Iconoclasts explore the experimental and often transformational practices of thirteen groundbreaking artists, inviting us to engage anew with what modern day iconoclasm might be.
Thomas Mailaender
Daniel Crews-Chubb
By using a myriad of unusual image-making practices from branding imagery onto human skin to sculpting curving structures out of crow feathers – these artists are breaking the mould, ushering a new age of artistic defiance through their resistance to typical artistic processes and their personal interpretations of cultural mores.
Josh Faught
Alexi Williams Wynn – Douglas White
Dale Lewis
Makiko Kudo
Born in 1978, Aomori prefecture, Japan. Lives and works in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan.
Makiko Kudo, Stage Curtain, Oil on canvas, 194.5 x 259.2 cm, 2011
Makiko Kudo, Stage Curtain, Detail
The realm of dreams and memory is one that Kudo’s figures inhabit. Rather than confronting or depicting the world as it is, Kudo rejects it by escaping from it – deriving the motifs from everyday life and her own imagination.
Makiko Kudo, Floating Island, Oil on canvas 227 x 364.6 cm, 2012
Makiko Kudo, Floating Island, Detail
Makiko Kudo, Floating Island, Detail
Makiko Kudo
Makiko Kudo, Gray Town, Oil on canvas 227.5 x 365 cm, 2011
Makiko Kudo, Gray Town, Detail
Makiko Kudo, Gray Town, Detail
Makiko Kudo, Invisible, Oil on canvas 182.0 x 227.5 cm, 2011
Makiko Kudo, Burning Red, Oil on canvas 181.5 x 227 cm, 2012
“I feel like a kind of a ghost in a thin and flimsy world. Because I lack a sense of volume and reality. I sense reality more in my dreams. Constructing a painting in similar to dreaming. Shuffling different landscapes, creating stories and connecting them with emotion and imagination, like a collage or a jigsaw puzzle.”
Makiko Kudo, I See Season, Oil on canvas 259.5 x 389 cm, 2010
This exhibition celebrates the work of Black artists working in the united states in the two decades after 1963. During this turbulent time, these artists asked and answered many questions. How should an artist respond to political and cultural changes? Was there a ‘Black art’ or a ‘Black aesthetic’? Should an artist create legible images or make abstract work? Was there a choice to be made between addressing a specifically Black audience or a ‘universal’ one? The exhibition looks at responses to such questions.
In 1963, when the exhibition begins, the American Civil Rights Movement was at its height. At the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington D.C., Dr Martin Luther King, Jr dreamed that his children would live in ‘a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’.
King referred to himself proudly as ‘Negro’, but by this time, many who were on the March were beginning to call themselves Black. Taking issue with King’s non-violent position, especially after appalling racist violence later in 1963, many joined in calls for ‘Black Power’.
Others rejected in idea of an integrated America, and began to speak of a separate, autonomous Black Nation. Looking at newly independent African nations, and understanding an ancestral connection to the continent, the terms ‘Afro-American’ and ‘African American’ also began to take root. The artists in Soul of a Nation wereprofoundly aware of these political visions and different senses of self, and each took an aesthetic position in relation to them.
Reginald Gammon, Freedom Now, Acrylic paint on board, 1963
Norman Lewis
“America the Beautiful”
In a small series of works, he set aside his flair for colour to concentrate on black and white, in order to reflect on race relations in America. Here, lewis evokes a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan, while titling the work to suggest the difference between America’s vision of itself and its realities.
Norman Lewis, America the Beautiful, Oil paint on canvas, 1960
Romare Bearden The Dove Photostat on Fibreboard 1964
Wadsworth Jarrell
“Black Prince”
Black Prince is a portrait of Malcolm X, made for the second AfriCOBRA exhibition in 1971 held, like their first, at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It is based on a May 1963 photograph of Malcolm X in Harlem, speaking against segregation and ‘Uncle Tom Negro preachers’.
Wadsworth Jarrell Black Prince Acrylic paint on canvas
Wadsworth Jarrell Liberation soldiers Acrylic paint and foil canvas
Kay Brown
“The Divel and His Game”
Kay Brown was for a time the sole woman member of Weusi artist collective, named after the Swahili word for ‘blackness’, and would go on to be an influential member of Where We At! In The Devil and His Game, Brown comments on then-US president Richard Nixton’s foreign and domestic policies.
Kay Brown The Divel and His Game Paper and acrylic paint on canvas 1970
Jeff Donaldson, Wives of Sango, Acrylic paint, gold foil and silver foil on cardboard, 1979
Ed Clark
“Yenom (#9)”
Ed Clark was a part of the second generation of abstract expressionist and in 1957 was the first American artist to experiment with irregularity shaped canvases.
