View - Titus Kaphar

Titus
Classical
Disruption
Kaphar
Contents
2
5
Intricate Illusion
37
Letter to Mr. Kaphar
45 Artist Biography
46 List of Plates
47
Colophon
Bridget R. Cooks, Ph.D
Ishmael Vesper
3
Intricate Illusion
5
Bridget R. Cooks, Ph.D
In Titus Kaphar’s painting Father and Son (2010),[p.9]
the artist presents a portrait of the great American
philosopher W.E.B. DuBois formally dressed, sitting
upright, and proudly cradling a blanket covering a
sleeping infant. A second look at this intimate moment
shifts the assumption of what was seen at first glance.
The blanket is actually a sheet of raw canvas formed
into the shape of a baby blanket and stitched onto the
painting it hangs from. What initially appeared to be a
soft and warm layette painted on the canvas is instead
the traditional coarse material of painting—blank
and wadded, formless as if ready to be discarded.
The wasted potential of this canvas to take its proper
stretched form for painting serves a metaphorical
function in Kaphar’s work and in relationship to
DuBois’ own paternal history. In his seminal book The
Souls of Black Folk (1903), DuBois relates the story of
the death of his first-born son, who likely died of diphtheria, a respiratory disease that even at the turn of
the twentieth century could have been successfully
treated with medical attention. Yet DuBois was unable
to find a doctor in time that would treat a black baby.
The infant died not of the disease as much as the
deliberate discarding of black life, shadowed in insignificance, worthless.
Kaphar’s attraction to DuBois’ work makes
sense as it is within Souls that DuBois introduces his
concept of the veil, at once a visual metaphor for the
social separation of the black and white worlds, and the
layers of miseducation and devaluation that disrupt the
possibility of visible clarity and lucid communication
between the races. Here, Kaphar’s blank canvas is the
veil. With it, he creates a portrait of a proud father and
a post-mortem memorial of DuBois’ lost son. The blanket becomes the embodiment of an unspeakable loss
and the manifestation of the color line. In Father and
Son, the canvas serves multiple roles. It is the material
of great potential for art, the representation of the first
born, and garbage—all layers of the same idea that
Kaphar represents effortlessly through his work. The
perceptual shifts in the process of looking, the narrative quality, and physical and interpretive layering are
consistent features of Kaphar’s art that demand his
viewers to engage in lingering provocations.
Kaphar works hard to present the appearance
of the truth in painting as his first effect. His paintings offer something familiar to draw the viewer in
and, at the same time, offer a deformation. Within a
few moments of approaching one of his works, it is
clear that something is not quite right. The viewers
must labor to deduce what exactly is going on. The
4
persistence of change in Kaphar’s work mimics the
revelation of inherited narratives within personal
and collective histories that explain how our present
came to be. Kaphar shows us that these stories are
constructed as deceptively simple truths: the past,
like the present, is complex, sloppy, and contradictory;
our understanding of history as an easily consumable
narrative is often an intricate illusion. The fact that
histories have multiple points of view is a given for
Kaphar, and his work offers these perspectives for the
viewer both to experience and reveal.
Kaphar dismantles the process of perception
through various technical and formal gestures in
several bodies of work. Throughout these approaches,
tension emerges from the uncanny juxtaposition of
the familiar and disjunctive. He seductively conjures
references to great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
European and American paintings in which welldressed individuals and families stand contrapposto in
the tradition of grand portraiture. Kaphar’s ability to
paint in the style of great masters affords his figures,
and the stories they tell, a respectable and trustworthy
quality spoken in the language of a time-honored tradition of painting. It is easy to be lulled into the safely
settled past of these images in which the figures we
see sit like still lifes within the frame. They have long
since passed from what we decide must certainly have
been a simpler time. But to rest there is to willingly
stop looking. This peaceful temptation is interrupted
by Kaphar’s expressionist treatment of the past. The
artist takes this historical representation as a document to look through. He exposes the past as a performance of identity and assembles new objects that
visualize the construction of memory. These contemporary works encapsulate the layers of meaning that at
first appear coherent.
In All We Know of Our Father (2008) Kaphar
literally makes the painting surface protrude, torn and
partially digested with a scopophilic desire. In this
portrait, only the background and top half of a man’s
head is clearly visible. From the nose down, the canvas
is a shredded mass. This vandalistic action brings
the past forward with force. The re-presentation of
the father from what was once a conventionally stoic
portrait is undeniably reactivated as both unfinished
and dead. The expressionist remaking of the past
inspires the viewer to look, decipher, and create new
narratives for understanding. Through a kind of tender
violence, Kaphar emphasizes what is unknown in
representations of the past and forcefully argues that
our understanding of the past still matters.
