WANAFOTO: 04/2025

04/04/25

David Hockney @ Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris - Une exposition majeure avec plus de 400 oeuvres de 1955 à 2025

David Hockney, 25

Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

9 avril - 31 août 2025

David Hockney

"Winter Timber" 2009

Oil on 15 canvases (36 x 48" each)

274.32 x 609.6 cm (108 x 240 Inches)

Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson

La Fondation Louis Vuitton invite DAVID HOCKNEY, l’un des artistes les plus influents des XXe et XXIe siècles, à investir l’ensemble de ses espaces d’exposition. Cette présentation, inédite par son contenu comme par son ampleur, de plus de 400 œuvres de 1955 à 2025 rassemble, outre un fonds majeur provenant de l’atelier de l’artiste et de sa fondation, des prêts de collections internationales, institutionnelles ou privées. L’exposition réunit des créations réalisées avec les techniques les plus variées – des peintures à l’huile ou à l’acrylique, des dessins à l’encre, au crayon et au fusain, mais aussi des œuvres numériques (dessins photographiques, à l’ordinateur, sur iPhone et sur iPad) et des installations vidéo.

David Hockney s’est totalement impliqué dans la réalisation de cette exposition. Il a lui-même choisi, en collaboration avec son compagnon et studio manager, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, de centrer l’exposition sur les vingt-cinq dernières années de son œuvre sans omettre les œuvres « mythiques » de ses débuts, proposant ainsi une immersion dans son univers, couvrant sept décennies de création. Il a voulu suivre personnellement la conception de chaque séquence et de chaque salle, dans un dialogue continu avec son assistant Jonathan Wilkinson.

David Hockney déclare : « Cette exposition est particulièrement importante pour moi, car c’est la plus grande que j’aie jamais eue – les onze galeries de la Fondation Louis Vuitton ! Quelques-unes de mes toutes dernières peintures, auxquelles je suis en train de travailler, y seront présentées. Ça va être bien, je crois. »[ 1]

L’exposition « David Hockney, 25 » montre combien ces dernières années témoignent du renouvellement permanent de ses sujets et de ses modes d’expression. La capacité de l’artiste à toujours se réinventer à travers des nouveaux media est en effet exceptionnelle. D’abord dessinateur, passé maître dans toutes les techniques académiques, il est aujourd’hui un des champions des nouvelles technologies.

David Hockney

"Portrait of My Father" 1955

Oil on canvas

50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 Inches)

Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt

The David Hockney Foundation

David Hockney

"A Bigger Splash" 1967

Acrylic on canvas

242.5 x 243.9 x 3 cm (96 x 96 x 1.181 Inches)

Tate, U.K.

David Hockney

"Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" 1972

Acrylic on canvas

213.36 x 304.8 cm (84 x 120 Inches)

Photo Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

David Hockney

"Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy" 1968

Acrylic on canvas

212.09 x 303.53 cm (83.5 x 119.5 Inches)

Photo Credit: Fabrice Gibert

Sont réunies au rez-de-bassin des œuvres emblématiques des années 1950 aux années 1970 – depuis ses débuts à Bradford (Portrait of My Father, 1955), puis à Londres, jusqu’en Californie. La piscine, thème emblématique, apparaît avec A Bigger Splash, 1967 et Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. Sa série de doubles portraits est représentée par deux peintures majeures : Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, 1970-1971 et Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968.

Puis la nature prend une place toujours plus importante dans le travail de David Hockney à partir de la décennie 1980-1990 – comme en témoigne A Bigger Grand Canyon, 1998 – avant que l’artiste ne regagne l’Europe pour y poursuivre l’exploration de paysages familiers.

David Hockney

"May Blossom on the Roman Road" 2009

Oil on 8 canvases (36 x 48" each)

182.88 x 487.7 x 0 cm (72 x 192 x 0 Inches)

Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt

David Hockney

"Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur

le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique" 2007

Oil on 50 canvases (36 x 48" each)

457.2 x 1219.2 cm (180 x 480 Inches)

Photo Credit: Prudence Cuming Associates

Tate, U.K.

