© Agnes Varda. Young woman in front of Fidel mosaic, Regla 1962-1963.
Let the games begin! CraveOnline visits Art Basel Miami and spotlights some of the most dynamic work from the show.
Rosalyn Drexler
© Rosalyn Drexler. The Dream, 1963.
Garth Greenan Gallery, Booth S9
Bronx native Rosalyn Drexler is a woman of many talents. A Pop artist, novelist, Obie Award-winning playwright, and Emmy-Award winning screenwriter, Drexler began her career in 1951 as Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire, a professional wrestler, which inspired Andy Warhol to make a series of silkscreens in her likeness. By the 1960s, her art career was in full swing, as she emerged in the Pop art scene alongside Claes Oldenburg. As a woman in a male dominated field, she did not receive the same recognition as her peers. But, as with all good things, her time has come as Garth Greenan presents a selection of her vibrant paintings from the 1960s. From King Kong to Marilyn Monroe pursued by death, Drexlerʼs paitnings evoke the pulp fiction novels, B-movie, and film noir of the era.
Agnès Varda
© Agnes Varda. Young woman in front of Fidel mosaic, Regla 1962-1963.
Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Booth E14
Like many French intellectuals and artists of the time, filmmaker Agnès Varda was intrigued by the Cuban revolution lead by Fidel Castro. A guest of the Cuban Institute of Cinema, she arrived in Havana in December 1962, and traveled the island over the next two months with her Leica, taking around 2,000 black and white photographs, documenting the people as they adapted to a new way of life. The work, which gas never been shown together in public before, comes from a larger exhibition now on view in “VARDA/CUBA” at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, now through February 1, 2016.
Lorna Simpson
© Lorna Simpson. Direct Gaze, 2014 (detail).
Galeria Nathalie Obadia, Booth E14
“Direct Gaze” by African American photographer Lorna Simpson is an intimate work of what is remembered, and what is lost. Created in 2014, the work is composed of 60 elements that include 27 found photo booth portraits, 13 magazine clippings, and 20 solid bronze elements. Created as a meditation on African American history, Simpsonʼs work deal with memory and identity in a deeply felt way. Each photo booth portrait is a striking image of persons unknown, black men and women who look directly into the camera, strong and bold. Interspersed throughout the work are abstract elements, representing that which we cannot full conceive in retrospect, while the solid bronze elements speak to that which has disappeared from the historical record all together.
Arnold Newman
© Arnold Newman
Howard Greenberg Gallery, Booth F2
Howard Greenberg Gallery presents a series of nine portraits of Pablo Picasso in his studio in Vallauris, France, taken by American photographer Arnold Newman in 1954. Each photograph in the series, printed in an intimate size, gives us a glimpse into the world of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. We witness Picasso in his creative milieu, through the lens of Newman, one of the finest portrait photographers of the era. The series, which reveals itself as a meeting of the minds, reveals how the creative spirit allows us a path into a way of seeing that we might not otherwise grasp. It is here, in Newmanʼs photographs, that we discover a complex and compelling personality, one that came to redefine and dominate the aesthetic landscape throughout his career.
William Kentridge
© William Kentridge. Untitled (Wanting to hold), 2015. Charcoal, coloured pencil, Indian ink, digital print and water colour on Shorter Oxford English Dictionary pages.
South African artist William Kentridge, best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films, is a master of the form. Like the great political artist Francisco Goya, Kentridge uses his gifts as a means to comment upon the social injustices that have riddled his native land. Goodman Gallery presents “Untitled (Wanting to hold)”, a series of sixteen panels that compose the whole. Using his signature expressionist style, Kentridgeʼs bold strokes are layered over pages of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, providing a striking contrast between the known and the perceived.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