Ed Clark, Yenom (#9), 1970
William T. Williams
“Trane”
This painting was named after John Coltrane and may conjure the cascades of sound in his performances.
William T. Williams, Trane Acrylic paint on canvas, 1969
Jack Whitten
“Homage to Malcolm”
Most of his late 1960s works were colourful with expressive brushstrokes, however Homage to Malcolm is very clearly structured and is the artist’s only triangular painting.
Jack Whitten, Homage to Malcolm, Acrylic paint on canvas,1970
Andy Warhol
“Muhammad Ali”
The palette of red, black and green shares its colours with the pan-African flag where red represents the blood uniting the African diaspora, black as representative of its people, and green being the natural riches of the African continent.
Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali, Acrylic paint and screenprint on canvas, 1978
Barkley Hendricks
“Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale)”
Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale) is a self-portrait, trimmed with a border evoking the American flag. Barkley Hendricks painted himself wearing a novelty T-shirt, provocatively nude from the waist down. The work’s subtitle invites a declarative statement of solidarity with the Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale.
Barkley Hendricks, Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale), Oil paint, acrylic paint and aluminium leaf on canvas,1969
Gerald Williams
“Nation Time”
Gerald Williams was one of the five founding members of AfriCOBRA. For Williams, ‘Nation’ referred not to America but to a separate Black nation. Amiri Baraka used the word in the same way in his poem of the same year, ‘It’s Nation Time’, and Jeff Donaldson used the phrase too in the landmark AfriCOBRA text, ’10 in Search of a Nation’, also 1970: ‘It’s NATION TIME and we re now searching.
Gerald Williams, Nation Time, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1970
David Hammons
“Injustice Case”
Injustice Case refers to Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale’s trial for conspiracy to incite violence, during which Seale was bound and gagged in the courtroom. Hammons cut an American flag to frame the image (itself a punishable offence), effectively making this shocking scene from the halls of justice an x-ray of America.
David Hammons, Injustice Case, Body print and screenprint on paper, frame wrapped with American Flag, 1970
Barkley Hendricks
“What’s Going on”
Five figures stand nearly life-size. Amalgamations of people real and imagined, the nude woman is modelled on Hendricks’s recurring model, dancer Adrienne Hawkins, and the youngest man in rose-tined glasses is based on the artist’s brother. Hendricks conveys a range of complexions by seamlessly transitioning between highly malleable, slow-drying oil paint and fast-dying acrylic to suggest different textures and surfaces.
Barkley Hendricks, What’s Going on Oil paint, acrylic paint and acrylic resin paint on canvas, 1974
Barkley Hendricks
“Brilliantly Endowed (Self-Portrait)”
Brilliantly Endowed is a self-portrait that demonstrates swagger – defiance and cool detachment – as an everyday act of revolutionary aesthetics. Hendricks subtly targets New York Times critic Hilton Kramer, who had concluded a 1977 review by calling that artist ‘a brilliantly endowed painter who erred, perhaps, on the side of slickness’. The artist tackles head-on the double entendre and its potential stereotype connotation of Black male anatomy, while also putting on show his confidence as a painter, upending ‘slickness’ to embrace it as an attribute.
Barkley Hendricks, Brilliantly Endowed (Self-Portrait), Oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas, 1977
Alice Neel
“Faith Ringgold”
Alice Neel, a white artist, was an ardent supporter of the equal representation of Black people – both through her own selection of sitters, such as this portrait of artist Faith Ringgold, and in her social actions.
Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, Oil paint on canvas, 1977
Emma Amos
“Eva the Babysitter”
Emma Amos was the sole woman artist in the Spiral group. The circumstances of socially-accepted domestic and child rearing responsibilities compounded the challenges women artists faced. This image honours a woman who helped enable Amos’s artistic practice. The radiant child-carer smiled while the artist’s toddler daughter is barely contained by the canvas.
Emma Amos, Eva the Babysitter, Oil pain on canvas, 1973
Carolyn Lawrence, Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1972
virginia jaramillo, Untitled, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1971
Joe Overstreet
“We Came from There to get Here”
In he early 1960s, Joe Overstreet Was making image-based painting clearly expressing the political goals of Black Power; he was closely associated with the Black Arts Movement, and painted backdrops for the jazz musician Sun Ra. He later turned to making more abstract work, here painting a colourful grid and drawing the outlines of figures giving gestures of empowerment.
