Artists Program, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, March 7, 2023.

Featured image- Tuning (Hypershape, 311-520), 2018, exhibited in Torkwase Dyson 2022 Hall Art Foundation, Schloss Derneberg Museum, Holle, Germany

Culture

This Century And Last Century Art Mastery By Yoko Ono

November 11, 2022 The Silo 2 Comments

“I would like to see the sky machine on every corner instead of the Coke machine. We need more skies than Coke.” – Yoko Ono, 1966.

Growing up the daughter of proud, British baby-boomer parents, the name Yoko Ono was not exactly revered in my household. In fact, she was considered a weird, controlling creature that somehow brainwashed John Lennon and systematically broke up the Beatles—the greatest rock and roll band of all time (according to my father). It wasn’t until art school that I began to learn who Ono really was and why she is considered one of the most iconic and mythological people in contemporary society.

Yoko Ono has been in the public eye for over 50 years, and she has been viewed as a muse, destroyer, widow, mother and artist. Granted, the fact that she is a household name is due largely to her late husband’s fame and legacy. However many are not aware of the her own accomplishments, innovations and her impact on the contemporary art world, beginning before her much publicized marriage and continuing until today.

Yoko Ono was born in Japan in 1933 to wealthy parents. Her family experienced much hardship during the Second World War, surviving the great fire bombings of Tokyo in 1945. They lost everything and were forced to beg and barter for food, which Ono credits as being the inspiration behind her imaginary/instructional art works or, as she refers to them, “paintings for the mind.”

After the war her family settled outside New York City, where Ono studied at the prestigious Sarah Lawrence College. In New York she began visiting galleries and art “happenings” (a form of performance-art involving the participation of both artist and audience), and these experiences inspired her own emerging work. In the early 1960s Ono was closely associated with the Fluxis movement, which was more a state of mind than a style of art. Members valued social goals over aesthetic goals and their main aim was to upset bourgeois (ie: middle-class or materialistic) routines of art and life.

The Fluxus incorporated influences from Dadaist theory, a school that originated in Europe after the First World War when founding artists Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Jean Arp felt they could no longer trust reason and the established order of things. The intent of Dada artists was to denounce all previous attitudes and perceptions and to shock the audience. Similar to Dada and often described as anti-art, the Fluxis used mixed-media, mail art, actions and happenings to promote a new culture of performance-based, audience-interactive, and non-commodifiable art.

One of the most iconic pieces of performance art, and the one for which she is most renowned, is Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” (c. 1964). Performed on several occasions and in a variety of venues, “Cut Piece” featured Ono alone on a stage, dressed in a black garment. Volunteering audience members were given scissors and invited to cut pieces from her dress. Like most performance-based artists, Ono could not have had a set purpose when she performed this work—or if she did it would be pointless—because it depended on the audience/viewer response and action.

For the most part, people were at first hesitant to come on stage, but as they lost their inhibitions participants began to cut bigger and bigger pieces of cloth until the dress was left in shreds (in one performance a young male actually cut off her undergarments).

Depending on where she performed “Cut Piece,” Ono received a different reaction. In Japan the audience was shy and hesitant. In London they became so violent security had to intervene. But even if no one had come forth to snip the dress, the performance would still have made a statement.

This is the strongest, most encompassing element of Ono’s catalogue as a whole: its participatory aspect. Everything she has done has been dependent on her audience or viewer. Her book Grapefruit is an excellent example of this. It contains instructions on how to perform her various imaginary pieces, such as “Painting to be constructed in your head,” and “Conversation piece.” In one of my personal favourites, “Painting for the wind,” the reader is instructed to “cut a hole in a bag filled with seeds and place the bag wherever there is wind” (1961, summer).

It is impossible to discuss Yoko Ono’s work without mentioning her late-husband and collaborator, John Lennon. After their extremely public romance and marriage, Ono found she was somewhat shunned or distanced by the contemporary arts community. But the couple decided to exploit their massive profile to forward their social agenda for peace. On their honeymoon, the two staged a “Bed-in for Peace” in Montreal, knowing the media would eagerly cover something so curious and provocative. John articulated his understanding of the potential of modern media very well; he knew that whatever he and Yoko did would end up in the papers.

