The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Jo Ann Callis

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Jo Ann Callis.

If you know the work of Jeff Wall or Gregory Crewdson or Marilyn Minter, you should know Callis, whose work anticipated theirs. Starting in the early 1970s Callis has constructed both black-and-white and color photographs that consider, sex, sexuality, pleasure and more pleasure.

Aperture has just published “Other Rooms,” a new book of Callis’ investigations of the nude body and sexuality, mostly from the mid-1970s. Amazon offers it for $54. And on Tuesday, June 17th, Callis and Lesley A. Martin will discuss the project at Aperture on West 27th Street in New York. Their conversation starts at 6:30.

Callis is one of the most important photographers of her generation. In two thousand nine the J. Paul Getty Museum presented a retrospective of her work titled “Woman Twirling.” Callises are in the permanent collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

The image above is a detail of Callis' Three Black Bands (1976-77), which is included in “Other Rooms." 

On the second segment Carol S. Eliel discusses her new retrospective of John Altoon, which opened at LACMA this week. Altoon was a member of the group of artists who came of age in post-war Los Angeles, where his paintings and drawings were informed by surrealism and biomorphism and exuded sex. The exhibition will be on view through September 14.

How to listen to this week’s show: Listen to or download this week’s program above, on SoundCloud, via direct-link mp3, or subscribe to The MAN Podcast (for free) at:

• iTunes; 
• SoundCloud; 
• Stitcher; or
• via RSS.