Jonathan Griffin

Criticism and essays on art and culture

Month: August, 2023

August 24, 2023

Keith Haring

Installation view of Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody exhibition at The Broad, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com, courtesy of The Broad

The Broad, Los Angeles

I predict few will linger long enough to absorb the four paragraphs of potted biography on the neon yellow wall welcoming visitors to ‘Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody’, before surging onward into the first gallery, which is painted with fluorescent pink and orange stripes. The green and orange Statue of Liberty (1982) commands the room, graffitied to high heaven by Haring and his then-15-year-old collaborator, LA II (Angel Ortiz). Nearby is a Corinthian column, similarly improved, while on the walls hang Haring’s Day-Glo paintings on muslin, aluminium and Formica.

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August 23, 2023

Richard Mayhew

Pamela’s Aura, 2004, Courtesy Richard Mayhew and Venus Over Manhattan, New York

The painter Richard Mayhew, who recently celebrated his 99th birthday, has lived through as broad a swath of this nation’s history as anyone you might hope to meet.

Sitting at a patio table outside his cedar-shingled suburban home in Soquel, near Santa Cruz, Mayhew leaned back in his chair and reflected on his long life.

“I drove across the United States six times,” he said. “Three over, and three back, from New York to San Francisco. I was always looking.”

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August 9, 2023

Ei Arakawa

Ei Arakawa, GET BACK / GET OUT, 2022, performance view. Courtesy: the artist; photograph: Roxie Fuller

A confession: the last time Ei Arakawa performed in Los Angeles, I was out of town. I had it in my diary, but when I realized I couldn’t make it, I wasn’t particularly upset. Besides the event’s title – GET BACK / GET OUT – and the scheduled date, 9 April 2022, the email from the artist’s gallery, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, had offered scant details of what to expect. One piece of information stood out: ‘2 – 6pm (open rehearsals and performance)’. The performance, it seemed, would not be differentiated from its rehearsal. I’d attended too many proudly shambolic, deskilled art performances before, I thought, and I wasn’t so sad to miss another. I was wrong.

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