Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard catalogue

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess is having quite the moment, with a retrospective up at LACMA and a solo show at Kaufmann Repetto Gallery in New York City. There’s also a new catalogue and variety of articles, including an ArtNews interview with Carolina Miranda. It’s a long overdue look at the work of the 95-year-old artist, who was born in Venezuela, began working professionally in Chile, and has called Los Angeles home since the 1960s, where she also collaborates with her ceramist husband, Michael Frimkess.

A two-page spread of ceramic Minnie Mouse sculptures, from the catalogue.

In the introductory essay to the catalogue, curator José Luis Blondet cites a 1962 Art in America article where Paul Harris called Suarez “the most daring sculptor working in Chile” whose work “is distinguished by the finest disregard for whatever is supposed to be so.”

Truly a fitting observation for the work of Suarez Frimkess, which looks deceptively simple at first but is full of numerous references to popular culture and art history and is carried through with a sculpting and drawing line that is all of a piece.

Blondet’s essay continues in noting that the finest disregard “assertion is helpful in understanding Suarez Frimkess’s relation to technique, particularly when it comes to her ceramic work…she refused to learn how to use the wheel, experiment with the kiln, or combine pigments to produce glaze.”

On the left, a vessel thrown by Michael Frimkess and painted by Magdalena Suarez Frimkess.

“That’s Michael’s territory,” Frimkess is quoted as saying about her husband, who has thrown thin and accomplished pots that Suarez Frimkess then decorates. “He wanted me to learn, but I didn’t want to mess with that.”

Blondet notes, “Aspirations to craft excellence have never been a primary concern in her practice. Instead…she forged a connection with traditional techniques on her own terms, using her background in sculpture, painting, and sewing.”

The finest disregard, indeed.

The cover of the catalogue.

Along with the essay by Blondet, the catalogue includes an essays by Jenni Sorkin and Carribean Fragoza, and short notes / essays by artists Luz Carabaño, Karin Gulbran, Ricky Swallow, Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka. The catalogue is also wonderfully illustrated with images of work by Suarez Frimkess and includes numerous ceramics and drawings.

The Finest Disregard
Published by Los Angeles County Museum of Art and DelMonico Books, 2024
Hardcover, 128 pages
Listed at $49.95

Click the gallery below to see more images from inside the catalogue.

What do you think of the work of Magdalena Suarez Frimkess? Let us know in the comments.

Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina exhibition catalog

Simone Leigh on being a “weirdo sculptor”

In the catalog for the exhibition Hear Me Now, there is a wonderful conversation between the artist Simone Leigh and historian Jason R. Young. Young first asks Leigh about her interest in making sculpture out of fired clay, which started in the early 1980s. This excerpt starts with Young’s second question:

Jason R. Young: You say you were interested first in making water pots. Were you drawn to the form itself or to the materiality of the clay?

Simone Leigh: I was drawn to the idea of a handmade readymade and how these beautiful objects were valued and why. As far as formal concerns, I felt these objects were modernist masterpieces. I was also drawn to the fact that there’s clay covering the whole earth that is available to everyone, unlike so many raw materials acquired through violent extraction. The material connects to time from a geological perspective. That process was beautiful to me. I was interested in the feminist implications of a tradition most often restricted to women and that so many who worked in it were anonymous. I think there’s no Black woman artist who doesn’t have to come to terms with the fact that their foremothers are largely anonymous. The first ceramist that I was aware of was Ladi Kwali from Nigeria. And the first person I saw working in a way I wanted to work was Magdalene Odundo. When I came to New York and was developing skills working with clay, I realized that people did not understand what I was trying to do as a conceptual enterprise. So I abandoned the idea of being an artist who worked in the field of ceramics and just became this kind of weirdo sculptor.

JRY: That was a very brave decision to make. Another artist might have decided to move into a different medium, but you stuck with it.

SL: I was really interested in coming to New York and being int he art world as an intellectual activity. We already had Duchamp, using a ceramic object, make it clear that anything could be art. But when I came to New York, I was told that this material was not something I could use seriously in my conceptual work. So that made me dig in my heels.

