Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

  • Home
  • Riot Material Magazine
    • About Riot Material
    • Entering The Mind
    • Contact
    • Masthead
    • Categories >
      • Art
      • Artist
      • Books
      • Cinema Disordinaire
      • Film
      • Interview
      • Jazz
      • Riot Sounds
      • Thought
      • More   >
        • Architecture
        • Image
        • Records
        • The Line
        • The New Word
        • That Evening Sun
        • The Natural World
        • Video
  • Art
    • Art Reviews
  • Books
    • Book Reviews
  • Film
    • Film Reviews
  • Records
    • Jazz Reviews
    • All Reviews
  • Riot Sounds
  • Cinema Disordinaire
    • Riot Cinema

Through The Soundless Lens, Darkly

November 17, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch

Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin & Peter Hujar
At Matthew Marks, Los Angeles (Through December 22, 2017)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

As three supremely unconventional 20th century portrait photographers, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, and Peter Hujar are currently the subjects of an exhaustive, evocative and eponymous retrospective at Matthew Marks, Los Angeles. 

With twenty-two poignant prints spanning sixty years proudly on display here, the viewer can detect the overwhelming similarities and differences between these widely adored artists. Although all three chose the same medium and subject, each photographer approached the human form and spirit in a completely unique manner. 

Nan Goldin, “Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! in the bathroom, NYC.” 1991.
©Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery ©Estate of Peter Hujar, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

Perhaps the most well-known of the group, Diane Arbus is renowned for her intimate and thoughtful depictions of people on the fringes of society. This New York native would wander the city streets in the 1960s and capture the daily lives of circus performers, transgender people, the mentally ill, and others in pensive and momentous black and white. Arbus was on the leading edge in an era of rapid societal change. For the very first time, the public was becoming aware of groups outside of the mainstream. Fascinated by notions of identity and the unorthodox, Arbus depicted these formerly ridiculed people with dignity and respect. Born Diane Nemerov, she was raised in a wealthy family, which allowed her to pursue an artistic career. Deeply inspired by the photographs of Eugène Atget, Matthew Brady, and Paul Strand, Arbus began a commercial photography career, eventually contributing to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar before her foray into artistic street photography. Following her tragic suicide in 1971 at the age of 48, her fascinating photographs are now included in prestigious collections all over the world, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Peter Hujar, “Candy Darling on her Deathbed.” 1974.
©Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery ©Estate of Peter Hujar, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

Similar in subject matter and tone are the works of fellow American black and white portraitist Peter Hujar. A prominent figure in the New York cultural scene of the 1970s and 80s, this minimalist photographer often portrayed his famous friends and acquaintances, such as Susan Sontag with empathy, theatricality, and sensuality. He also frequently car depicted car crashes, gloomy landscapes, and animals, including dogs, horses, and cows with as much care and intimacy as his human subjects. Due to Hujar’s childhood abandonment, this New Jersey native’s work features a sense of looming darkness. Death is a central theme here, ranging from photos with skulls taken in darkened catacombs to the heartbreaking deathbed photo of transgender actress Candy Darling from 1974. Shortly after Hujar’s death caused by AIDS-related complications in 1987, his partner, avant-garde mixed media artist, and frequent Goldin collaborator, David Wojnarowicz tenderly photographed him one final time. The artist left behind a body of incredibly moving and relatable works which used memento mori to remind us that death is the one thing we all have in common. 

Nan Goldin, “Paris skyline, twilight.” 1999.
©Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery ©Estate of Peter Hujar, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

As the final artist included in this exhibition, Nan Goldin also takes extremely personal, candid, and transgressive photographs of her family, lovers, friends, and the LGBTQ community. Inspired by Arbus and Hujar, Goldin has captured a series of compelling subjects and themes over the course of her lengthy and prolific career, including drag queens kissing in bars, drug addiction, and domestic abuse. Working solely in color, she instills these topics with vibrancy and sympathy. Goldin admits that this sense of connection photography creates is one of its great strengths, “It’s a way of touching somebody—it’s a caress. I think that you can actually give people access to their own soul.” First emerging on the New York art scene in the 1970s, Goldin’s masterpiece is undoubtedly The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1980-1986), a slideshow of over 700 candid pictures documenting her life within the city’s vibrant subcultures. 

