Simone Forti in Her Own Words
A never-before-published interview with the late performance artist, police arrest anti-ICE protesters in DC, and an artist’s scented toilets for Frieze London.
In 1961, Yoko Ono dedicated one of her famous screaming pieces to performance artist Simone Forti, who died in Los Angeles last week. That same year, Forti debuted her piece Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in Ono’s Manhattan loft. Just two years apart (with Ono being the elder), these two legends shared much in common. In a never-before-published interview with scholar and curator Julia Bryan-Wilson, Forti reflects on her history with Ono, aging, and her career over the decades with her typical charm and humility.
In the news, police arrest 16 protesters who carried portraits of people killed by ICE agents in a US Senate building. Also in DC, seven Smithsonian museums close because of a faulty cooling system.
Also today: Artist Anna Boghiguian talks about her woven tapestries of Armenia's natural history, an artist is commissioned to reimagine Frieze London’s restrooms, and did you know that the harp is hot again? Read our weekly columns Art Movements and Required Reading for more. Happy Friday!
About a dozen years ago, I happened to be simultaneously writing two different essays about two of the most influential artists of the 20th century who are almost exact contemporaries: Simone Forti (born in Italy in 1935) and Yoko Ono (born in Japan in 1933). Only two years apart, these women had many other things in common besides age: They were both transcultural migrants whose early lives were shaped by the deprivations of fascism and war. Both experienced discrimination — Forti’s Jewish family left Italy as a result of Mussolini’s Racial Laws, while Ono was (and still is) by turns exoticized and vilified as an Asian woman.
As cross-disciplinary groundbreakers, both Forti and Ono transgress the boundaries between sound, drawing, poetry, participation, movement, new media, and sculpture. They continually invoked touch as mode of connection, and they both incorporated everyday objects as charged collaborators. | Julia Bryan-Wilson
Swann Auction Galleries is hosting it's 7th LGBTQ+ Art Material Culture & History auction featuring Tom of Finland, Hugh Steers, Lorenza Böttner, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and more.
The sale will also include works consigned on behalf of the Detroit Queer Biennial and the Leslie Lohman Museum.
“The gift of being alive is developing a garden in oneself,” the Armenian-Egyptian artist told Hyperallergic, “and to move towards heaven.” | Avedis Hadjian
This week: a Renaissance altarpiece returns home, Yoko Ono at the Broad, the anti-AI writing movement, an uncertain future for butterfly collectors, the harp is hot again, and more.
Gray Wielebinski’s scented artworks for the fair’s bathrooms, Michelle Grabner’s gift to a Wisconsin museum, Gagosian’s real estate footprint shrinks, and other news.
The artist’s internal revolution erupted in the radical innovations of his years in the city, which seemed to offer refuge from the storms of his life. | Miles J. Unger