“She has created an aesthetic form—a visual language,” says Philippe Vergne, one of the organizers of “Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love,” on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 11 through February 3, 2008. That language is elaborated to an unprecedented extent in the exhibition, the first American museum survey of Walker’s work. Whether using shadow puppetry, light projection, or animation, each of Walker’s pieces narrates her ambiguous tales of romance, sadism, oppression, and liberation.

Her 1997 watercolor Do You Like Crème in Your Coffee and Chocolate in Your Milk? envisions black and white bodies packed in a slave ship in sexually compromising positions. Though, as in many of her pieces, it’s hard to tell who’s exploiting whom. The work is one example, Vergne says, of Walker’s ability to tackle race, sexuality, and violence all in one carefully aimed shot.

As for Walker’s new designation as one of the most influential artists of our time, believe the hype, Vergne says: “When someone sees Kara’s work, nobody leaves the room intact.”

The exhibition, which premiered at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis earlier this year, travels to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, from February 17 through May 11, 2008.

Point of Departure
What does an artist renowned for pushing the limits of paint and color theory produce when he puts simple black lines to paper?

According to Jodi Hauptman, curator of “Georges Seurat: The Drawings,” at the Museum of Modern Art, “some of the most spectacular drawings from the 19th century.”

Most art lovers know Seurat for carefully executed Pointillist paintings, in which the artist was interested in mixing colors in the eye rather than on paper, but few have seen his equally meticulous drawings. Not content merely to sketch, Seurat layered thick black conté crayon on creamy white paper to produce luminous portraits of turn-of-the-century Paris. “They are kind of dark and mysterious,” says Hauptman. “They have a cold, white, evocative quality.”

Seurat took his drawings just as seriously as the work he produced with a brush. In 1888, he exhibited eight drawings alongside his monumental paintings at the Salon des Indépendants.

Now MoMA has organized a comprehensive exhibition of his drawings, the first in nearly 25 years, on view from october 28 through
January 17, 2008. Seurat’s renderings of circus performers, popular concert halls, and the “no-man’sland” of factories surrounding the
French capital are normally stashed away for preservation. But here they get the full treatment next to a small selection of the artist’s oil sketches and paintings.

“We’re just so excited to have them here,” says Hauptman, marveling at the range of more than 135 works, which have come from as far away as France, Switzerland, and Japan. The exhibition spans Seurat’s oeuvre— from his academic sketches to studies for monumental Pointillist canvases such as the renowned A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884–86).

Perhaps most exciting of all, visitors will get to flip through the artist’s four existing sketchbooks—virtually, that is. The museum has scanned hundreds of pages to bring these fragile, little-known masterworks to the public.

The Short List
From quirky wrapping paper with images of trash from the Dominican Republic’s beaches to a basketball gutted and turned into a woman’s purse, Quisqueya Henríquez never fails to produce work with inventiveness, humor, and a pointed message. Despite such talent, this midcareer Cuban-Dominican artist has flown largely under the radar in the United States until now. “Quisqueya Henríquez: The World Outside” at the Bronx Museum is the artist’s first major museum survey in the U.S. See it through January 27.

In a unique alliance, New York University’s Grey Art Gallery has teamed up with the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas to bring together one of the most comprehensive overviews of Latin American geometric abstraction ever seen this side of the Rio Grande. “The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection” focuses on how the form evolved from the 1930s through the 1970s in key cities like Montevideo, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Caracas. On view through December 8.