Ensuite le cœur de l’exposition renvoie aux 25 dernières années, passées principalement dans le Yorkshire où il redécouvre les paysages de l’enfance, ainsi qu’en Normandie et à Londres. On y assiste à une célébration du Yorkshire, l’artiste faisant d’un buisson d’aubépine une explosion spectaculaire du printemps (May Blossom on the Roman Road, 2009). L’observation du rythme des saisons le mène au paysage hivernal monumental peint sur le motif, exceptionnellement prêté par la Tate de Londres, Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Âge Post-Photographique, 2007.

David Hockney

27th March 2020, No. 1

iPad painting printed on paper, mounted on 5 panels

Exhibition Proof 2

364.09 x 521.4 cm (143.343 x 205.276 Inches)

Dans le même temps, David Hockney poursuit le portrait de ses proches, à l’acrylique ou sur iPad, ponctué de plusieurs autoportraits. L’exposition en compte une soixantaine en galerie 4, associés à des « portraits de fleurs » réalisés à l’iPad mais insérés dans des cadres traditionnels, créant un trouble dont on retrouve l’effet dans le dispositif qui les réunit au mur, 25th June 2022, Looking at the Flowers (Framed), 2022.

Tout le 1er étage – galeries 5 à 7 - est consacré à la Normandie et à ses paysages. La série 220 for 2020, exécutée uniquement sur iPad, est présentée dans une installation inédite en galerie 5. David Hockney y capte, jour après jour, saison après saison, les variations de la lumière. En galerie 6, faisant suite à cet ensemble, on notera une série de peintures acryliques et le traitement très singulier du ciel animé de touches vibrantes, lointaine évocation de Van Gogh. En galerie 7, un panorama composé de vingt-quatre dessins à l’encre (La Grande Cour, 2019) fait écho à la Tapisserie de Bayeux.

Enfin, le dernier étage est introduit par une série de reproductions remontant au Quattrocento constituant des références importantes pour l’artiste (The Great Wall, 2000). La peinture de David Hockney, qui se nourrit de l’histoire universelle de l’art depuis l’Antiquité, est centrée ici sur la peinture européenne, de la première Renaissance et des peintres flamands jusqu’à l’art moderne. La première partie de la galerie 9 témoigne de ce dialogue avec Fra Angelico, Claude le Lorrain, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Picasso... Puis, le public est invité à traverser l’espace de cette galerie-atelier transformée en salle de danse et de musique, comme David Hockney le fait régulièrement, accueillant chez lui musiciens et danseurs.

Passionné par l’opéra, David Hockney a souhaité réinterpréter ses réalisations pour la scène depuis les années 1970 dans une création polyphonique à la fois musicale et visuelle, en collaboration avec 59 Studio, enveloppant le visiteur dans la salle la plus monumentale de la Fondation Louis Vuitton (galerie 10).

David Hockney

"After Munch: Less is Known that People Think" 2023

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 72"

Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson

David Hockney

"After Blake: Less is Known that People Think" 2024

Acrylic on canvas

72 x 48"

Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson

L’exposition se clôt par une salle intimiste où seront révélées les œuvres les plus récentes peintes à Londres, où l’artiste réside depuis juillet 2023 (galerie 11). Celles-ci, particulièrement énigmatiques, s’inspirent d’Edvard Munch et de William Blake : After Munch: Less is Known than People Think, 2023, et After Blake: Less is Known than People Think, 2024, où l’astronomie, l’histoire et la géographie rencontrent une forme de spiritualité, selon les propres mots de l’artiste. Il a souhaité y inclure son tout dernier autoportrait.

