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Tag: Richard Avedon

  • Gagosian’s Kara Vander Weg On Shaping the Afterlife of an Artist’s Work

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    The Truck Trio as shown in “Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience.” Courtesy Gagosian

    Earlier this month, Gagosian debuted a stunning show featuring the work of Walter de Maria at its Le Bourget gallery in Paris. “Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience” was curated by Donna De Salvo and featured at its heart The Truck Trilogy, a trio of vintage Chevrolet pickup trucks outfitted with De Maria’s signature stainless-steel rods. The work was conceived in 2011 and completed in 2017, four years after De Maria’s death at the age of 77.

    This was the same year that the gallery launched its “Building a Legacy Program,” which marshals the gallery’s extensive resources to ensure that artists remain in the minds of the public in the future, whether they are young, old, or deceased, through educational efforts and ambitious shows like “The Singular Experience.” The program has been spearheaded by Kara Vander Weg, a managing director at the gallery, whom we caught up with to hear more about its origins and processes.

    How did the idea for the Building a Legacy Program originate in 2017, and what gaps in artist or estate planning was it meant to address?

    KVW: The catalyst was Walter De Maria, an artist who had been close to the gallery since the 1980s, dying in 2013 without a will. The lack of preparation threw his estate into turmoil but, fortunately, the gallery was able to help address a number of immediate practical needs, including preserving and documenting his archives. Nuanced decisions had to be made about his intentions and his work, including how it was displayed. Walter was incredibly precise and exacting, and to go from his presence, a resource that was always there, to nothing was a profound shock, particularly for Elizabeth Childress, who had managed his studio for decades.

    Through our work with the Richard Avedon Foundation, which began in 2011, we learned a lot about the challenges and questions they faced when Dick had died suddenly several decades earlier. It has been instructive to learn about their organization, which is impressive, and implemented processes for decision-making as the artist would have wished.

    Through our work with artists and with their subsequent estates and foundations—which is inevitable when working together over many years—we have seen that balancing an artist’s legacy with ongoing operational concerns can be incredibly challenging. As much as the gallery, as an entity outside of the family or studio, can be helpful, we want to be. For all artists, it is ideal to have some plans for legacy decisions in place. And as the value of art has grown, it has become even more important to have detailed wishes outlined, particularly when it comes to decisions like posthumous work, as well as planning for the resources necessary to carry an artist’s legacy forward.

    A symposium felt like the right way to address some of these delicate topics and provide a space for knowledge sharing between our artists and others. Peer-to-peer support can be an exceptionally helpful resource, and many of the connections that have been made through the symposia continue to be fruitful for the artists and estates.

    The team behind Gagosian Quarterly also saw an opportunity to address many of the questions on people’s minds through thoughtful content in the magazine. We launched an ongoing series featuring conversations with experts in the field of artists’ estates and legacy stewardship who offer insights that hopefully prove useful to artists, their staff, foundations and estates, scholars, and others.

    In working with estates like Walter De Maria’s or Nam June Paik’s, what have been the most revealing challenges in realizing an artist’s intentions after death?

    KVW: Honoring an artist’s wishes and intentions is always the biggest challenge.

    With Walter, we’ve had to make decisions about how to install his work at a level he would have permitted. Fortunately, both Larry [Gagosian] and I worked closely with him and have those experiences to draw on. We also owe a great debt to Elizabeth Childress for her constant counsel. For example, Walter was always incredibly precise about the surface on which his floor sculptures rested; it had to be completely unmarked. For an exhibition at our 21st Street gallery while he was still alive, I remember we had to bring in a trompe l’oeil painter to touch up marks on the concrete floor before he would agree to go ahead with the show. And for the current exhibition at Le Bourget, we had to find solutions to address the floor beneath 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows. These might seem like small things, but we know how critical they were to Walter.

    He was also very resistant to putting out too much information about his work, because he wanted viewers to have a focused, unmediated experience of it. The downside is that, as a result, people haven’t really come to understand the thinking behind his practice. That’s why, for the Le Bourget exhibition, curator Donna De Salvo has included a number of drawings, some of which have never been seen before, something that would never have happened during his lifetime. Our hope is that this will offer the wider public a way into Walter’s thinking: his precision, a bit of his humor, and the connections between his early work and the later pieces for which he became known. These are things we believe are important, not only for his legacy, but also for the scholarship around his work.

    The circumstances of our work on behalf of Nam June Paik are very different, and my colleague Nick Simunovic is best placed to talk about it. [Writer’s note: They wanted Nick to jump in here so I said why not.]