“We decided,” he said, “to use the space we would occupy…with a commercial for peace and also for a theatrical event.” Life as art with social goals: very Fluxis.

After Lennon’s devastating assassination in 1980, Ono continued to manage his estate and advocate for world peace, eventually getting back to conceptual art in large galleries. Most recently she has exhibited and performed commemorative shows in honour of the 40th anniversary of “Cut Piece.”

In the movie “Imagine: John Lennon,” Lennon describes how he met his wife: “Yoko was having an art show at the Indica Gallery…I went down the night before the opening. The first thing that was in the gallery was a white step ladder and a painting on the ceiling and a spy glass hanging down. I walked up this ladder and I picked up the spy glass and in tiny little writing it just said, ‘Yes’…” Lennon also once referred to his wife as the world’s “most famous unknown artist. Everybody knows her name but nobody knows what she does.” For the Silo, Eve Yantha.

For further contemplation:

Imagine: John Lennon- A startling film derived from over 200 hours of John’s own film and video footage, as well as stills & heretofore unpublished music from John and Yoko’s personal collection. (1988)

Grapefruit: A Book of Instruction and Drawing by Yoko Ono (c. 1964; 1970)

Featured image:

This Room Moves at the Same Speed as the Clouds

Art

Light, Interviews, Books to Inspire, And A Call To Artists From Rome

January 27, 2017 The Silo Leave a comment

Consider for a moment the nature of light and time. Fleeting, infinite, unknowable, and yet familiar as our own minds. We long for more time while cursing its slow progress. Temporal matters dictate every aspect of our human lives. We are beholden to the times in which we live. We cannot grasp light and yet we are surrounded by it. When we enter into the unknown, art is a light guiding us toward better days ahead.

Mary Temple's "unsolved red white and blue" — Mary Temple’s “unsolved red white and blue”

Mary Temple has the ability to incorporate all of this into her artwork in the most surprising ways. She can capture a moment and freeze it for all eternity with the stroke of her brush. Her ethereal public art painted on existing architecture preserves the memory of a moment of light. Temple also focuses on the times in which we live, using her art to engage in global political discussion. Her series Currency depicted world leaders in such a way that ranked them according to their ability to achieve progress in matters of world peace. Temple uses time as a dimension in her work. Currency was an up to the minute newsfeed told through hand drawn portraiture, while her public artwork uses light to capture time and hold it still for all to see.

Susan Silton lets our life and times inform her art. Through performance, installation, video, photography, text, audio, participation and print-based projects, Silton speaks to the turbulence around us. She fuses humor, unease, beauty with the intention of shining a light on the failures and triumphs of our moment on the planet. Her video work “Turn the Beat Around” was a direct response to the 2016 attack on an Orlando, Florida nightclub. Her art is a conduit to process grief, come to terms with the violence in our society, and seek common ground.

Writer Murong Xuecun once said, “Literature is not at the service of the government; on the contrary governments should do everything in their power to create a favorable climate for literature.” In these uncertain political times, what are you reading? Click here to contribute your books in the comments or use the comments feature at the end of this post. Tony Maslic, is reading “The Dispossessed” by Ursula Le Guin. Lian Brehm has turned to Suzi Gablick’s “The Reenchantment of Art” while artist Mary Temple cites the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as well as her TEDx talk We Should all be Feminists as necessary fuel.

The Rome Glocal Brightness 2017 Light Festival has issued a call for artists. The Festival illuminates the sixth district of Rome allowing viewers to experience undiscovered corners of the city.

This bringing of light does not seek to diminish the dark, but to emphasize that the darkness can become a canvas in itself.
As we stand together at the edge of a new ravine, let us not fear what may be but embrace what is in each moment and never stop reaching toward the light. For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

Brainard Carey is an artist, author and educator. You can attend one of his free webinars for artists here. He also has an educational platform for artists called Praxis Center.

*featured image- Mary Temple “Currency”Series