[1] “This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had – 11 rooms in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Some of the most recent paintings I’m working on now will be included in it, and I think it’s going to be very good.” -- David Hockney

Commissariat de l'exposition :

Suzanne Pagé, directrice artistique de la Fondation Louis Vuitton et commissaire générale

Sir Norman Rosenthal, commissaire invité

François Michaud, conservateur à la Fondation Louis Vuitton, commissaire associé

Assisté par Magdalena Gemra

Avec la collaboration de Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima et de Jonathan Wilkinson, pour le studio David Hockney

Publication

DAVID HOCKNEY

Édité par Norman Rosenthal

Contributions de Suzanne Pagé, Norman Rosenthal, James Cahill, Magdalena Gemra, Anne Lyles, François Michaud, Simon Schama, Donatien Grau, Eric Darragon, Théo de Luca, Fiona Maddocks et Philippe-Alain Michaud. Publié par Thames & Hudson et la Fondation Louis Vuitton. Relié, 25,9 x 30,5 cm, 328 pages, 484 illustrations, ISBN: 9780500030325

FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON

8, avenue du Mahatma Gandhi,

Bois de Boulogne, 75116 Paris

www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr

Amy Sherald: American Sublime @ Whitney Museum of American Art, New York - A Major Exhibition

Amy Sherald

American Sublime

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

April 9 – August 10, 2025

Amy Sherald

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018

Oil on linen, 72 1/8 × 60 1/8 × 2 3/4 in. (183.1 × 152.7 × 7 cm)

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

The National Portrait Gallery is grateful to the following lead

donors for their support of the Obama portraits:

Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg;

Judith Kern and Kent Whealy;

Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia.

Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

Amy Sherald

Breonna Taylor, 2020

Oil on linen, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in.

The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky,

Museum, purchase made possible by a grant from the

Ford Foundation; and the Smithsonian National

Museum of African American History and Culture,

purchase made possible by a gift from Kate Capshaw

The Whitney Museum of American Art presents Amy Sherald: American Sublime, the artist’s debut solo exhibition at a New York museum and the most comprehensive showing of her work. American Sublime considers Amy Sherald’s powerful impact on contemporary art and culture, bringing together almost fifty paintings spanning her career from 2007 to the present. This exhibition positions Amy Sherald within the art historical tradition of American realism and figuration. In her paintings, she privileges Black Americans as her subjects, depicting everyday people and foregrounding a population often unseen or underrepresented in art history. The exhibition features early works, never or rarely seen by the public, and new work created specifically for the exhibition, along with iconic portraits of First Lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor—two of the most recognizable and significant paintings made by an American artist in recent years.

Amy Sherald places her work within the lineage of American realism and portraiture, alongside artists like Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, and Andrew Wyeth—all represented in the Whitney Museum’s collection. The early American realists sought to capture the ethos of American places and people. However, there is an evident absence of Black Americans in theserepresentations. Deeply committed to expanding notions of American identity, Sherald’s compositions center her subjects, inviting viewers to meet them eye to eye and empathetically step into their imagined worlds. Employing props and iconography—a tractor, a beach ball, the American flag, a toy pony, or a teacup—the artist crafts universally relatable narratives, illuminating her subjects’ idiosyncrasies and their unique life experiences. By including symbols that resonate with common ideas of American identity and history, these portraits offer a more complete view of the complexity of twenty-first-century American life. The resulting body of work attests to the multiple facets of American identity, reinforcing Sherald’s profound belief that “images can change the world.”

Amy Sherald

If You Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It, 2019

Oil on linen, 130 × 108 × 2 1/2 in. (330.2 × 274.3 × 6.4 cm)

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2020.148

purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee,

Sascha S. Bauer, Jack Cayre, Nancy Carrington Crown,

Nancy Poses, Laura Rapp, and Elizabeth Redleaf

Amy Sherald

What's precious inside of him does not care to be known by

the mind in ways that diminish its presence (All American), 2017

Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm)

Private collection, courtesy Monique Meloche Gallery

Photograph by Joseph Hyde

Amy Sherald

Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between, 2018

Oil on canvas, 100 x 67 x 2 1/2 in. (254 x 170.1 x 6.35 cm)

Baltimore Museum of Art, Purchase with exchange funds

from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.,

BMA 2018.80.

Photograph by Joseph Hyde

“It is a great honor to work with Amy Sherald, one of the most compelling, generous, and impactful artists of our time,” said Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum. “Her unwavering dedication and commitment to what she has called the ‘wonder of what it is to be a Black American’ is deeply felt, and I am thrilled to share her visionary work with our audiences.”

