Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

Two icons of the comics world—and old friends—tell their cartoonist origin stories, from the psychedelics-fueled breakthroughs of the 1960s to finding their singular styles and the generational divide among the comics cognoscenti today. R. Crumb is one of the founding fathers of the alternative comics movement, and Art Spiegelman is equally influential, having authored the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus. 

A conversation between two dynamic artists and good friends, P. Staff and Julie Tolentino, whose work feels especially urgent now. Staff, who recently had a solo exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries in London, uses video and other mediums to comment on body politics from a queer and trans perspective. Tolentino also addresses issues facing marginalized groups, through performance that combines her dance background with social exchange. Always integral to their practices, these concerns are only heightened in the current moment. Here, they discuss contagion, toxicity, anxiety, the “leaky body,” and art during the pandemic. P. Staff’s work is currently on view as part of Platform: Los Angeles, an online exhibition featuring thirteen Los Angeles-based galleries hosted on David Zwirner Online. You can learn more about Julie Tolentino’s work via the gallery Commonwealth and Council. 

A conversation with the acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin that transports us to two of her favorite cities, Venice and Rome, in a celebration of Italy as the country begins to loosen the longest coronavirus-related lockdown in Europe. The episode features evocative readings from her forthcoming book,Two Cities, which captures the meditative yet constantly surprising nature of travel from a deeply personal point of view. Learn more about Two Cities here. 

Artists Diana Thater, a leading pioneer of video and installation and major figure in the L.A. art community since the early 1990s, and Rachel Rose, a defining new voice of the medium, discuss the rapid evolution of video art and its limitless possibilities—including, for both of them, its ability to reckon with personal trauma and threats to the environment.

A timely conversation with the art critic Kyle Chayka, author of The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, on how minimalism went from radical 1960s art movement to, ironically, a hyper-commercialized lifestyle adopted by luxury brands and millennials everywhere—and where Marie Kondo and Agnes Martin overlap, if at all. During this time, we’re evolving to give you even more to listen to, with one-on-one episodes with the people—and on the subjects—we find compelling now. Please stay tuned.You can buy Chayka’s book here. 

Photographer Tyler Mitchell and critic/curator Antwaun Sargent on the radical power shift from gatekeepers to artists, the breakdown of barriers between fashion and art photography, cautionary tales of social media groupthink and overexposure, and historical artists who made the new black vanguard possible.

A special episode dedicated to the late artist Noah Davis, with some of the the people who knew him best. The curator Helen Molesworth, his brother, the filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, and his wife, the artist Karon Davis, remember Davis, whose legacy continues to grow—through his paintings, which depict everyday life with emotional and formal ambition; The Underground Museum, the space he founded in Los Angeles that combines many different worlds; and the family, literal and figurative, that coalesced around the magnetism of his personality.You can learn more about Davis here.

A rare conversation between artists who have stayed together for over three decades. The Swedish artist Karin “Mamma” Andersson and her husband Jockum Nordström’s story—of two young artists leaning on each other as their family grew; of uncertainty and insecurity and figuring out how to be different but together; of the pleasure of getting completely lost in one’s work—feels especially potent in these uncertain times.Andersson’s recent exhibition at David Zwirner’s New York gallery, The Lost Paradise, was cut short due to the escalating spread of COVID-19, but you can explore the show here.

In uncertain and even scary times, host Lucas Zwirner revisits the first episode of Dialogues, in which Jeff Koons and the curator Luke Syson turn to art as a way of connecting and communicating through making something—an ethos that feels even more important now. Soon Dialogues will return with even more episodes to stay in touch with our audience. Stay tuned for much more. 

In this episode, the artists Doug Wheeler and Vija Celmins revisit their years in Venice Beach, California in the late 1960s, a scene crowded with figures like Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell. Wheeler and Celmins—old friends and visionaries of their medium—gossip, rehash, map, and even correct this vital piece of art history, while tackling a central question of art along the way: How to impress your sensibility upon the world through your work.Vija Celmins was the subject of a recent, critically-beloved retrospective at the Met Breuer and SFMOMA. Doug Wheeler currently has an exhibition at David Zwirner in New York through March 21, 2020; a definitive monograph of his career was recently published.