What a soundtrack is to a movie, a Spotify list is to the new non-chronological retrospective of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara now on view at Guggenheim Bilbao: it reveals the mood underpinning the visual landscape. Amongst the 25 tracks Nara selected are tunes from T.Rex, Big Star, Donovan and—in a nod to the national setting—two references to Spain’s countercultural La Movida, in the form of Radio Futura’s Enamorado de la moda juvenil and Tequila’s Salta!!!
“I don’t listen to music in order to draw something,” the artist said in a conversation with curator Mika Yoshitake in 2020, timed with his exhibition at LACMA. “When I’m listening, I see an image and I try to capture it.” He built himself a radio as a child and tuned into broadcasts by the American military stationed in Japan during the Vietnam War. He began going to record shops in middle school. He’s cited Bob Dylan and Neil Young as permanent auditory staples. The New York Times described him as an “insatiable witness to Western pop’s evolution from the flower-child bliss of the mid-60s to the ecstatic thrash of late ’70s punk.” But although many works in the show are named after songs—and a charming dual representation of Dee Dee and Joey Ramone is on view, as musician dogs mid-performance—the music is often sublimated.
“The Nara that we know now, it is the Nara that started in Germany while he was a student at the Kunstakademie,” Lucia Aguirre, curator of the Bilbao show, said. Born in Japan after World War II, Nara went to Germany to study in 1988, after he had been to Documenta in Kassel the year prior. Although he’d already completed a university degree in Japan, he decided to start over. He has stated Japan’s educational system was tinged by a ‘do what you’re told’ approach; he transitioned willingly to Europe’s ‘make up your own mind’ approach. At the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, he studied under the Neo-Expressionist A. R. Penck; other teachers working at the same time included the Bechers and Gerhard Richter. “The problem that he had, of not speaking German when he arrived, made him think about his art as a way to communicate with others.” In 1994, after his studies ended, he moved to Cologne and lived in a collective in a Bauhaus building, remaining there until he had a show at the Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan in 2001, a point at which he decided to return to his native land.
Nara works alone, without studio assistants. He often paints on recycled cardboard boxes, window frames, and used envelopes. “He approaches the canvas without doing any sketching; he’s using the canvas as a laboratory itself,” Aguirre said of Nara’s process. He has collaborated with designer Stella McCartney on two capsule collections of Oxford shirts and shorts. His Knife Behind Back (2000) sold at Sotheby’s for $25 million in Hong Kong; ARTnews called him “one of the most expensive artists in Asia, and his work regularly appears in marquee auctions there.”
His signature Nara girls—some more androgynous than evoking any firm gender identity—are readily distinguishable by their oversized heads, their reductively delineated bodies, and their giant eyes “that are like orange slices,” Aguirre noted. These impish creatures are painted shadowlessly against featureless backgrounds, as was done in the early Renaissance or pre-Renaissance, Aguirre pointed out.
“His sense of humor is so developed in his drawings,” Aguirre said. Indeed, there is something amusing and sly about these devious creatures. In one reproduction of a typical ukiyo-e woodblock print, a geisha peers over a Nara girl scowling from within a teacup. Of this delightfully interventionist work, it’s like he’s “changing the history of art a little bit.”
His work underwent a sharp tonal change, however, after the Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami of 2011. Many thousands of people were killed, creating an unfathomable sense of loss. For a while, Nara stopped producing. When he did start again, the tenor and style of his work had changed. Aguirre cited Miss Margaret (2016) as a prime example of a new approach: layered surfaces, variegated color use and a new articulation of the eyes in a tremulously melancholic gaze. This has continued all the way through Midnight Tears (2023), the most recent work in the show, with its softened, motley portrayal of a mournful figure. What remains the same throughout, per Aguirre: “the face of the girl, in the center, like a moon in the middle of the canvas.”
This show at Guggenheim Bilbao is Nara’s first big exhibition in Europe. After its run in the U.S. at LACMA, the exhibition traveled to the Yuz Museum in Shanghai; following its time at the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, the show will move to the Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands. As for why Nara’s presence in Europe hasn’t been very notable, despite his twelve-year stint on the continent, Aguirre was unsure about what accounts for this. “We have done the Murakami show here in Bilbao, and also we have done the Yayoi Kusama show,” Aguirre reflected, regarding the museum’s non-Western programming. “Nara is an artist who has always been here. Perhaps we are a little bit Euro-centric in Europe but that is beginning to change.”
New York is gearing up for a busy September, with the Armory Show alongside other fall art fairs and major exhibitions marking the return of an art world in full swing. With that ahead of us, Hauser & Wirth just announced their September show, “Et in Arcadia Ego,” which is guaranteed to be a must-see. Artist Rashid Johnson conceived of the show in consultation with Hauser & Wirth curatorial senior director Kate Fowle (previously director of MoMA PS1), structuring it around a body of work by acclaimed American artist Leon Golub from the early 1950s to the late 1990s.
It’s rare to see such significant works by this artist in a commercial setting, as most are owned by major museums or in private collections. Indeed, the show will feature substantial loans from both The Broad and the Ulrich Meyer and Harriet Horwitz Meyer Collection. The works will be displayed in conversation with Johnson’s own art, as well as with new and existing pieces by other internationally acclaimed contemporary artists Johnson selected for “Et in Arcadia Ego,” including Philip Guston, david hammons, Wifredo Lam, Sharon Lockhart, Robert Longo, Teresa Margolles, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Taryn Simon. The exhibition also includes text excerpts from writers like Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, Samuel Beckett and Percival Everett. The show as a whole will explore the complexities of human nature, focusing on the genesis and accompanying emotions of moments of conflict and uncertainty—which feels fitting in this moment of rising geopolitical tensions and increasing precariousness of societal structures at different levels.
The title “Et in Arcadia Ego” comes from Golub’s 1997 painting Time’s Up, in which the archaic Latin phrase is inscribed over an upturned skull. The Latin phrase is also commonly associated with a Baroque masterwork by Guercino (1591-1666), and the words ‘et in arcadia ego’ are typically translated to mean “I, too, am in Paradise,” with the I referring to death. Mortality was a recurring theme in the Baroque, despite the celebration and emphasis on splendor and magnificence. Much like now, it was a time of dramatic expression of emotional and sensory sensations in a time of secular changes in the order of society, as the temporal and religious powers oppressively responded to ongoing changes to their level of authority.
Golub’s work has always been rich with mythological allusions that reference contemporary societal and political themes. Through his use of scale and ambitious materials, his paintings aim for a stature akin to ancient bas-reliefs of historical narratives. However, in most of his scenes, the classical connotation of heroism is subverted, revealing the inner and external human drama behind each war, battle and combatant.
Golub lived in Italy for several years with his wife, artist Nancy Spero, spending time in Rome between 1959 and 1964. This period was highly formative for his work, as he was deeply inspired by the remnants of ancient culture around the country. He perceived the ancient Roman Empire as a “cosmopolitan urban culture under stress,” characterized by themes of authority and violence, where a more natural relationship with death was a daily experience. Many of Golub’s works reflect an attempt to recover messages from this glorious yet turbulent past, offering timeless metaphors and archetypes of human behavior across time and space. As a source of inspiration for his work, the artist also used to collect ephemera—from slogans, graffiti and tattoos to news photographs and other publicly available imagery—which later nourished his own compositions.
These “radical juxtapositions” and “proxy positionings” have long fueled Johnson’s interest in Golub’s work. Similarly, Johnson strives to archive materials and symbols from recent urban history, creating large-scale works that layer structures and meanings from various sources, using the potential of materials to serve as vessels for cultural memories and stories. “In looking back at the psychological condition of post-war sensibility, I think, as a contemporary African American artist, there are critical and philosophical parallels,” Johnson said in a statement. “I’m interestingly positioned to talk about the potentially transgressive and polarizing dynamic of experiencing a sense of tragedy while figuring out how to illustrate and navigate it.’
Golub foregrounded a relentless commitment to bearing historical witness within images and their remnants, elaborating on the collective historical traumas that tested humanity—such as the Holocaust, the U.S.’s use of the atomic bomb and the highly mediated abuses of the Vietnam War, as well as American interventions in South Africa and Central America in the 1980s.
Leon Golub, Philosopher IV,1958, Lacquer and oil on canvas, 206.5 x 120.7 x 3.8 cm / 81 1/4 x 47 1/2 x 1 1/2 in / 210.8 x 126.7 x 7.6 cm / 83 x 49 7/8 x 3 in (framed). Photo: Alex Delfanne
Through what he describes as a “kaleidoscopic unpacking,” Johnson has selected works for the Hauser & Wirth show featuring individuals from different backgrounds, creating a transitional space where his art and Golub’s works intersect with those of artists who have similarly grappled with the horrors and anxieties of contemporary society.