Joe Overstreet, We Came from There to get Here, Acrylic pain on canvas and rope, 1970
Frank Bowling
“Texas Louise”
Texas Louise was one of six Map Paintings Bowling included in his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in late 1971. He poured waves of acrylic over stencils of continents that were removed before more paint was applied, so ghostly outlines remain. Continents emerge from and disappear into colour; oceans and rivers are combined with pools and trails of liquid paint. While many Black Americans were pointing to Africa as a mother continent, Bowling’s maps do not privilege any particular place, and celebrate a more fluid and open idea of identity and belonging to the world.
Frank Bowling, Texas Louise, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1971
“No.1 / series: The Artist’s Mind” – Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood- 18.5in x 18.5in x 1.57in, 2017
Name: Leo Vergel
DOB: December 1988
Place of birth: Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
Occupation: Artist
I was born on December 16, 1988 in the Caribbean city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, I was given the name Jesús Leonardo Vergel Alvarez, but I prefer Leonardo Vergel, because of the pressures of this society that is always dictating what to do, ending up giving up and studying a university degree “Profitable”, which by the way does not end because I decided to make art and live from it. I have never entered an artistic institution, I firmly believe in confronting the work a thousand times and do it very often, I am totally self-taught, painting now means for me to have recast the child I had forgotten.
“Palenquera No.1” – Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood -38.19in x 27.36in x 1.57in, 2015
“Palenquera No.2” – Mixed, acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood- 24.02in x 17.32in x 1.57in, 2016
My technique is to use colored cardboard cutouts, I can use them in a way that has an order or a random shape purposely that allows me to express the idea at that time. The shapes I use are rectangular, square, rhomboid or other triangular cases, I think it is because when I had a little fun playing using these materials and associated them with those geometric figures I saw in school.
“Palenquera No.3” – Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood- 48.03in x 36.02in x 1.57in, 2017
This can also be seen in the funds that I make in my works, to this is added that when I was 7 or 8 years I saw a lot of Japanese TV program called “nopo y gonta” where the presenter very creatively taught Children on topics such as geometry and how this could be creatively used to create any number of fun objects. Part of what I saw and lived as a child is reflected today in my work.
“Mango”- Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood, 55cm x 44cm x 4cm, 2016
My work is handled in a genre that I still try to understand and that for me is handled between painting and collage, but I could not say that it is clearly one or the other. My work begins to manage a little symbolism, from the memories, what I live in my daily life and what I think or how I see the world.
“No.2 / The Artist’s Mind” Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood, 2017“No.3 / The Artist’s Mind”- Mixed, Acrylic and recycled cardboard on wood-31.89in x 28.74in x 1.57in, 2017
I like to think that it is Fauvism, by the way I express myself emotionally through color, but with recycled cardboard of vivid colors reinforced with acrylic. I have seen and I am inspired by works of great masters like Gustav Klimt, the way as in his work and uses the color are great teaching for me and I try to achieve it with my work, that the color and the human figure achieve a moving impact In people to the point of reflection. I would like very much to get my work to transcend my generation and in fact to impact people, to let people know that there are always second chances, I want to leave a legacy. My technique is inherent in me, it represents my childhood, when you do not have the resources to paint the only thing that matters is you and your imagination, the rest you forget, it loses importance.
“Open Cage”- Acrylic & recycled cardboard on wood, 45.67in x 35.83in x 1.57in, 2017
The first series of large-scale works draws on Miller’s extensive archive of psychology and social science books, which date from the 1960s and ’70s. Characterised by their bold and colourful abstract covers, these books embraced a positive attitude and the possibility of ‘fixing’ disorders through a process of self-help.
Pot, Oil on canvas, 105 x 72 x 2 in. 2017Colour Made Me Hard, Oil on canvas, 109 x 73 x 2 in. 2016In the Shadows I Boogie, Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 x 2 in. 2017
In Miller’s paintings, three-dimensional architectonic forms in bright, pop colours float against solid saturated backgrounds and are paired with fictional, sardonically humorous titles such as Reverse Psychology Isn’t Working (2017) and Immediate Relief … Coming Soon (2017). Occasionally, the same title appears on different compositions, highlighting how colour, forms and context can change both the rhythm and meaning of words.
Reverse Psychology Isn’t Working, Oil on canvas, 115 x 81 x 2 in. 2017Immediate Relief … Coming Soon, Oil on canvas, 118 x 81 x 2 in. 2017
Similar to the titles, Miller’s abstract imagery can also be read in different ways. Commenting on the work Armageddon – Is It To Much To Ask? (2017), for example, he says: ‘it’s an image that you see one way – then, when you relax, it flips and, no matter how hard you try, you can’t see it the original way. It’s symbolic of the way you read the title.’ These words reflect a departure for the artist, whose previous series of Penguin paperback paintings were re-appropriations of an existing object. Here, for the first time, Miller creates his own designs, focusing more closely on the impact of the image itself.
