Episode No. 141 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Judy Fiskin and curator Michael Duncan.

Fiskin’s newest work, I’ll Remember Mama (2013) is featured in “Made in L.A. 2014,” the Hammer Museum’s biennial of art from Los Angeles. The exhibition, curated by Connie Butler and Michael Ned Holte, is on view through September 7.

I’ll Remember Mama cleverly jumps off from George Stevens’ 1948 film “I Remember Mama,” which was nominated for five Academy Awards, to consider the ways in which Fiskin’s mother has aged, and how that’s reflected in their relationship.

Fiskin came to prominence in the 1970s as a photographer who was part of the New Topographics movement. While she was not included in the famous all-male exhibition of that title, Fiskin’s examinations of vernacular architecture in southern California, New York, and beyond earned her significant acclaim. In 2011, J. Paul Getty Museum curator Virginia Heckert published “Some Aesthetic Decisions: The Photographs of Judy Fiskin” in conjunction with the exhibition “In Focus: Los Angeles, 1945-1980,” a Pacific Standard Time exhibition of the Getty’s holdings of Southern California photographs. The 360-page monograph includes a terrific interview Fiskin did with artist John Divola. See more of Fiskin’s pictures at judyfiskin.com.

Fiskin started working in video after experiencing health problems that made photography challenging. That went pretty well right from the start: Her first major video, 1997’s Diary of a Midlife Crisis, was screened at film festivals in the United States and Europe, and won the Silver Spire award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

On the second segment, Michael Duncan discusses “An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle,” an exhibition he co-curated with Christopher Wagstaff. The show debuted at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, traveled to the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, and is on view through August 17 at the American University Museum in Washington, DC. It will conclude its tour this fall at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Siglio Press recently published Duncan’s marvelous “O! Tricky Cad and Other Jessoterica,” a visual wander through Jess’s exquisitely composed collages.

 

Air date: July 17, 2014.