Art in America’s Winter “Collaborations” Issue Features First-Rate Fashion Projects, Ugly AI Girls, Sculpture’s Maximalist Turn, and More

When we talk about sending an issue of a magazine to the printer, we often say we are putting it to bed. This is a time-worn phrase, an artifact of an analog era: the “bed” here refers to the printing press. I was thinking about this phrase because this issue goes to bed at the end of October. As it sleeps, if you will, the United States presidential election will be decided. When it wakes up in late November, in your—the reader’s—hands, our country will have elected a new leader. Put another way, this is a strange time to be writing an editor’s letter, which, in any instance, always addresses an uncertain future.

This issue of Art in America is not an overtly political one, but themes that run through it are inextricable from today’s politics, and indeed, the matters most at stake in this election. Fiona Alison Duncan writes in her feature on the art/fashion collective Women’s History Museum about a highlight of the group’s latest line: “a virgin-white hooded gown with bound knees, back-bound wrists, and a fetus print on the abdomen”—a particularly poignant reference to threats to reproductive rights. In Max Norman’s feature on artists collaborating with their parents, artist Sheida Soleimani talks about taking photographs of her mother and father, immigrants who fled political violence in Iran in the 1980s, and settled in Ohio. “JD Vance grew up 20 minutes from where we were,” Soleimani says.

It is apt that the current issue is about collaboration—and, this time, pays special attention to a turn toward maximalism that we have observed around the art world of late. What, after all, is a democracy, if not a collaboration of a decidedly maximalist kind? What are votes if not the individual brushstrokes that make up the highly problematic experimental artwork that is the United States? A magazine too is a collaboration: every name on our masthead represents someone who worked on this issue in some way. Women’s History Museum even made an artwork that highlights that aspect of publishing: As Duncan writes about the work, which emulates the kind of print product you’re holding in your hands right now, “it’s as if they took everything there is to love about magazines—the thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of juxtaposition, our need for fantasy and beauty, and the energy of collaboration—and brought it to life.”

However things turn out in November, there is one thing I’m sure of: art-making is an inherently political act, because to make a true work of art is always to remake a world. We at Art in America are committed to following artists wherever they lead us. That will not change.

Chloe Wise: Salad Sconce III, 2021.

Photo Dan Bradica

Impossible Objects
Digital fabrication tools aided sculpture’s shift from post-minimalism to maximalism.
by Glenn Adamson

Pretty Gross
As the AI girlfriend industry takes off, these feminist artists are hacking the system.
by Emily Watlington

Lookbook
The year in art and fashion collaborations.
by Chloe Wise and Jeppe Ugelvig

In Style, Out of Time
Women’s History Museum looks to fashion’s past for clues to the future.
by Fiona Alison Duncan

Provenance Issues
Training the camera on their parents, three photographers renegotiate the ethics of their medium.
by Max Norman

Turn Me On
Artists’ lamps shine light on fun and functional forms.
as told to Andy Battaglia

Expanding Horizons
Andrea Carlson’s frenetic landscapes double as decolonized territories.
by Jeremy Lybarger

A photo of a brown-skinned dancer in yellow pants and a turquoise shirt. — A performance by Ralph Lemon during the exhibition “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century,”
2011, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Photo Yi-Chun Wu/Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York

Datebook
A highly discerning list of things to experience over the next three months.
by the Editors of A.i.A.

Hard Truths
A gallery assistantaspires to roof-raising DJ stardom, and a studio worker ponders signing an NDA.Plus, an interactive quiz.
by Chen & Lampert

Inquiry
A Q&A with Ralph Lemon about dance, drawing, and maintaining a decades-long generative practice.
by Maximilíano Durón

Object Lesson
An annotation of Agnieszka Kurant’s Risk Landscape.
by Francesca Aton

Battle Royale
Prada vs. Uffizi—two pilgrimage-worthy European painting collections face off.
by the Editors of A.i.A.

Syllabus
A reading list for a crash course on Caribbean art history.
by Erica Moiah James

Appreciation
A tribute to Rebecca Horn, an artist who evoked alchemy and states of transformation.
by Xin Liu

Issues & Commentary
Artist-run ad campaigns are everywhere. Is the fashion industry supporting the arts or subsuming them?
by Emily Watlington

Spotlight
Whether filming avant-garde dances or splicing together TikToks, Charles Atlas’s videos capture campy choreography.
by Beatrice Loayza

Book Review
A reading of Sarah Lewis’s The Unseen Truth.
by Emmanuel Iduma

Cover Artist
Jean-Pierre Villafañe talks about his artwork featured on the cover of A.i.A.