Now Open: Sixties Surreal at the Whitney

Sixties Surreal is an ambitious, scholarly reappraisal of American art from 1958 to 1972, encompassing the work of more than 100 artists focused on the era’s most fundamental, if underrecognized, aesthetic current—an efflorescence of psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary tendencies, undergirded by the imprint of historical Surrealism and its broad dissemination.  In the 60s, many of these artists sought new strategies for connecting art back to a lived reality that seemed increasingly unreal due to rapid postwar transformation and the social, political, and technological upheavals of the later part of the decade. 

Sixties Surreal will attend to the ways in which historical Surrealism of the early 20th Century laid the groundwork for a kind of vernacular surrealism in the 1960s—particularly in America, as cascading social and political changes affirmed that life, itself, is surreal. The way in which artists working across the country—from New York and Philadelphia, to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area—viewed and reimagined this reality will be among the exhibition’s central concerns, while also mirroring the sociopolitical extremes in which artists of the present find themselves working. The exhibition's title, Sixties Surreal, states the show's straightforward historic parameters while suggesting a new take on that history. Above: Linda Lomahaftewa, “Untitled Woman’s Faces” (c. 1960s), 

Some of the artists—both established and recently discovered—are: Diane Arbus, Lee Bontecou, Franklin Williams, Nancy Grossman, David Hammons, Linda Lomahaftewa, Mel Casas, Yayoi Kusama, Romare Bearden, and Louise Bourgeois, among others. The era is time in which history is inextricable from its soundtrack; whether you were there or not, it’s hard to imagine the ’60s without music. If 1960s Pop Art seems to privilege surface appeal, plenty of the era’s music delved into the depths of the psyche. including Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Isaac Hayes, and The Rolling Stones — along with a few avant-garde artists (i.e., Steve Reich, Sun Ra, Frank Zappa) and a solid selection of jazz, such as Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone, and Charles Mingus. (The songs can be accessed on Spotify, but they are not playing in the show, so come prepared with your phone and headphones if you want to listen while you wander.)

The Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Shifting Landscapes at The Whitney

While you’re there, go up to six for a new take on what is a landscape. Some 120 works by more than 80 artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Martin Wong, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ana Mendieta, and Gordon Matta-Clark, examine how political, ecological, and social forces influence artists’ representations of their environments. Organized thematically across the museum’s entire sixth floor, the show explores topics such as industrialization, geopolitical borders, ecofeminism, and alternative geographies. Above: Anita Steckel, “NY Skyline on Canvas #1 (Woman Pressing Finger Down)” (c. 1970–74)

The Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Lisa Yuskavage | Drawings at The Morgan

Lisa Yuskavage: Drawings  incorporates works on paper from the early nineties to the present and including sketches and finished studies. the exhibition will feature a wide range of her explorations with materials including work in graphite, pen, Conte, pastel, charcoal, distemper, monotype, gouache, watercolor, acrylic and ink on paper. It will chart Yuskavage’s career-long inquiry into how process and material experimentation create entirely new ways to find images. From her earliest drawings of imagined figures and still lives, through a period of investigation into what constitutes a model, to her recent studio and landscape scenes synthesizing the real and the imagined into a new kind of fictional reality, Yuskavage’s drawings give insight into the way we see and comprehend the world. Within the jewel-like space of the Thaw Gallery, the exhibition provides an immersive experience, allowing the viewer to enter the artist’s mind.

The Morgan Library and Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Press & Pull | The Robert Blackburn Workshop at The James

This exhibition celebrates more than 20 years of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, whose namesake master printer and educator died in 2003. Prints by over 30 participating artists — including Chakaia Booker, Maren Hassinger, and the late Faith Ringgold — are on view alongside works by Blackburn, as well as archival materials chronicling the evolution of one of the country’s oldest collaborative printshops.Click the link below to discover an incredible lineup of workshops of people of all ages. Above: Dindga McCannon, “Sojourner, Harriet, Shirley, and Maya”, 2022

James Gallery at CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

Homage: Queer Lineages on Video

Seven artists, including Carolyn Lazard and Rirkrit Tiravanija, interrogate queer identity politics, intergenerational kinship, and traditional forms of commemorative documentary in this exhibition. Eight video and film installations centering queer subjects in the Columbia University gallery range from a couple of minutes in runtime to more than 10 hours.

Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, 615 West 129th Street, 6th Floor, Harlem, NY Info

Continuing: 100 Works on Paper Benefit Exhibition at the Kentler

Established 35 years ago by artists Florence Neal and Scott Pfaffman, the Kentler International Drawing Space has stuck by its founding mission: supporting artists working in the medium at different stages of their career, while embracing expansive definitions of what a drawing can be. In this spirit, the center’s annual benefit show will include over 100 works ranging in technique and material, from chine collé and pastel on paper to Japanese mokuhanga. Above: Dionisios Kavvadias, 2005

Kentler International Drawing Space, 353 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY Info