Golub’s method of scraping and layering paint created something akin to the weathered surfaces of ancient frescoes and sculptures, suggesting both the passage of time and the persistence of violence throughout history. From this perspective, the choice to include artists such as Hammons, McClodden and Margolles was obvious, as they also applied this idea of human traces and cultural remains as a translation of collective traumas and its reading in the inner psychological dimension of the individuals, victims of broader societal and political systems.
What we can expect from the show is a series of powerful conversations aimed at broadening the understanding of Golub’s artistic and sociopolitical research and the extent of it in capturing the feelings of an entire historical age, often foreshadowing the continuation of this human drama in a new century.
“Et In Arcadia Ego,” curated by Rashid Johnson, opens at Hauser & Wirth New York on September 5.
An installation entry view of Fawn Rogers’ “Everything is Sacred, Nothing is Precious; Everything is Precious, Nothing is Sacred” at Make Room, Los Angeles. Courtesy the artist and Make Room
As I peer through the large glass window of the new one-room solo installation by artist Fawn Rogers, my eyes scan the dozens of small, colorful paintings that pack the walls from floor to ceiling. Some feature mangled automobiles, cigarette-smoking monkeys and ironic cake icing messages, while others offer glimpses of pure nature: rare avian species, bare feet on lush lawns and adorable copulating ducks. Oh, but there’s also the benevolent Dalai Lama, and how about that close-up of grill-capped teeth saddled by sexy snarling lips? Seemingly dissimilar, these images come across like hyper, comic and wanton flashes of late-night television channel surfing—a place where we relinquish our consciousness and will to the oblivion of shock-value programming. Together, in this small white space, I wonder what they mean. I take it all in and pause.
Then, I approach the doorway to the gallery’s [ROOM] space entrance, lowering my gaze to a dense carpet of living, green sod that runs from corner to corner. An unavoidable, center-seated, large furry chess set, entitled R.I.P., now grabs my strict attention. Hand-hewn, patinaed bronze statues of extinct animals act as playing pieces on top of the board, where the faults and follies of humankind are played out by the very victims of our assault against the planet. Luckily, in this safe space, we’re offered a mere game to play, helping us make light—and maybe gain a small semblance of control—of the woes that add up to the inevitable burden of heavy consumerist life as we know it.
When I ask Rogers, whose show “Everything is Sacred, Nothing is Precious; Everything is Precious, Nothing is Sacred” closes soon at L.A.’s Make Room, about what chess means to her, she mentions dominance and conquest and tells me she was inspired by the works of Jake and Dinos Chapman and Rachel Whiteread… as well as soap chess boards made in prisons.
Dominance, triumph, subjugation, conquest. Whatever happened to strategy—or fun, for that matter? How do we look at games today? I remember a few years ago reading an often-misattributed quote, “Life is just like a game. First, you have to learn the rules of the game. And then play it better than anyone else.” Playing the game of life ‘better than anyone else’ is perhaps the problem. Why? Because we should be in it together reasoning through conflict and attaining harmony, instead of competing for space in the zero-sum fallacy. Of course, our lives can be perceived as an oppositional game-like succession of events—similar to chess—in some ways. Suggesting that “life is a game” might imply that we should approach life—and our obligations to the natural world—as an elective, off-time leisure activity with lesser importance. However, it can also lead to greater investment and interest in responsible living, akin to the ‘flow state’ engagement found in enjoyable games.
So, what might the work of Rogers do? She presents a party-on place to play during our prime-time pop cultural yen for fatal fantasy, meme-making and cosplaying in the virtual land we pay witness to and remotely occupy. But, as she said plainly: “The work hopefully prompts the viewer to appreciate the role they play.” For me, that role means the locked-in-step dance with the real world, the here-and-now, enacting some commitment that will hopefully extend beyond my backyard into the sustainable global realm, a place the artist cares deeply about. So, I decided to look again and engage with Rogers’s objects directly in the real world.
After I get off the phone with the artist, I hop in the car, drive down Hollywood back roads and return to the exhibition space. There’s little conspicuous activity in the area. I see the workaday lineup of whitewashed warehouse soundstages, fast food joints, storage facilities and a gas station. It’s like a no-person’s land between the powerhouse Paramount movie studio and the dying fashion retail sprawl of Melrose Avenue. It’s a fitting location to think about Rogers’s concerns and work. No, it’s not inside an animal sanctuary or a clean energy lobby headquarters on Capitol Hill. Instead, it’s the result of our excess industrial production, the place where motion media stories are generated for dream-drinking audiences, where we fill our cars with fossil fuels and where we store our junk. But the Rogers show—with paintings of mutated but thriving Chernobyl flowers and trees that grow through wrecked car engine bays—is a living, breathing break in it all. It’s sometimes important to pause in the eye of the storm to see where the rapid swirling winds and rising waters might take us.
Rogers’ art encourages both the beauty and the profanity of the past, encouraging us to live, and, engage, in the present. Courtesy the artist and Make Room
Despite the sharp urgency and formal manifest outline of the artist’s quest to reflect our foibles and willful exploits in “Everything is Sacred, Nothing is Precious; Everything is Precious, Nothing is Sacred,” the work seems rather innocent upon second viewing. While deftly made by a seasoned artist, the inner-childlike quality throughout helps represent the installation as a sincere invitation to explore, rather than a cry for help or even a demonstrative lesson. Some art holds a rear view mirror up to our activity at large, some art breaks the mirror into pieces to readjust our perspective and some art creates a new daring path we might take to avoid the pitfalls already experienced. Rogers’ art may well accomplish the first two by examining both the beauty and the profanity of the past, encouraging us to live—and, again, engage—in the present. What about the future, you may ask? It’s uncertain, of course. Until then, we have art to help us out a little.
Observer briefly caught up with Rogers at the exhibition’s tail end to discuss her practice, the show and her thoughts on the world’s current state.
How long have you focused on the many weighty issues central to your work?
I’ve been investigating and creating art about humanity’s demise for over two decades. I don’t have answers about how to ease the suffering caused by the climate crisis, the conflicts of humans versus the unbuilt world, or, of course, humans versus each other. I avoid preaching a dogmatic message and instead focus on capturing the characteristics of our present day—one big end-of-the-world party. When I think about making my work, I feel grandiose piano playing as the ship goes down or party horns blaring as a house burns.
Your Ass is Grass 4J, 2022 (Oil on canvas, 20” x 16” 50.80cm x 40.64cm) and Your Ass is Grass 3K, 2022 (Oil on canvas, 19” x 14” 48.26cm x 35.56cm). Courtesy the artist and Make Room
What influences sharpened your formative awareness of the classic human vs. nature conflict that now seems more pronounced than ever?
I grew up in the woods of Oregon, immersed in the wild. When my family later moved to the city, it was a stark contrast to the world that I knew. My mother is of Cherokee descent, and my stepfather was also Native American, so valuing harmony with the natural world was often part of our family conversations.
As kids, we were made to read several books by survivalist Tom Brown Jr., such as The Tracker, which detailed an incredibly dark and seemingly realistic vision of the future.
Another important influence was Walkabout, directed by Nicolas Roeg, one of the first films I ever saw. Under the pretense of a picnic, a city man takes his two children into the wild and attempts to kill them and then kill himself. The children are saved by an Aboriginal boy who teaches them how to survive in nature. The movie focuses on the disharmony between the unbuilt world and the dangers of modernity. This theme has been central to my practice from the very beginning, in a way, a burden I cannot escape.
At the same time, my alcoholic mother had a severe religious “psychosis” and was constantly discussing the rapture, her god and the end of the world. I felt fear at times but was also very aware of the ironic and real impending destruction of the natural world––versus my mother’s imagined doom where I would be left behind.
Why is this show important for you to mount right now?
With so much suffering in the world and all the overwhelming conflicts, I am interested in their primary sources. Humans are flawed and we have never evolved past the desire to conquer and destroy.
Our world is rapidly changing. I was interested in creating an immersive experience with a macabre, humorous tone where the audience can actively engage with the themes of the work—and possibly participate in the critical thinking process.
Left to right: Your Ass is Grass 21, 2022 (Oil on canvas, 18” x 18” x 1” 45.72cm x 45.72cm x 2.54cm) and a corner view of “Everything is Sacred, Nothing is Precious; Everything is Precious, Nothing is Sacred.” Courtesy the artist and Make Room
Tell me a little about this format and how the show came together.