Read the whole interview in the catalog. More on the book below

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In addition to the conversation with Simone Leigh, the catalog features four essays, maps, a bibliography and 154 illustrations. The show was quite densely installed at the Met, so it’s a pleasure to revisit each artwork in this beautifully illustrated book.

The catalog features a cover printed with a picture of a stoneware storage jar by Dave the Potter, and a clear plastic slip cover with the title. Edited by Met Musum curator Adrienne Spinozzi, the essays are by Spinozzi, Vincent Brown, Jason R. Young, and Michael J. Bramwell and Ethan W. Lasser.

This book is a must have for any fan of 19th century pottery and it contains new scholarship that is enlightening and revealing.

Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina
Edited by Adrienne Spinozzi
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Hardcover, 200 pages with 154 illustrations
Listed at $45 but typically available for less.

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Images from Inside the Book

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Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art catalogue

Jaguar God of the Underworld, a 7th-8th century ceramic censer from Palenque, Mexico on view as part of Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art.

In the introduction to the catalogue Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art, anthropologist Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos describes how representations of gods in ceramic incense burners are viewed by Lacandon people (present day Maya in Guatemala and Mexico), and this contemporary practice gives us clues as to the importance of historical depictions of gods. For the Lacandon, the censers have autonomous spiritual qualities, with volition and power of their own, and a life cycle tied to the life of the ceramic sculpture.

Making censers is comparable to giving birth and newly made censers must be cared for like children. Small stones placed inside the censer are regarded as their souls and the embodiments of the gods. People provide food and drink for the censers, which age and eventually die. Special ceremonies mark the death of the old censers and their renewal with freshly made ones. Similarly, Lacandon ceramic drums have the face of K’ayom, the god of music, and are considered to be animated beings, engendered by the women who make them and educated by the men who add the membranes and play them.”

The catalogue accompanies a museum show of the same name on view at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City from November 2022 – April 2023 and at the Kimbell Museum of Art in Fort Worth Texas from May – September 2023.

Images of the ceramic whistles depicting gods emerging from flowers.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, the catalogue further expands on the exhibition, which includes numerous ceramic and stone sculptures, ceramic vessels and whistles, relief carvings in stone and wood, and video. The catalogue includes an introduction and seven essays, based on recent research and new interpretations of Mayan texts.

One of the most delightful parts of the show were small ceramic sculptures of people emerging from flowers. Thought to depict gods and also dead relatives, the catalogue text shows x-rays revealing these sculptures as whistles.

The show and catalogue are a must see. Just a stunning collection of work.

Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art
Edited by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, James A. Doyle, and Joanne Pillsbury
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Yale University Press
Hardcover, 244 pages, 2022
Listed at $50, but typically available for less.

Images From Inside the Book

Cover page

Table of Contents

Two stone sculptures

The show includes numerous covered ceramic serving dishes with animal head lids.

The catalog helpfully includes pictures showing the entire image found on round ceramic vessels.

Have you seen the show or read this catalogue? Let us know in the comments.

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Alice Mackler: "I do what I want to do"

Near the end of her 2021 monograph, the artist Alice Mackler is asked if she ever felt the need to rebel against what she learned in school in order to find her own voice. Mackler’s response: No. Because I do what want to do.”

The first page of the Alice Mackler interview by Joanne Greenbaum.

It may be some of the sagest advice for anyone making their way in a creative field. Do what you want to do. Do what you need to do. Just, uh, do it.

The whole catalog on Mackler is lovely and worth a look if you are interested in ceramics or want to take an inside look at an artist who has been making work in New York City since the 1960s.

The catalog contains a generous selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Mackler, along with an introduction by Matthew Higgs, essay by Kellly Taxter, and the concluding interview between Mackler and artist Joanne Greenbaum.

Alice Mackler
by Matthew Higgs and Kelly Taxter
Published 2021 by New York Consolidated, Gregory R. Miller & Co, in association with Kerry Schuss Gallery.
Listed at $45 but usually available for less

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More images from the book

Cover page

Table of contents

A sculpture from 2016.

A sculpture from 2015.

Drawings from 2017.

A sculpture from 2018.

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