    NS: In the case of Nam June Paik, we partnered with the Estate, who had a clear sense of the artist’s wishes, and we worked tirelessly over a decade to realize a number of important goals.

    When we began working with the Estate in 2015, they were keen to work with a major gallery as a way to shine a spotlight on Nam June’s work, particularly given that the last exhibition sanctioned by the artist was 20 years prior. Larry [Gagosian] had noted that he felt that the artist was a bit lost in the market, and that was a view shared by the family. There was also a realization that there were gaps in the holdings of American museums.

    We laid out a multi-tiered plan that began with that first show in Hong Kong in 2015 and culminated with a major survey in New York planned for 2020. The opening was delayed by the COVID pandemic but eventually opened in 2022.

    We brought in noted curator John G. Hanhardt, who also organized the retrospectives of the artist’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1982), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (2011), in addition to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000). We were able to strategize and execute against the artist’s wishes because we had clear direction from the Estate, including Nam June’s nephew Ken Hakuta, and input from partners like John Hanhardt and Estate curator Jon Huffman.

    As a result of those efforts, works by the artist from that 2022 exhibition were placed with major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, and the Bass Museum of Art, filling a crucial gap in the artist’s canon and legacy.

    How do you balance market considerations with curatorial or scholarly fidelity when guiding legacy work inside a commercial gallery?

    KVW: The two are interconnected and I don’t think that is a bad thing, work needs to be placed with owners to ensure the highest level of scholarly fidelity. And good curatorial work can help to bolster an artist’s market.

    The monograph Gagosian published for Walter De Maria is a great example. Little scholarly work had been done on his life, and through our work preserving the archive, we had an opportunity and the ability to take on the project. We had access to rarely seen archival material from his studio and the result is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s entire oeuvre that explores both his creative career and his personal life.

    It was a massive undertaking that was many years in the making, but the publication will support both future sales and exhibitions of his work. It has already served as the catalogue for the Menil Collection’s 2022-23 exhibition, Walter De Maria: Boxes for Meaningless Work.

    The recent symposium in London gathered artists, curators, and foundation directors. What insights or points of friction surfaced about the future of legacy stewardship?

    KVW: It was our third symposium on the topic of legacy planning, and there was a fascinating session during which I spoke with Mary Dean, Ed Ruscha’s studio director; Waltraud Forelli, Anselm Kiefer’s studio director and board member of the Eschaton–Anselm Kiefer Foundation; and Vladimir Yavachev, director of operations for the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation. A key takeaway from our conversation was the critical importance of hiring an archivist, ideally while an artist is alive.

    Waltraud rightly pointed out that in addition to helping from an organizational perspective, hiring an archivist brought a realization that they couldn’t do everything alone. They needed to plan for a younger generation to continue their work and to take the time now to transfer that knowledge. For Vladimir, who has catalogue raisonné preparations underway, an archivist is particularly important given the volume of material that Christo and Jeanne-Claude retained.

    Mary Dean emphasized another important point, the value of openness, even when addressing a sensitive topic like planning for a future one won’t be part of. For Ed, this is a living, evolving process that he actively engages in through the thoughtful placement of his works and archival material with institutional partners. For instance, the Getty Museum is currently in the process of receiving his street photograph archive. All of his films and artistbook archives are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. He has also made significant donations: Ed was born in Omaha, Nebraska, so the Joslyn Art Museum has a substantial collection of his work, and he has donated work to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Oklahoma City.

    Younger artists such as Titus Kaphar are building institutions during their lifetimes. How is the conversation about legacy changing for living artists?

    KVW: There is a generation of artists today who are interested in philanthropic endeavors beyond their own artistic practices. Providing space and resources for the creation of foundations and community projects is a big priority and perhaps is an indication of legacy planning taking shape much earlier in artists’ careers.

    There is a tradition of artists stepping up and supporting other artists, one example is Theaster Gates, who has devoted the past 15 years to his Rebuild Foundation. It’s a mantle that artists including Ellen Gallagher and Titus Kaphar are taking up with projects like the Nina Simone House and NXTHVN, respectively.

    But this process isn’t new, there is a history of artist support with someone like Robert Rauschenberg, who during his lifetime formed an entity to help other artists, as did Roy Lichtenstein.

    For galleries, support of an artist needs to evolve to include these priorities, which could be advice around the organization of studio resources or the make-up of a Board of Directors.