I wanted to show this series of paintings, Your Ass is Grass, in a more compact space to emphasize their value as an approaching storm, so to speak, and provide a sense of urgency. In the space, audiences are surrounded by one hundred small oil paintings with a bed of real grass below their feet dying over the course of the exhibition. The audience is invited to lounge and play the R.I.P. centerpiece with recently extinct animal chessmen cast in bronze on an oversized board of faux fur. A small army of intently forward-looking frogs serve as pawns and reference the current extinction of half the world’s amphibians. So, players can knock their enemies to the ground but they’re being intently watched—maybe even judged—by paintings of endangered birds, erotic dancers and collaged portraits of other figures that are part human, part animal, part ashtray.
What state do you think we’re approaching today?
I believe the world is one big crime scene and we’re all personally involved. I think a lot about when we become consciously aware that humanity can quickly and intentionally cause the extinction of another species, which we did with the great auk at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution. At the time, that event disproved Darwin’s theory that extinction typically happened over a long period—all because of our distinctly heinous human shenanigans. We became aware of the negative impact of our actions but continued—and continue—in this manner, nonetheless. In my sculpture, R.I.P., the great auk appears as the bishop. That bird was the first casualty of the Anthropocene-Epoch expansion.
Of course, the game of chess has shown up in just about every art medium over the ages—from the paintings of Honoré Daumier to Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey—as a charged symbol about the clever tacticians who play it. It was also the preferred game of such art luminaries as Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso. What does it mean to you?
Chess is a game of triumph, but triumph is a corollary of conquest. It is notably a game that the harmony-promoting Buddha refused to play. The game’s colonial history, coupled with an emphasis on dominance, finds fresh implications in our current subjugation of the natural world. When making R.I.P., I was inspired by the works of Jake and Dinos Chapman and Rachel Whiteread, as well as soap chess boards made in prisons.
Designed by Japanese architects Nikken and nestled in the forest, Pola Museum of Art achieves a full symbiosis between Hakone’s natural beauty and art. Pola Museum of Art
The Pola Museum of Art might not yet be as well-known an art destination in Japan as the art islands Naoshima and Teshima but nevertheless, this private museum up in the mountains—just a two-hour train ride from Tokyo—offers the perfect combination of art and nature. All it takes to get there is the Romancecar limited express train up to Hakone-Yumoto Station. From there, you’ll transfer to a little old-style train that will take you on a 40-minute ride through rustically beautiful scenery, all the way up to the town of Hakone, where a shuttle (or the regular bus) can transport you to the museum. It’s a bit of a hike, but I can assure you it’s worth the trek.
Designed by Japanese architecture firm Nikken Sekkei, the Pola Museum of Art’s stunning glass and concrete architecture perfectly integrates with the surrounding landscape of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. A large installation by Welsh artist and sculptor Cerith Wyn Evans occupies the extensive transitional space between exterior and interior, where bronze sculptures welcome you, including some by Henry Moore. Inside, the museum is a treasure chest of some of the most iconic masterpieces of Impressionist art.
The museum’s collection of approximately 10,000 items was assembled over some 40 years by the late Tsuneshi Suzuki, the second-generation head of the Pola Corporation, who established the museum and opened it to the public in 2002. The current show, “From Impressionism to Richter,” pairs the work of German contemporary artists with Monet’s Nyphees and Moules, as well as some of the finest works by Renoir, Cézanne and Picasso plus two enigmatic portraits by Amedeo Modigliani.
A view of the museum’s striking architecture in conversation with Cerith Wyn Evans’s neon sculpture. Photo by Elisa Carollo
In this unique setting, the museum is currently presenting the largest survey of Philippe Parreno’s work in Japan in the thought-provoking exhibition, “Places and Spaces,” making the trip even more of a must.
Since the ’90s, the acclaimed French artist has been challenging and investigating cinema as a medium of narration, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, artificial and natural, and unveiling its mechanisms and dynamics. His works, as well as his exhibitions, often consist of an ever-changing open field, which exposes the viewer to different technological simulations aimed at suspending the sense and perception of reality.
At Pola Museum of Art, Parreno has created a large-scale theatrical set divided into distinctive chapters or rooms, where mysterious presences, voices, lights, darkness and hidden messages come together in a dramatic sequence. Transforming the museum space into a labyrinth of symbols, the exhibition immerses the visitor in experiences of both wonder and confusion, not knowing what will be next or if one is already involved as a performer.
The journey starts in one of his aquarium rooms, where the sense of reality and materiality is subverted by a series of mylar floating fish that make you feel like you are inside water. Slowly drifting, these colorful fishes evoke a sense of familiarity, a hint of melancholy and nostalgia for a childhood left behind. Notably, in this latest work from Parreno’s fish balloon series, the artist meticulously crafted each of the fish eyes that convey irrepressible curiosity and joy, as they seem to be lost in contemplation in an imaginary ocean of the outdoor forest.
Philippe Parreno, My Room Is Another Fish Bowl. Photo by Elisa Carollo
In the next room, in his well-known installation Marilyn (2012), the actress’s deep loneliness resonates in her voice (here is generated by an algorithm) and in her writing (here recreated by a robot). Meanwhile, the camera pans silently around her hotel suite at New York’s opulent Waldorf Astoria Hotel, recording personal effects the diva left behind while trying to give her point of view. In this complex choreography and continuous interplay between fiction and reality, between artificial and automatic, the actress is continuously embodied and disembodied, resulting in what the artist has described as “a portrait of a ghost embodied in an image.” Questioning the power of the camera’s eye to shape our sense of reality while obscuring or emphasizing specific aspects in relation to what is shown or not shown, Parreno unveils the other side of the celebrity: there’s insecurity, fragility and deep discomfort lurking under the glamor and perfection shown on the screen.
The artifice behind this complex installation, and also the genius of the artist’s mind, is revealed downstairs in another room showcasing a series of rarely shown drawings created for three films: Marilyn, C.H.Z. and those currently in production (100 Questions, 50 Lies) along with a standalone drawing series, Lucioles.
Presented inside vitrines, these images dramatically appear and disappear with the interplay of light and darkness as some sudden epiphanies emerge from the subconscious. Parreno’s drawings are more like prophetic dreams. Made in preparation for the movies more than mental maps or storyboards, they appear as free annotations of symbols, situations and feelings. As precious witnesses to the inner workings of Parreno’s creative process, these seemingly random constellations of images envision sporadic moments then coming together in the flow of the cinematic life.
The following room is occupied by orange and uncannily shaped balloons floating but also hanging as parasites. They’re part of Speech Bubbles, a series that Philippe Parreno conceived around the end of the ‘90s as a mass of cartoonish 3D speech bubbles of different colors, trapped against and suspended in their noise, without a way to convey their messages. The first batch of Speech Bubbles was produced in 1997 for a labor union demonstration—participants were meant to write messages on them. Today, with their playful but somehow disturbing and invasive presence, they stand as a critique of the transient culture of online chatting and of the futility of a public debate becoming increasingly empty of solid arguments and positions, but they can also represent the suppressed, silent protestations of countless voiceless individuals
Parreno’s Balloons are accompanied here by an article published in 1975 by Italian writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Disappearance of the Fireflies,” in which he mourned the vanishing of fireflies due to rapidly worsening environmental pollution, drawing parallels to the decline in postwar Italy’s culture and inner wealth as a result of insensible consumerism and authoritarianism. Inspired by this famous text and the powerful poetic metaphors made by the writer, in 1993, Parreno created an installation featuring electric lights that imitated fireflies: turned on only at night and so never encountered by visitors during museum hours, they powerfully evoked this idea of rebirth and loss, of renewal and the fragility of the flame of hope, to stay alive also in dark and discouraging geopolitical times.
Philippe Parreno, Speech Bubbles (Transparent Orange). Photo by Elisa Carollo
This experience of suspension between light and darkness, hope and despair, deception and simulation, continues in the next room, where a haunting robotic creature made of light bulbs stands, illuminating only intermittently. As an epiphanic presence emerging from the black void, it could be an angel from the hyper-technological age or a mermaid trapped in the relics of the electronic industry. A bench in the darkness invites you to sit in front of an LCD display that intricately replicates a future landscape imagined by generative A.I., the direction of light changing in alignment with the real-time position of the sun. On the other side, another luminous machine connected to numerous cables blinks in an organic yet irregular rhythm, as an alien creature that has been captured and imprisoned into a machine to study it.
