Henry Taylor: B Side - by Bennett Simpson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The official catalog accompanying the major retrospective at MoCA LA: Henry Taylor creates a grand pageant of contemporary Black life in America

Surveying 30 years of Henry Taylor's work in painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph celebrates a Los Angeles artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor's portraits and allegorical tableaux--populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars and entertainers--display flashes of familiarity in their seemingly brash compositions, which nonetheless linger in the imagination with uncanny detail. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist's installations often recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials (bleach bottles, push brooms) to play upon art historical tropes and modernism's appropriations of African or African American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor's practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century, while also inviting a humanist fellowship that pushes outward from the particular.
Raised in Oxnard, California, Henry Taylor (born 1958) took art classes at Oxnard College in the 1980s and studied under James Jarvaise, who became a mentor. From 1984 through 1995 Henry Taylor worked as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Mental Hospital (a facility that is now California State University Channel Islands) while concurrently attending the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, where he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1995. Taylor has had institutional solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Review Quotes

Marvelous catalog...mostly written by artists, poets or artist-poets. Walter Price, inspired to paint by Taylor's example, contributes a poem about his first impressions: "Each painting aggressive, swift, bold/I was pushed."--Roberta Smith "The New York Times: Arts"

An overall commitment to figurative painting in support of his own tribe, to share their stories of joy and hardship, and, more importantly, to relay his own beautiful and unique vision of Blackness, in all its variable parts.--Terence Trouillot "Frieze"

Ever alert to social contradictions, embedded histories, and the gap between public propaganda and private experience, Taylor often graces his subjects with a deliberate equanimity, suggesting only by inference a narrative of quiet, enduring resistance.--Albert Mobilio "Hyperallergic"

Henry Taylor: B Side, ' captures the sweep of Taylor's career thus far, featuring more than 150 pieces that include drawings and -- for the first time in any meaningful way -- sculpture, as well as what he calls "painted objects" on small cigarette packs, cereal boxes and beer crates. [...] Even his older work has a timelessness that makes it feel contemporary.--Robin Pogrebin "The New York Times"

Taylor's scenes of everyday life perform what might be called stop-motion image-making...The picture sticks in your brain, while your body responds to the painterly scene.--Christopher Knight "Los Angeles Times"