Barack Obama asked Taylor for a painting to give to Michelle on her birthday. “The market is also paying close attention,” that article noted. His work “helped fuel an explosion of interest in Black figuration,” as a New York Times article put it last year, going on to list Jordan Casteel, Kerry James Marshall, Jennifer Packer and Amy Sherald as some of Taylor’s peers who have likewise experienced critical and institutional success at least in part for their depictions of Black lives. Few other painters, not even Picasso, have been held up as a totem of the culture they inhabit as explicitly as Taylor has. Taylor’s inclusion in the Biennial turned him into a spokesperson for Black America and changed the stakes of what (and who) the art industry believes to have value. He connects another key juncture in Taylor’s rise to the 2017 Whitney Biennial, where he presented “The Times Thay Aint a Changing, Fast Enough!,’” a painting of Castile in the passenger seat of a car, shot dead by a Minnesota police officer. The Studio Museum in Harlem presented his first museum exhibition in 2007 and, in 2012, MoMA PS1 offered him a solo exhibition, “after which the art world began taking Taylor seriously,” according to Miller. His first gallery show was in 2004 at Kathryn Brennan’s Sister gallery in Los Angeles. Over the past two decades, Taylor developed his practice and managed to establish a foothold in the upper reaches of the art world. The earliest works in Taylor’s “B-Side” retrospective are drawings of patients at the hospital. To pay the tuition, Taylor worked at Camarillo State Mental Hospital as a psychiatric technician. He was in his early 30s by the time enrolled at the California Institute of Arts, where his foundation in writing turned into free-form pictorial storytelling. Initially, he aimed to become a writer, taking journalism courses, before focusing on art classes. Taylor attended community college on and off for nearly six years. Miller charts Taylor’s education, artistic development, and family background-exploring the artist’s relationship with his father, brutal death of his grandfather and how his roots in Naples in East Texas show up in his paintings. Miller and features photographs of the artist in his studio by D’Angelo Lovell Williams. THE TIMES PROFILE of Taylor is written by M.H. He paints with a sense of freedom-a richly colored, loosely rendered, bluesy approach to visual storytelling. His expansive body of work features a range of subjects, including family members, fellow artists, historic figures (Black Panthers, Haile Selassie, and Olympic Gold Medalists Alice Coachman and Carl Lewis), victims of police violence (Philando Castile and Sean Bell), his neighbors during the pandemic lockdown, and anyone he may encounter in his studio, on the street, or during increasingly frequent international travels.Īt age 65, Taylor is recognized for painting candid scenes and fascinating portraits in a style all his own. “Some, like the artist Henry Taylor, who for years painted in obscurity while working as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, found creative or critical success later in life…”Īt age 65, Taylor is recognized for painting candid scenes and fascinating portraits in a style all his own. “When you look at our Greats honorees over the years, you see that the path for many of them was meandering, the journey fitful,” T Editor Hanya Yanagihara wrote in the introduction to the issue. 22, features Muccia Prada, Queen Latifah, Annette Bening, and Taylor, with each receiving an extensive profile treatment. The 2023 Greats Issue, published in print on Oct. Each year, the Times identifies pivotal generational talents. Now Taylor is among The Greats, recognized by T: The New York Times Style Magazine as one of the rare artistic figures who is shaping his field and the broader culture. Last week, Hauser & Wirth, the mega-gallery that represents Taylor, inaugurated its space in Paris, France, with “From Sugar to Shit,” an exhibition 30 new paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by the artist. In May, a painting by Taylor set a new artist record at auction, surpassing $1 million for the first time, soaring to nearly $2.5 million.
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