All these tech-animated creatures in the room appear to have lives of their own, out of any functionality humans could have created them for. Still, everything in this sci-fi or post-human imaginative-yet-real space is carefully choreographed and manipulated by Parreno to deliver an uncannily nonsensical yet cohesive organic experience as if everything was in a code, in a language and rationale that goes beyond human comprehension.
Oscillating between chaos and order, between playful and unsettling and disorientating experiences, Parreno suspends any ordinary sense of reality, triggering a more conscious interrogation of what reality is once this is constantly integrated, shaped and manipulated by new everyday technologies, even beyond cinematic fiction.
In a moment when A.I. is supposed to “Ignite the Consciousness Revolution,” Philippe Parreno once again created an open field for a critical investigation of the complex interplay between technology, human experience, human cognition and the nature of reality itself. Repeatedly forcing the visitor into a series of experiences where boundaries between the virtual and physical world continuously blur, the artist proves to us how differentiating between “real” and “authentic” becomes more challenging if we don’t start to question what we perceive and what produced the data and input we absorbed.
Welcome to Reality Park echos eerily in the darkness of the last room, inviting us into an ambiguous unreality or possibly a portal to another reality. Parreno’s work appears as a “reality check,” unraveling the various potential levels of reality, many of which already seem to escape common understanding due to the intricate interplay between digital manipulation, A.I. and emerging technologies that have already infiltrated our daily lives.
As one exits Pola Museum of Art, out of this technological hyper-exposure, a nature trail leads one into the woods, where stunning works of contemporary art and sound art coexist with the very real landscape. In the forest’s silence, you can contemplate the gentle ripples in the water caused by the wind on Roni Horn’s cast glass Air Burial, listen to a music piece echoing softly across the trees and concentrate on your breath as you walk through the world and its beauty. Here, in this serene setting, perhaps, there’s still a chance to achieve a moment of higher consciousness out of our primordial human perception of the reality surrounding us.
One of the absolute highlights of the second edition of Tokyo’s art week was the Alexander Calder show, “Calder: Un effet du Japonais,” now on view through September 6 at Azubudai Hills Art Gallery in collaboration with Pace Gallery. The exhibition celebrates Pace’s new Japanese outpost, which had its soft opening and preview timed to coincide with Tokyo Gendai. The ambitious show marks the first extensive presentation of the artist’s work in the city, following a series of institutional shows in other parts of Japan. “It took us twenty years to do a Calder show in Tokyo,” Calder Foundation president and curator of the exhibition, Alexander S. C. Rower told Observer. We had the pleasure of walking through the exhibition with Rower (whom many might know as Sandy Rower, Calder’s grandson). “This is really a gift to Japan,” he said. “He could have had a big party, but Marc [Glimcher] decided on this multimillion-dollar show instead.”
Despite Calder never actually traveling to the country and never openly claiming any direct connection with Japanese culture, the show sheds new light on how much of his art had absorbed and inventively interpreted an approach to form and space typical of the Japanese aesthetic. As Rower explained, this was probably the result of Calder’s parents collecting many Japanese tools and prints that then surrounded the artist during his youth.
Featuring around 100 works from the Calder Foundation’s collection spanning the 1920s to the 1970s, the exhibition was not conceived as a retrospective but aims instead to explore the relationship Calder’s art had with Japan and how the country’s aesthetic influenced and nourished his endless inventiveness in poetically reimagining sculptural forms. According to Rower, it’s about looking at Calder’s work with fresh eyes. The line, of course, appears as a leading element throughout Alexander Calder’s career, shaping a formal journey into the rhythm of nature and natural circles. As masters of Japanese ink painting would do, Calder was able to suggest form, space, energy and movement with nothing more than a black line.
The exhibition, which is the artist’s first solo show in Tokyo in almost thirty-five years, draws its title from the enigmatic piece positioned right at the entrance of the show, Effect Japonaise, which mirrors the beauty of a tree’s floating leaves moving with the wind and the beauty of a star suspended in the sky, also recalling the dancing movement of the fans during the traditional Kabuki dance, which can be adjusted to evoke the wind, the water, the snow and other natural phenomena.
Calder’s oeuvre is deeply imbued with the Japanese “aesthetics of emptiness,” based on a necessary dialectic relation between emptiness and presence that allows a dynamic space of transformation—a place where processes can still flow and find a balance. His sculptures appear to translate the philosophical and construction concept of “MA,” namely the interchangeable relation that needs to exist between place, space and void. Yet his use of the line on canvas often follows the lesson of Japanese traditional ink paintings, and the haboku technique in particular, where a few very rapid monochrome ink strokes can suggest a landscape not explicitly identified and, more importantly, the air circulating in between the subjects, translating a simultaneous both sensory and spiritual engagement with the scene.
The first epiphany related to these crucial aspects of Calder’s practice comes with the first artworks we encounter in the exhibition: sketches of animals hanging on the first wall, just a few single linear traits quickly drawn on white paper to describe creatures and the dynamics between them. These works remind one of the Cirque Calder, one of his early works. Calder, in the 20s, was working as a toy designer, and in 1926 he made mechanical toys that led to the creation of his Circus, now on permanent view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. However, the Azubudai Hills Art Gallery show purposely avoids presenting his wire sculptures, focusing instead on what Calder was sharing with the Japanese traditional aesthetic and philosophical approach to the line as space: “drawing in space,” as critics describe the artist’s practice.
On the first wall, we are also invited to examine two large paintings, which are very much not what Calder fans might regard as his most significant. They’re there, Rower explained, because they were the first two works by Calder shown in Japan in 1965 as part of an extensive show of Western art in, of all places, a department store. In one, we see a view of Calder’s studio in 1955.
As we move to the second cluster of works in this survey, a series of early abstract paintings from the ’30s show how Calder was absorbing and elaborating in a very personal way the lessons of the avant-garde and the sensibility of surrealism. The burgeoning surrealist movement naturally influenced Calder, and some of its most prominent voices, including Joan Miró, André Breton and Jean Arp, became his friends. Some of Calder’s abstract paintings show his closeness with Mirò, as they shared an interest in establishing rhythmic and dialectic relations between organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn together with sharp and interlacing lines into new “constellations.”
A significant contribution in translating this formal and narrative rhythm into the space in this extensive show is provided by thoughtful exhibition design conceived of by Japanese architect Stephanie Goto, a longtime Calder Foundation collaborator. Rooted in the proportion of the geometry of a 3:4:5 triangle, the design plays with traditional Japanese materials such as cherry wood and the mysterious blackboard black paper, which create a framework where Calder’s sculptures can differently emerge or be camouflaged to create a new tension between the elements and offer new suggestive allusions to their parallels in nature. The black paper background, in particular, allows for an entirely different experience of Calder’s use of color. The three red spheres suspended in space become the protagonists; there’s the structure, but like a trunk, it serves to elevate and connect with these suspended celestial presences.
In our walkthrough with Rower, we stopped to contemplate a curious story connected with one of the works on view that showcased the inventiveness of the American Modernist sculptor: one of the sculptures is kept together with both permanent rivets and removable screws, which let the sculpture to come apart and be reassembled. The piece is from 1945, right after the war, and Rower explained that at the time, due to the limited resources, Calder was repurposing everything he could find in the studio. Duchamp once visited him and, fascinated by the recent evolution of Calder’s work, now all made from scraps, he wanted to organize a show in Paris, suggesting they could send the sculptures by airmail. “Calder made demountable sculptures that could fit in a small package that could be in Paris the next day, where the work would be reassembled,” said Rower. “As with a teleport, you could collapse a work of art down and then send it, and then it reappears the same as what it was, which has something extremely pioneering both on a technical and conceptual level at the time.”
As we proceeded through the exhibition, we encountered the sculptures depicted in the two paintings at the entrance. One of those, in particular, seemed quite explicative of the idea of “drawing in space.” It stands in the extreme synthesis of its thin, linear sculptural body thanks to the specific inclination and angle that allows it to stand, counterbalancing the busy top part. Above, there is a strange mobile with a more symbolic appearance floating in space, reminding us of the iconography of the dragon in some ancient Asian mythology. Rower explained that this is the only piece that didn’t come directly from the Calder Foundation. In the corner, a towering black stabile is a meditation on the shape of the triangle; between compression, expansion and elevation, it eventually recalls a Pagoda, as its title suggests.
