Critchlow’s portraits of Black women transform Western portraiture and conflate kitsch with tradition
Somaya Critchlow’s canvases and sketchbooks log an ongoing process of world building. The artist fashions these realms by drawing upon her expansive knowledge of picture-making traditions ranging from the Renaissance to the Rococo. In charting the ever-expanding dimensions of this female-dominated universe, Critchlow casually disarms the distinctions that inform concepts of high and low culture by uncovering the ways in which class and racial difference are routinely conflated. The voluptuous, self-possessed women who explore Critchlow’s fantasy landscapes and pensively occupy domestic interiors or otherwise blank pages owe as much to the aesthetics of Love and Hip Hop as they do to Peter Paul Rubens, and thus prompt the viewer to consider the disparate ways in which we esteem these forms of culture—and the women they feature.
Featured image is reproduced from ‘Somaya Critchlow'.
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Dazed
Miss Rosen
A collection of her sumptuous figures that revel in the joys of beauty, sensuality, and desire.
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Somaya Critchlow: Paintings and Drawings opens today at the Flag Art Foundation in New York, and we are delighted to recommend a bit of supplemental reading in Somaya Critchlow: Paintings, published by Skira. Collecting 100 oil paintings made 2018–2019, this is the first major monograph on the rising British artist. Amanda Renshaw describes a moment when Critchlow’s studio came alive for her. “Young women; looking at me; watching me from their rectangular shaped spaces, calmly standing, seated or leaning back against a table; quietly waiting until I had noticed them. The canvases were small—comfortable to hold in one hand—half way between miniature and icon, these were pictures of loved ones. Yes, loved ones: like children coming of age, they may surprise, reject and rebel against their parents, but they are loved…” Featured image is Foot on the Wheel (2019). continue to blog
Somaya Critchlow: Paintings and Drawings opens today at the Flag Art Foundation in New York, and we are delighted to recommend a bit of supplemental reading in Somaya Critchlow: Paintings, published by Skira. Collecting 100 oil paintings made 2018–2019, this is the first major monograph on the rising British artist. Amanda Renshaw describes a moment when Critchlow’s studio came alive for her. “Young women; looking at me; watching me from their rectangular shaped spaces, calmly standing, seated or leaning back against a table; quietly waiting until I had noticed them. The canvases were small—comfortable to hold in one hand—half way between miniature and icon, these were pictures of loved ones. Yes, loved ones: like children coming of age, they may surprise, reject and rebel against their parents, but they are loved…” Featured image is Foot on the Wheel (2019). continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11 in. / 144 pgs / 100 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $40.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $56 ISBN: 9788857244815 PUBLISHER: skira AVAILABLE: 3/22/2022 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA
Critchlow’s portraits of Black women transform Western portraiture and conflate kitsch with tradition
Somaya Critchlow’s canvases and sketchbooks log an ongoing process of world building. The artist fashions these realms by drawing upon her expansive knowledge of picture-making traditions ranging from the Renaissance to the Rococo. In charting the ever-expanding dimensions of this female-dominated universe, Critchlow casually disarms the distinctions that inform concepts of high and low culture by uncovering the ways in which class and racial difference are routinely conflated. The voluptuous, self-possessed women who explore Critchlow’s fantasy landscapes and pensively occupy domestic interiors or otherwise blank pages owe as much to the aesthetics of Love and Hip Hop as they do to Peter Paul Rubens, and thus prompt the viewer to consider the disparate ways in which we esteem these forms of culture—and the women they feature.
