Color 8.2 Buy This Issue Now

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It’s an odd fit, a skateboard magazine profiling an exhibition of watercolour landscapes from the early-to-mid 20th century. Even for Color. But this retrospective of the late Charles Burchfield, who occupied an uneasy position in American art history—revered by many but overlooked amidst the emerging brand of American modernism of the postwar years—is its own curiosity. Its presentation at the institution that bears the artist’s name is but one stop along the way for a show that initiated at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The Hammer, an institution better known for its contemporary programming, has indeed struck up a curious pairing, inviting famed contemporary American sculptor Robert Gober to curate a monographic exhibition of an artist he would seem to bear little relation to. But judging from the rigour and sensitivity of this exhibition, the affinities run deep.