To the other side, the exhibition’s second section presents much more of what one expects to see in a show of Calder’s work, with some beautiful examples of his stabiles and gouaches carefully selected for their resonances with Japanese aesthetics and sensibility. And in between, Rower opted to include a video by John Cage filming a selection of Calder’s sculptures from different perspectives with an accompanying score of dedicated music that enhances the rhythmicity in their perception. It’s almost hypnotic and does a fine job of translating on video the actual experience of Calder’s sculptures, as they dance in a sort of ritual, moving organically like leaves on a tree.
This video and certain other works in the exhibition particularly exemplify how Calder’s idea of sculpture is all about staging constellations of forms in space, often with the ambition to replicate broader cosmic orders and processes. As in the traditional Japanese ink paintings, Calder uses empty space as the climax of action: in the dialectic between complete and void, the free space allows the void to circulate between subjects, distinguishing them, amplifying and enhancing their action bringing to fruition the height of the representation/presentation. Viewers are drawn into these endless dynamics between the form and the space, in a similar dialectic tension that characterizes all the interrelational exchanges with the outside world. Calder’s sculptures invite us to experience art from multiple perspectives, drawing visual lines in the tridimensional space—something that anticipated the research of Minimalist artists just a few years later.
A group of paintings and gouaches toward the end of “Calder: Un effet du Japonais” highlights how his use of circular lines and forms resonates with “ensō,” another key concept in traditional Japanese calligraphy and ink painting. As one of the most potent symbols of Zen 禅, the circular shape becomes synonymous with the cosmic circle enclosing emptiness. It is a symbol of the absolute, of the totality of phenomena, and at the same time, of the extreme intuition and understanding of both the formal and philosophical role of emptiness, which the art of Calder attempts to reach.
Ironically, the show’s closing piece is a metal maquette for an outdoor sculpture that recalls in its shape and movement the Great Wave by Hokusai, playing with what is arguably one of the most iconic paintings of Japanese art known by the international public, while still moving beyond such art historical stereotypes. Ultimately, Rower’s unique Calder exhibition effectively reveals unexpected and largely unexplored connections between the art of the Modern American master and Japan, demonstrating how modern art is shaped by cultural exchanges between artists operating at the historical intersection of local/nationalist resistance and the unstoppable forces of globalization.
“Calder: Un effet du japonais” is on view through Friday, September 6, 2024 at Azubudai Hills Art Gallery in Tokyo.
“Darcy & Darcy: In Monochrome” is at Nunu Fine Art through Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art New York
Brad Darcy still remembers family dinners where the television news was always on, his father’s sharp eyes glued to the screen, taking in the day’s events. Afterward, his father, Thomas F. Darcy, would invite all the children into his studio to critique his latest political cartoon. “He valued our opinions, even as kids,” Brad Darcy recalls. “We grew up knowing he was doing really important work, but it came with risks—death threats over mail and calls, and moving houses often to stay safe.”
Thomas F. Darcy (1932-2000) considered himself a “newsman,” as Brad recalls. He first worked in the advertising industry before shifting to editorial cartooning at the daily newspaper Newsday. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1970 for his penetrating works addressing the Vietnam War and racial discrimination. This was followed by the Best Cartoon on Foreign Affairs Award in 1970 and 1973, a Meeman Conservation Award in 1972 and 1974, and a National Headliner Award in 1974. Thomas F. Darcy’s works cover a broad spectrum of topics, from the Vietnam War and racism to nuclear arms. Known for incisive and witty political commentary, Darcy’s cartoons offer a sharp perception of the contemporary milieu.
Illustrations by Brad Darcy. Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art New York
When his fourth son, Brad Darcy, was born in 1969, Darcy realized that Brad was a rebel. Brad did not follow his father’s or brothers’ footsteps to become an art director or cartoonist. Instead, he studied at The Fashion Institute of Technology and then pursued an education in computer art at the School of Visual Arts. He considered his illustrations as spontaneous “automatic drawings.”
Nearly twenty-four years after his death, Darcy’s work is being exhibited alongside his son’s in “Darcy & Darcy: In Monochrome,” currently on view at Nunu Fine Art New York through August 24. The show features over 120 of Darcy’s original editorial cartoons from the postwar decades and more than 50 of Brad Darcy’s black-and-white works on paper depicting his spontaneous “automatic drawing” sessions.
At a time when students worldwide are protesting on campuses in response to the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, the show is timely. It invites viewers to reflect on the anti-war movement, both past and present, challenging the status quo with a blend of humor and critique. The simplicity of black lines on white paper distills complex subjects to their essence, making the work both accessible and profoundly impactful.
One striking element in the gallery is a series of letters from the White House signed by Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (38th U.S. president from 1974 to 1977) and Richard Nixon (37th U.S. president from 1969 to 1974), displayed in a case on the left. Darcy made several pieces mocking the government’s inactions and corruption related to the war, expressing a deeply anguished atmosphere, as corruption, spying and skepticism became public preoccupations—issues that remain relevant today.
Despite the satirical nature of Darcy’s work, Nixon was a fan. In a letter sent on June 11, 1969, Nixon wrote: “Dear Mr. Darcy, I am delighted to have your ‘honeymoon’ cartoon. I understand that in the absence of the original, you very generously drew another for me, and I am very grateful for the time and efforts this thoughtful gesture must have required.”
Thomas F. Darcy, Political Cartoon 694, August 11, 1969; Ink and Zip-a-tone on illustration board. Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art New York
In a piece titled “Political Cartoon 694” (August 11, 1969), Darcy masterfully encapsulates the tension between authoritarian power and youthful protest. The cartoon features a stern, authoritarian leader, possibly a military general, seated at a desk labeled “Super Powers Inc.,” with a backdrop of peace-sign-carrying student protestors. The bold lines and intricate detailing on the uniform and the leader’s expression emphasize Darcy’s skill in conveying authority and disdain. The caption, “Silly kids think they can change the world overnight!” reflects the dismissive attitude of the establishment towards the anti-war movement, capturing the generational and ideological divide of the era. The stark mention of a “20 MINUTE WARNING FOR TOTAL NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION” underscores the looming threat of nuclear war during the Cold War period, critiquing the government’s prioritization of power and war over public sentiment and peace. This cartoon not only highlights Darcy’s incisive and witty political commentary but also resonates with contemporary issues, echoing current student movements and global political tensions.
Thomas F. Darcy, Political Cartoon 1316, February 11, 1973; Ink, pencil, and Zip-a-tone on illustration board. Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art New York
In another piece titled “Political Cartoon 1316” (February 11, 1973), the artist confronts the stark realities faced by Vietnam War veterans. The image depicts a slumped, heroin-addicted veteran lying against a brick wall, with a discarded syringe beside him. Above, a billboard ironically reads, “Help A Veteran…Buy A Poppy,” highlighting the hollow gestures of support offered by society. The detailed rendering of the veteran’s posture and the stark text on his jacket serves as a powerful commentary on the neglect and struggles faced by those who served. Through this piece, Darcy not only critiques the superficiality of societal support but also evokes empathy and awareness of the ongoing plight of war veterans. The cartoon remains a powerful and relevant reminder of the human cost of conflict and the failures of societal and governmental support systems.
Of course, Darcy’s work drew controversy. In a letter from the Houston Post’s news director on Oct. 5, 1966, Williams J. Woestendiek wrote, “Darcy… I am sure [he was] the best editorial cartoonist Houston ever had. However, the cartoon that appealed so much to you and to EDITOR & PUBLISHER proved to be too strong for Houston blood and Darcy is no longer with us.”
Throughout his career, Darcy worked at multiple news outlets, such as the Phoenix Gazette, Houston Post, and Philadelphia Bulletin, but his longest tenure was at Newsday, a daily New York newspaper serving primarily Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. Due to the emotional toll carried in his work, Darcy had a series of nervous breakdowns when he worked as a political cartoonist at Newsday.
“1964-1972. Hurricanes end. Sunshowers. No longer the free, lyrical flight of the gull, high above the outstretched horizon, motionless for a moment, then, unwilling to fix itself in time glides, rolling out into a deep, graceful arc, knowing no boundaries,” he wrote in his op-ed titled “After Recovery, the years of Judgment” in Newsday during the post-war period (year not clear).
Thomas F. Darcy, Political Cartoon 1045, 1969-1980; Ink on illustration board/photostat. Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art New York
As his son Brad Darcy comments, Darcy’s work was a form of activism, “driven by the plight of the less fortunate,” where race and gender issues are two common themes in his work.
In “Political Cartoon 1045” (1969-1980), Darcy delivers a biting commentary on gender wage disparity through a humorous yet poignant scenario. The cartoon depicts a female robber holding up a man, who raises his hands in surrender while stating, “I’ll give you 62 percent of what I gave a male robber yesterday.” The juxtaposition of the woman’s assertive posture against the man’s submissive one effectively critiques the systemic undervaluation of women’s work.