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Intricate Illusion
Although primarily a painter, Kaphar is
influenced by twentieth-century sculpture (think the
crumpled Plexiglass of John Chamberlain): he literally slices his canvases (recall Lucio Fontana’s Spatial
Concept paintings), forcing their limits and remaking
form. This restlessness with painting is jarring and
innovative in its storytelling ability. In Ishmael, His
Mother, and His Grandfather (2009)[p.10] Kaphar uses
several techniques to reveal the false modesty of
portraiture and the constructedness of family. The
title’s biblical reference to Ishmael offers a well-known
example of the complexity of family and the feelings
of jealously and shame that can be involved in familial
relationships. Brightly painted within an elaborate
gilded frame is a portrait of a man, woman, and child.
Upon closer view, it becomes evident that each figure
appears on a different surface layer, one stacked in
front of the other, yet the trio fits together in a familial
composition. Furthest back is the image of the woman
standing in a bright blue dress beside an elegant
potted plant and a palimpsest flurry of white paint
covering the trace figure of a man. Standing before her
is a young boy positioned tenderly near her arm and
spatially in the center of the work. The boy’s delicate
silhouette stands free from the painting that he was
once a part of. His former context has been cut away
and lumped between him and his mother at the bottom
of the frame. Like the boy, the man in the foreground
of the painting has been removed from a different
painting. In his new composition, the man sits pensively in a bright red suit; the quick white de Kooninglike brushstrokes beside the woman in the background
seem to explode passionately behind his head. Hanging above him is the negative space of his original
canvas drawn up like a theatrical curtain and stuffed
into the border at the top of the frame.
Ishmael’s three figures once belonged in their
own discrete portraits. Kaphar manipulates those three
surfaces to make one—a three dimensional object that
shows the relationality between the figures in a new
family grouping. He does not try to fully conceal the
three contexts of which they were a part; instead, he
shows the effort to hide them and their stubborn will
to be seen. Set in a wood crate with a protective black
velvet lining, this reconfigured family—the result of
cutting, smashing, repainting, and stacking—can easily
roll back into storage, but this time with the drama of
its secrets exposed. The effect of this reconstruction is
that a wrong has been made right; the corrected record
now shows a family that was not recognized as legitimate in the past. Kaphar’s new object, however, encourages new questions about how family histories are told
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and who has the right to tell them. Although the three
paintings have become one, the figures stand apart,
each in its own space. The story is still incomplete.
Kaphar uses the white washing technique seen
in Ishmael and His Mother to tell a tale of vengeance
in The Preacher’s Wife (2010).[p.13] A dignified woman
wearing a crisp white collar, bright emerald green
dress, and matching hat, stands erect and purposeful
in a church. The glow of light that seems to radiate
from her body combined with her clenched jaw and
piercing gaze express her feelings of rage. Sitting in
front of her is man whose entire body has been effaced
by white paint. The shape of his face is barely visible
through the layers of strokes that engulf him like
flames. The woman stands accountable for his demise
with the paintbrush gripped in her fist like a weapon.
Her knuckles rest stiffly on the edge of the pew and
she points the brush toward him without shame. In
the context of the church, the angry tone of this work
intensifies this couple’s relationship beyond the personal and into their spiritual bonds. The triangulation
of the woman, man, and modest cross hanging on the
wall behind them suggests a story of family, religion,
and betrayal. We can imagine the woman as the subject
and artist of this scene, who created the portrait in
order to destroy the man before her. She looks as if she
had temporarily lost her composure, but is returning to
calm and restraint. This painting depicts an imagined
symbolic act of empowerment that never happened,
but perhaps should have. Kaphar activates these
figures from their past and gives this woman an opportunity to make her own justice.
Veiled Before Waking (2011)[p.15] also features a
strong female protagonist. Kaphar presents a dreamlike equestrian portrait of a cloaked and veiled woman.
Although the artist carefully conceals the woman’s
identity, he makes her sense of determination and
power clearly perceptible. Beneath her slightly cocked
top hat, light shining through her lace-edged veil shows
a silhouetted face turned directly toward the viewer.
