Hilton ALS is best known as a writer. His essay collection “White Girls” was the finalist of the National Book Critics Circle Award from 2014 and in 2017 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his theater criticism in New York, where he has been a staff writer for more than 30 years. But in the world of art is as visible as a curator. Organized the main show Joan Didion At the Hammer Museum Museum in Los Angeles and the curator of the travel series of painting performances at Yale Center for British Art, as well as two performances Portraits Alice Neel In the gallery David Zwirner.
Just at the moment Victoria Miro Gallery In London repeats a newer show Zwirnerand The Hill Art Foundation in Chelsea hosts “Writing is on the wall,” In which ALS gathered the work of 32 artists, including Vija Celmins, Ina Archer and Cy Twombly to explore how visual art overlaps with writing.
It is unusual that the critic for a large publication will be paid for curatorial and museum exhibitions, although ALS, 64, He cleaned his independent efforts to switch hats with his boss David Remnice, editor of New York. And ALS says he avoids the review of any institution where he curated the show.
We sat down through lunch at New York’s West Village to talk about whether he was still considering writing his signature medium, how he maintains his role clear and which a great American novel still needs a document. These are modified excerpts from our conversation.
Can you tell me about your relationship to the visual art, where does it come from?
I think that if you grow up without access, you know, an annual trip to Europe to look at the paintings, something else will happen. And that something has a parent who is very invented to find cultural things for children for children. So I went to these classes of free characters at the Brooklyn Museum. And I remember that I like the role of the artist. I was wearing a small striped shirt and I liked to entertain the artist. Which I think it was a bit parallel to talk about my gayness. Finally, I went to the Brooklyn public library and had these extraordinary photo books and remember how I found or discovered Avedon, Penn, and I was fascinated by the worlds that capture. So much that I wrote a letter to Dick Avedon offering my service. I was 13. If the job was alive for me and if there was a person alive, why shouldn’t you contact them?
Absolutely. Speaks You.
And they were really companions for me. But my mother also had a very strong faith in the artist, love for artists. My sister and I have always had a kind of sympathy for artists – and I also had a desire to do things. Since I was 8, I knew it would be linguistic because my sister was a poet. And you don’t need anything to write – you need a pencil. It was powerful that I wanted to be. It’s almost as if you knew you were willing.
It sounds like you always tell me the story of being an artist.
All curators are narrators, they are really narrators. They try to tell a story, even if it is a fracture. You tell a story about a person or –
Or an idea.
Do you know what I recently found? Notifications for the first show I’ve ever done Gallery of functions (with nine artists around a single topic).
When was it?
1989.
So your curation goes all the way back!
Here’s a story. I wrote a letter again (GALLERIST) Hudson. I said I was a fan and wanted to do a show. It’s been a long time ago you could say. And he said, “Great,” and gave me a small back room. He had a small gallery on Broome Street. And I asked if I could work with my boyfriend (photographer) Darryl Turner. It was the practice I still do, which means that it will create a kind of artwork of available material.
Did you expect my next question – when will the curator become artistic practice in itself?
I think from the beginning. So then Darryl and I did another show for Simon Watson. He had a gallery on Lafayette Street. And then we did one other project and then Darryl did not want to continue cooperation.
Why did you need Darryl there?
Exactly. You just asked me a very deep question. Because my desire to join other people often came to the expense of my own survival, sometimes? And – no.
For me, continuity in your work is a critic and curator. But as for your role in the world of the art world, they are two very different types of authority and I ask if you had any problems with these roles in the conflict.
Oh, no, well, I was very honest with David Remnice that there was no way for me to be the main critic because I did this next job. But I can make occasional pieces and are exclusively about artists I have never worked with. I think the only kind of crossover could be Alice Neel’s painting in the show I am a curator in the Karma Gallery (in 2021), but that was it. I also want to protect the magazine in a way. Back to authority – to protect the authority of the magazine and not so blurry.
So when Hill Foundation says, “You want to do something,” you say, “Yes, let’s talk about it, but we will also understand that I will never write about another show.”
That’s exactly how it works.
I recently met with an unforgettable remark of Pippy Garner’s artist about her life, ”I tried to create an example that no one else can follow“And that made me think of you. How do you think that would affect the state of artistic criticism if more people moved between writing and curatories as you have?
Oh, I’m nothing new. There is a long history of curatorial writers, Frank o’hara be an obvious example (in the Museum of Modern Art). I think the more cheerful. Certainly, however, there would have to be people who can work on both rollers – and also do not confuse. I really can’t speak for other writers and curators and I wouldn’t. But for me, it is part of the joy of being alive, trying to create all parts of your own infant, rules or no rules.
In “The Writing’s On the Wall”, you managed to get some of the accusations of writing without letting write the visual.
That’s a really great point. I wanted to find a job that really balanced. And there are other pieces that are bridges of the language – I think of the cooperation of Steve Wolf/Christian Marclay (“La voix Humaine”, 1991) of Stereo. The language is on the recording in the form of writing on the label and the silence of the record that is not played is the bridge for Ellen Gallagher’s very text grid of prints (“Deluxe”).
The real challenge and joy were to find connections and bridges. Once you have the kind – what would they say in the movie? The main shot – you need to find details that combine smaller scenes to larger scenes. And I felt I wanted to be very careful not to overcome larger pictures, but bigger pictures helped.
What would you say bigger pictures were?
Well, literally bigger pictures. Drawing Little Claes Oldenburg is a great bridge for Jennie C. Jones (“Fluid Red Tone (during break)”, a painting from 2022). I have always loved Oldenburg – his rendering and drawings were so beautiful for me – and I remembered “Pink Pearl Eraser” Vija Celmins that there was a pink. So things had to resonate rhythmically and curatively.
Did you start with a concept or look at the Hill Art Foundation collection J. Tomilson Hill and Janine Hill?
When Mr. Hill sent me a checklist, things that really excelled were all these works that seemed to have written in them. I don’t think other curators have created this connection before.
Something that distinguishes writing from curation is that you can write something without showing it to someone. Do you think there is a kind of lower entry to thinking as a writer?
Well, you have more control, right? You have more control over this particular narrative. But what I like about this aspect of creation is like making a movie. You have a producer who is nervous. You have artists who are vulnerable. And you have a director/writer who I am, says, “Believe me, I tell a story that honors all these elements. And earn money. ”
Would you also make movies?
Certainly I would.
If I am a Hollywood producer and I say –
If you were a producer and said, “Here are two million dollars and I will not bother you, I love your script” – that would be amazing.
You know what I really want to do? I think there must be a documentary about William Faulkner. I feel people like Ken Burns, they will submit it because it’s so volatile. The views of Faulkner on the race were outdated, but he had a real insight into how sex and race got closer in white southern imagination. For someone like me, the film would be extraordinary. Because I don’t have it.
