THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Brett Sokol
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| Rachel Kushner in her living room in Los Angeles. On wall, clockwise from left, are “C,” by Chris Williams (2010); “Untitled,” by Anon (Richard Prince), 2015; “Tit Print,” by Brigid Berlin (1995); “After Ono” by James Benning (2014); “One Month Ago (Special Edition)” by Wade Guyton (2014); and on piano, “Fruits and Nuts” by Laura Owens (2011). |
LOS ANGELES — Few of Rachel Kushner’s artworks were purchased outright. While her Angelino Heights Craftsman-style home, where she lives with her husband, Jason Smith, and their son, Remy, may be an intimately scaled who’s who of contemporary art — including West Coast painters like James Hayward and Laura Owens and New Yorkers like Seth Price and Richard Prince — most of these pieces were received in exchange for her writing. When she came to New York from San Francisco in 1996, at 27, she became friends with the painter Alex Brown and subsequently took a deep dive into the downtown art scene. Even after entering Columbia’s M.F.A. writing program, she maintained this affinity. [
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| Clockwise from upper left: James Hayward’s “Smoke #94” (2003); Alex Brown’s “Untitled” (1994); Kerry James Marshall’s pillowcase “Souvenir I” (1997); and Alex Brown’s “Untitled” (1993). |
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| Diana Thater’s “Shumia” (2008). |
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| Laura Owens’s “Untitled” (2013). |