She pulls back the reins on her white horse tightly
with a black-gloved fist. Although the horse has reared
up on its hind legs, the mysterious woman sits firmly
on its back. It appears as though we have interrupted
her making an urgent journey away from the valley
below. During this eerie confrontation she stops to
dare us to prevent her from continuing further. The
drama of this image suggests epic narratives of folklore
and fairy tales, so perhaps this woman is a heroic or
terrifying character of legend. In the thematic context
of Kaphar’s oeuvre she may be an important ancestor
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Bridget R. Cooks, Ph.D
whose story has been lost. The figure’s lack of physical
features emphasizes the distance we have from ancestors often known to us only through legendary family
stories. While the unique details of her life have been
forgotten, she makes her presence known through
Kaphar’s painting.
In Conversation Between Paintings #1:
Descending From a Cross to be Nourished at the Breast
of Our Mother (2006–7),[p.16] Kaphar explores the interdependent relationship and colonial history between
male European power and female African labor and
sustenance. Based on Portrait of a Negress (1800) by
neo-classicist Marie-Guillemine Benoist and various
portraits of noble military officers from the turn of the
nineteenth century, the coupling presents a narrative
that is rarely discussed, and certainly never in contemporary painting. The gentleman’s form has been mostly
incised from its background, moved from an upright
stance with his weight leaning on his cane, and repositioned with his head resting beneath the breast of the
negress who, resigned, places a hand of comfort on his
chest. The outline of the fallen man and the crossbars
behind the canvas cast shadows on the wall beneath.
The figures stare directly out at the viewer, perhaps
in shame, or resentment, or love, caught in interracial
roles that were never meant to be acknowledged. The
visual similarity of their position to the pietà further
complicates the interpretations of the reimagining.
Kaphar conflates the possibility and historical reality
of rape, abuse, Christian sacrifice, maternity, love, loss,
and labor in this haunting work. Both figures are shown
as types instead of as individuals. Benoist employed
the unnamed negress as an exotic model representing
just one of many of her kind. Kaphar’s representation
of her draws attention to her use value in art, exploited
for the needs of others and not the agent for her own.
The black female nude, as seen in Descending
From a Cross, recurs as a subject in Kaphar’s work.
In the history of Western art, the black female nude
has been portrayed as abject in comparison to the
European female body, which ranks as the highest
standard of beauty. Kaphar takes on the challenge of
creating a black odalisque to give her an established
place of beauty in the canon of Western art. In Nip
Tuck (Lillian Dandridge) (2009) Kaphar visualizes the
difficulty of creating this subject position given the
history that has defined the black female body as oppositional. In a work of larger-than-life-size scale, a black
woman turns away from the viewer with a downward
gaze. Her head is the only discernable part of her body
visible along with the top curve of a Victorian chaise.
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The dark wall behind her and the luxurious turquoise
curtain on the right—the only direct clues of the
scene available—locate her in the place of Ingres’ Une
Odalisque (1814). The lower half of the painting has
been scrunched up across the surface and only fragments of the painting can are decipherable in its folds.
Beneath is a fresh unprimed canvas ready for the next
rendering. Excess canvas draping off the painting’s
edges reinforces the incomplete discourse of black
female representation in painting. Nip Tuck (Lillian
Dandridge) relays a sense of frustration with a perpetual process to get the representation of the black
female nude just right. The title reference to plastic
surgery connotes the art historical face-lift necessary
to transform the canon to appreciate black beauty. It
also suggests the precision required to create a new
role for black female beauty in art. One of Kaphar’s
critical interventions in this work is not making the
black female body accessible. The many reclining
nudes in the nineteenth century were painted for the
sexual pleasure of white male viewers. Because of the
sexual violence of colonialism, black women’s bodies
were seen as always already available to these viewers
through the entitlement of the nation-state. Kaphar
performs the struggle between wanting to show the
black female form as beautiful and rejecting the domination of the sexist and racist privilege of white spectatorship. A simple replacement of the white female
form with the black female form will not do. Kaphar
asks his viewers to recognize this problem of representation through the unfinished look of this work.
Kaphar breaks away from the limitations of
painting in My Inarticulate Everything (2010), [p.18] one
of the fully sculptural forms in the exhibition. Through
this neo-classical style we see a woman posed like a
goddess sitting nude on the ground with her legs elegantly crossed to her side. Unlike classical renditions
of goddesses sculpted in similar odalisque poses, she
holds the bundle of a child in her arms, gently lifting
the weight of its head toward hers. She is unaware of
our presence as her focused gaze is wholly on the baby.