    With “The Singular Experience” now open in Paris, featuring De Maria’s Truck Trilogy and 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows, what does this presentation demonstrate about Gagosian’s collaboration with the De Maria Estate? What are the lessons there for other artists planning their estate?

    KVW: The relationship with Walter has always been very personal, his friendship and working relationship with Larry [Gagosian] stretches back more than 35 years, and it has anchored our long commitment to him and his work.

    The approach is methodical and takes time, but the exhibition at Le Bourget is a product of that commitment. It’s his second show in the space and one that we had actually begun discussing before he died in 2013.

    Showing Truck Trilogy outside of the United States for the first time is incredibly exciting. It was his last sculpture, conceived in 2011 and completed posthumously in 2017 according to his specific directions, so it touches on a lot of what we have talked about. It’s also wonderful to be showing 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows at the same time as his inclusion in the exhibition “Minimal,” curated by Dia Art Foundation’s director Jessica Morgan at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris. And it’s all taking place in the same month as Walter would have turned 90.

    But the exhibitions are just one piece in a broader program that aims to cement and extend his legacy, from placing a group of early sculpture and drawings with The Menil Collection (a family that were early champions of the artist) and working with Dia Art Foundation to help conserve The Lightning Field to working tirelessly to publish his monograph. And the work continues as we try to find a home for his archive.

    For artists working today, it can be hard to have the patience to play the long game, but that thought and planning is key. It can also be useful to talk with other artists and studios who are focused on this work. One of the benefits from the symposium was the exchange of ideas and the conversations that happened outside the sessions.

    Looking across the gallery’s roster, what qualities distinguish the artists who are most intentional about shaping their own legacies while still alive? What do they have in common?

    KVW: They have a clear sense of purpose regarding the direction of their work and its legacy. They like control, either maintaining it themselves or wisely bringing in the right studio leadership. They’ve built strong museum connections and have access to resources in terms of staff and space. It’s a reminder of the symbiotic relationship between the market and legacy, artists need resources to actively plan for the future.

    Gagosian’s Kara Vander Weg On Shaping the Afterlife of an Artist’s Work

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    Dan Duray

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  • In Arles, the Rencontres de la Photographie Showcases the Vernacular, the Archive and the Contemporary

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    David Armstrong, Johnny, Provincetown, late 1970s. Courtesy of the Estate of David Armstrong

    The Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles has been an annual magnet during the summer season for professionals and amateurs alike since it began in 1970 in the south of France. The small city—which has become both more international and more gentrified since a towering Frank Gehry-designed arts center opened in 2021—mounts diverse exhibitions in churches, former middle schools, cloisters, museums, a crypt and even a Monoprix (the French equivalent of Target). The 2025 edition, which runs through October 5, is umbrellaed by the theme “Disobedient Images,” a kind of counterpoint to the existing status quo.

    In a reframing of national narrative, “On Country: Photography from Australia” is a group show of artists exploring their country’s identity, subtly or explicitly addressing its heritage of colonialism over First Nations people. Per the wall text, “on Country” indicates “more than just being situated somewhere, it is about being shaped by that place, connected to it, and having a responsibility to care for it.” wani toaishara lovingly portrays Black citizens from the African diaspora in Melbourne while Adam Ferguson sensitively showcases varied populations, from coal miners to contract shearers, based on his 150,000 kilometers of travel across the country. The images by Indigenous photographer Michael Cook are jarring and provocative, replicating a single figure in politically symbolic spaces to underline minority discrimination and lack of visibility.

    A vintage black-and-white photograph shows two women in swimsuits on a beach joyfully kicking their legs and raising their arms as they face the camera.A vintage black-and-white photograph shows two women in swimsuits on a beach joyfully kicking their legs and raising their arms as they face the camera.
    Anonymous amateur photographer, Untitled, Houlgate, France, 1931. Courtesy of the former Marion and Philippe Jacquier Collection / Donation from the Fondation Antoine de Galbert to the Musée de Grenoble

    A very different group show, “In Praise Of Anonymous Photography,” is a fascinating repository of vintage vernacular images divorced from their once-owners. They all come from the collection of Marion and Philippe Jacquier, who were gallerists for over twenty years outside of Paris and self-describe as being “in the business of ‘image hunting.’” They specialize in uncovering amateur photography ranging from pinup girls to animal bestiaries and own a compendium of 10,000 silver prints. Here, the selected images and series are especially enigmatic and often eccentric. One woman (“Lucette”) had 850 photos taken of her during her travels—never backgrounded by anything remarkable, often blurry—between 1954 and 1977. Who she is, the purpose of her documentation, and who took the photos is unknown. In another series, a pharmacist circa the 1950s used a spy camera to photograph his day-to-day customers unbeknownst to them, using a trigger system activated behind the cash register. Though the photos are pedestrian and innocent-seeming, the ethics behind this endeavor are suspect. In another series, a 20-year-old man returns to places he spent time in with a lover before she moved to Tahiti, photographing urban geography and chronicling what happened there (crying, kissing, etc.). Is he a sweet romantic or a creepy obsessive?

