Warhol at the Whitney: A provocateur for all seasons (Two Coats of Paint)

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / There are certainly strong generational reasons for the Whitney to mount “Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again,” its penetrating current retrospective. It goes almost without saying that Warhol changed art history by melding the commercial and the “fine,” and, in his energized aesthetic embrace of the whole world (especially New York), by irreversibly expanding the horizons of art and substantially advancing its conceptual dimension. At the same time, it’s tempting to question whether he has more particular contemporary relevance – or at least whether today his work resonates positively or constructively.

Black Male Writers for our Time (New York Times)

Through the institutional cultural cache garnered during these many moments, our literary ancestors carved pathways to success. Harlem Renaissance writers parlayed white patronage to create inroads to the apparatus of publishing. The Black Arts Movement brought about radical changes in university curriculums. New institutions were founded, including New York City’s Medgar Evers College, providing black writers with access to the support and stability of academia. The poet Gregory Pardlo points to the rise of the New York and Chicago slam poetry scenes in the ’80s as a conduit for many writers, including the novelist Paul Beatty. Jacobs-Jenkins discusses ’90s-era evolutions in black writing that produced “an incredible sea change of influence,” when writers like August Wilson and Toni Morrison “achieved black arts excellence and major status in the same breath.”

Bull leader and Delphi Theater

On our mindsEvelyn CannonNovember 20, 2018Ancient Greece, Delphi, Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes

Roses for the blind - unity through diverse, multicultural America

On our mindsChavisa WoodsNovember 19, 2018roses, diversity, Steve Cannon, A Gathering of the Tribes

Two Sister-Poets Gone Too Soon: Ntozake Shange and My Sister (The New Yorker)

Written by Hilton Als and originally published in The New Yorker:

I am writing this a day after my favorite sister’s birthday. She was very dear to me. She would have been sixty-nine this fall. She died two years ago, another casualty of M.S. and poor-black-girl-in-America life. My sister’s absence became even more pronounced for me when the poet, playwright, and author Ntozake Shange died on October 27th. Shange was just seventy when she passed and had been living in an assisted-care facility in Maryland. When my sister died, she had been living in an assisted-care facility in Brooklyn. My sister’s birthday, Shange’s death—each consumed me and left me sitting in the middle of a kind of loneliness which I do not want to bear but had to bear, because I wanted to tell you something about these women, their strengths and weaknesses, and the profound effect that each had on my life and my consciousness, as a writer and a feminist.

On a stairway beneath the eyes, a star ascended

You can see/feel/experience this work by LaMont Hamilton at The Drawing Center in SoHo.

On our minds, Poetry & ProseLaMont HamiltonNovember 15, 2018LaMont Hamilton, Steve Cannon, Braille, poetry, art, installation

Reimagining Norman Rockwell’s America - The New York Times

In 2012, Hank Willis Thomas saw a poster of Norman Rockwell’s painting of a family seated around a holiday table, the matriarch presenting a turkey to her guests. For Mr. Thomas, a 42-year-old black artist raised in Manhattan, the pale complexions in Mr. Rockwell’s 1943 masterpiece did little to represent his experience of a diverse America. So he decided to create a tableau of his own.

Read the full article by Laura M. Holson here.

Bimbo Rivas Mosaic at Two Boots Pizza

Bimbo Rivas mosaic at Two Boots Pizza in the East Village.

On our mindsChavisa WoodsNovember 12, 2018Bimbo Rivas, Two Boots, Two Boots Pizza, A Gathering of the Tribes, mosaic

David Hammons - Cat on a Drum

When it comes to Jazz

As David Hammons would have it

The question becomes -

Who’s the cat on the drums?

A Literary Wake for Ntozake Shange

Join us in remembering Ntozake Shange sista poet, friend, mentor, teacher, Black feminist Obie Award winning playwright, activist and daughter of the African Diaspora who wrote and actively fought for Black women and all women of color, for Black liberation and the freedom, humanity and unity of all the children of the AfroDiaspora. Bring something for the community altar, and your love for Zake, who is soaring now in all the rainbows she conjured. We celebrate her life, her work and what she stood for!

Wed, Nov 7 at the National Black Theater. 7pm. Free to the public.

The Art of the Accused: A Conversation

In the wake of #MeToo, how should we consider the art of those accused of reprehensible acts? Should their actions affect how we see their work? Should it color our reasons for engaging with it? As part of PEN America’s Conversations of Consequence event series, Deborah Solomon, A. O. Scott, Tanya Selvaratnam, and Maggie Mustard discussed the issues surrounding power, spectatorship, violence, gender, labor, and media consumption.

On our mindsChavisa WoodsNovember 5, 2018PEN, The Art of the Accused: A Conversation, Deborah Solomon

Ntozake Shange, Who Wrote ‘For Colored Girls,’ Is Dead at 70 (The New York Times)

Ntozake Shange, a spoken-word artist who morphed into a playwright with her canonical play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf,” died on Saturday in Bowie, Md. She was 70.

Vilma Hodo

On our mindsChavisa WoodsOctober 22, 2018vilma hodo, Steve Cannon, A Gathering of the Tribes, actor

Mary Chen

On our mindsChavisa WoodsOctober 22, 2018Mary Chen, Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes

Phoebe Halkowich

On our mindsChavisa WoodsOctober 22, 2018phoebe halkowich, Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes, actor

A Map of Every Building in America (NY Times)

Traces of Distant Culture

South of New Orleans This arrangement of buildings along a narrow spit of land on either side of a Louisiana bayou shows the imprint of the region’s history under France: “long lot” development, which stretched skinny holdings laterally away from important waterways. Geography shapes settlement, but culture does, as well.