The tone and texture of her skin offers a warmth not
found in cold white marble, the preferred material of
classical and neo-classical sculpture. Instead of carving
stone, Kaphar created her form by building up many
layers of colored encaustic. The result of this painstaking and laborious process is a flesh-toned version of
the timeless mother and child coupling. The body of
the infant, however, is not rendered naturalistically
here, and only suggested by a black mass held close to
the woman’s exposed breasts. Not formed in wax like
its mother, the small body is instead literally a plastic
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Intricate Illusion
8
trash bag filled and shaped to mimic the appearance of
a child. The mother’s enraptured gaze reveals the precariousness of the young life and her desire to protect
it. Just as he depicted DuBois’ first born in Father and
Son, Kaphar does not fully articulate this infant but
leaves the potential for its future open for the viewer
to imagine.
Kaphar continues to explore sculptural possibilities in Doubt (2010)[p.21] through a monumental
figure of a black man down on his knees. His upward
gaze and pleading pose recall nineteenth-century abolitionist emblems (“Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”)
and post-emancipation public sculpture of newly freed
slaves. The man kneels powerfully with desperation
and optimism. He clutches a vividly painted canvas to
his torso: Kaphar’s rendition of the Deposition of Christ
(1540–1545) by Bronzino. The combination of familiar
historical images in sculptural and painted forms
makes Doubt an allegorical work about faith, vulnerability, and hope. Here Kaphar develops a new and
contemporary iconography based on the language of
the past. Doubt is emblematic of a new formal gesture
that Kaphar is making through figurative sculpture.
In his work the past looms large (and sometimes oversized), becoming an undeniable presence in the current
context. His techniques trouble the past and revel in
discomfort. Through the layers of personal and national
histories and iconic representations of truth, Kaphar
asks viewers to become active producers of history and
not take anything for granted.
Bridget R. Cooks, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History
Program in African American Studies
University of California, Irvine
8
Father and Son, 2010
9
Ishmael, His Mother, and His Grandfather, 2009
10
11
The Preacher’s Wife, 2010
13
Veiled Before Waking, 2011
15
Conversation Between Paintings #1:
Descending From a Cross to be Nourished
at the Breast of Our Mother , 2006–7
16
17
My Inarticulate Everything, 2010
18
19
Doubt, 2010–11
21
Venus, 2010
22
23
Where Are You, 2010–11
25
This Place Never Felt Like Home /
As if I Were Here Own, 2010–11
26
27
Disordered Suspension, 2011
29
Memory Fails, 2011
30
Preservation of Family Fictions, 2010–11
31
Fidelity, 2010
32
Innocence, 2010
33
Without Site, 2010
34
Well Kept, 2010
35
Eve, 2010
36
37
Veil, 2008
38
And His dog…, 2010
39
Untitled, 2010
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List of Plates
George, George, George, 2008
Oil on cut canvas on panel
96.1 x 68.1 in.
244 x 173 cm.
Collection of Peggy Scott & David
Teplitzky
Preservation of Family Fictions,
2010—11
Oil on canvas, tree limbs, chair,
linen
78 x 56 x 47 in.
198.1 x 142.2 x 119.4 cm.
Father and Son, 2010
Oil on canvas
59.84 x 48.03 in.
152 x 122 cm.
Collection of Peggy Scott & David
Teplitzky
Disordered Suspension, 2011
Oil on cut canvas on panel
48 x 60 in.
121.9 x 152.4 cm.
Well Kept, 2010
Oil on canvas on panel
84 x 54.5 x 4 in.
213.4 x 138.4 x 10.2 cm.
Collection of Pam and Bill Royall,
Richmond, Virginia
Eve, 2010
Mixed media
50 x 60 x 34 in.
127 x 152.4 x 86.4 cm.
Without Site, 2010
Oil on canvas on panel
84 x 54.5 x 4 in.
213.4 x 138.4 x 10.2 cm.
Fidelity, 2010
Oil and enamel on canvas on panel
84 x 54 in.
213.4 x 137.2 cm.
Private Collection, Switzerland
Veil, 2008
Oil on canvas
48 x 38 in.
122 x 96.5 cm.
Private Collection
Innocence, 2010
Oil and enamel on canvas on panel
84 x 54 in.
213.4 x 137.2 cm.
Private Collection, Switzerland
Conversation Between Paintings
#3: Descent, 2007
Oil on cut canvas
60 x 113 in. (diptych)
152.4 x 287 cm.
Collection of the Studio Museum
in Harlem
Ishmael, His Mother, and His
Grandfather, 2009
Velvet, oil on linen, oil on linen on
wood panel, gilded frame, wood
crate
74 x 60.25 x 26 in.
188 x 153 x 66 cm.
Burger Collection
Conversation Between Paintings
#1: Descending From a Cross to
be Nourished at the Breast of Our
Mother, 2006—07
Oil on cut canvas
48 x 36, 60 x 36 in.
121.9 x 91.4, 162.4 x 91.4 cm.
The Hudgins Family
Nip Tuck (Lillian Dandridge), 2009
Oil on canvas
79 x 72 x 7.5 in.
200.7 x 182.9 x 19.1 cm.
Pizzuti Collection
Doubt, 2010
Reinforced wax, foam, tar, metal
and wooden base
67 x 45.75 x 37.75 in.
170.2 x 116.2 x 95.9 cm.
Burger Collection
My Inarticulate Everything, 2010
Reinforced wax, foam, tar, metal,
wax and wooden base
43 x 49 x 40 in.
109.2 x 124.5 x 101.6 cm.
And His Dog..., 2010
Oil on canvas
60 x 50 in.
152.4 x 127 cm.
Private Collection
Memory Fails, 2011
Oil on canvas, tar and gilded frame
44 x 64 in.
111.8 x 162.6 cm.
Artist Biography
46
Venus, 2010
Oil on cut canvas on panel
53 x 84 in.
134.6 x 213.4 cm.
Present Lives and works in
New Haven, CT
2008 Macrocosm. Roberts &
Tilton, Culver City, CA
2006 MFA, Yale University,
School of Art, New Haven, CT
Cancelled, Erased & Removed.
Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, NY
2009 Gwendolyn Knight
and Jacob Lawrence Fellowship
Recipient, Seattle Art Museum
2001 BFA, San Jose State
University, San Jose, CA
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
Museum, Kalamazoo, MI
2006 Artist in Residence,
The Studio Museum In Harlem
1976
Born in Kalamazoo, MI
2007 Blur. Arndt & Partner
Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2004 Belle Arts Foundation
Grantee
Solo Exhibitions
Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss
Song. Von Lintel Gallery, New
York, NY
2001 California Arts Council
Grantee
Midnight’s Daydream. The Studio
Museum In Harlem, New York, NY
2011 Titus Kaphar: Classical
Disruption. Friedman Benda, New
York, NY
2009 Reconstruction. Roberts
& Tilton, Culver City, CA
History in the Making. Seattle Art
Museum, Seattle, WA
2008 Painting Undone. Red
Gallery, Savannah College of Art
and Design, Savannah, GA
2005 New Revolution. Yale
Art Gallery, Trumbull Gallery, New
Haven, CT
2004 Erace-ing Art History.
Provisions Library, Washington,
D.C.
The Preacher’s Wife, 2010
Oil and enamel on canvas
48 x 60 in.
121.9 x 152.4 cm.
Private Collection
Visual Quotations. Anno Domini
Gallery, San Jose, CA
2000 The House That Crack
Built. San Jose State University
Gallery 2, San Jose, CA
This Place Never Felt Like Home /
As If I Were Her Own, 2010—11
Oil on cut canvas on panel
Each:
48 x 60 in.
121.9 x 152.4 cm.
Group Exhibitions
2011 Round About. Tel Aviv
Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
(Untitled), 2011
Oil on canvas
48 x 36 in.
121.9 x 91.4 cm.
What Does Painting Want? Haifa
Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel
2010 Stitches. Armory Center
for the Arts, Pasedena, CA
Veiled Before Waking, 2011
Oil on canvas on panel
91.5 x 76.25 in.
232.4 x 193.7 cm.
The Gleaners: Contemporary Art
from the Collection of Sarah and
Jim Taylor. Victoria H. Myhren
Gallery, Denver, CO
Roundabout. The City Gallery,
Wellington, New Zealand
Other Than Beauty. Friedman
Benda, New York, NY
2009 Your Gold Teeth II.
Marianne Boesky Gallery, New
York, NY
46
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My Love Is a 187. The Luggage
Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Salon Nouveau. Galerie Engholm
Engelhorn, Vienna, Austria
2006 Lag-Time Line-up.
Mumbo Jumbo Gallery, New York,
NY
Materiality. Kravets | Wheby
Gallery, New York, NY
School Days. Tilton Gallery, New
York, NY
2004 Edges. Euphrat Museum
of Art, Cupertino, CA
2003 Stop Art Gallery, San
Jose, CA
Awards
Bibliography
2010 Mizota, Sharon. “Art
Review: ‘Stitches’ at Armory
Center for the Arts.” Los Angeles
Times, May 21, 2010.