Thomas F. Darcy, Political Cartoon 1359, 1969-1980; Ink on illustration board/photostat. Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art New York
In “Political Cartoon 1359” (1969-1980), Darcy tackles the sensitive and critical issue of the FBI’s harassment of Martin Luther King. The cartoon portrays a contemplative King juxtaposed with a sinister figure handing him a note that reads, “KING: WE SUGGEST YOU COMMIT SUICIDE…OR ELSE!” The caption below, “Tell me again about your impartial investigation of my death…” adds a chilling irony to the piece. The somber expression on King’s face, rendered with careful attention to detail, conveys a deep sense of injustice and the burden of surveillance he endured. This piece serves as a reminder of the lengths to which the establishment would go to silence dissent and control narratives, making it a powerful example of Darcy’s ability to confront uncomfortable truths through his art.
While Tom Darcy’s works lay the foundation, his son Brad Darcy’s contributions to the exhibition bring a modern sensibility to the themes his father explored. The younger Darcy’s works are more spontaneous and free in expression. He created a form of “autonomous drawing session,” where he channels his creativity in concentrated bursts timed with the full moon. This unique process, motivated by the higher tides and intensified thoughts during the full moon, has become a ritual for Darcy. Over the past five years, he has dedicated one session per month, often lasting four to five hours, during which he produces around 50 drawings. His approach has evolved from filling each page with multiple small drawings to focusing on one larger drawing per page, capturing a stream of consciousness. By maintaining a 9×12″ format, he ensures his ideas are quickly and fluidly transferred to paper, reflecting a raw, uninterrupted flow of thought.
Darcy’s “Claw Myself a Rainbow” (2018) is an evocative piece that embodies the essence of his automatic drawing sessions. Utilizing basic art supplies such as pens, pencils, brushes, markers and ink, Darcy crafts a spontaneous and dynamic linear composition. The lines appear fluid and free, mapping out unconscious terrains rather than rendering detailed representations. The title suggests a struggle for peace amidst chaos, a theme echoed in the vigorous, almost frantic lines that make up the figure. The abstract forms coalesce into a vaguely human shape, hands raised in a gesture that can be interpreted as both pleading and defiant. Darcy’s quote accompanying the piece reinforces this interpretation: “The feelings I feel and the thoughts that flow through my mind are distilled to a point where my heart almost blindly relays a secret message to my hand… I don’t draw my thoughts and feelings, they draw me.”
Brad Darcy, Claw Myself a Rainbow, 2018; Ink on paper. Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art New York
“Darcy & Darcy: In Monochrome” successfully brings together the distinct artistic practices of father and son. While Thomas F. Darcy’s cartoons are rooted in the sociopolitical issues of his era, Brad Darcy’s automatic drawings explore the intricacies of human consciousness. The exhibition’s monochromatic palette of black lines on white paper creates a visual harmony that underscores the thematic connections between their works. Both artists, through their concise portrayals, engage viewers in a deeper contemplation of complex subjects, highlighting the power of simplicity in conveying profound ideas.
“The meat and bones in my practice is somewhere between texture and storytelling,” artist Nicole Eisenmanonce said. A New York Times critic called her “Kafka with a paintbrush, mindful of the nightmares of history and partial to somber, social-realist colors.”
The artist’s first exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Paris, titled “with, and, of, on Sculpture,” explores the multiplicity of her output, from a monumentally scaled cortège to accessible line drawings. In tandem, a major survey exhibition, “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened“—organized by Museum Brandhorst and Whitechapel Gallery—is on view until September 22 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, spanning 100 works produced from 1992 to today.
It’s not Eisenman’s first outing in France. A show of her paintings, juxtaposed alongside work by Edvard Munch and Käthe Kollwitz, was displayed at the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh in Arles in 2022: “Heads, Kisses, Battles.” (The artist has spoken admiringly of Van Gogh’s wildly gestural canvases: “You can look at Van Gogh’s paint marks and almost shake his hand.”)
During a press visit at the Parisian Hauser & Wirth earlier this month, Eisenman explained that she works between two Brooklyn-based studios, for painting and sculpture respectively, reflecting her “bifurcated practice.” The spaces are a seven-minute bike ride apart, but she is not zig-zagging between them: “When I’m making paintings, I don’t tend to go to the sculpture studio for six, eight months. And then when I’m making sculpture, the paintings go into the attic and I lock the door and I don’t pay attention to that. It goes back and forth, usually six or eight months on, flip-flopping.”
Directly greeting the visitor as they step into Hauser & Wirth’s ground floor is Archangel (The Visitors), an imposing painting that Eisenman started last summer. “It’s gone through a few iterations before arriving at this one. And I’m not sure I’m totally done with it either—there may be more.” The canvas depicts the opening of an exhibition of sculptures, with, overhead, a “military looking animal hanging down, which is inspired by a sculpture that I’ve been obsessed with for a very long time… by two Dada artists called [John] Heartfield and [Rudolf] Schlichter.”
Those artists showed Prussian Archangel, a pig-headed mannequin in a World War I outfit suspended from the ceiling, at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920. As fascist politics rise—France is still reeling from the omnipresence of the far right in the recent European elections, and a snap election awaits yet—the painting is a queasy harbinger of what looms.
The figures in Archangel (The Visitors), milling between sculptures, feature people the artist knows and people she made up; the visitors in the rear of the painting entering the space were inspired by attendees of the Degenerate Art exhibition, a show masterminded by Adolf Ziegler and the Nazi Party in Munich in 1937. Eisenman stated: “The painting acts as a kind of parentheses of this period between the Dada art show and the Degenerate Art show—which took much of that work and reframed it as degenerate.”
Neighboring this unsettling work is Eisenman’s partial but still large-scale installation Procession (2019), which premiered in an even larger form at the 2019 Whitney Biennial. (Upstairs, a preparatory study for the installation is on view.) It was part of a colossal composition sprawled across a terrace at the Whitney, inspired by mass protests. From the excerpt on view here, which cuts across the entire ground floor, Eisenman remarked that the leader’s fists may be in the air, but it’s “not such a strong fist—kind of a tired fist that needs help.”
However, she noted that “it’s interesting for me to see this piece taken out of that grouping… it becomes less about the protests and a little bit more personal—how couples behave.” Here, she laughed. “At some point, you have to pull the other person along, or the other person’s a weight… persevering and slogging through, trudging together.”
Nearby are bright, much less representational paintings, Shape Driven Head 1-3, which Eisenman links, process-wise, as hewing more closely to her sculptural practice. She cited John Chamberlain as a meaningful equivalent: “how he makes pieces of metal smushed together—I think about this kind of process. With painting, it’s a matter of layering: of addition and subtraction.”
This is very different from how she created Archangel (The Visitors), where “there’s really a lot of plotting. It’s related to a process that’s probably more like a fiction writer, how a fiction writer would construct a narrative.” She discussed how a preparatory collage study, on view upstairs, was helpful and formative in graphing that plot: “I can move things around and decide what’s where. It’s kind of like an analog version of Photoshop, where you can have things move around and change sizes without having to redraw the whole thing every time. It’s like a really utilitarian drawing.”
One floor up, a variety of media are on display, everything from an artist’s book called “Alt Faces,” to a plaster bust of faux Gallic sophistication (Dame Francaise Chic), to a bronze sculpture (Mad Cat) topped with a helmet made from the seat of a custom Herman Miller chair, to an oil painting announcing raw squiggly CUBIST FEMALE INNARDS in all caps, to an amusing pencil drawing about life in Eisenman’s studio (an orbit of cartoon bursts including a lightbulb of insight, demarcations for internet breaks and a despondent list of NO IDEAS, BAD IDEAS, DUMB IDEAS and OLD IDEAS).
Eisenman’s ability to make at once uncanny sculptures, iconographic drawings and politically powerful paintings yields a complex ensemble. Time and again, she is a maestro at mixing malaise and playfulness and astute observations about human fallibility.
An installation view of “Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dreams of the Future.” Achim Kukulies
It’s a shame that the two preeminent stars of abstract art—Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky—never met in person. At one point, Swedish-born af Klint and Russian-born Kandinsky were miles apart from each other in Stockholm, where Kandinsky traveled in 1915 for an exhibition. They could have talked about their uncanny similarities, parallel lives and of course, their differences.
But what if these premiere painters of abstraction actually shared a conversation? What would that dialogue look like? Would one overpower the other?
