Spring 2023 Issue

Hans Ulrich obrist’squestionnaire:joy williams

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 make a selection from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the first installment of 2023, we are honored to present the author Joy Williams.

Joy Williams in Amherst, Massachusetts, 2016. Photo: Jonno Rattman

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine, London. He was previously the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show, World Soup (The Kitchen Show), in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Photo: Tyler Mitchell

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Joy Williams is the author of five novels, most recently Harrow (2021); four collections of stories; and Ill Nature (2001), an essay collection that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her many honors include the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was elected to the academy in 2008. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Laramie, Wyoming. Photo: Jonno Rattman

Hans Ulrich ObristWhat is the role of titles?

Joy WilliamsTitles should be at the end of stories or concealed within them somehow. And prove to surprise or complicate the reader’s conclusions.

HUOWhat keeps you coming back to the studio?

JWI still harbor the hope (possibly delusion) that I might be able to create something marvelous through effort, chance, or inspiration.

HUOWhat is your unrealized project?

JWWriting hymns in the manner of the great Welsh hymnist William Williams.

HUOWhat have you forgotten?

JWHow to tan. I was once an expert. A true natural. Much admired.

HUOHow would you like to die?

JWWell, after reading sister Alicia’s research on the subject in Cormac McCarthy’s ”Stella Maris”, certainly not by drowning.

HUOHas the computer changed the way you work?

JWI’ve never used a computer. I think it would take an immediate and intense dislike to me.

HUOThe future is . . . ?

JW That which was ever intended.

HUOWhat ought to change?

JWExperimentation on animals must stop. The whole ghastly system—breeders—labs—vivisectors—should be shut down.

HUOWhat music are you listening to?

JWGlenn Gould playing anything. Albert Schweitzer on the organ. The piano music of G. I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann. The symphonic works of John Luther Adams.

Francesca Woodman

Ahead of the first exhibition of Francesca Woodman’s photographs at Gagosian, director Putri Tan speaks with historian and curator Corey Keller about new insights into the artist’s work. The two unravel themes of the body, space, architecture, and ambiguity.

Prosperity’s Long Song #1: At Lights-Out Hour

We present the first installment of a four-part short story by Arinze Ifeakandu. Set at the Marian Boys’ Boarding School in Nigeria, “Prosperity’s Long Song” explores the country’s political upheavals through the lens of ancient mythologies and the mystical power of poetry.

Chris Eitel in the Kagan Design Group workshop

Vladimir Kagan’s First Collection: An Interview with Chris Eitel

Chris Eitel, Vladimir Kagan’s protégé and the current director of design and production at Vladimir Kagan Design Group, invited the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier to the brand’s studio in New Jersey, where the two discussed the forthcoming release of the First Collection. The series, now available through holly hunt, reintroduces the first chair and table that Kagan ever designed—part of Eitel’s efforts to honor the furniture avant-gardist’s legacy while carrying the company into the future.

Black and white portrait of Frida Escobedo

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Frida Escobedo

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 select from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the first installment of 2024, we are honored to present the architect Frida Escobedo.

Black and white portrait of Katherine Dunham leaping in the air

Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900–1955

Dance scholars Mark Franko and Ninotchka Bennahum join the Quarterly’s Gillian Jakab in a conversation about the exhibition Border Crossings at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Cocurated by Bennahum and Bruce Robertson, the show reexamines twentieth-century modern dance in the context of war, exile, and injustice. An accompanying catalogue, coedited by Bennahum and Rena Heinrich and published earlier this year, bridges the New York presentation with its West Coast counterpart at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Black and white portrait of Maria Grazia Chiuri looking directly at the camera

Fashion and Art: Maria Grazia Chiuri

Maria Grazia Chiuri has been the creative director of women’s haute couture, ready-to-wear, and accessories collections at Dior since 2016. Beyond overseeing the fashion collections of the French house, she has produced a series of global collaborations with artists such as Judy Chicago, Mickalene Thomas, Penny Slinger, and more. Here she speaks with the Quarterly’s Derek Blasberg about her childhood in Rome, the energy she derives from her interactions and conversations with artists, the viral “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirt, and her belief in the role of creativity in a fulfilled and healthy life.

film still of Harry Smith's "Film No. 16 (Oz: The Tin Woodman’s Dream)"

You Don’t Buy Poetry at the Airport: John Klacsmann and Raymond Foye

Since 2012, John Klacsmann has held the role of archivist at Anthology Film Archives, where he oversees the preservation and restoration of experimental films. Here he speaks with Raymond Foye about the technical necessities, the threats to the craft, and the soul of analogue film.

A person lays in bed, their hand holding their face up as they look at something outside of the frame

Whit Stillman

In celebration of the monograph Whit Stillman: Not So Long Ago (Fireflies Press, 2023), Carlos Valladares chats with the filmmaker about his early life and influences.

Stanley Whitney: Vibrations of the Day

Stanley Whitney invited professor and musician-biographer John Szwed to his studio on Long Island, New York, as he prepared for an upcoming survey at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum to discuss the resonances between painting and jazz.

Jamian Juliano-Villani and Jordan Wolfson

Ahead of her forthcoming exhibition in New York, Jamian Juliano-Villani speaks with Jordan Wolfson about her approach to painting and what she has learned from running her own gallery, O’Flaherty’s.

Kelsey Lu

Art historian and curator Olivier Berggruen reflects on his trip to Berlin to see a performance by the multihyphenate Kelsey Lu. Following his experience of that performance, The Lucid, Berggruen caught up with Lu in New York, where they spoke about the visual elements of their work, dreaming, and the necessity of new challenges.

Portrait of twins Frances McLaughlin-Gill and Kathryn Abbe in front of a beach, one of them sits in a lawn chair and the other stands behind looking out of a spyglass

The Art of Biography: Mary Gabriel and Carol Kino

Carol Kino’s forthcoming biography of Frances McLaughlin-Gill and Kathryn Abbe, the identical twin sisters who blazed new trails in the world of photography—Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines—charts a critical moment in the United States, bringing to the surface questions around aesthetics, technologies, and gender through the arc of the twins’ lives. Here, Kino meets with award-winning biographer Mary Gabriel, whose 2023 publication Madonna: A Rebel Life described the unparalleled significance of the musician’s life and career, to discuss the origins of their most recent projects, as well as the specific considerations that underpin the process of narrating a life.

Gagosian Quarterly

Hans Ulrich obrist’squestionnaire:joy williams