    Also archival but less inscrutable, “The World of Louis Stettner (1922–2016)” presents the photographer as bridging American street photography and French humanist photography. Born in Brooklyn in 1922, Stettner trained at the Photo League, which he described as “the first progressive, left-wing photography organization in the United States.” His 1946 series on the New York subway captured with his Rolleiflex is fascinating, and the MTA sure looked better then: men in hats and women in fur coats sitting primly between Coney Island and Times Square. His series Nancy is a study of an insouciant adolescent living in Greenwich Village, her life characterized by “sleeping late, odd jobs, money scrounging and partying.” She’s photographed playfully upturning a glass in her mouth or lounging in bed with a radio. Stettner also mixed with French photographers (Willy Ronis, Édouard Boubat, Brassaï); he himself settled in Paris in the middle of the 20th Century for several years, and again late in life.

    A black-and-white portrait shows a young man in glasses and a suit jacket sitting sideways and gazing intently at the camera.A black-and-white portrait shows a young man in glasses and a suit jacket sitting sideways and gazing intently at the camera.
    Irving Penn, Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, 1957. Courtesy of The Irving Penn Foundation / Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent

    Featuring another man who moved to France, the “Yves Saint Laurent and Photography” show is a splashy one. Saint Laurent himself was almost relentlessly photographed, snapped by Irving Penn, David Bailey, Robert Doisneau and—in a then-scandalous nude portrait from 1971—Jeanloup Sieff, amongst many others. These photographs unquestionably contributed to Yves Saint Laurent’s renown. Some 80 works trace the evolution of Saint Laurent’s creations in the media (like Richard Avedon’s Dovima with Elephants featuring a F/W 1955 Yves Saint Laurent for Christian Dior dress or Jean-Claude Sauer’s images of bright Pop Art cocktail dresses from the haute couture F/W 1966 collection) as well as iconic portraits of the couturier himself (the show opens with a wallpaper reproduction of Helmut Newton black-and-white 1971 contact sheets and ends with a photo from 2000 by Juergen Teller). Nestled within this exhibition is a panorama of 200 archival items from the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, including passports, paper dolls, scrapbooks of fashion shows, advertising for the opening of the ready-to-wear boutique, covers of Paris Match from when YSL stepped down as a designer and a 42-page special from when he died in 2008. The paraphernalia provides a dense and completist look of someone who was fully documenting his life as it unfolded and had a public-facing persona as much as his collections did.

    A diptych presents on the left a color photograph of a person in a white slip dress curled up on a sofa with their head in their hands, and on the right a marble sculpture of two figures embracing and kissing.A diptych presents on the left a color photograph of a person in a white slip dress curled up on a sofa with their head in their hands, and on the right a marble sculpture of two figures embracing and kissing.
    Nan Goldin, Young Love, 2024. Courtesy of the artist / Gagosian

    Focusing on a different veteran icon, Nan Goldin presents a contemporary work at Église Saint-Blaise: showings of “Stendhal Syndrome” (2024) loop on the half hour, with limited seating. The Goldin-narrated photo slideshow has a soundtrack composed by Soundwalk Collective, and the film juxtaposes cropped snapshots of classical, renaissance and baroque masterpieces taken within the collections of international museums (the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Galleria Borghese, the National Gallery), interspersed with Goldin’s portfolio of intimate portraits. Stendhal syndrome is a kind of aesthetic affliction named after the 19th-century French author who felt weak in the face of overwhelming beauty. Goldin’s “Stendhal Syndrome” creates parallels between centuries-old gestures and contemporary poses, instilling a meaningful sense of both artistic continuity and sensitive humanism.

    Nan Goldin was the guest artistic director of the Rencontres in 2009, and at the time introduced an exhibition featuring work by David Armstrong. Fifteen years later, the two are part of the same festival again: David Armstrong’s photos are on view at LUMA Arles, curated by Mathieu Humery (who also curated the Diane Arbus show last year, which is now in New York until August 17). In the 1970s, Armstrong studied photography and eventually became associated with a larger group of avant-garde artists known as the Boston School. An exquisite portraitist, Armstrong (who died in 2014) captured striking moments amongst his coterie of queer misfits—messy hair, direct gazes and fabulous outfits.