In “Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dreams of the Future” at the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Germany, curators Julia Voss and Daniel Birnbaum have constructed a meeting of these creative minds through visual means. It’s the first major museum show exhibiting their works like they were exchanging words: their otherworldly points of intersection as well as their distinct approaches to painting.
Both artists passed away in 1944. At age 45, they produced the marquee paintings in “Dreams of the Future,” both inspired by the spiritual. Nestled in a corner next to Improvisation 10, Composition IV stands out as a kaleidoscopic reflection of Kandinsky’s thoughts on the ethereal when he lived in Munich. He once said, “Color is a power which directly influences the soul,” and fittingly, this statement applies to af Klint. She made her immense canvases, The Ten Largest, in 1907 in Stockholm, guided by— she claimed—mystical powers.
The Ten Largest comprise her core series of 193 works entitled “Paintings for the Temple.” She wrote in her journal that the “pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless, I worked swiftly and safely, without changing a single brushstroke.”
This also explains why she did not write her name anywhere on her works. These ten towering pieces required mindfulness and muscle. Her friend and fellow artist, Cornelia Cederberg assisted her in the undertaking.
Wassily Kandinsky, Im Blau, 1925; Öl auf Pappe, 80 x 110 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Achim Kukulies
Speaking of collaboration, af Klint and Kandinsky saw the meaningful importance of engaging with artists in groups, and the curators highlight that here. Af Klint met with De Fem “The Five” (including Cederberg) from 1896 to 1908. They held seances and meditations and would create artwork from what they described as “higher beings.” This women-only society knew these forces by name: Amaliel, Ananda, Esther and Gregor. Af Klint’s friend and artist Anna Cassel’s pictures from The Saga of the Rose are shown in a room dedicated to the five. After the group dissolved, af Klint formed a lasting friendship and partnership in life and in art with Thomassine Andersson—also an artist who translated af Klint’s texts into German.
In Kandinsky’s world, he established “Der Blaue Reiter” (the Blue Rider) in 1911 with Franz Marc, and the artists in this community used abstraction to push the limits of real-life expression. The name of the collective is rooted in Kandinsky’s 1903 “Blaue Reiter” painting: a man in a blue cape on a horse in a lush field symbolizing movement from the physical realm into a hypothetical one.
Der Blaue Reiter Almanac (1912)—a significant tome in Western art history with contributions from other artists, writers and musicians—is on display here with the Kandinsky-designed cover depicting Saint George (a spiritual icon) protecting a princess from a dragon. Likewise, af Klint portrayed Saint George in her Dove series (1915), with the holy figure slaying the dragon in the middle of a heart with crosses on both the top and bottom.
While Kandinsky’s writings and paintings like Der Blaue Reiter—not to mention his teaching at the Bauhaus—became widely known during his lifetime, af Klint faced a different reality. She didn’t amass the fame Kandinsky enjoyed. Only recently, thanks to the blockbuster 2018-2019 Guggenheim retrospective of af Klint’s work (“Paintings for the Future”), did she gain a massive following. Would af Klint be surprised to know she has over 131,000 followers on Instagram (in comparison to a comparable Kandinsky fan account with roughly 41,000 followers)?
As funny as this might sound, the magnet of af Klint’s iconic Altarbild, Gruppe X, Nr. 1 was sold out when I visited the museum gift shop. It’s this mesmerizing work that represents her on the museum’s poster of the show: a prism within a triangle intersecting a sun-like circle. Although there is no proof that Kandinsky saw Altarbild with his own eyes, he once wrote about the cohesion of these two geometric shapes: “The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle is actually as overwhelming in effect as the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo.”
Hilma af Klint, Altarbild, Gruppe X, Nr. 1, 1915; Öl und Metallblätter auf Leinwand, 237,5 x 179,5 cm. Albin Dahlström / The Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Schweden
Af Klint’s posthumous popularity also speaks to the layout of the exhibition. While the art world can argue that both af Klint and Kandinsky will live on as “pioneers of abstraction,” it is af Klint who dominates the discussion in “Dreams of the Future.” If one is to note how this show concludes, af Klint’s The Ten Largest leaves visitors with one resounding—and vividly colorful—exclamation point. She alone has the last word.
Irving Penn. ‘Hippie Family (Kelley),’ San Francisco, 1967. Platinum-palladium print. 16 5/8 × 14 3/16 in. (42.2 × 36 cm). The Irving Penn Foundation
The other day, Page Six dropped a gossip item about the pressure Anna Wintour faces over TikTok’s sponsorship of the Met Gala, in light of the app’s recent ban, and I thought about how hard it would be to explain all that to someone from the time when Vogue launched, at the turn of the last century. Technology aside, you’d have to explain that fashion has become perhaps the dominant form of culture, and that Vogue has become much more than a frivolity for Edith Warton-style ladies.
The photographer Irving Penn played no small part in the growth of the magazine, to which he contributed for six decades. He brought an artistic sensibility to a medium that wasn’t thought to be particularly high-minded. All of his career is celebrated at a new show that bears his name at the de Young Museum but was, in fact, organized by the Met. The exhibition brings together around 175 diverse works that showcase his range, showing his ability to capture blue-collar workers alongside Marlene Dietrich, audrey hepburn, Gianni Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, Truman Capote and Joan Didion.
There’s a dedicated section that taps into the local flavor with Penn’s photographs from the 1967 San Francisco Summer of Love. There are nude people hugging, the Hell’s Angels and of course, the Grateful Dead, and then a curious series on hippie parents and couples that stands out because it shrugs off obvious narratives about radicalism and promiscuity. You can tell much about a person by seeing their partner and the body language between them. These families all exude a great deal of love, and not necessarily the free kind. I’m sure the photos were a revelation at the time for the way they humanized these hippies. They might even manage to make you feel warm toward the baby boomers of today.
As for the celebrities, it is somewhat impressive that the same man photographed Marcel Duchamp and Nicole Kidman, but aren’t all of these big names known for their charisma? Penn really shows his muscles when he’s getting weird, as in his series of smoked cigarettes. Anyone can make Gisele look good, but luxuriating in the other kind of butt shows real talent. The catalogue draws wise parallels to Phillip Guston and Kurt Schwitters.
Also great are his abstract nudes from 1949 and 1950, a specific period during which he was obsessed with the tummies of headless women and how they change and move in various positions. Around the same time he would capture small trades like Steel Mill Firefighter (1951) and here too the body’s position is important. If you’re defined by your job and asked to fall into its muscle memory positions, you can’t help but notice the way some always seem to make you look happy, as in Butcher (1950). Pity the Coal Man (1950). If anyone ever captured the VoguePhotographer (1940s-2000s), he probably looked like he was having a blast.
“Irving Penn” is on view at the de Young Museum through July 21.
A Paloma Contreras Lomas art car with Ines Doujak collages. Photo courtesy of Center for Art, Research and Alliances, credit Luis Corzo
At first glance, pairing the work of rising star Paloma Contreras Lomas and established multidisciplinary artist Ines Doujak—as the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) has done—seems like it could be a juxtaposition. Contreras Lomas (b. 1991) and Doujak (b. 1959) come from different generations. Hail from different nations. Work in very different styles. But that work, however dissimilar, is very much focused on critiquing patriarchal systems—and in showing Contreras Lomas and Doujak together, opportunities arise for examining hierarchies of race, class and gender in new ways.
CARA curator Manuela Moscoco told Observer that her intention with the “Paloma Contreras Lomas and Ines Doujak” exhibition was to “foster a space where these profound dialogues can unfold organically… sparking contemplation and perhaps even transformative insights.”
Ines Doujak’s ‘Hope Against Hope’ (2023) in the foreground; Contreras Lomas’ ‘Doctrina Monroe’ (2020) in the background. Photo courtesy of Center for Art, Research and Alliances, credit Luis Corzo
It would be easy to declare Doujak’s Hope Against Hope (2023) the most striking work on display, if only for the styrofoam, wood and metal sculpture’s size and intensity. Pepto pink, large and unabashedly naked, the subject seems poised to make a furious or possibly wildly triumphant noise as she straddles a similarly roseate goat in the act of bucking. Ditto for Contreras Lomas’ life-size car installation—the latest in a series—festooned with an overwhelming grouping of characters, flora, entwining limbs and what could be a monumental plush knife or a ghost wearing an elongated top hat.
