Time Sensitive18 Okt 2023

Sanford Biggers on Patching Together the Past, Present, and Future Through Art

To Sanford Biggers, the past, present, and future are intertwined and all part of one big, long now. Over the past three decades, the Harlem-based artist has woven various threads of place and time—in ways not dissimilar to a hip-hop D.J. or a quilter—to create clever, deeply metaphorical, darkly humorous, and often beautiful work across a vast array of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, photography, music, and performance. Among his standout works are “Oracle” (2021), a 25-foot-tall cast bronze sculpture that combines a Greco-Roman form with an African mask; his “BAM” series (2015) of gunshot statuettes; and his ongoing “Codex” series of quilts, which have, over his past decade of making them, become an especially potent and ritualistic part of his art-making.

On this episode, Biggers talks about the influence that musicians such as Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder have had on his art; why he thinks of himself as a “material polyglot”; and why religious and spiritual works like reliquaries, shrines, and “power objects” are the bedrock of his practice.

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:26] Sanford Biggers

[03:55] “Sanford Biggers with Yasi Alipour”

[07:14] “The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers”

[12:34] Moon Medicin

[13:36] Mahalia Jackson

[13:39] Ray Charles

[13:40] Charles Mingus

[13:41] Thelonious Monk

[15:32] Stevie Wonder

[16:06] Prince

[18:00] Dick Gregory

[18:01] Richard Pryor

[18:02] Redd Foxx

[18:47] “BAM” series

[27:17] “re:mancipation”

[29:05] Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture

[30:08] John Biggers

[31:41] “Codeswitch” at the California African American Museum

[33:28] Dr. Leslie King-Hammond

[33:30] Maryland Institute College of Art

[37:47] University High School

[38:23] Morehouse College

[38:33] Art Institute of Chicago

[47:34] Isamu Noguchi

[47:36] Martin Puryear

[49:06] “Lotus”

[50:31] “Orin”

[55:52] “Meet Me on the Equinox”

[55:52] “Back to the Stars”

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(160)

Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making

Dries Van Noten’s lifelong fascination with craft and making runs deep. He grew up in a multigenerational family of retailers and tailors in Antwerp, and in the 1980s, he was part of the famed avant-g...

24 Juni 59min

Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age

Through PIN–UP, the German-born, New York–based editor, curator, and founder Felix Burrichter continues to expand the possibilities of what an architecture magazine can be. He constructs intuitive bri...

17 Juni 1h 20min

Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives

Through her multifaceted work, the Bulgarian-born, Brooklyn-based writer, reader, and researcher Maria Popova, founder of the “free, ad-free, A.I.-free, fully human” website and newsletter The Margina...

10 Juni 58min

Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

For our latest “site-specific” episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer meets Sheila Hicks inside her courtyard in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, where she has called home for more than 60 yea...

27 Maj 1h 4min

Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance

The singer-songwriter Valerie June has a gift for writing contemporary songs that feel timeless and as though they could also have existed at various points across the past century. Her expansive laye...

13 Maj 1h 13min

George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World

The novelist, essayist, and short-story writer George Saunders—widely celebrated for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), which won the Man Booker Prize, and book of short stories Tenth of December ...

6 Maj 1h 11min

Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art

There’s an animate quality to the biomorphic sculptures of the self-taught, Utah-born artist Alma Allen. His works, carved from wood, marble, and bronze—and informed by his deep appreciation for the n...

22 Apr 1h 6min

Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound

To be in a room with one of the artist and audiophile Devon Turnbull’s texture-rich Ojas hi-fi audio systems may be the closest one can get to being in the studio with the musicians themselves. It’s n...

8 Apr 1h 4min