Art in America's highly anticipated fall "Icons" issue presents an in-depth exploration of artists whose decades-long careers represent unwavering commitment to unique and deeply personal artistic practices. Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas emphasizes how this annual publication demonstrates that there are as many ways to be an artist as there are artists themselves, with each featured icon representing a singular vision developed over years of dedicated work.
The issue highlights how several featured artists discovered their artistic voice through their chosen medium. Video artist Paul Pfeiffer describes becoming "hyper-aware of the grammar of images and the way one could engineer attention through subtle changes" while working on his early video pieces. His work explores how rituals and religion haunt sports and movies, revealing the spectral nature of contemporary culture. Textile artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood found her voice in thread and fabric, explaining "I had to be puro hilo [pure thread] to get the viejitas [the female elders] on my side. I could hear them asking, what's wrong with thread?" Her work weaves through the complexities of the US-Mexico border experience.
Painter David Diao, who has spent much of his career referencing the work of Barnett Newman, admires Newman's "matter-of-fact way he painted—it's somehow unfussy. It's just what needs to be done." Diao's practice involves hijacking the history of modernism to make it more inclusive. The late sculptor Joel Shapiro, who passed away in June as the magazine was preparing this issue, discovered "how transformation happens when you're actually physically working with wood, looking at it, cutting it, changing it, altering it, until it somehow satisfies some aspect of your unknown intent." His final interview with writer Max Norman serves as a fitting tribute to an artist who broke sculpture down to its fundamentals.
German artist Rosemarie Trockel is featured as "The Auto-Iconoclast," offering lessons for staying curious and unconventional in one's artistic practice. The magazine includes a special pull-out print accompanying her feature. Performance artist Tehching Hsieh, interviewed for the issue's Inquiry column, provides philosophical insight into art's relationship with free thinking, stating that "art is the more groundbreaking and creative part of freethinking, but freethinking is something everyone does." He continues: "Freethinking means that nobody can stop you. It belongs to you only, and no one can take it away from you."
A particularly compelling feature explores the relationship between photography and blindness, examining pictures of anonymous blind people by several iconic photographers to reveal the medium's existential contradictions. This investigation into "Seeing Isn't Knowing" challenges conventional understanding of photography's documentary function and raises questions about representation and perception.
The magazine's departments section includes a carefully curated "Datebook" of experiences over the next three months, "Hard Truths" featuring a curator grappling with invisibility and a designer questioning obsolescence, and "Sightlines" with Bukhara Biennial curator Diana Campbell Betancourt sharing her preferences. Additional features include a "Battle Royale" between Monet and Manet, a spotlight on photographer Malick Sidibé as "an architect of utopia and purveyor of nostalgia," and a review of Okwui Enwezor's Selected Writings.
The issue also presents new talent Katja Seib, who creates "canvases of pure color and mild mysticism," and includes a comprehensive reading list for understanding anti-fascist art history. Reviews span international exhibitions from Berlin to Santa Fe, including shows featuring Kaari Upson, Bas Jan Ader, Mildred Thompson, and Rachel Ruysch, demonstrating the global scope of contemporary art discourse and historical reevaluation.
