Published by GRAY. Introduction by Thulani Davis. Conversation with McArthur Binion, Jules Allen.
This thought-provoking publication presents a fecund dialogue between Chicago-based painter McArthur Binion (born 1946) and New York–based photographer Jules Allen (born 1947), two American artists taking different approaches to rendering the Black experience. To illustrate their interactions, Binion contributes a new series of paintings and Allen contributes his most recent images as well as a collection of archival black-and-white photographs. In a sinuous, stimulating conversation, the long-term friends discuss their musical influences, education and shared experiences developing their skills as artists in New York. Buoyed by mutual admiration, the two artists trade insights on one another’s practice. In one striking example, Binion remarks that Allen endeavors to “take themes of the culture that were universal and personalize it, so it came from someplace specific to someplace general.” The introduction penned by interdisciplinary scholar and writer Thulani Davis provides a zoomed-out jumping-off point before the reader is catapulted deep into the two artists’ subjectivities.
Published by DelMonico Books. Edited with text by Diana Nawi. Text by Grace Deveney, Michael Stone Richards. Interview by Franklin Sirmans.
Chicago-based painter McArthur Binion (born 1946) combines collage, drawing and painting to create autobiographical abstractions. He paints minimalist grids and patterns over copies of his personal documents and photographs, including pages from his handwritten address book and his birth certificate, as well as images of his childhood home and photographs of his hands. This book explores Binion’s DNA series and includes reproductions of more than 80 of his paintings and works on paper, as well as essays investigating this series through the lens of art history, labor, music and writing.
Offering in-depth formal analysis and contextualizing his trajectory within the interdisciplinary cultural scenes of New York and Chicago, McArthur Binion: DNA provides insight into the rigorous and experimental spirit that has defined the artist's larger practice and illuminates his place within a critical history of abstraction in the 20th and 21st centuries.
McArthur Binion: DNA