Peter Hujar, “David Wojnarowicz Smoking.” 1981.
©Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery ©Estate of Peter Hujar, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

One of most gut-wrenching images from The Ballad of Sexual Dependency collection is on display in this latest Matthew Marks exhibition. “Nan one month after being battered” (1984) reveals the artist with not one, but two black eyes. This series also includes several of Goldin’s intimate and unconventional portraits and cityscapes from the 1990s and 2000s, including, the blurry “Paris skyline, twilight” (1999) and “My mother laying on her bed, Salem, MA” (2005). 

Other highlights include Hujar’s “David Wojnarowicz Smoking,” (1981) a gelatin silver print depicting the frail-looking artist staring down the camera with a piercing expression. The aforementioned “Candy Darling on her Deathbed” from 1974 is also here. Always glamorous, even when dying of Lymphoma, Darling turned this traumatic occasion into an enchanting boudoir photoshoot with red carpet-ready makeup and a single red rose by her side. Additionally, Hujar’s warm and relaxed 1975 portrait of former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland is also included. 

Peter Hujar, “Diana Vreelend.” 1975.
©Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery ©Estate of Peter Hujar, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

Whether capturing the inner lives of strangers on the street, family, or the closest of friends, all three photographers displayed here were not afraid to show the grittier side of life and explored New York City’s vibrant underground subcultures at a time when they were bursting with newfound attention and creative energy. Arbus, Hujar, and Goldin helped spark national discussions by portraying sex, disease, death, LGBTQ issues, drug use, and familial ties with boundless heart and depth. While Arbus revealed the humanity behind things that may seem outwardly strange, Hujar underscored the fragility of life, and Goldin used candid, colorful snapshots to empathize and give power to the voiceless, they were united in the celebration of life in all of its varieties. 

~

Emily Nimptsch is a freelance arts and culture writer living in Los Angeles. She has written for Flaunt, ArtSlant, Artillery, ArteFuse, and Time Out Los Angeles.

Nan Goldin, “My mother laying on her bed, Salem, MA.” 2005.
©Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery ©Estate of Peter Hujar, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

♦

Featured Image: Peter Hujar, “Divine.” 1975.
©Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
©Estate of Peter Hujar, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

[paypal_donation_button]

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

The Line

A poetic interpretation of Anselm Kiefer's Exodus, at Los Angeles Marciano Art Foundation, is at Riot Material.

On Wing With Word Through Anselm Kiefer’s Exodus

Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (through 25 March 2023) by Rachel Reid Wilkie Los Angeles poet Rachel Reid Wilkie was given the task of walking into Anselm Kiefer’s Exodus — a literally monumental exhibition, in that each of these paintings are upwards of 30’ tall — and addressing the colossal artworks “cold,” as in […]

Detail of Henry Taylor, "Warning shots not required," 2011. At Riot Material magazine.

Henry Taylor’s B Side: Where Mind Shapes Itself to Canvas

Henry Taylor: B Side at MOCA Grand, Los Angeles (through 30 April 2023) Reviewed by Eve Wood Ages ago when there were LP records and 45s, the B side of a popular single made allowances for experimentation and could be counted on as an alternative vision to the more mainstream and compulsory hit single. B […]

Songbook of a Bygone Dead: Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song

Reviewed by Dan Chiasson The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan Simon & Schuster, 352pp., $28.93 NYR Bob Dylan’s new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, is a kind of music-appreciation course open to auditors and members of the general public. It is best savored one chapter, one song, at a time, while listening to the […]

Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani

Words To Wrap Around A Dying Brother

Smoking the Bible Reviewed by Rhony Bhopla Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani Copper Canyon Press, 96pp., $15.99 HR Chris Abani’s autobiographical book of poems, Smoking the Bible, centers on the relationship of two brothers growing up in Nigeria with an Igbo father and an English mother. The poems, which incorporate the Igbo language along […]

Grant Wallace, “Through Evolution Comes Revelation.” at Riot Material magazine.

Communication Breakdown: Grant Wallace, His Heirs & the Legacy of a Forgotten Genius

Grant Wallace: Over the Psychic Radio at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC (through 3 December 2022) By Michael Bonesteel Freelance writer and editor Deborah Coffin of Albany, California, was in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 when she first encountered street musician Brian Wallace at a party. “I had a friend who knew Brian,” […]

The Joshua Tree Talk

A Conversation on Dzogchen C von Hassett & Rachel Reid Wilkie at Joshua Tree Retreat Center 

Louise Bourgeois: What Is The Shape of This Problem?

at University of Southern California, Fisher Museum of Art. (through 3 December 3, 2022) Reviewed by Margaret Lazzari Louise Bourgeois is widely recognized for her sculptures and installations, but Louise Bourgeois: What is The Shape of This Problem is a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in her perhaps-lesser-known prints, fabric work and writings. This exhibit contains over […]

Moonage Daydream Conveys More Myth Than Man

Moonage Daydream Dir. Brett Morgan Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin As one of the greatest shapeshifters in the expansive history of rock music, it seems only fitting that the documentary with David Bowie as its subject never seems content to express the trials, tribulations and artistic triumphs of Bowie in any one fixed way. This is […]

Carnación di Rocío Molina, at Riot Material Magazine.

