Henry Taylor: B Side
Oct 4, 2023–Jan 28, 2024
Portrait of Steve Cannon
7
Over the years, Taylor has depicted many artists, critics, and curators from his community including Andrea Bowers, Deana Lawson, and Robert Pruitt, all of whom have works in the Whitney's collection. However, Taylor's focus on the art world extends beyond those he knows personally. His "covers" of Dawoud Bey's photograph of David Hammons and Gerhard Richter's painting of his daughter are examples of how he invokes a broader art-historical family by reinterpreting the art of others. Taken together, these works form a map of Taylor's social and artistic circles.
Henry Taylor, A young master, 2017
Henry Taylor, A young master, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 60 × 60 in. (152.4 × 152.4 cm). Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. © Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Sam Kahn
This painting imagines the artist Noah Davis as an adolescent. Davis—a cofounder of Los Angeles’s Underground Museum and a multidisciplinary artist whose figurative work portrayed real and imagined scenes of Black life—was a dear friend of Taylor’s and continues to be a significant influence in his life and art. Painting Davis’s portrait two years after his death from a rare form of cancer at age thirty-two was Taylor’s way of “keeping him here and present.”