John Yau

1 week ago | hyperallergic.com | John Yau

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — I first saw Lori Larusso’s paintings in 2004, when she was a graduate student in the MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and I was finishing my last semester of teaching there. Before I left, I did something unprecedented for myself: I bought two of her paintings. One portrayed a melting chocolate ice cream cone with a childlike face, placed upside-down on a dish, and the other was of two frosted coconut cakes set against a creamy white ground.

3 weeks ago | hyperallergic.com | John Yau

Suellen Rocca was one of the original six artists who comprised the Hairy Who. The Chicago artist group exhibited three times in the city between 1966 and ’68, then, in 1969, Walter Hopps curated the final Hairy Who show at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. Nearly six decades later, what continues to impress me about these artists is that they each developed an individual visual language, and started tracing this trajectory at the outset of their careers.

1 month ago | hyperallergic.com | John Yau

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, please join us as a member. CHICAGO — In 1951, the French painter, sculptor, and Art Brut founder Jean Dubuffet delivered a lecture at the Chicago Arts Club titled “Anti-Cultural Positions.” There, he said that the only Chicago artist he wanted to meet was Ivan Albright, “the master of the macabre,” who was known for his morbidly detailed depictions of the human figure.

1 month ago | hyperallergic.com | Natalie Haddad |Lisa Zhang |John Yau |Seph Rodney |Alexandra Thomas

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, please join us as a member. Sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than encountering the work of a creative force. Our favorite shows this week are each centered on a single figure. Some are visual artists, ranging from historical innovators (Volodymyr Tatlin) to under-appreciated names (Judy Linn) to perhaps unknown names (Abraham Lincoln Walker).

1 month ago | hyperallergic.com | John Yau

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, please join us as a member. Between the early 1960s and his death in 2018, Irving Petlin established himself as both an artist and an activist. He began hitting his stride in the turbulent ’60s, working with such organizations as the Artists Protest Committee in Los Angeles and the Art Workers Coalition in New York.