Analog Collage and Intimacy in Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s We Begin to Let Go

Explore Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s We Begin to Let Go through memories of analog collage and a close look at intimacy, texture, and a figure’s gesture.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby and We Begin to Let Go (2013), The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Collage is becoming a lost art—or at least analog collage is. I do not mean that people have stopped making collages. Digital collages are everywhere. But before design programs made it possible to cut, layer, and rearrange images on a screen, collage required physical materials: magazines, scissors, paper, and glue.

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I would cut images, headlines, and intriguing scraps of language from magazines I had read. Entertainment Weekly was a particular favorite. I kept the clippings carefully, as though I were building an archive for some future version of myself who would know how they all belonged together.

There was something comforting about the ritual: the slight resistance of the paper against the scissors, the accumulation of fragments, and the freedom to remove an image from its original context and give it another life. A collage did not begin with a blank page. It began with the discarded pieces of other worlds.

So, when I look at Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s We Begin to Let Go, what strikes me first is its use of collage: fragments assembled to reveal a domestic scene.

I notice the central figure’s legs draped in blue stockings and her blue high heels. She is seductive, bare on top; the juxtaposition of skin and fabric makes her seated pose dramatic. And then I notice the chair and the floor, a pastiche of newspaper collage, ephemeral in appearance. But it is the face that cements Akunyili Crosby’s work. What collage magic is this? But, no. She is painted in acrylic—a Mona Lisa hidden among the paper, charcoal, and pastel. The mark of the artist. The mark of the pose.

She looks away from the viewer and away from the man behind her. Perhaps he is her companion, or perhaps there is something sinister about his presence. I read their relationship as transactional: he, like a modest pimp, takes care of her, while she adamantly looks away. Preserves her animus.

His garish orange trousers and patterned shirt speak out, as do his flat-soled sneakers—also blue, but not stylish like hers. Maybe he is telling her something, stooping the way he is, while she reluctantly listens but never gives him her gaze.

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Journal Entry #2502022: I Woke Up This Morning on a Hot, Summer Day in Queens and I Fiddled

In this post, I dabble in a bit of online journaling. Take a peek at the day in the life of a bloke in New York City on a hot Summer day.

The author dons a blue surgical mask
on a hot Summer's day.

I woke up this morning early. I fiddled a bit, then ran out of the house to catch the bus. And then I realized I was waiting at the wrong bus stop. I eventually made it to my eye doctor’s appointment — albeit a little late. Side note: I realized that I am still definitely afraid of the eye puff machine, even though the eye doctor told me they don't use the puff anymore. That doesn't stop me from mightily squinting and tossing my chin. “There’s no puff, Mr. Roselli,” the doctor said, “You can relax.” I love when medical doctors are so rational with their patients; it's comforting. At the end of the visit, he was like, you're a good patient — as if he was attempting to reassure me. Uh <laugh> but I was okay. I ate some Brazilian comfort food, hopped on an N train, and went to @moma. Tourists queue up to take pictures with Andy Warhol’s soup cans. Watching museum goers look at art is voyeuristic. A boy calls Jackson Pollock’s drip painting “cool,” and a family was having fun finding all the animals in Rousseau’s “The Dream.” I noticed @momafilm was screening the vampire flick Let the Right One In. One unique element of movies is how they create settings. This movie takes place in a gray, snowed-in Norwegian suburb. I highly recommend the movie. Amazing. I had seen it in 2008, but it's always splendid to see a good movie on the big screen.

On Astoria Boulevard in Queens, there is a mural of a 7 subway train car; The author notes, "As I waited for my take-out, I snapped a picture of the fish in the aquarium. Life is good."

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Aesthetic Thursday: Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

Edvard Munch "The Scream". Pastel on board, 1895.

Moma will display one of four versions of Edvard Munch's expressionist painting "The Scream". The heavily reproduced and often parodied image will be on view at the museum on October 24 - April 29. The version Moma will display is pastel on board and has been lent to the museum by a private collector. The other three versions are in museums in Norway.

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Art Review: Hitler McDonald

Learn about Noah Lyon, an artist in New York City who does mashups of Ronald McDonald-cum-Adolf Hitler.

Noah Lyon, an artist in New York City, has showcased at the New York Art Book Expo his poster image of an amalgam between Hitler and Ronald McDonald. Strangely, the combination seems appropriate, don't you think?

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