For “Touchstones,” ARTnews asks creative figures from different disciplines—writers, musicians, filmmakers, chefs, and so on—about one artwork that has inspired them.
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L’Rain
Image Credit: Photo Naho Kubota/©Taryn Simon/Courtesy Gagosian Taryn Simon, An Occupation of Loss (2016)
I saw this piece around a time when I was experiencing significant loss, and it has lingered for years. You entered the Park Avenue Armory and descended into the hall to see these giant obelisk structures that had openings in them. In each of the structures were mourners from different cultures singing mourning songs. When you stepped inside, you could only hear one song. But outside the structures you could hear soft remnants of all of them at the same time. I didn’t speak any of the languages of the mourners but could understand what was happening anyway. That makes for a really powerful experience.
L’Rain (aka Taja Cheek, a curator at MoMA PS1) is the creator of the new album Fatigue.
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Molly Lewis
Image Credit: Courtesy Nicolas Provost Nicolas Provost, Plot Point (2007)
I went to Paris Photo in L.A. and there was a room of video art. I sat down to watch this and didn’t quite know what I was watching. It seemed like some kind of thriller, but I came to realize that it was footage of regular people in everyday life that Nicolas Provost had taken and expertly manipulated with cinematic tropes and codes to create a narrative and the feeling of a film. A woman talking on a payphone in the rain would have an ominous soundtrack and a voiceover by an actor conveying a storyline. I just loved the way it blends reality and fiction, and also the inherent humor in using these unsuspecting people going about their lives and placing them in a cinematic world.
Molly Lewis is a world-renowned whistler and the creator of the new single “Oceanic Feeling.”
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Jonah Mixon-Webster
Image Credit: Photo Daniel Greer/Courtesy Creative Time Sanford Biggers, Oracle (2021)
What fascinates me about Oracle isn’t just its immense size but also some of its historical components, which are striking for a Rockefeller Center installation. It creates this kind of full circle with other works there, which show traditions that have been adopted into American culture—Greco-Roman figures, various different types of architecture. But what Sanford Biggers is doing with this figure with an African mask superimposed is creating a cultural blend. It’s an intermix of cultures, and he’s able to capture resonances that I’ve been considering when it comes to Western philosophy and African-American history and post-colonial studies—this kind of weird miscegenation of culture and artifacts.
Jonah Mixon-Webster is the PEN/Osterweil Award–winning author of the poetry book Stereo(TYPE).
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Arooj Aftab
Image Credit: Courtesy Luhring Augustine, New York Zarina, Corners (1980)
I first heard about Zarina through a friend of mine who was studying art history. I started to look into her and saw all these similarities in her aesthetic that were really resounding to me. She talks about working on a small scale with repetition that builds, and how small scale has its own intensity because an image has no place to go. That resounds with my minimalist approach to music. I’m attracted to hopeful sadness and using small motifs that build and layer on top of each other. I had the opportunity to see Corners in person and its grayness calmed me down and took me places. It reminded me of when my parents moved to Pakistan and bought a house. Pakistani homes have all these little corners built in, and this reminded me of that immediately.
Arooj Aftab is a Pakistan-born, Brooklyn-based composer and the creator of the new album Vulture Prince.
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Chad Taylor
Image Credit: ©2005 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago Mark Rothko, Untitled (1967)
I’m a fan of Mark Rothko, so much that I got married in the Rothko Chapel. That marriage didn’t work out, but it was quite an experience. I’ve always been drawn to him because I feel this balance where the work is complicated and very simple at the same time. And his work can be really emotional, which is what attracts
me to music. I grew up playing mostly jazz and classical music, and the emotional feeling I get from that is the same as I get looking at Rothko. There’s an emotional energy that I love. Another thing I like about Rothko’s work is that it exists in its own universe, on its own terms. You could compare it to other abstract art of the period, but it doesn’t need that. It exists all by itself.Chad Taylor is a percussionist/composer, cofounder of the Chicago Underground Duo, and, as a member of Mind Maintenance, creator of the new album Mind Maintenance.
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Matthew Dear
Image Credit: Courtesy Simard Bilodeau Contemporary, Los Angeles Emma Larsson, Wild Indigo (2020)
I found Emma Larsson recently through the wormhole of Instagram. I just went crazy scrolling and kept liking, liking, liking—and then started reading about her. There’s something very aquatic about her work, with all these fantastical, jellyfish-like creatures. They’re otherworldly in such a cool way, and she’s created this land of make-believe. There’s such an interesting mix of textures, with wet, soft watercolor edges but then these moments of hard contrast with oils and acrylics that ground everything. And her use of color—melancholic and muted and dark—really appeals to me.
Matthew Dear is a DJ/producer, singer/songwriter, and the creator of the new Preacher’s Sigh & Potion: Lost Album.
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Rivka Ravede
Image Credit: Courtesy Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Ilya Repin, Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885)
This is my favorite painting. The art that I’m drawn to is really bleak and violent in nature, but I like this one most because of the history of it, which is pretty dramatic and extra. It’s been attacked twice, once with a knife—and the curator of the gallery that it was in threw himself under a train because he was so distressed over its stabbing. I’ve also always wanted to paint like this. I’ve been painting since I was a teenager, and I’ve always wanted to paint like a Russian Old Master. I really like that kind of realism. It makes me feel a lot of anxiety.
Rivka Ravede is a singer/bassist, a member of Spirit of the Beehive, and creator of the new album Entertainment, Death.
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Amanda Hesser
Image Credit: Photo Bill Jacobson Studio/©Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy Dia Art Foundation Richard Serra, Torqued Ellipses (1996–2000)
I had taken in a number of beautiful sculptures, but I had never felt really strong emotions about them until I went to Dia:Beacon and into a room—not a huge room for the size of the sculptures—and walked around these hulking steel pieces. My visceral response took me by surprise, and it made me understand that Richard Serra is creating these amazingly graceful shapes with really heavy-duty materials—and actually experiencing those materials and the angles at which they stand is a whole experience of its own. In some instances, it’s comforting; in some instances, it’s menacing. It really depends on where
you are as you move around. I was so impressed by how something seemingly so simple had so much complexity to it.Amanda Hesser is a cofounder of Food52, the former New York Times food editor, and author of the newly updated The Essential New York Times Cookbook.