Why Breathe In, Why Breath Out, Oil on canvas, Two panels, each: 75 x 61 x 2 in. 2017Ace, Oil on canvas, 105 x 75 x 2 in. 2017Bi, Oil on canvas, 104 x 72 x 2 in. 2017
In another series of fictional book cover paintings, Miller depicts the outlines of letter in a range of typefaces and colours, intersected or layered over each other to create short, enigmatic words such as ‘Up’ or ‘If’.
Up, Oil on canvas, 104 x 73 x 2 in. 2017If, Oil on canvas, 104 x 72 x 2 in. 2017
Through a process of isolation, overlaying and re-connecting, Miller creates a sense of depth in the image that deconstructs and abstracts the meaning of language itself. With their bold, saturated colours, these paintings reference American abstraction and, in particular, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha’s use of vernacular signage and motifs. Miller has said about this series: ‘The idea is to make paintings that are just words, in contrast to the titles of previous works’.
Thought After Filthy Thought, Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 x 2 in. 2017The Future, You May Not Like it Now, But You Will, Oil on canvas, 115 x 80 x 2 in. 2017
In both series of paintings the artist continues to use his own name as author. While the presence of Miller’s name alludes to the actual authorship of both image and text, fact and fiction became blurred, allowing for the artist’s deadpan humour to provoke, question and draw attention to the context and content of each work.
Wherever You Are, Whatever You’re Doing, This One’s For You, Oil on canvas, 112 x 77 x 2 in. 2017Circling The Small Ads, Oil on canvas, 109 x 72 x 2 in. 2017
Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-98) was a Danish Surrealist painter, whom Peggy Guggenheim met in Paris in 1937 and invited to exhibit at her Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London the following year. This show initiated Guggenheim’s patronage of Surrealism.
The current exhibition inaugurates two new exhibition rooms at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Kernn-Larsen played a noteworthy part in the Surrealist movement, both in Denmark and internationally. She trained with Fernand Léger in Paris the early 1930s, distinguishing herself as his star pupil.
Searching For the Moon, 1936-37, Oil on canvas
In the Surrealist vein, Krenn-Larsen merged memories rooted in real-life experiences with dream and imagination, derived from an automatic painting method generating a stream of images from within the unconscious. Her works reflect the Surrealist desire to bridge any possible boundaries or alternative states, be they the human and the natural, dream and reality, the conscious and unconscious. A central motif in her paintings were the femme-arbres, women as arboreal creatures, which allude to the Surrealist’s identification of the female artist with the fertile natural world.
Behind the Mirror, 1937, Oil and sand on vancas
In her later years, Kernn-Larsen moved away from Surrealism towards an art based on both abstraction and nature. Her paintings were selected by the art historian Arturo Schwarz for the 1986 Venice Biennale. This exhibition marks her return to the city after more that thirty years.
The Apple From Normandy / The Apple
1934
Oil on canvas
This is one Kernn-Larsen’s earliest Surrealist paintings. It develops its biomorphic shape through an automatic technique, championed by the Surrealists, in which the subconscious freely directs the hand in tracing the line on the surface.
She explained: “I start with something realistic and its continuation is taken care of by the unconscious. The result often surprises me… there is as such a certain connection to the ‘psychoanalytic’.”
Phantoms
1934
Oil on canvas
Phantoms originated with a drowning accident that Krenn-Larsen and her husband witnessed on vacation in Normandy at a bathing resort in late summer 1934. ” It was uncanny… two [people] went missing… I don’t think they were ever found. It made a deep impression on me,” she recalled.
Dance and Counter-dance
1936
Oil on canvas
Kernn-Larsen’s works combined memories, dreams and imagination, as the employed an automatic Surrealist painting method to generate a flow of images arising from the unconscious. This is a signature example. The artist explained, “two rhythms play against each other. I consider it to be one of my most successful pictures.”
Self-Portrait (Know Thyself)
1937
Oil on canvas
The automatic line in this self-portrait evolves from Kernn-Larsen’s personal features. She explained: “I have taken off the shoes because I had to step into the glass.”
The Women’s Uprising
1940
Oil on canvas
The self-identification with fertile nature was frequent in Kernn-Larsen’s work. Seeing nature as female, Surrealist woman artist found in its abundant growth a metaphor for their artistic creation. Here, Kernn-Larsen developed the motif of the femme-arbres, women as arboreal figures, with their growing, sprouting branches.
