Ben Luke talks to Jacqueline Humphries about her influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Installation view of Jacqueline Humphries's IDFK01 (2023)
Courtesy the artist and Modern Art
Humphries, born in 1960 in New Orleans, US, and now based in New York, is an artist who has pushed painting into new territories. She is mindful of the medium’s history but embraces technologies and explores their impact on this time-honoured discipline. Her practice, which now stretches across five decades from the late 1980s to today, is rigorous, irreverent and consistently surprising.
Left to right: Jacqueline Humphries's JH530 (2023), JH190BarnettNewman (2023)
Courtesy the artist and Modern Art
She discusses the early influence of Édouard Manet and a late revelation about Caravaggio, key relationships with fellow painters like Charlene von Heyl, her admiration of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, and her fascination with the video game Dwarf Fortress. Plus she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: What is art for?
Jacqueline Humphries's untitled (2023)
Courtesy the artist and Modern Art
• Jacqueline Humphries, Modern Art, Helmet Row and Bury Street, London, until 22 July
• We Smell Gas, Reena Spaulings, New York, until 25 June
• From Andy Warhol to Kara Walker: Scenes from the Collection, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany, until 14 July
• To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting, Gagosian, London, until 25 August.
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app.
The free app offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single download, with new guides being added regularly. They include numerous institutions with which Jacqueline Humphries has shown her work, from the Venice Biennale to The Kitchen in New York and Dia Bridgehampton, where Jacqueline showed her Black Light works in 2019. If you download the app, you will find that the Dia guide has a section on the Bridgehampton site, which was designed by the artist Dan Flavin to permanently house an installation of his work, as well as temporary exhibitions like the one devoted to Tony Cokes opening on 23 June. The guide also has features on Dia’s ten other locations, including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field.