You are invited to visit the studios of 2010-11 Studio Museum artists in residence Simone Leigh, Kamau Amu Patton, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya as they prepare for their upcoming summer
exhibition! This is a rare opportunity to meet the artists and get an advance look at their newest work. Conceived at the formation of the Museum nearly 40 years ago, the Artists-in-Residence Program remains central to the Museum’s mission.
The Artists-in-Residence Open Studios event is free and open to all.
Last night at the Studio Museum of Harlem, a special conversation about fashion and art with André Leon Talley and emerging fashion designer LaQuan Smith was moderated by the museum’s Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden.
A 25-year veteran of and contributing editor to Vogue, André Leon Talley regularly pens a witty, pithy column called “Life with André." He also worked at Interview during Andy Warhol’s tenure. Talley regularly appears on television and in film and can currently be seen as a judge on the television show “America’s Next Top Model.”
LaQuan Smith has designed custom fashions for artists including Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Aubrey O’day, Amerie and more. Smith’s New York Fashion Week debut was held on February 15, 2010 and he has been featured in many media outlets including The New York Times, New York Daily News and Studio Magazine.
Both shared a wonderful view on fashion. Mr. Talley told the standing room only audience, “Fashion is HARD WORK, hard core work;” he continued to say, “true fashion insiders must do their homework, be patient, learn the business and live your dream.”
LaQuan’s 2nd fashion collection frenetic energy filled the Gramercy Room of the Peninsula Hotel as editors and buyers waited for wunderkind LaQuan Smith’s Spring/Summer 2011 show, entitled “A Storybook Path,” to begin.While a crush of photographers circled around rapper Common to get a shot, a gaggle of reporters rushed before Vogue’sAndre Leon Talley and designer and CFDA President Diane Von Furstenberg for a soundbite. The excitement generated so much heat, attendees fanned themselves with hot pink paper fans provided on the tables. As classical music began to play, a young lady wearing a blush pink corseted brocade jacket and matching frilly skirt came out, pursing gold lacquered lips and tottering atop Walter Steiger stilettos. The show had begun, and the air erupted with shouts of enthusiasm over the clothes–and the models themselves:
Exclamations of “Honey better work!” and “Ok!” could be heard as models sauntered out in a series of bust and thigh accentuating pieces seemingly inspired by the famously coquettish and fashion loving late 18th century Marie Antoinette. Brocade fabrics in champagne pink, deep burgundy, white, black, and electric blue were fashioned into cropped frilled tops and bodice dresses, perfectly fit for modern day princesses. Though dreamlike, as if cut from a storybook, the clothes were designed to titillate. To wit, an almost bare bottomed Jaslene Gonzalez elicited whoops of “Yes, girl,” as she worked a sheer mint green flapper dress with green plumes of feathers peeking out the bottom.
The shouts reached an almost fevered pitch as even more celebrity models emerged. Singer Cassie in a corseted gold and burgundy bubble hem dress; Deborah Cox in a Tiffany blue gilded number with an asymmetric train; Serena Williams, who closed the show, in a Bourdeaux red regal gown with exaggerated hips.
Kehinde Wiley is a New York based painter from Los Angeles who has situated himself firmly within art history's tradition of portrait painting. Wiley, as the contemporary descendent of a long line of portraitists including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, Ingres, and others, appropriates the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, opulent, majestic, and sublime in his representations of young, urban, black men.
The subjects and stylistic references for his paintings are juxtaposed inversions of each other, forcing ambiguity and provocative perplexity to pervade his imagery. By applying the visual vocabulary and conventions of glorification, history, wealth, power, and prestige to subject matter drawn from the urban fabric in which he is embedded, Wiley presents his young men as both heroic and pathetic, aestheticized and reified, autonomous and manipulated. Ultimately, Wiley's practice disturbs and interrupts tropes of portrait painting to locate, in his words, "class struggle at the level of sign". Wiley’s paintings often blur the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation. Rendered in a realistic mode –– while making references to specific old master paintings –– Wiley creates a fusion of period styles, ranging from French rococo, Islamic architecture and West African textile design to urban hip–hop and the "Sea Foam Green" of a Martha Stewart Interiors color swatch. Wiley’s slightly larger than life size figures are depicted in a heroic manner, as their poses connote power and spiritual awakening. Wiley’s portrayal of masculinity is filtered through these poses of power and spirituality.
His portraits are based on photographs of young men who Wiley sees on the street, begun last year with men mostly from Harlem’s 125th Street, the series now includes models from the South Central neighborhood where he was born. Dressed in street clothes, they are asked to assume poses from the paintings of Renaissance masters, such as Titian and Tiepolo. Wiley also embraces French rococo ornamentation; his references to this style compliment his embrace of hip–hop culture. Similarly, the poses of his figures appear to derive as much from contemporary hip–hop culture as from Renaissance paintings.
The artist describes his approach as "interrogating the notion of the master painter, at once critical and complicit." Wiley’s figurative paintings "quote historical sources and position young black men within that field of power.” In this manner, Wiley’s paintings fuse history and style in a unique and contemporary manner.
Sunday is the day that Harlem truly comes alive, and the day that many make time to visit The Studio Museum in Harlem. To make sure that the Museum is accessible to all, we would like to introduce Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum, thanks to generous support from Target.
The program, which will offer free Museum admission every Sunday between 12 and 6 PM, reflects a shared commitment to engage the community and offer a vital cultural experience to all.
In addition to free Museum admission on Sundays, the Education and Public Programs Department has organized free programs and events geared to all our different audiences. From hands-on family workshops to theater performances, whatever their age or interest, visitors will find something to love at Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum.
Join us, as we explore how art and visual communication can ignite the imagination, engage the mind and reflect our human experience-past, present and future.
