Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

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Since the 1970s, artists have increasingly used self-portraiture to explore multiple invented personas as well as darker psychological states. Searching for their own place in a society that prizes youth, fame, and self-exposure, many have adopted strategies from popular culture but often with a twist. Kalup Linzy stars in an imaginary soap opera about the art world, while Jean-Michel Basquiat places himself and his friends along the troubled continuum of African American performers in Hollywood. Other artists confound the air of heroism traditionally associated with the artist’s image, casting themselves as antiheroes shrouded in anxiety and self-doubt. Charles Ray turns himself into the diminutive prisoner of his own art, and Rudolf Stingel depicts himself on a grand scale overcome by melancholy and inertia. In a culture in which the fashion industry, cosmetic surgery, and digital editing have made physical appearance more malleable, the artists whose work is featured in this section testify to a widespread sense of uncertainty in the self and how it might be portrayed.

Below is a selection of works from Self-Conscious.

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This video’s subtitle riffs on the soap opera As the World Turns and is one of a series inspired in part by such daytime dramas. Kalup Linzy writes, directs, produces, scores, and stars in these narrative videos about the fictional Braswell family, here playing the role of Katonya, a fledgling New York artist. Using risqué caricature and kitschy melodrama, the work parodies stereotypes of race, class, and sexuality. It is not simply satire, though; Katonya emerges as a sincere and sympathetic character grappling with art-world rituals and pretensions—the same challenges Linzy faced as an emerging artist.

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Self-Conscious

13

CONVERSATIONS WIT DE CHUREN V: AS DA ART WORLD MIGHT TURN, 2006

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Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

On the Hour

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Self-Conscious

13

CONVERSATIONS WIT DE CHUREN V: AS DA ART WORLD MIGHT TURN, 2006

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection