Independent 20th Century Returns to NYC for the Second Edition at the Historic Battery Maritime Building

Vince Aletti. Courtesy of Independent, Speaker at Ed Baynard Promiscuous Blossoms. Aletti is a critic and curator living in NewYork. He writes about photography for The New Yorker's online Photo Booth, with feature for Aperture, Foam, Photograph, and AcnePaper.

Independent 20th Century

The Battery Maritime Building

SEPTEMBER 7 through 10, 2023

By DARYL RASHAAN KING September 8, 2023 

Independent 20th Century returns for its second edition, in New York City and online. Besides the artists on exhibition, who else is protesting the general number of differences that divide our communities? With the gap between peers going as far back as Middle School, the scarcity of resources has created a never-ending contest. #BarbieLand serves as the perfect metaphor for not only our social media world, if not an extension and critique of the Metaverse, but the following art fairs and exhibitions taking place across the globe. New York City itself could avoid becoming a horror story if someone did something about it. That certain someone, or one of many, is the founder of Independent, Elizabeth Dee. Housed in the Battery Maritime Building, which was built in 1908, Independent 20th Century promises to offer a visual feast of “internationally recognized artists, lesser-known narratives, and a side of the canonical artist’s practice, which even well-informed collectors and museums attest to further curatorial and market attention.” 

The constant pace of the City can make anyone quietly fall into pieces amongst all of this. To accommodate the pleasure of encountering and discovering the profound revelation of new “American debuts, undiscovered aspects of well-known artists, female artists throughout the 20th century, Caribbean and South America, self-taught artists, Black art communities, international Pop, Italian avant-garde, and more.” The program behind the art fair also features prominent voices from the art community, including a podcast series.

Why is it that at the end of American Romanticism, children were worked like machines, while industrial barons rose to greater wealth, fantasizing in their private gardens. They were also simultaneously creating a century or pure male dominance throughout everyone else’s life. Humanity is now yet again failing to prevent children from performing labor across the globe, including Michigan. 

We haven’t fully addressed that legacy of abuse, and how the end of Victorian culture hinders social progress. Dee states, “Independent 20th Century is doubling down on its mission to reframe and broaden our understanding of the canon during this, and spark conversations that perhaps haven’t happened before, or are long overdue.” 

Prudence Peiffer. Courtesy of Charles Fulford. Speaker at The New York Scene in the 1950s, An American Bloomsbury, Peiffer is an art historian, writer, and editor, specializing in modern and contemporary art. She is currently the Director of Content at the Museum of Modern Art, NewYork.

Two initiatives are initiating the process: A new public program to support contemporary artists as they establish the root of their individual, but most certainly simultaneous, legacies. The Hauser & Wirth Institute, a private foundation dedicated to artists’ archives, will feature Zahoor ul Akhlaq (1941-1999) and Mary Dill Henry (1913-2009). Is it possible to consider this the new hypothetical bottom line definition of Contemporary Art, suggesting a brighter future? It is impossible to cover the full depth of Independent, but here it is, in brief: 
 

WOMEN ARTISTS ACROSS THE CENTURY 

The art fair will feature works by female artists across the 20th Century, with the pronounced inclusion of presentations from self-taught artists, leaders in the avant-garde, as well as the milieu. Given the current standing of feminist rights in the present, is this how we should start considering what is the fundamental idea of our unity, that we are all equally participating in something much bigger than ourselves? Alexandre will present Loren MacIver (1909-1998) and Edith Schloss (1919-2011), two American artists who each lived a significant part of their lives in Europe. They each investigate the quotidian, synthesizing various subjects in new ways. MacIver, a self-taught artist, studied her on her travels, which led to her decoding moments and objects into relevant art objects today. Schloss took a more Mediterranean approach to her work. The secret power source of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s, to which Dindga McCannon (1947) contributed, was that there are still Indigenous people alive today. Fridman Gallery chose to present her work because she was one of two female members of the Weusi Artist Collective and a co-founder , Where We At Black Women Artists, Inc. Civilization, at large, is in such a sad state that it should be a crime now, not to work ethically to confirm to some sustainable system, which could guarantee our long term safety, as prescribed by Indigenous people. 

Michael Hermann. Courtesy of James Williams III Hermann is the Moderator for Popping the Question: Andy Warhol Commissioned Portraits. Hermann is a New York based multidisciplinary artist, award-winning arts professional with 20+ years of experience, and author of Warhol on Basquiat and AndyWarhol: Love, Sex, and Desire.

