On the Cover:
Annabeth Rosen, Talley, 2011. Fired ceramic, baling wire, and steel armature on casters, 46.5 x 29 x 22 in. Photo: Lee Fatherree, Courtesy P.P.O.W Gallery, NY, and Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco.
Editor’s Letter:
“As a rule, I don’t like work that has to go with a text on the wall,” Huma Bhabha told me during her interview for this issue. By contrast with prevailing modes, which emphasize concept and context, Bhabha’s devotion to making things, to the transmogrification of influences into something new, recalls an older, even romantic, approach to art. It so happens that this old-school approach is visible throughout these pages, for instance in Annabeth Rosen’s ceramics and Phyllis Green’s colorful, corporeal objects. It seems, then, that invention can still be powerfully relevant in a time when many who care about art are feverish for sampling, recycling, and ideation or remain content with unchallenging decorousness.
Still, we didn’t pick these artists in order to stake out a position in the aesthetic battles of the day, rather we aim to map the territory. Doing so means exploring every byway of art-making today, guided not by the magnetic pull of fashion or the vicissitudes of the market but our own, internal compasses. —Daniel Kunitz