One of Contreras Lomas’ video works. Photo courtesy of Center for Art, Research and Alliances, credit Luis Corzo
Perhaps more interesting, however, are Contreras Lomas’s drawings and Doujak’s Ghostpopulations collages, all of which are rich in both detail and meaning and offer a lot for exhibition visitors to visually digest. Together they create, as Moscoco put it, a “compelling feminist narrative,” even if the theme is not always immediately clear.
A large drawing by Contreras Lomas. Photo courtesy of Center for Art, Research and Alliances, credit Luis Corzo
Both artists have worked diligently to open the door to interpretation in the hope that the viewer will put in a similar level of effort. “Though previously unacquainted with each other and with distinct aesthetics,” she added, “Contreras Lomas and Doujak share a political approach that prioritizes the attempt rather than providing definitive answers.” Whether that feels empowering or like a chore will depend on how you prefer to consume art. Here, active consumption is rewarded.
There is no photographer in history quite like Irving Penn. He built a bridge between commercial photography and fine art photography. He helped define the Vogue aesthetic and overwrote popular ideas about beauty with his trailblazing fashion photography. And he shot everything, from celebrities to still lifes, with the same thoughtful intensity. He’s arguably one of the top artists of the 20th Century, and his work is as relevant as ever.
It’s also the subject of a new exhibition at the de Young museum at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: a retrospective simply called “Irving Penn.” Roughly 175 images are on view, spanning every decade of the famous photographer’s storied and celebrated seventy-year career.
Installation view of “Irving Penn”, de Young, San Francisco, 2024. Photo by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The show starts with documentary scenes of New York from the late 1930s, when Penn first took up a camera and took his first amateur snaps, and then segues into his famed celebrity portraits and fashion photography. It also includes his vivid photos of counterculture featuring, among others, members of the Hells Angels and then-local rock band, the Grateful Dead. And his still-life photography is exceptional. My favorite photo of Penn’s is After-Dinner Games, New York, shot in 1947, with its playing cards, chess pieces and dice gathered artfully around a cup of coffee, or maybe Still Life with Watermelon, New York, also taken in 1947, which is composed with all the care of an Old Master painting.
If this all sounds familiar, that may be because “Irving Penn” first opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has since traveled. The only West Coast showing of the retrospective adds a local bent. De Young visitors will see Penn’s shots from the Summer of Love in 1967, which chronicle bands, hippies, youth culture and activists who revolted against the Vietnam War. He was in the city on assignment from Look magazine and invited regular people into his studio, where he rolled down a concrete-colored backdrop and took beautifully honest portraits. He also photographed the experimental dance group San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop, led by founder and post-modern choreographer Anna Halprin.
Remember, Penn shot long before Photoshop could magically touch up our flaws. The perfection of his analog photos is in the light, the composition and the shadows. There are experimental shots, like the mouth covered in various shades of lipstick for L’Oreal taken in 1986, and of course, the portraits of iconic celebrities that take us back in time.
Standouts in the exhibition include stunning shots of Marlene Dietrich looking back in awe in New York, a smiling audrey hepburn shot in Paris, as well as images of Yves Saint Laurent, Truman Capote and Joan Didion. There are also photos of street vendors in Peru and several photos of Swedish muse, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, who was Penn’s wife from 1950 to her death in 1992 and is widely considered the first supermodel. Some of the best photos in the show feel like photos of friends, from his portrait of the architect Le Corbusier from 1947 to shots of artists like Georgia O’Keefe and Pablo Picasso.
Looking back on his studio portraits, one only wishes one could go back and be a fly on the wall. Penn’s former assistant Robert Freson, who worked alongside the photographer for thirteen years, has described in detail how Penn approached portraiture. “He had his own method: very isolated in studios or sometimes on location,” Freson said in a 2022 interview at age 95. “It was just Penn, the subject and I. No unnecessary sounds. He would concentrate by speaking to them very peacefully while sitting on a high stool behind the camera.”
Conversation was apparently key to the photographer’s studio-based process and how he managed to capture such authenticity in his subjects.
“Penn knew all about the people he photographed and was able to lead the conversation to get people to react to him. Then he would photograph them. Once he established the circumstance to take the photograph, he would stay with it. At a certain point, he got through to the reality of the person behind the facade—and that moment is valid forever.”
“Irving Penn” is on view in the de Young museum’s Herbst Exhibition Galleries through July 21.
An installation view of ‘The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism’ at the Met. Courtesy The Met, Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen
Among New York neighborhoods, Harlem has long stood out for its immense impact on culture. Early in the Twentieth Century, it emerged as an epicenter of music, art, theater, literature and dining—the result of the mass exodus of millions of Black Americans from diverse backgrounds who left the rural south to settle in the urban north. More than 175,000 people came to Harlem, including artists, writers, musicians and great thinkers who would pave the way for the Harlem Renaissance’s most recognizable names: W.E.B. Du Bois, Josephine Baker, Augusta Savage, Cab Calloway and many more.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recently opened show, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” pays tribute to it all with an exhibition featuring over 160 artworks by Black artists from the 1920s through the 1940s, in what is the first survey of the subject in the city since 1987.
The exhibition is divided into sections that highlight everything from activism to nightlife, featuring what the Met calls “the first African American-led movement of international modern art,” and showcasing the work of artists like Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee and Laura Wheeler Waring. Also shown are portrayals of African diasporan subjects as rendered by Matisse, Munch, Picasso and a handful of others.
The start of “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” recognizes writer and philosophy professor Alain Leroy Locke, whose 1925 book of cultural criticism, The New Negro, set forth principles of “a new vision of opportunity” for African Americans and helped shape the Harlem Renaissance and, with it, American culture as a whole. There’s a portrait of the writer by Winold Reiss, alongside a copy of his book, which includes the essay ‘The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” that invited black artists to embrace African aesthetics. There are also portraits of thinkers like Zora Neale Hurston, presented in a portrait by Aaron Douglas.
Archibald J. Motley, Jr., ‘The Picnic,’ 1936, Oil on canvas. Juan Trujillo / HowardUniversityGalleryofArt,Washington,D.C.
The section titled “Everyday Life in the New Black Cities” is full of stunning paintings, including Hale Woodruff’s 1930 The Card Players, depicting a cubist-inspired scene of pool players in a dark bar and Pool Parlor, a 1942 painting by Jacob Lawerence—the first example of the artist’s work to be included in the Met’s permanent collection.
Overall, the exhibition is wide-ranging and thoughtful in both its curation and presentation. Photo highlights include the James Van Der Zee photo Couple, Harlem, from 1932, with its stylish couple in fur coats posing with their Cadillac on a street lined with brownstone buildings.
James Van Der Zee, ‘Couple, Harlem,’ 1932, printed later, Gelatin silver print. James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Gift of Donna Van Der Zee, 2021
Women are highlighted throughout the show, which is refreshing. In a section devoted to “Portraiture and the Modern Black Subject,” a 1943 portrait by William H. Johnson called Woman in Blue depicts a woman staring confidently into the painter’s gaze—it looks as if she’s wearing a uniform, signaling the strength of the working woman. There are pieces by women artists, including Laura Wheeler Waring’s Yellow Roses on view, and plenty of representation: a photo of acclaimed singer Josephine Baker taken in 1925 by Adolph de Meyer shows her in all her glamorous glory.
A major highlight of the exhibit is the room of paintings by Aaron Douglas, who created monochromatic, graphic images of silhouettes of African Americans throughout history real and imagined. Some of the most exciting sections are the galleries devoted to the Black nightlife that came to define Harlem and the “Artist as Activist” section, which explores the civic activism at the core of the Harlem Renaissance. William H. Johnson’s Moon Over Harlem, which depicts police brutality after a race-related riot in August of 1943, is particularly moving.
William Henry Johnson, ‘Moon over Harlem,’ 1944, Oil on plywood. Smithsonian American Art Museum
The exhibition ends with a tribute to Harlem: the 15-foot-long 1970 mural The Block by artist Romare Bearden. It depicts a block of mid-century buildings in the NYC neighborhood, including the block where Bearden, a member of the Harlem Artists Guide, had his art studio on 125th Street. He worked in the same building as artist Jacob Lawrence and poet Claude McKay, and his depiction takes the viewer back to old New York, capturing its bustling essence in a lively street that continues to be a hub of African American cultural life.
A Harlem Renaissance exhibition at the Met was arguably long overdue, but don’t let that stop you from checking it out now. One show can’t cover the wide breadth of a decades-long art movement but “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” does much to capture its impact and legacy. It’s a strong introduction to what should be a lifelong journey into the lives of these influential artists and luminaries.
Portraits are a major focus of ‘The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism.’ Courtesy The Met, Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen
