🍬
one of my favorite exhibitions of 2024, this quiet and unassuming show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery moved me. includes his usual candy piles and ticker-tape-like timelines, the curatorial edge is in really interesting pairings with portraits from the museum’s collection. a portrait of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkas is juxtaposed with a photo of their flower-laden graves taken by González-Torres, decades later. i was floored to see a photo of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., given their relationship to and inaction around the AIDS epidemic, but the image was made more poignant against the somber and poetic backdrop of González-Torres’s work.
on view through early July ‘25.
Jan 15, 2025
Related Recs
His art breaks my heart. Cuban born American artist, Felix Gonzales-Torres makes art centering around his queer life. Often pertaining to yearning, and love, his art sets out to juxtapose the pain that queer folks endured just so they could be with and love one another. Pictured: "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA)"
May 14, 2024
my dad had a postcard when i was younger that I used to look at of a Leon golub painting— not this one, just a contorted face— but his paintings are a different type of representation or documentary approach of American life, maybe about the absent images that structure it.
do you remember last year or whenever when people thought that Philip guston paintings were going to Get their institutes canceled and almost censored that exhibition? It did end up showing at the national gallery, and my dad went to see it (he doesn’t really engage with art anymore but guston is his favorite painter) and talking about it he said something like “America will really be ready to change when there’s a national retrospective of Leon golubs paintings”
ao I think about that sometimes when I look at his paintings, which are in the end all about violence and rendered in these huge, textural scales
(This one is White Squad V)
Jan 7, 2024
I went to the Met to look at a Kerry James Marshall painting but this piece by Max Beckmann just struck me on my way to the other gallery. an old man and I looked at it together for a while
Oct 1, 2024
Top Recs from @salad_valet
i canceled my Spotify account over the summer and have spent the last few months rebuilding my digital music library on a refurbished iPod Touch. reading critiques of the app (and it’s enshittification), i realized i wasn’t even sure of my own musical tastes and preferences. i had stopped picking for myself, stopped seeking out new music, ceasing to know how to choose what i wanted or articulate what i like.
breaking free from the algorithm has been such a joy! i’m borrowing gobs of music from the library, rebuilding my old playlists, and consuming more music than i have in years. and better yet, my data isn’t being tracked by Spotify and i own what’s in my personal library. further, my receptors are more open when i’m out in the world exposed to music, searching for recommendations in an organic way.
Jan 16, 2025
i’ve been trying to articulate why i enjoy this space so much. yes, the UX is reminiscent of Tumblr and the early days of the internet. and there’s genuine sincerity and vulnerability on here that makes it feel really cozy and real, which i haven’t felt online in at least a decade.
but i think what’s undergirding my love of this space is how anti-capitalist it feels. most of the recs everyone shares are vibe-checks, quality of life shifts, meditations and offers, music and movies, just plain good art. i don’t feel compelled to buy anything when i come here. i feel excited and pumped to be a cheerleader, find connection, find common ground. and FWIW the recs i’ve shared that have gotten the most traction are my suggestions for leading a less capitalistic / consumerist life (quitting Amazon, getting off of Spotify, building community to take care of you and your things).
all of this is to say, i love it here and i love you guys.
Feb 7, 2025
hear me out—this one might feel impossible, but i quit purchasing items on Amazon in 2018 and cancelled my GoodReads account shortly after.
i did some serious reflection and realized i’d become super reliant upon, and frankly, quite used to the instant gratification of purchasing something and knowing i’d have it within a day. that’s not normal. the labor practices, economics, and environmental impacts of getting what you want from the internet delivered quickly and right to your door are skewed. i was filling a void in myself with mindless purchases.
i’m aware that they service a huge swath of the internet (Amazon Web Services), own Whole Foods and Abe Books, and will likely take over more businesses we like and rely on. weaning off and avoiding entirely is very very hard, but it can also be a measured decision. that said, i know that it is a privilege to abstain from Amazon. i am able bodied, i don’t have kids, i have access to a car, i live in an urban environment with access to a lot of stuff at my fingertips. but making the choice to break out of the Amazon loop has ultimately been better for my pocketbook and better for my relationship to these mega-tech-companies that have their fingers in everything.
in contrast, i’m becoming more interested in alternate economies, like bartering and sharing. i love the idea of having commonly shared tools and items (tool libraries are very cool). we don’t need to own it all, we have each other.
interested in exploring more? the zine pictured below is a great start, and summarizes a much larger book by the same author on how to resist the leviathan that is Amazon.
Jan 22, 2025