    A color photograph shows a performer with silver-painted skin and black straps across their body balancing upside down on the floor while looking toward the camera.A color photograph shows a performer with silver-painted skin and black straps across their body balancing upside down on the floor while looking toward the camera.
    Lila Neutre, Edwin Xtravaganza (Latex Ball No. 1), Sculpting the Self – The Rest is Drag series, 2015. Courtesy of the artist

    For a more contemporary take on queer culture, Lila Neutre’s work is a tribute to LGBTQIA+ nightlife. “Dancing on Ashes (Open Fire)” juxtaposes two series of photographs completed about ten years apart: Twerk Nation and The Rest is Drag, a vision of parties and performance through queer community, including the collective La Famille Maraboutage in Marseille and their quest for inclusivity. These figures affirmingly shrug off social normativity in patent leather red heels, silver lipstick and sparkly accessories, although the disco ball hanging in the exhibition is on the nose.

    One approach that consistently did not deliver across three exhibitions was the “reinvention” of archival material through modern interpretations. The archives remain superior. One such example was Agnès Geoffray’s “They Stray, They Persist, They Thunder.” Geoffray’s portraits of young women are based on research pertaining to underage girls in France imprisoned between the end of the 19th Century and the middle of the 20th Century for deviating from gender norms. Geoffray’s work is shown alongside a selection of historical documents—photographs, articles, administrative paperwork—which are layered in an alarm-red coating. The records themselves are fascinating, but the contemporary portraits feel hollow relative to the originals.

    Similarly, a contemporary series on U.S. Route 1 by Anna Fox and Karen Knorr reprises a journey undertaken by Berenice Abbott between July and September 1954; Abbott drove and documented her journey back and forth from Fort Kent, Maine, to the Florida Keys. Route 1 offered, according to Abbott, “a realistic picture of a true cross-section of American life.” Her experiences—never published—reflected the increasing standardization of the mid-century American landscape. In turn, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr photographed small towns, motels and diners along the same route, timed to Trump’s first presidential campaign and the country’s fast-rising zeal for conservative politics. Their images portray an America that is vulgar, ramshackle and stagnant. Unlike the images by Abbott, they feel cliché; there’s déjà vu. Lastly, Carmen Winant’s exploration of the lesbian separatist communities of the 1970s connected her with Carol Newhouse, co-founder of WomanShare, a lesbian feminist community on the West Coast. Winant and Newhouse pursued several collaborative projects, including new work on view here: shooting jointly on the same roll of film sent back and forth, doubly exposing and layering images. The result—deemed, in the wall text, a reclamation of feminist photographic strategies—is not nearly as powerful as the black-and-white photos from the 1970s by Newhouse, which reveal a sense of solidarity and camaraderie.

    In Arles, the Rencontres de la Photographie Showcases the Vernacular, the Archive and the Contemporary

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    Sarah Moroz

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  • And Now For A Very Different Kind Of Cosplay Gallery

    And Now For A Very Different Kind Of Cosplay Gallery

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    Image for article titled And Now For A Very Different Kind Of Cosplay Gallery

    We post galleries from major cosplay shows all the time, and they’re always excellent, but for the recent New York Comic-Con one photographer wanted to do things a little differently.

    Wanting to try something beyond just taking nice photos, veteran photographer Andrew Boyle (disclaimer: I wrote the foreword for his book) thought that for this year’s show he’d try and make the cosplayer “the sole focus” of his work.

    “After my cosplay photo book ‘Heroes & Villains’ came out in 2017, I thought I’d relax it up a bit with the subject matter, but it kept pulling me back; the effort, the enthusiasm and the sense of community amongst the costumed fans”, Boyle tells Kotaku. “I shoot in a uniform style inspired by the portraits of Richard Avedon, so that the sole focus is the subject without background distraction.”

    “I also work in collage pieces and motion I wanted to integrate a unique hand made feel for each selected subject. For some, I used cut out pieces that referred to the character, others were repetition of shapes, or color blocking with paper and textures. It was a way to differentiate from other cosplay photography, all of which has it’s own approach, and take a different feel to celebrate all the effort and energy the NYCC crowd brings. Plus I love reading the reactions people have to seeing themselves portrayed in such a way.”

    The result is this heavily-stylised gallery which, by removing the usual convention background, really lets each cosplayer, their outfit and their performance shine.

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    Luke Plunkett

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