Why Do We Care How Long It Takes Artists to Make Their Work?

In Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings, quick brushstrokes swish into invented figures set against moody, abstract backgrounds. In Invincible(2018), for example, a shirtless boy—a fictional character, like all of Yiadom-Boakye’s subjects—sits in profile atop a red-and-black ledge. He writes on a white piece of paper with one hand, gripping his seat with the other. His upper body appears against a shadowy brown backdrop that’s lighter around the top of his head. The nubby canvas is visible beneath the paint, suggesting that the artist applied thin, brisk brushstrokes. The work is patchy but immediate; its sacrifice of a more worked-over surface allows for a vulnerable, naked appearance.

Indeed, Yiadom-Boakye frequently completes her canvases in a single day. According to Tamsen Greene, senior director at Jack Shainman Gallery, that’s partially a function of her “wet-on-wet” process: The artist applies oil paint to a canvas so quickly that no single layer of pigment can dry before the composition is complete. (This is changing, however; in her latest body of work, on view this month at Jack Shainman’s Chelsea location, Yiadom-Boakye began experimenting with other types of canvas that absorb her paint at different rates.) …Read More