1. Introducing CULTURED's 2024 Young Artists List
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing lately about how contemporary art has lost its edge. You may have heard that the field is in a state of aimlessness. It’s uninspired. It’s backward-looking. The 30 artists on CULTURED’s ninth annual Young Artists list offer a powerful rejoinder to this idea. Their work is bursting with idiosyncrasy, curiosity, and gumption—all necessary ingredients for great art.
When they step into their studios, Jon Batiste and Amy Sherald become vessels—channeling any number of inspirations, from Frida Kahlo and Beethoven to their own inner child. “When you’re in that flow state, sometimes you forget how you got to the end result,” says Batiste. Here, the duo discusses how they keep that spark safe, and the complexities that come with “shaping our perception of history.”
In the fall of 2009, Titus Kaphar recalls pacing the floor of his Los Angeles gallery anxiously awaiting Venus Williams’s arrival. It was his first solo exhibition in the city, and the team at Roberts & Tilton (now Roberts Projects) told him that the tennis star had recently spotted one of his paintings. “I kept thinking, She might come in today, she might come in tomorrow,” he recalls. Williams never made it to Kaphar’s show back in 2009, but 15 years after their missed connection, CULTURED brought the pair together for a long-awaited conversation about how each of them found their stride—and what it takes to maintain it.
Despite their divergent fields, artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby and filmmaker Malcolm Washington are connected by a shared hunger to create work infused with an unwavering sense of self-knowledge. It’s also what brought them together in Crosby’s Los Angeles studio this fall for CULTURED’s Artists on Artists series. Here, the pair discuss what it takes to make a work of art that imbues daily life with the echo of history.
Lili Anolik’s relationship with late patron saint of 1970s Los Angeles Eve Babitz began like many relationships between writers and their subjects: with a barrage of letters and calls, and Anolik hoping that Babitz would eventually bite. A profile ensued, and a book—Hollywood’s Eve—followed in 2019. Yet after Babitz died in 2021, Anolik discovered that “Eve, who I thought I knew so well, I didn’t know at all.” While sifting through the detritus of Babitz’s life, Anolik discovered boxes full of journals, artworks, and letters—including several to Joan Didion, her fellow iconic literary Angeleno.
6. Here’s How Two Nebraska Doctors Became the Face of Burberry’s Latest Holiday Campaign
Herschel and Lilly Stoller—Omaha, Nebraska-based doctors—have no connection to the fashion world, per se, but they do wear Burberry every day. “Nebraska has four very distinct seasons,” the couple explains. “We have Burberry for each one.” This month, Herschel and Lilly appeared in their beloved brand’s “Wrapped in Burberry” holiday campaign, a jovial romp through London’s Bloomsbury neighborhood.
7. Collecting Heavyweight Craig Robins Reveals the Two Artists You Need To Keep An Eye On
Before Miami was the art world powerhouse it is today, entrepreneur and real estate developer Craig Robins saw expansion on the horizon. After focusing on the rejuvenation of South Beach early in his career, the Dacra Development founder shifted his attention to Miami’s burgeoning Design District, helping to foster its now flourishing creative scene. This year, his work is being recognized by the Bakehouse Art Complex—the oldest artist-focused nonprofit in Miami, providing residencies, studios, and workshops—at the organization’s annual fundraiser.
8. 5 Pieces of Advice for Art Collectors Heading Into the Billion-Dollar Fall Auction Season
When it comes to emerging art, auctions can be a dangerous playground for the uninformed collector. For reasons he dives into, they’re not advisor Ralph DeLuca's preferred way to buy. But if you’re planning to participate in marquee fall auctions, here are the five pieces of advice he'd give any collector who wants to come out the other side without any regrets.
9. The Collection of One of New York’s Most Legendary Tastemakers Is Coming to Christie’s
Christie’s has organized a marquee series of Mica Ertegun auctions in New York beginning Nov. 19—three live and two online—with a portion of the proceeds going to the cultural philanthropies and preservation programs the Erteguns championed. Combined, the five sales are expected to bring in as much as $158 million in the first day alone, spanning the art, furnishings, decorative objects, and jewelry that meant the most to her—emblematic mementos of a most gracious time on earth. CULTURED scoured the collection for five highlights you should be paying close attention to.
10. This Photographer Traded Shirts with Tyler, The Creator. Then He Became His Go-To Photographer
Brick Stowell’s friendship with Tyler, The Creator began with a trade. More than a decade ago, the rapper and producer was standing on the sidewalk with his fellow Odd Future members following a show at the Airliner in East Los Angeles when Stowell, then a stranger, walked by wearing a covetable Supreme jersey. The nascent star had already learned to flex his celebrity muscles and asked Stowell for the jersey point-blank. “He kept insisting,” Stowell recalls. “I was walking away when I thought, Oh, this is the moment, right here.” Deciding to seize it, the young photographer agreed to give up the short on the condition that Tyler and the rest of OF come to his studio for a shoot. “The rest is history,” Stowell says, and it many ways it was.
Over the past century, the world of ceramics has evolved exponentially, and now encompasses everything from beautifully simple tableware to ornately decorative sculptures—easily affordable items to highly collectible artworks. Several artists from the last century have defined how we collect and curate these objects, so for this new iteration of Quick Study, Colin King decided to speak to some of today’s top designers, curators, and gallerists to get their individual takes on their influences.
12. Scene Hopping Across the Political Abyss: A Dispatch from Election Night in New York
For this very special, un-paywalled edition of the Critics’ Table, writer and critic Domenick Ammirati of the newsletter Spigot recounts his kaleidoscopic Tuesday—including a marathon reading featuring bold-type name authors at Gladstone Gallery, a party at publicist Kaitlin Phillips’s apartment, and a glimpse of the edgelords on the Lower East Side. Ammirati narrates an evening of anxiety and hope—and its dismal conclusion.
13. Rhiannon Giddens and Spel on Making Art While Incarcerated—and Sharing It on the Outside
At a Rhiannon Giddens concert in Pennsylvania last fall, an audience member shouted “Free Spel!” into the crowd. Giddens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Grammy-award winning musician, is known for infusing her art with education and advocacy around the legacy of slavery and the African origins of folk music—particularly with her instrument of choice, the banjo. On tour for her album You're the One, though, she had a different focus: elucidating the experience of those wrongfully convicted in the United States. Spel is one of those people.
Wearing a tortoiseshell headband in a transparent attempt to look like an Ashkenazi Caroline Bessette-Kennedy, Nicolaia Rips stood on the streets of FiDi next to a woman in a glittering ball gown and a man with orthopedic shoes and a Jansport backpack. Tonight was Books’ Big Night Out! The Oscars of Books! The 75th National Book Awards. That meant the dress code was confused, and the gossip literary.
In April of 2023, André Holland embarked on what would become a three-month-long routine: a daily commute from his home in New York to Titus Kaphar’s New Haven, Connecticut, studio to learn how to paint. Even for Holland, a veteran performer who enters a period of deep research for every role, this was a new level of immersion. Holland and Kaphar poured all those months in the studio into Exhibiting Forgiveness. The project, a true labor of love, has won and broken hearts across the film festival circuit. Now, Holland reflects on the intensity of the process and his increasing involvement in the art world.
