DiaTalks- Jessica Bell Brown and Eric N. Mack on Sam Gilliam

Saturday, November 23, 2019, 2 pm
Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York
Jessica Bell Brown is a writer, curator, and an art historian based in New York. She is currently the consulting curator for Gracie Mansion Conservancy, New York, where she organized She Persists: A Century of Women Artists in New York, 1919-2019 (2019). Bell Brown is a PhD candidate in modern and contemporary art in the department of art and archaeology at Princeton University. Her research explores American painting and identity in the post-civil-rights decade. Before pursuing graduate study, she worked in programming capacities at Creative Time and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. From 2016 to 2017, Bell Brown was the museum research consortium fellow in the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As a writer and critic, she has penned critical essays on contemporary artists Sam Gilliam, Eric N. Mack, Kerry James Marshall, Senga Nengudi, Jennifer Packer, Charles Ray, and Wilmer Wilson IV, among others. Her writing and art criticism has appeared in Artforum, the Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, and Hyperallergic, in addition to catalogues and publications for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Lévy Gorvy, Museum of Modern Art, and Studio Museum in Harlem.
Eric N. Mack was born in 1987 in Columbia, Maryland, and lives and works in New York City. He received his BFA from Cooper Union, New York, in 2010, and his MFA from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, in 2012. Recent solo presentations of his work include Dye Lens at Scrap Metal Gallery in Toronto (2019-20); In austerity, stripped from its support and worn as a sarong at Power Station in Dallas (2019); Lemme walk across the room at the Brooklyn Museum, New York (2019); and Vogue Fabrics, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2017). Mack’s work was included in the 2019 biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Major group exhibitions include In the Abstract, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2017-18); Ungestalt, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2017); Blue Black, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis, Missouri (2017); Making & Unmaking, Camden Arts Centre, London (2016); and Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York (2015).

[@edplunk600]

Noose? Why can't people "allow" non Whites to do something else besides art related to what Whitty does to people?

[@harima36]

Glad that not much of substance was said about Sam's work here because words diminish the direct experience. Sam is a master of restraint. I feel that you are not representing '68, '69, '70' or Sam to the standard they deserve. Sam is a master of restraint. He knows when to stop. At times covered head to toe in paint, his hands and eyes have a light touch. He towered above me and had already gone over the edge from abstraction and into the new. - I was a 113 lb., 18('68), 19('69), 20('70) year old child prodigy (as stated by those providing my scholarships) eating, breathing and ecstatic to be in the thick of color 12 hours a day. I,
once clear that my direction was color was guided by my benefactors primarily to Sam Gilliam, then Gene Davis, Ed Mcgowin, Leon Berkowitz and many others at Corcoran and MICA. The Atrium of Corcoran was the apex and nexus of creativity that spread out from there and so it seemed to all of D.C. The air was alive with energy and excitement. This dynamic existed because of the interfacing of painters, teachers, students and the public. Many artists mentioned (and not) taught at Corcoran. Many painters of high standard shown in the Atrium. Some excellent painters never to be seen again. Ever-changing shows in the atrium were probably one of the greatest influences and stimulants that activated the beehive that was Corcoran. For students and teachers alike inspiration was drawn from the work shown. We would come bouncing through that Atrium of continual surprises never knowing what might occur next. - My dad used to work at the NSF around the corner and would drop me in front of the Corcoran every day at 6:00 am. One of those days i came bouncing through the doors greeted by Sam's huge draped canvas up in the corner. To the left was an Olitski, a Morris Louis on the other wall. That was the day I learned everything... that was the day i learned no words are necessary for that which is timeless, complete, and pure. 50 years later undiminished. Content, vitality, and timelessness. To this i will attest. -