Zahad Hadid in her London office in 1985. Photo by CHRISTOPHER PILLITZ/GETTY IMAGES
“I have always been interested in the concept of fragmentation, abstraction and explosion, in de-constructing ideas of repetitiveness and mass production. My work first engaged with the early Russian avant-garde; in particular, the work of Kasimir Malevich – he was an early influence for me as a representative of the modern avant-garde intersection between art and design.” Zaha Hadid
Malevich’s Tektonik, London, UK 1976-77
Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid was an Iraqi-born British architect. Hadid was born on 31 October 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq.
In 1997 she graduated from American University of Beirut and then starting to work for her former professors, Koolhaas and Zenghelis, at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Hadid established her own London-based firm in 1979.
Then she began teaching in universities such as Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge University, the University of Chicago and Her reputation for a while rested largely upon her teaching and the imaginative and colourful paintings she made of her proposed buildings, because no one would pay for her projects.
This exhibition at Serpentine Sackler Gallery was mainly about her early working days and showing her extraordinary talent even back then.
In 1988 she was chosen to show her drawings and paintings as one of six architects chosen to participate in the exhibition “Deconstructivism in Architecture” curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This was a start for her international reputation.
Vision for Madrid, Spain 1992Detail
In 2004 she became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
The Peak, Hong Kong, China 1982-83The Peak, Hong Kong, China 1982-83
The BRIT Awards 2017 with Mastercard confirm that the 2017 statue was designed by Zaha Hadid.
An Iranian born artist now living in Columbus, Ohio, she attended the Faculty of Arts at the University of Tehran, and afterward studied under the mentorship of prominent Iranian painter Daruish Hosseini. She later began sculpting under the tutelage of eminent sculptor Behrooz Daresh.
Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x20″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard,25″x22″
“I am an expressive person. I enjoy watching people, in public spaces, at coffee shops, pools, beaches, painting their bodies, their emotions, capturing the other side of them. Not the realistic things everyone can see, but the hidden expressivity.”
Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 22″x24″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 20″x24″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 20″x22″
“I like to make my viewers think. When they pass a piece at an exhibition they have to stop and wonder. I like to show non-artists the things they can’t see. Show them a different world. It’s sometimes hidden, and sometimes not real at all, but in my imagination, a fiction that the person inspires.”
Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 18″x20″Acrylic and pastel on cardboard, 22″x26″
Raheleh’s work concentrates on abstractions of the human form and the emotional expressivity emanating from it, something not found elsewhere in nature. Each piece shows an alternate view of the subject, displaying a distinct beauty otherwise unseen. One cannot pass Raheleh’s pieces without stopping, and getting washed over by its startlingly unique perspective.
Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x16″Acrylic & pastel on card board, 20″x24″Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x22″
“For sculpting, I started because the canvas is not enough to show my emotion and excitement. I needed to make it in three-dimensional to get enough expression. To make the creatures I invented, and introduce them to the people.
I enjoy carving. When there’s a piece of wood or metal, and you can bring out art out of nothing — you give a little of your soul to these things. They have a part of you in them.”
Diving Bird – Aluminium 12″ x 10″
Since moving to the U.S., Raheleh has begun collaborating with an Iranian-American photographer, Arezoo Bijani, on a collection of works emanating from their experiences as artists in Iran, revealing the struggles they passed through in their home country, but also the distinct non-Western vantage point it gives them on male-female asymmetries even in the West.
Prints:
Lino print & collage on paper, 20″x8″Lino print with ink & collage on paper, 10″x8″Lino print & pen on paper, 10″x8″Lino print on paper,12″x10″
‘Painting of a pregnant woman, and her unborn child as an embodiment of hope and emergence of Sigmund Freud’s explorations of the child within every adult persona in Vienna’s turn-of-the-century. The skull nestling on her belly is an allusion to death.’
◊
“Lady with Fan”
Gustav Klimt
1917-1918
Oil on canvas
‘This Relaxed pose of the Lady, calms you down and gives you the opportunity to explore all the rich colours and exquisite patterns of this painting.’
◊
“Death and Life”
Gustav Klimt
Started in 1908 and finished in1915
Oil on canvas
‘Death and life are two very clear part of the painting.
Death standing on the left watching over life in an amusing way, and on the right, a man holding a woman and young women behind them are holding their new born child. An older lady in the middle of them, showing another stage of life in a soft and beautiful way. Over representation of women could refer to women as source of life.
All covered in flowers and patterns that you can see in other Klimt’s paintings.
Creating the circle of life on canvas in the most poetic way possible.’
Wadsworth Jarrell Liberation soldiers Acrylic paint and foil canvas