Cheng, Scarlet. “Unconventional
‘Stitches’ at the Armory Center
for the Arts.” Los Angeles Times,
May 16, 2010.
2009 “Fall Preview.” Art Ltd:
Fall Preview Issue. September/
October, 2009.
Palazzoli, Daniela. “Post-Black
Wo.Men: Return to History.” Inside
21, Autumn, 2009.
Douglas, Sarah. “Summer in the
City: Group Shows.” Art Info,
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2002 Studio 110, RePresenting Ourselves. San Jose
Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
Carlson, Michele. “History in the
Making: Titus Kaphar Cuts Up to
Rebuild.” Art in America, May 20,
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Mountain View City Hall, Mountain
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GIANT, May, 2009.
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Mexican Heritage Plaza, San Jose,
CA
Miller, Brian. “Titus Kaphar.”
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Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale, CA
...of Subversion and Dominance.
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CA
“Seattle Museum Honors Titus
Kaphar.” Huliq News, April 21,
2009.
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history.” Seattle Art Museum
Examiner, April 15, 2009.
Graves, Jen. “Titus Kaphar,
Pushing His Own Damn Boat.”
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April 13, 2009.
“Seattle Art Museum Honors
Titus Kaphar, Inaugural Fellowship
Recipient, With a Solo Exhibition.”
Artdaily.org, April 12, 2009.
47
Large, Jarry. “Painter challenges
history with Seattle Art Museum
exhibit.” The Seattle Times,
April 6, 2009.
Shiloh, Ramon. “Seattle Art
Museum Honors Titus Kaphar.”
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2008 Harvey, Phillip. “The
View From Now Trends In the
Idiom of Young African American
Artists.” The International Review
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22, No 2, 2008.
“Titus Kaphar: Painting Undone.”
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2008.
Hersh, Allison. “Cut and Paste.”
Savannah Morning News,
March 15, 2008.
Wall, Katie. “Kaphar Challenges
Traditional Perspectives.” The
SCAD Chronicle, March 7, 2008.
2007 Schwendener, Martha.
“Three Contemporaries, Each With
a Different Way to View the Past.”
The New York Times, August 11,
2007.
Kim, Christine Y. “Artists-inResidence 2006-07.” Midnight’s
Daydream, 2007.
2006 Vogel, Carol. “Warhols
of Tomorrow Are Dealers’ Quarry
Today.” New York Times, April 15,
2006.
2005 “The Art of Cut-andPaste.” The Yale Bulletin &
Calendar, December 16, 2005.
2004 “Erace-ing Art History.”
Provisions Library, Spring, 2004.
“From the Margins of Art History,
a Painters Minority Report.”
Washington Post, April 11, 2004.
KPFA Radio Interview. Berkeley
and Washington, D.C., February/
April, 2004.
2003 “Artist Repaints History’s
Blackout.” San Jose Mercury
News, December 7, 2003.
Colophon
48
Published on the occasion of the exhibition
Titus Kaphar
Classical Disruption
February 17–April 2, 2011
Friedman Benda
515 West 26th Street
New York, New York 10001
212-239-8700
www.friedmanbenda.com
© 2011 Friedman Benda
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-9829112-1-1
Intricate Illusion © Bridget Cooks, Phd.
Editors:
Janine Cirincione, Alice Higgins & Jennifer Olshin
Photography:
Anthony Cuñha, Lucas Knipsher, Jon Lam, & Bill
Orcutt
All We Know of Our Father and Veil, Courtesy of
Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA
Design:
Kloepfer-Ramsey
Printing:
XXXX
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
prior written permission from the copyright holders.
Thanks to Emma, Jim, Stella, Eoin, and Jonathan for all
your help in the studio. Thanks to the team at Polich
Tallix – Vanessa, Amy, Loyal, and Roe. Thanks to
Demetrius, Wardell, and Tavares for the ways you’ve
helped inspire the work. Many thanks as well to David,
Peggy, and Lisa. And most of all, thanks to my wonderful wife Julianne and my boys Savion and Daven, for
putting up with….
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