Do you follow art news or
the website artnet? I have recently
started to follow art news – it’s like a break from stories dominated by an orange
dude who… Like I said, a break from
other kind of news. I read this story
about how the Baltimore Museum of Art sold some of their top dollar artwork by
white guys (Andy Warhol, Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg, for example) so
that they could acquire some top dollar artwork by people of color and women (Jack
Whitten, Amy Sherald [the artist who painted Michelle Obama's official
portrait], Wangechi Mutu, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and a bunch of others). The personally sad thing about this was that
I did not know who these, people of color and women, artist were – and I’m a
studio art major. Hell, I graduated with
honors on top of that. I felt like a
dumbass and I know I’m not dumb. I know
it goes without saying but I did know of all the white guys they mentioned in
the article. So, I had to look up a few of
these artists whom I did not know. I was
really flabbergasted by one artist in particular – Isaac Julien. This dude…
Wow! Well his website says that he
is a “filmmaker and installation artist”.
But he makes photographic prints too.
And “Julien was awarded the title Commander of the Most Excellent Order
of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s birthday honors, 2017.” So like yeah.
Well, you never stop learning. I
need to hurry up and get my stuff out there.