SELF-TAUGHT ARTISTS

Independent reinvested in their initial stake in self-taught artists, increasing the amount of representation to 25%. For them to bear the full responsibility of their privileges, future theory must based on biomimicry, making it possible to recognize and create a circular, inclusive approach, leading towards a better inheritance from the planet. Self-taught artists have been performing the act of biomimicry since the beginning of time, taking hints, clues, and notes from things that they have seen to create. From that exchange humanity started reapplying those skills and techniques to the future. James Barron Art will present works by Winfred Rembert (1945-2021). Rembert was raised during the Jim Crow era in Georgia. He was imprisoned and forced to work on a chain gang. The damage of which experience would later be a source of artistic inspiration. Rembert learned how to work with leather from a fellow prisoner, thus inspiring almost 25 years of work. Galatea presents the debut of Miguel Dos Santos (1944), from northeastern Brazil, whose practice draws inspiration from African and South American traditions. The relevance of this work today is expressive of the global migrant problem. If someone is struggling, without a financial source of income, how do we regard them? How are we not taking advantage of their lack of ability to fit within whatever is considered mainstream in “America?” Ed Barnard, former graphic designer for The Beatles and a costume designer for Jimi Hendrix will also be present at the James Fuentes exhibition.

Lisa Darms. Courtesy of David O’Neill. Darms is the Executive Director of Hauser & Wirth Insititute. She will be partaking in the first episode of the Previoiusly Unknown Podcast Series.

THE ITALIAN AVANT-GARDE: FROM SPATIAL TO INTERNATIONAL POP

A spectrum of artwork from Italian artists will demonstrate how the stress of poverty will make it impossible for billions to survive. There is a certain sense of awakening amongst some Italians when they realize that they are going to face what they consider to be Nordic/ White. This is a basic fact of New York City history, where Italians were once the poor South American immigrants living at shelters across New York City, and now exhibit clear expressions of White fascism as a country. However, Nordic countries, despite whatever examples of light skin Facism are present, have shown more clemency towards immigrants, speaking out against the United States. Sergio Lombardo (1939) first worked in black and white, before moving to color, to survey political figures such as John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Charles De Gaulle. Is 1/9unosunove, the gallery showing his work, making strategic commentary on an issue regarding someone of greater wealth and status, occupying the metaphysical presence of someone more deserving of a creative job? Big Data consumes so much of our planet’s resources, but what has the general mass received in exchange? Are they happy with it? Europeans  have proven that they are willing to kill themselves to adhere to a sense of false Native superiority that they were willing to kill their Mediterranean brothers and everyone else who they incidentally were able to provide charities for. Their sense of Nativism now infects the United States.

Larry Ossei Menseh. Courtesy of Aaron Ramsey. Ossei Menseh will be Moderating the conversation on Black Art Communities from the 1960s to the 1980s.He co-founded, ARTNOIR, a non-profit driven by the mission to create more racial equality across the art industry. The Speed of Grace will be his first exhibition in Brazil.

THE OTHER SIDE OF CANONICAL ARTISTS

With the promise that “several presentations will showcase mainstays of the art historical canon, with new and inventive perspectives,” viewers will have yet to determine whether or not there is real Indigenous representation. Perrotin, will present the work of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Alexander Calder (1898-1976). The grand purpose, if there could ever be a happier one, of everything after World War 2, was to reinterpret it as the new basic definition of global cultural rules or laws regarding what is acceptable. If anyone is even close to restarting such a scenario, the main question is why are they still in their offices? Everyone who is upset, in consideration of the fact that there is a contradiction between their ability to survive in the future and the continuance of their ability to afford luxury, won’t actually be able to survive because the planet doesn’t care. Truthfully, it is a thing that works on its own to follow a path towards an eventual explosion. So at this point, we should no longer protect, anything that isn’t focused on regrouping efforts to improve the overall well-being of citizens. There are some people who are continuously stuck in past tragedies. In fact, there was nothing worse than the sudden loss of artist Yves Klein, who still inspires a group presentation by Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art, as well as the most recent Schiaparelli haute couture collection.  

 Episode 2 of the podcast series, concerning the topic of Marie Laurencin, will feature speaker Cindy Kang, Curator, The Barnes Foundation. Photo © The Barnes Foundation.

ARTISTS FROM THE CARIBBEAN, SOUTH ASIA, AND THE AMERICAS 

11 presentations by BIPOC of artists from the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Americas will look towards what made it possible for us to all to be so scatological. Everyone is afraid of Artificial Intelligence, after years of it already having been integrated into our daily lives, because, to this date, the majority of its writers have been male. In the best regard, indigenous people should live in a constant state of protective isolation until something extraterrestrial destroys them. This is the precise belief of Trinidad-based artist Kenwyn Crichlow (1951). Diane Rosenstein Gallery considers his work to be a “unique abstract language, (such as) a humanistic, aesthetic, and political choice.” Myrtle Williams (1955), another self-taught artist seeks to “give visibility to Black women.” She does this by using ceramic works as a conduit for textures, signs, and symbols, ultimately providing an evidence-based approach that could help the country define how the local communities utilize technology. WM