Menu

Gagosian Quarterly

Fall 2020 Issue

Now available

GagosianQuarterlyfall 2020

The Fall 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available.

Photo: Moneta Sleet, Jr., 1968. Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution. A project by Theaster Gates/Black Image Corporation

Photo: Moneta Sleet, Jr., 1968. Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution. A project by Theaster Gates/Black Image Corporation

The work of Theaster Gates, with its message of resilience and its insistent exploration of questions surrounding agency, history, and material conditions in Black culture, led us to the cover image for this issue. Part of Gates’s Black Image Corporation project, which grew out of his engagement with the archives and legacy of the Johnson Publishing Company, the historic image of the crowd at the public funeral of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968 was taken by Moneta Sleet, Jr. The first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, Sleet was also known for his high-fashion photography. A selection of these photographs appears in the related article inside the issue, where Gates discusses Black Image Corporation in the context of his upcoming exhibition at Gagosian, New York, in the fall.

Also inside this issue, we continue our Building a Legacy series, speaking with the board of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation about their decision to establish a multiyear initiative dedicated to providing $5 million in COVID-19 relief for artists and arts professionals. Titus Kaphar and novelist Tochi Onyebuchi contribute a poetic rumination on Kaphar’s From a Tropical Space series. Cate Blanchett interviews Gregory Crewdson about his new body of work, and painter Louise Bonnet connects with her friend Miranda July on Zoom to catch up on their most recent endeavors.

Elsewhere in the issue, we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of The Kitchen, New York: Laurie Anderson, Charles Atlas, Jacqueline Humphries, Wade Guyton, Joan Jonas, Ralph Lemon, and Anicka Yi relay their memories and admiration for this trailblazing institution. Additionally, Frank Gehry and Jean-Louis Cohen discuss Gehry’s architectural drawings; choreographers Bebe Miller and Cynthia Oliver reflect on their careers and the choreographies of the pandemic; Carlos Valladares celebrates the films of Jacques Demy; Alex Israel writes on his lifelong muse, Los Angeles; Raymond Foye speaks with Allen Midgette about the actor’s involvement in the great Warhol lecture hoax; Maria Morris Hambourg unpacks the photographic conventions of portraits of industrial designers and architects while exploring Andreas Gursky’s recent portrait of Jony Ive; and writers Anne Boyer and Emma Cline each contribute powerful short stories.

For all of this and more, order your copy or subscribe at the Gagosian Shop, or read the issue online.

Photograph of Serpertine Pavilion designed by Theaster Gates © Theaster Gates Studio. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy: Serpentine

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Theaster Gates

In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents are invited to make a selection from the larger questionnaire and to reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For this installment, we are honored to present the artist Theaster Gates, whose Serpentine Pavilion 2022 Black Chapel opened in London on June 10.

Takashi Murakami cover and Andreas Gursky cover for Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2022 magazine

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2022

The Summer 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, with two different covers—featuring Takashi Murakami’s 108 Bonnō MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (2022) and Andreas Gursky’s V & R II (2022).

Theaster Gates, A Song for Frankie, 2017–21, 5,000 records, DJ booth, and record player

Social Works: The Archives of Frankie Knuckles Organized by Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates, steward of the Frankie Knuckles record collection, is engaging with the late DJ and musician’s archive of records, ephemera, and personal effects. For the Quarterly’s “Social Works” supplement, guest edited by Antwaun Sargent, Gates presents a selection of Knuckles’s personal record collection. Chantala Kommanivanh, a Chicago-based artist, educator, and musician—and the records manager for Rebuild Foundation, Chicago—provides annotations, contextualizing these records’ importance and unique qualities. Ron Trent, a dear friend of Knuckles’s, speaks to the legacy evinced by these materials.

Edmund de Waal and Theaster Gates

Artist to Artist: Edmund de Waal and Theaster Gates

Join the artists for an extended conversation about their most recent exhibitions, their forebears in the world of ceramics, and the key role that history plays in their practices.

Photo: Moneta Sleet, Jr., 1965. Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution.

Theaster Gates: Black Image Corporation

As a prelude to his first-ever solo exhibition in New York, Theaster Gates discusses his prescient work with the photographic archive of Chicago’s Johnson Publishing Company and his formation of Black Image Corporation as a conceptual project. In conversation with Louise Neri, he expands on his strategies as artist and social innovator in his quest to redeem and renew the sacred power of Black images and Black space. 

The inside of Theaster Gates’s Black Vessel for a Saint sculpture

How to Renew the Color of Bricks

Social historian Chris Dingwall reflects on Theaster Gates’s engagement with the history of quotidian materials, focusing on the symbolic qualities and function of his brick-based sculpture.

Theaster Gates in his studio

Theaster Gates: Black Vessel

Join Theaster Gates in his studio as he prepares for an upcoming exhibition at Gagosian, New York. In this video, shot on location in Chicago during the tumultuous weeks of protest in late spring 2020, Gates reflects on the metaphorical power of materials and process, and on the redemptive potential of art.

Anselm Kiefer, Volkszählung (Census), 1991, steel, lead, glass, peas, and photographs, 163 ⅜ × 224 ½ × 315 inches (4.1 × 5.7 × 8 m)/

Cast of Characters

James Lawrence explores how contemporary artists have grappled with the subject of the library.

Theaster Gates, Paris, 2019.

Theaster Gates: Amalgam

Theaster Gates’s exhibition Amalgam explores the social histories of migration and interracial relations by highlighting the specific history of the Maine island of Malaga. Here, William Whitney considers the exhibition in relation to Gates’s ongoing art practices and social commitments.

Cover of the Winter 2019 Gagosian Quarterly, featuring a selection from a black-and-white Christopher Wool photograph

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2019

The Winter 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a selection from Christopher Wool’s Westtexaspsychosculpture series on its cover.

Thelma Golden and David Adjaye.

The Studio Museum in Harlem

Established in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem has served as a crucial institution in the development, presentation, and promotion of artists of African descent. With the museum now preparing for the construction of a new home, Gagosian’s Mark Francis spoke with Thelma Golden, director and chief curator, and Sir David Adjaye OBE, the project’s principal architect, about the building plans and the centrality of artists in their collaboration.

Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2019

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2019

The Summer 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Afrylic by Ellen Gallagher on its cover.