Henry Taylor: B Side
Opens Oct 4, 2023
For more than thirty years, the Los Angeles–based artist Henry Taylor (b. 1958) has portrayed people from widely different backgrounds—family members, friends, neighbors, celebrities, politicians, and strangers—with a mixture of raw immediacy and tenderness. His improvisational approach to artmaking is hinted at in this exhibition’s title, Henry Taylor: B Side, which refers to the side of a record album that often contains lesser-known, more experimental songs.
Taylor’s paintings, executed quickly and instinctually from memory, newspaper clippings, snapshots, and in-person sittings, are variously light-hearted, intimate, and somber. In them, he combines flat planes of bold, sensuous color with areas of rich, intimate detail and loose brushstrokes to create paintings that feel alive. Guided by a deep-seated empathy for people and their lived experiences, Taylor captures the humanity, social milieu, and mood of his subjects, whose visceral presence is heightened by their closely cropped, often life-size images. In working from personal experience and shared history, Taylor offers a view of everyday life in the United States that is grounded in the experiences of his own community, including the incarceration, poverty, and often deadly interactions with police that disproportionately affect Black Americans. Deeply steeped in art history, his work forms a continuum with the expressive figurative painting and politically engaged work of European and American artists from Max Beckmann to Bob Thompson, Philip Guston, and Alice Neel.
Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Ventura, California, Taylor grew up nearby in Oxnard. While studying art at Oxnard Community College and later the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), he worked at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital as a psychiatric technician on the night shift. After graduating from CalArts in 1995 and moving to downtown Los Angeles, Taylor became a mainstay of the burgeoning art community there and a leading influence on the rise of figurative painting.
Organized thematically, Henry Taylor: B Side presents the artist’s paintings along with a selection of his assemblage sculptures, rarely exhibited early drawings, a large grouping of painted objects on recycled cigarette packs and other everyday supports, and two new installations, one made specifically for this exhibition.
This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), in Los Angeles, and curated by Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator, with Anastasia Kahn, Curatorial Assistant, at MOCA. The presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art is organized by Barbara Haskell, Curator at the Whitney, with Colton Klein, Curatorial Assistant, and Caroline Webb, Curatorial Assistant.
Please read about the exhibition’s accessibility information before visiting Henry Taylor: B Side.
Henry Taylor: B Side is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
This exhibition is sponsored by
Generous support is provided by Judy Hart Angelo; the Barbara Haskell American Fellows Legacy Fund; Oliver Haarmann; Kevin and Rosemary McNeely, Manitou Fund; and the Whitney’s National Committee.
Major support is provided by The Keith Haring Foundation Exhibition Fund, Hauser & Wirth, Sueyun and Gene Locks, and George Wells and Manfred Rantner.
Significant support is provided by the Kapadia Equity Fund.
Additional support is provided by The Cowles Charitable Trust.
New York magazine is the exclusive media sponsor.
Portrait of Steve Cannon
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Over the years, Taylor has depicted many artists, critics, and curators from his community including Andrea Bowers, Deana Lawson, and Robert Pruitt, all of whom have works in the Whitney's collection. However, Taylor's focus on the art world extends beyond those he knows personally. His "covers" of Dawoud Bey's photograph of David Hammons and Gerhard Richter's painting of his daughter are examples of how he invokes a broader art-historical family by reinterpreting the art of others. Taken together, these works form a map of Taylor's social and artistic circles.
Events
View all-
Sun,
Jan 28Weekend Member Mornings
9:30–10:30 am
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Sat,
Jan 27Ethics of Looking: Drop-in Discussion
4:30 pm
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Sat,
Jan 27Weekend Member Mornings
9:30–10:30 am
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Thurs,
Jan 25Curator-Led Tour of Henry Taylor: B Side
9:30–10:30 am
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Wed,
Jan 17Contemporaries Tour of Henry Taylor: B Side
8:15 pm
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Wed,
Jan 17Contemporaries Tour of Henry Taylor: B Side
7:45 pm
Essay
Audio guides
Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from the exhibition.
View guideExhibition Catalogue
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.
Buy nowIn the News
“...an empathetic portrait painter.” —The New Yorker
“As long as there are artists like Henry Taylor around, painting is in little danger of dying.” —The New York Times
“The other strand of Taylor’s art concerns a larger, shared American history. Subjects don’t sit for these works, but most of them are still portraits, albeit ones that reflect a collective memory.” —T Magazine
“Taylor rewrites art history, often with art historical references, to amplify Black people who have been overlooked or undermined by the canon and systems of power and control.” —Forbes
“Through painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, this retrospective celebrates an artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision, and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor’s figurative work… showcases an imagination that encompasses multiple worlds.” —Art Africa Magazine
“…Taylor approaches the world and the people in it not as an aloof observer or “student of man,” but as someone full of empathy, someone who lives here too.” —Artforum
“…the best show of 2023.” —New York Magazine
“This, Taylor’s first career survey, will prove that his big, lushly brushed portraits are not all he does well.” —The Washington Post”