On Binding: Notes from Venice

Bienalle Arte and Bienalle Danza, Venice 2022 By Allyn Aglaïa Chest bound, lips sealed, I walked through Venice alone, quiet, and: thought about narratives that bind us to erotic binds

Mohammad Barrangi's Guardians of Eden (Dreamscape #8), at Riot Material magazine.

Transcendence Beyond Erasure in Mohammad Barrangi’s Dreamscape

at Advocartsy, Los Angeles (thru 5 November 2022) Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz Fantasy requires a symbolic vehicle to transport a character from the real world into the imaginary realm, where the laws of reality are subverted or obscured to justify an otherwise absurd event. The artist might depict the vehicle as a real object […]

Soul Crash: Our Slow, Inexorable Release Into the Metaverse

by Sue Halpern The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball Liveright 352pp., $18.89 NYR In October 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would now be called Meta and its business interests would be pivoting to the metaverse, there was almost universal confusion: most observers had no idea what he was […]

green tara

Pointing the Staff at the Old Man

A wisdom transmission by Samaneri Jayasāra Excerpted from —  Advice from the Lotus Born  from the chapter “Pointing the Staff at the Old Man” Translated by Eric Pema Kunsang Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 184pp., $21.95 . .

Margaret Lazzari’s "Shimmer." From the exhibition "Breathing Space."

Margaret Lazzari’s Luminous Breathing Space

at George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles (through 8 October 2022) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner “Things are not what they seem: nor are they otherwise.” –Buddha Margaret Lazzari’s luminous solo exhibition of paintings, entitled Breathing Space, were painted during the pandemic, and the exhibition title is indeed significant. It’s defined as a respite, a hiatus, or an […]

From Phil Tippet's Mad God, reviewed at Riot Material magazine.

Nihilism Births Its Own Interminable Hell

Mad God Dir. Phil Tippett Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin Technically astonishing and immersive to a fault, director Phil Tippett successfully demonstrates that thirty years of relentless dedication to your craft can lead to cinematic innovations even his old stomping grounds – the sets of Star Wars and Jurassic Park – have yet to catch up. […]

A Look Back on an Iconoclast: Art Critic Dave Hickey

by Jarrett Earnest Far From Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art by Daniel Oppenheimer University of Texas Press, 141 pp., $24.95 The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded by Dave Hickey University of Chicago Press, 123 pp., $15.00 (paper) Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey Art Issues Press, 215 […]

John Lurie’s The History of Bones

Reviewed by Cintra Wilson The History of Bones: A Memoir by John Lurie Random House, 435 pp., $28.00 NYRB It was 1989 when I saw John Lurie on TV in a late-night advertisement for the new Lounge Lizards album, Voice of Chunk, which was “not available in stores” and selling exclusively through an 800 number. Operators were standing […]

Marlene Dumas, "Losing (Her Meaning)," 1988. At Riot Material magazine.

Marlene Dumas’ Masks of Inborn Gods

open-end, at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (through 8 January 2023) Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx Four relatively small artworks greet the visitor in the first room of the Marlene Dumas exhibit, open-end, at Palazzo Grassi. D-rection shows a young man contemplating his rather large and purple erection. A bluish white face and a brown face unite […]

Clarice Lispector

Baffling the Sphinx: The Enigmatic World of Clarice Lispector

Reviewed by John Biscello Água Viva by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 88pp., $14.95 Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 864pp., $29.95 The word is my fourth dimension –Clarice Lispector And on the eighth and endless day, where the bottomless hallelujah meets Ouroboros, God created Clarice Lispector. Maybe. […]

Donna Ferrato "Diamond, Minneapolis, MN 1987." At Riot Material magazine

Donna Ferrato’s Magnificent Holy

at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, NYC (through July 29 2022) Reviewed by Phoebe Hoban The small scale of Donna Ferrato’s snapshot-like black-and-white photographs belies their personal and political power. Whether they document the medical sinks and shelves in a now-shuttered Texas abortion clinic, or hone in on the badly bruised face of a domestic violence […]

Darcilio Lima Unknown Lithograph, 1972. At Riot Material magazine.

