ARTnews captures the past 25 years of the art world at a glance in its recent listing of the 100 best artworks of the 21st century, with CalArts alumni David Hammons (Chouinard 68), Daniel Joseph Martinez (Art BFA 79), Mark Bradford (Art BFA 95, MFA 97), Christopher Williams (Art MFA 81) making the cut.
Hammons’ Concerto in Black and Blue (2020) claimed 11th place in the ranking, described as “one of those experiences that was so cool you couldn’t believe you got to be part of it.” To experience the work, which opened in Ace Gallery in Manhattan, New York, visitors were given blue penlights in order to navigate a space shrouded in darkness—a nod to Hammon’s penchant for creating “audience provocation” through his art. Concerto in Black and Blue was recreated at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles this past February.
Martinez establishes a “spectrum of Americanness” with his large-scale installation The House America Built (2004), which was ranked 44th. Designed like a nondescript cabin split in half, the structure is a 1:1 replica of the cabin built by domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski—also decked out in colors from Martha Stewart’s line of interior paints. Through the work, Stewart represents unfettered capitalism on one end, with Kaczynski and terror on the other. Coincidentally, the opposing figures find a similarity in that they were both incarcerated in 2004, the year the work was created.
Taking the 55th spot is Bradford’s painting Bread and Circuses (2007). The map-like work reflects the artist’s interest in cartography, fashioned from materials gathered from the streets of South Central Los Angeles. While Bread and Circuses’ title is derived from a “Roman term of appeasement used to distract the public from more substantial issues,” the work mirrors Bradford’s ongoing interrogation of big-picture problems impacting his neighborhood and beyond.
Williams subverts brand recognition in Kodak Three Point Reflection Guide © 1968 Eastman Kodak Company, 1968 (Meiko laughing), Vancouver, B.C., April 6, 2005, which was ranked 74th in the listing. The photograph depicts a smiling model posed in a manner reminiscent of 20th century commercial advertising, with hair wrapped in a towel the same color as Kodak’s signature yellow: “While deconstructing how such photographs continue to shape our present late-late-capitalist reality, the artist also deconstructs how they were made—here, by including a usually hidden Kodak tool.”
View the aforementioned works and read the full listing at ARTnews.
