The Frick Collection has benefitted from a change in scenery: its stellar Old Masters, temporarily released from the ornate embrace of Henry Clay Frick’s limestone mansion (while it undergoes renovations), invite fresh contemplation against the modern austerity of the Whitney’s Marcel Breuer building. Now Johannes Vermeer and Hans Holbein the Younger mingle with two queer newcomers. The Israeli-born painter Doron Langberg, who lives in New York, is expert at depicting gay domesticity in his intimately casual and loosely rendered figurative work. “Lover,” from 2021, shows its shirtless subject reading intently on a couch covered with brightly patterned throws; he has little in common with the wonderfully dour, doomed Thomas More of Holbein’s nearby portrait, from 1527. Their unconventional proximity is a delight. The same can be said of the pairing of Salman Toor’s new canvas “Museum Boys” with two Vermeers. In his chartreuse-hued vignette of art viewing gone surreally awry (a young man appears collapsed in a pile in a vitrine), the young New York-based artist, who is from Pakistan, incorporates direct references to both the seventeenth-century Master and the colonialism of the Dutch Empire. “Living Histories” is a yearlong project: next up, Jenna Gribbon and Toyin Ojih Odutola respond, respectively, to works by Holbein and Rembrandt.
source: https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/living-histories
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.