Magia Protetora: The Art of Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos and Darcilio Lima

at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick, Cleveland OH (through 30 September 2022) Curated by Stephen Romano Gallery Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz The extension of a lineage occurs not merely by the repetition of form, but by the intersection of conservation and revolution. Transformation is fundamental to preserving the essence of a given tradition’s rituals and […]

Eve Wood's A Cadence for Redemption, written in the fictive voice of Abraham Lincoln, is excerpted at Riot Material magazine.

Songs For Our Higher Selves

A Cadence for Redemption: Conversations With Abraham Lincoln by Eve Wood Del Sol Press, 46pp., $5.99 Employing the fictive voice of a former president, Eve Wood shifts the perspective on the happenings of our times – where all indicators point to the slow, inexorable collapse of the American Experiment – to the one man who […]

The Clear, Crisp Taste of Cronenberg

Crimes of the Future Reviewed by Anna Shechtman and D.A. Miller Neon NYRB A line from Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg’s latest film, has been trailing it around with the campy insistence of an old-fashioned ad campaign: “Surgery is the new sex.” On receiving this information, a skeptical Saul Tenser, played by Viggo Mortensen, asks, “Does there have […]

Georganne Deen, How to prepare people for your weirdness (Painting for a gifted child) 2022

Conjuring a Divine Silence in Georganne Deen’s The Lyric Escape

at Rory Devine Fine Art, Los Angeles (through 6 August) Reviewed by Eve Wood Albert Camus once famously asked, “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” One can only hope that this was a rhetorical question, yet however ironic, it is still a sentiment worth pondering, especially considering today’s current socio-political climate […]

Pesticides in our foods inevitably enter the body and will have the intended effect of killing the organism. Which is to say you are certain to become diseased and evenutally die from the longterm ingestion of industrial pesticides.

A Strictly Organic Diet is Good Enough to Save Your Life

A chapter excerpt from Entering the Mind, the new book from C von Hassett which speaks to an ageless way of resting the mind in meditation to both recognize and stabilize in its already Awakened state. Yet to do this successfully, we must first cleanse the body of its myriad mind-fogging toxins taken in through […]

Milton’s Quotidian Paradise, Lost

By Catherine Nicholson Katie Kadue: Domestic Georgic: Labors of Preservation from Rabelais to Milton Timothy M. Harrison: Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England Nicholas McDowell: Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton Joe Moshenska: Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton NYRB Of the many liberties John Milton took in writing Paradise Lost, his 1667 epic […]

Foucault in Warsaw and the Shapeless, Shaping Gaze of the Surveillance State

Reviewed by Marcel Radosław Garboś Foucault in Warsaw by Remigiusz Ryziński  translated by Sean Gasper Bye Open Letter Books, 220pp., $15.95 Harvard Review Since Poland’s state socialist system collapsed in 1989, the records of its police agencies and security services have gone to a government commission entrusted with the “prosecution of crimes against the Polish […]

Noah Davis, Untitled (2015)

The Haunt of One Yet Faintly Present: Noah Davis, Still at Home

Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, Los Angeles Reviewed by Ricky Amadour Directly across from the entrance, an opening statement to Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, reads “many of the paintings you are about to see were painted in this space.” Smudges, dribbles, and droplets on the floor embody the physical notion of Davis […]

Julian Schnabel, The Chimes of Freedom Flashing (detail), 2022

The Supremely Humanistic Hand of Julian Schnabel

For Esmé – With Love and Squalor, at Pace Gallery, Los Angeles (through 21 May 2022) Reviewed by Eve Wood How does one represent, let alone quantify hope, hate, grief, love, joy, tragedy, or anything, for that matter, which stands in opposition to something else? Throughout his illustrious career, Julian Schnabel has always been one to […]

Rose Wylie, "I Like To Be" (2020)

In Full Surrender to the Wylie Eye

Rose Wylie: Which One, at David Zwirner, NYC (through 12 June) Reviewed by David Salle Rose Wylie: Which One by Rose Wylie; with Barry Schwabsky, Judith Bernstein, and Hans Ulrich Obrist David Zwirner Books, 196pp., $75.00 NYRB Rose Wylie, who is now eighty-seven, has been painting in the same rural studio in Kent, England, since […]

The Artful Construction of The ‘I’

by Merve Emre NYR The essay form…bears some responsibility for the fact that bad essays tell stories about people instead of elucidating the matter at hand. —Theodor Adorno The personal essay is a genre that is difficult to define but easy to denounce. The offending element is rarely the essay as a form, but its […]

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in