The Drawing Center opens the first museum exhibition dedicated to David Hammons's pivotal early works on paper
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Saturday, October 12, 2024


The Drawing Center opens the first museum exhibition dedicated to David Hammons's pivotal early works on paper
Bruce W. Talamon, David Hammons making a body print, Slauson Avenue studio, Los Angeles, 1974. Digital silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm). Courtesy of the artist.



NEW YORK, NY.- The first museum exhibition dedicated to David Hammons’s pivotal early works on paper, David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968–1979 brings together the monoprints and collages in which the artist used the body as both a drawing tool and printing plate to explore performative, unconventional forms of image making. On view from February 5 through May 23, 2021, the exhibition features a significant number of Hammons’s large-scale body prints, including Pray for America (1974), as well as two sculptural objects, Black Boy’s Window (1968) and The Door (Admissions Office) (1969). In addition, the exhibition presents examples of a lesser known, but no less important, series of Hammons’s body prints that utilize colored papers and inks. Together, the thirty-two works highlighted in the exhibition argue for the ingeniousness of Hammons’s series—a project which introduced the major themes of a fifty-year career that is central to the history of postwar American art.

Hammons’s body prints represent the origin of his artistic language, one that has developed over a long and continuing career and that emphasizes both the artifacts and subjects of contemporary Black life in the United States. Hammons created the body prints by greasing his own body—or that of another person—with substances including margarine and baby oil, pressing or rolling body parts against paper, and sprinkling the surface with charcoal and powdered pigment. The resulting impressions are intimately direct indexes of faces, skin, and hair that exist somewhere between spectral portraits and physical traces. Drawn, silkscreened, and collaged American flags, maps, pieces of clothing, and other found objects complicate the narratives of these works, as do their often-punning titles that offer pointed commentary. In a decade that was an inflection point for racial tension and racial justice in the United States, Hammons chose to use his own body to depict the quotidian joys and entrenched injustices of living as a Black man in midcentury America. More than a half century after they were made, these early works on paper remain a testament to Hammons’s desire to reinterpret notions of the real; his celebration of the sacredness of objects touched or made by the Black body; his biting critique of racial oppression; and his deep commitment to social justice.

Born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, Hammons moved to Los Angeles in 1963 at the age of twenty and began making his body prints several years later. He studied at Otis Art Institute with the great draftsman Charles White and became part of a younger generation of Black avant-garde artists who were loosely associated with the Black Arts Movement. In the development of his technique of using a body to make a one to-one likeness, Hammons was inspired by a number of sources including the use of naked female models as living brushes by the French artist Yves Klein; the assemblage and collage practices of Angeleno artists Noah Purifoy, John Outterbridge, John Riddle, and Betye Saar; and the performance work of Studio Z, a cohort of artists that included Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, Houston Conwill, and others. Hammons was also deeply affected by Marcel Duchamp’s readymade art object and use of the pun to expose language as the unstable information system that it is. Following his move to New York in 1978 Hammons’s work became more three dimensional, but the fundamental tenets expressed in the body prints remain in his work to this day.

David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968–1979 is organized by Laura Hoptman, Executive Director, with Isabella Kapur, Curatorial Assistant.










Today's News

February 7, 2021

Facing deficit, Met considers selling art to help pay the bills

Photography in the raw

A natural work of art may be hiding among Indian cave masterpieces

It's not every day we get a new blue

Exhibition of four monumental new paintings by Anselm Kiefer opens at Gagosian

Rarely seen artworks reveal untold stories in new exhibition

Works from the collection of Allen & Beryl Freer to be offered at auction

For this show, the artist went overboard

Fashion mogul Peter Nygard denied bail by Canadian judge

HBO's Black Art: In The Absence of Light debuts February 9

David Nolan Gallery presents a selection of new paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Jonathan Meese

The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU presents exhibition on the work of Will Eisner

The Drawing Center opens the first museum exhibition dedicated to David Hammons's pivotal early works on paper

'Joseph Rodríguez: LAPD 1994': New book and online exhibition by the Bronx Documentary Center

Simon Patterson's exhibition 'Head to Toe' opens at Serlachius Museums in Finland

'Picasso. Figures' from Musée Picasso-Paris makes sole U.S. appearance in 2021 at Frist Art Museum

Christopher Plummer's robust final act crowned a noble career

Stevens Auction Company to offer items from three major southeastern estates

First solo museum exhibition for Chris Schanck, Detroit-based designer & Dallas native

Curated kitsch collection to be offered at Benefit Shop Foundation

"Lewis Hine, Child Labor Investigator" opens at The Dorsky Museum

World's first million-dollar Michael Jordan card drives Heritage Auctions' Modern Sports Cards event

'Mastery and transgression' in music that bridges genres

Pierre Guyotat's visual oeuvre to be donated to the Centre Pompidou

5 Tips for cleaning RV with vacuum




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful