26 ARTS
Review of reviews: Art & Home Media
Da
rio
Lasagni“The most ambitious exhibitions help to
usher in new ways of seeing,” said Sebastian
Smee in The Washington Post. Curator
Okwui Enwezor, who died at 55 before see-
ing “Grief and Grievance” realized, excelled
at assembling such shows: “If you saw them
or even read about them, you knew you
were seeing the shape of future conversa-
tions about art.” Before cancer took his
life, the Nigerian-born Enwezor envisioned
an exhibition that would express what he
called the “crystallization of black grief”
that emerged in response to the recent rise
of the politics of white grievance. Grief
turns out to be a rich subject—because
grief remains “fundamentally a psycho-
logical phenomenon,” with no straight line
from the privacy of grief to community.
That helps explains why so much of the
work is abstract or incorporates music.
With 37 artists represented, including Kara
Walker, Theaster Gates, and Jean-Michel
Basquiat, the exhibition feels “polyphonic,
layered, and in many ways cathartic.”
Enwezor’s successors easily could have got-
ten by just on the fame of the artists, said
Holland Cotter in The New York Times.
Instead, the exhibition “will surely rank as
one of the most important of 2021,” with
a “volatile chemistry” that’s evident before
you even enter. Hanging on the museum’s
front in illuminated letters is a three-word
phrase, “blues blood bruise,” chosen by
artist Glenn Ligon to allude to a teenager’s
account of having been beaten by policeduring the 1964 Harlem riots. Inside, such
allusiveness is common. Terry Adkins’
contributions are his ghostly X-ray photos
of “memory jugs”—stoneware vessels
that African-American families filled with
mementos and left on loved ones’ grave-
stones. Later, bright, busy paintings by Julie
Mehretu and Mark Bradford at first appear
beyond mourning. But then you realize that
Bradford’s work traces the contours of a
map that was used to plan government sur-
veillance of black neighborhoods following
the 1965 Watts riots, and that Mehretu’s
includes a drawn image from 2017’s “Unite
the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.“It’s worth noting that there’s little explicit
address to white racism, white guilt,
or, really, white anything,” said Peter
Schjeldahl in The New Yorker. Most of
the work emphasizes patterns of feeling
that attend the experience of being black
in America, and “the predominant result
is poetic rather than argumentative.” Even
one of the most political efforts, a 2012
Dawoud Bey photo series that pays homage
to the victims of the 1963 church bomb-
ing in Birmingham, Ala., haunted me long
after I left. This is a show that “touches on
shared human needs and capacities,” which
makes it universally resonant. Sharing
sorrows and strategies for coping won’t
repair the world. Still, “it’s a start.”Exhibit of the week
Grief and Grievance: Art and
Mourning in America
The New Museum, New York City,
through June 6
Ligon’s Blues Blood Bruise: A distress signalNew and notable podcasts
Their badges said they
were Houston cops,
said Cat Cardenas in
Texas Monthly. But
in the eyes of at least
some fellow officers,
“they were Mexicans
first.” The odds were
stacked against the five members of
America’s first all-Latino police squad
when they were tasked in 1979 with try-
ing to crack 52 unsolved homicides in the
city’s barrios. But with police-community
relations at a nadir, the “Chicano Squad”
quickly managed to clear 40 cases, and this
docuseries about their work blends “vividly
reported” details of those distant cases
with the host’s anecdotes about personal
experiences that parallel those of her sub-
jects. The squad was in part a PR play, said
Sarah Larson in The New Yorker. In 1977,
white officers had fatally beaten a Mexican-
American Houston native and dumped
his body, sparking violent protest. But the
Chicano Squad was so successful that
the unit lasted decades, and this series,
“though marred by occasional off notes,”
brings color and humor to a crime story
worth sharing.
“The title doesn’t do
it justice,” said Jason
Zinoman in The New
York Times. Comedian
Keegan-Michael Key’s
new 10-episode,
Audible-exclusive pod-
cast offers something
“far more eccentric, funny, and personal
than an Intro to Comedy class, although it
is that, too.” Starting with ancient Sumerian
fart jokes and rolling right into the Netflix
era, Key “pairs a fan’s enthusiasm with the
skilled craftsmanship of a seasoned pro,”
not just telling us about great sketches
from eras past but performing the bits
himself. Even though the versatile former
co-star of Key and Peele seems intent on
being comprehensive, “we’re not just on a
trudge through time,” said Marc Hershon
in NYMag.com. He’s perfectly willing to
leap forward to share a personal memory,
such as how he caught the comedy bug
while watching a 1983 Saturday Night Live
sketch in which Eddie Murphy imperson-
ates Stevie Wonder. “It might take a few
minutes to get into Key’s technique in roll-
ing out this information, but you’ll likely be
hooked.” (Requires $8 Audible subscription)When a crime pod-
cast spotlights the
Chippendales, the
usual solemn narra-
tion simply won’t do,
said Fiona Sturges in
the Financial Times.
Fortunately, in this
“seriously entertaining” series, host Natalia
Petrzela “combines camp amusement and
genuine curiosity” as she savors recount-
ing the origins of the all-male exotic dance
troupe, its rise from seedy Los Angeles
strip club beginnings to global brand,
and the beefcake dancers’ nights of easy
money and easy sex. Petrzela is building
toward a murder story, but she’s in no
rush to reach it. Instead, we get to know
the Indian-American gas station owner
who launched the franchise, the exacting
choreographer who became a partner, and
plenty of interviewers willing to go back-
stage or talk about the feminist implica-
tions. “Even if the Chippendales make you
feel a bit icky—they do me—you can’t fail
to be swept along,” said Miranda Sawyer
in TheGuardian.com. “Petrzela is a great
listen, her humor and interviewing skills
really giving the podcast some zip.”Chicano Squad
(Vox Media)
The History of Sketch Comedy
(Audible Plus)Welcome to Your Fantasy
(Pineapple Street/Gimlet)