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Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly In League With The Night

There are certain painters who just have that magic aura to their paintings when you see them in person. A good Rothko can reveal that to the viewer. A Kerry James Marshall can be as if immersing yourself in a breathtaking novel. British painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s portraits have that glow, this unmistakingly special quality that very few painters can capture. She is lauded as one of the most important British painters working today, but the exhibition, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly In League With The Night , showing at the Tate Britain through May 9, 2021, is her first major survey to date and obviously, long overdue. This monograph is a chronicle of this Turner finalist’s career, and the exhibition of 80 works from 2003 to the present will be overwhelmingly sublime and powerful. How she paints is timeless; if you didn’t know where to look in the history books, you would surmise her peers were Manet or Gauguin. She positions her subjects in moments of quiet power and grace, and numerous critics have commented on how she has reimagined classic European portraiture into something fresh. A writer as well, the Fly In League With The Night book will feature a new work of fiction by Yiadom-Boakye as well as essays on her creative process and evolution. As one of the standout exhibitions to close out what has been one of the most conflicted years in history, it takes us into a new year. May YiadomBoakye’s paintings remind us of the power of intimacy and elegance. —EP D.A.P./TATE, artbook.com

Paul Whitehead

How many times have we all reminisced about great record album imagery? The great artists and designers of past eras, like Mark Ryden, Storm Thorgerson or Pedro Bell, transcended the music to new levels of appreciation, providing a pictorial universe for all the sounds to exist. Paul Whitehead, the great British painter, is one of the titans of the album cover, transforming the early years of Genesis with surreal, mythical visuals for some of their most experimental albums. Finally, the Brit’s work is being collected in the new book, Paul Whitehead, a comprehensive look at his early forays into music and album cover art, as well as in-depth examinations of his various series' and long-standing relationship with Genesis. Paul Whitehead is also a fascinating look at the “genesis” of pop surrealism. From rolling billboards, those harbingers of street art, to his esteemed recognition for producing what was the largest mural in the Guiness Book of World Records at the time, to counter-culture exhibitions that thrived outside of the traditional art establishment in the 1970s and 80s, Whitehead was at the forefront of many cultural inspirations within the pages of Juxtapoz . Like Robert Williams, Whitehead loves a potent, visual pun, layering artistic genres and folklore into one work. From Genesis' Nursery Cryme cover to his creative doppelganger, Trisha van Cleef, Whitehead is a storytelling painter. While his most famed works are attached to the internationally known band, this new monograph reminds us that Whitehead has a dense, wide-ranging career in painting, and belongs in that echelon of 1960’s painters who saw creative possibilities beyond canvas, in non-traditional means such as the album cover, shaping a twenty-first century blueprint for young artists today. — EP paulwhitehead.com

Windows On The World

On September 11, 2001, in the wake of terrorist attacks, many Americans felt like survivors, especially New Yorkers, most especially first responders and families of the victims. We read news accounts, saw their faces on fliers, journalists interviewed them. But of the undocumented immigrants who perished, there were no photos that appeared on walls and no one to comfort their families. Robert Mailer Anderson, Zack Anderson and Jon Sack have collaborated on a graphic novel, Windows On The World , published by Fantagraphics, that tells one such story of an undocumented worker working as a dishwasher at Windows of the World atop the World Trade Center. Watching the news from Mexico, his terrified wife thinks she sees him running away from the doomed building, and their son Fernando decides to go to New York to find him. Dramatic black-and-white linework guides the emotions that grip every scene in his journey, from the perils of traveling through the desert, to the impact of arriving in New York City, only to arrive at the rescue center and be told, ”If your father didn’t officially work in the Towers, he can’t officially be missing.” From hopeless to homeless, from lost to found, we learn what Fernando discovers on reaching his destination. More importantly, we realize that the story is ongoing for “unofficial” immigrants who, during covid, are afraid to seek medical aid and a modicum of pandemic relief. The stark black-and-white drawing brands the book with the impact this story deserves. —GV Fantagraphics, fantagraphics.com