A brush with... Ellen Gallagher

A brush with... Ellen Gallagher

Author: The Art Newspaper June 30, 2021 Duration: 1:04:33

Ellen Gallagher talks about her life and work through the art, literature, music and other cultural experiences that have profoundly affected her. She tells Ben Luke about the extraordinary opportunity she had to live with an original Keith Haring print while at Oberlin College, Ohio; her love of Diego Velázquez and Stanley Brouwn; the influence of the Afrofuturist mythology of the Detroit techno band Drexciya; how Herman Melville, in his novels and novellas, wrote more perceptively about race than he is often credited with, and much more. And, of course, she answers the ultimate questions we ask in each episode: if you could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.


Links for this episode:


Ellen Gallagher at Hauser & Wirth


Ellen’s page for the Sonsbeek 20-24 quadrennial


The Freud Museum, London


Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams, His Art and His Textiles


Keith Haring's Untitled (1982), The Keith Haring Foundation


Diego Velázquez at the Prado


Velázquez’s Infante Felipe Prospero (1559) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna


Headrest: Female Caryatid Figure (19th century) by the Master of the Cascade Coiffure


Ellen Gallagher’s Ecstatic Draught of Fishes (2020) at Hauser & Wirth, London


Pieter Paul Rubens’s Miraculous Draft of Fishes in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne from the Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne


The Art Newspaper’s report on the racist joke beneath Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square


Ellen Gallagher’s Art Institute of Chicago exhibition, Are We Obsidian?, featuring her series Negroes Battling in a Cave


Oscar van den Boogaard on Stanley Brouwn in Frieze magazine


Go-go legend Chuck Brown on Spotify 


Hugo van der Goes’s Diptych with the fall of man and redemption (Lamentation of Christ) in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna


Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat


Maryse Condé at World Editions


Ode à la Guinea by Aimé Césaire and more on Césaire at the Poetry Foundation


Léopold Sédar Senghor at the Poetry Foundation


Drexciya’s Futuristic Electro—a guide, by Albert Freeman at Bandcamp and Drexciya on Spotify


Herman Melville at Penguin Books


Kraftwerk


Alice Coltrane’s album Kirtan: Turiya Sings 


Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, BBC Radio 6 Music


Jan Mostaert’s Portrait of an African Man (Christophle le More?) (1525-30)



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


Ever wondered what really makes an artist tick? A brush with... from The Art Newspaper goes beyond the finished work to explore the daily rhythms and deep inspirations that fuel the creative process. Each episode is a quiet, focused conversation between host Ben Luke and a leading international artist, structured around a set of deceptively simple questions. You’ll hear them discuss the historical and contemporary figures they look to, the museums they find themselves drawn back to repeatedly, and the books, music, and films that shape their thinking. Crucially, Luke invites them to describe the mundane magic of the studio-what actually happens there day to day. This approach reveals the person behind the practice in a way that feels intimate and genuine. Sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the podcast builds a rich portrait of artistic life, one thoughtful dialogue at a time. It’s for anyone curious about the web of influences and habits that culminate in a piece of art, offering a rare glimpse into the minds that shape our visual culture. Tune in for conversations that are less about interrogation and more about discovery, where the answers often surprise even the artists themselves.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 135

A brush with...
Podcast Episodes
A brush with... Theaster Gates [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:47
Ben Luke talks to Theaster Gates about his influences—including writers, musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Gates is an artist whose ever…
A brush with... John Akomfrah [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:24
Ben Luke talks to John Akomfrah about his influences—including writers, musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.Akomfrah was born in Accra, Gha…
A brush with... William Kentridge [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:38
Ben Luke talks to William Kentridge about his influences—from the worlds of literature, music, film and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johan…
A brush with... Anicka Yi [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:58
Ben Luke talks to Anicka Yi about her influences—from the worlds of literature, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Yi creates installations and objects that sit on…
A brush with... Glenn Brown [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:16
In this 50th episode of A brush with…, Ben Luke talks to Glenn Brown about his influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Br…
A brush with... Adam Pendleton [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:07
Ben Luke talks to Adam Pendleton about his influences—from the worlds of literature, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Pendleton, born in 1984 in Richmond, Virgini…
A brush with… Pierre Huyghe [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:19
Ben Luke talks to Pierre Huyghe about his influences—including writers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Huyghe was born in 1962 in Paris and today…
A brush with... Zadie Xa [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:14:41
Ben Luke talks to the Canadian-Korean artist Zadie Xa about her influences—from the worlds of literature, film, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Xa was born in 19…
A brush with... Lina Iris Viktor [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:13
Ben Luke talks to Lina Iris Viktor about her influences—including writers, film-makers, musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Born in the UK in 1987, th…
A brush with... Megan Rooney [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:24
Ben Luke talks to Megan Rooney about her influences—including other artists, writers and musicians—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Rooney was born in 1985 in South Africa, but grew up in…