MoMA PS1

Artist Lara Favaretto Celebrates the Absurd and Existentially Tragic at MoMA PS1

Eric Russ

Located somewhere in the vast landscape of human emotion is the intersection of playfulness and sadness, a crossroads at which Italian artist Lara Favaretto has set up shop to ply her trade. Over the past 15 years, she has amassed a body of work that explores and celebrates the absurd and the existentially tragic. In the first-ever survey of her work, Lara Favaretto: Just Knocked Out, MoMA PS1 has given over several of its galleries to the display of her most important works to date, including a site-specific installation in the museum’s atrium and another throughout the exhibition.

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The Art of the Late Daniel Johnston: Musician, Artist, and Renaissance Man

by The Editors

Johnston’s songs have been covered by several hundred artists, including David Bowie and Tom Waits. The late Kurt Cobain mused that Daniel Johnston is the best songwriter in America. In 2006, his life was documented in the award-winning film, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and his painted illustrations were exhibited in the Whitney biennial. Johnston had a lifetime battle with mental illness, and medication prescribed for this condition damaged his liver requiring multiple hospitalizations. He died from a heart attack in his sleep before the morning of September 11, 2019.

The Ebenezer Baptist Church Has Been a Seat of Black Power for Generations

by Jason Oliver Evans

From the pulpit of Ebenezer, King preached some of his more memorable sermons. In one of his sermons published in a collection titled The Strength to Love, King describes racial prejudice as indicative of “softmindedness,” a person’s tendency to uncritically adhere to unsupportable beliefs. In the same sermon, titled “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart,” King argued, “Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings.”