“American Sublime is a salve,” said artist Amy Sherald. “A call to remember our shared humanity and an insistence on being seen.”

“Few contemporary artists make images as gripping and indelible as Amy Sherald. Each of her paintings distills the essence of an individual while also conveying a broad sense of humanity,” said Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director. “Over the years that I’ve been in dialogue with Amy, we’ve visited works in the Whitney’s collection by Paul Cadmus, Barkley Henricks, and Edward Hopper, among so many American painters whose legacy she both inherits and extends. I can think of no better home for this important exhibition, which we’re honored to present.”

Amy Sherald

They Call Me Redbone,

but I'd Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake, 2009

Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm)

National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC,

gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of the artist and

the 25th anniversary of National Museum of Women in the Arts

Photograph by Ryan Stevenson

Amy Sherald

The Rabbit in the Hat, 2009

Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm)

Green Family Art Foundation,

courtesy Adam Green Art Advisory

Photograph by Christina Hussey

Amy Sherald

Hangman, 2007

Oil on canvas, 100 × 67 × 2 1/2 in. (254 × 170.18 × 6.35 cm)

Collection of Sheryll Cashin and Marque Chambliss

Photograph by Kelvin Bulluck

Amy Sherald: American Sublime – Exhibition Overview

American Sublime explores the work of one of the most preeminent artists of our time. Arranged chronologically, the exhibition begins with Amy Sherald’s poetic early portraits and leads into the distinct and striking figure paintings for which she is best known. In her intentional privileging of Black Americans as her subjects, Amy Sherald tells stories of a population underrepresented in traditional portraiture. Influenced by her childhood fascination with family photographs—a black-and-white portrait of her grandmother in particular—Sherald aims to portray Black people in quiet, authentic moments. She chooses subjects who vary in age, gender, and identity, placing them in scenes from everyday life to share perspectives she wants to see depicted in the world.

Amy Sherald identifies as an American realist. She tells stories of the American experience through her paintings, much like artists Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. It wasn’t until she saw a painting with a Black person in it at a museum as a child that she realized she hadn’t yet seen herself represented in art history—a pivotal moment that continues to impact her career. Sherald’s portraits contribute new narratives to the collective American story by recasting figures in archetypal American roles, like a cowboy, a beauty queen, or a farmer. While Amy Sherald acknowledges the political dimension of her work, she wants her impact to reach beyond that. Amy Sherald invites viewers to challenge established preconceptions about race and engage with the universal stories told in her portraits, revealing the richness and complexity of humanity. Her signature gray palette for skin tones deemphasizes the focus on race, expanding her subjects’ narratives and demonstrating that there is more to an individual than can be contained in a single image or facet of their identity.

Amy Sherald

Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), 2014

Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm)

Private Collection

Photograph by Joseph Hyde

Amy Sherald

The Bathers, 2015

Oil on canvas, 72 1/8 × 67 × 2 1/2 in. (183.2 × 170.2 cm)

Private Collection

Photograph by Joseph Hyde

Amy Sherald

A Midsummer Afternoon Dream, 2021

Oil on canvas, 106 × 101 × 2 1/2 in. (269.24 × 256.54 × 6.35 cm)

Private Collection

Photograph by Joseph Hyde

Photography is an important element of Sherald’s creative process, serving as her sketchbook and the foundation for her compositions. With the exception of her two commissioned portraits of First Lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, the artist selects each sitter based on their inherent qualities, such as poise, style, or wit—what she calls their “ineffable spark.” During photoshoots, Amy Sherald allows her models to pose organically, allowing for the synergy to build between them so that she can authentically capture their essence. She curates each scene and styles the subjects in clothing that speaks to the narrative she wishes to craft, creating a sense of magical realism. In titling her paintings, Amy Sherald often draws inspiration from Black women writers and poets like Toni Morrison and Lucille Clifton, reinterpreting their poetry to develop different contexts around the interior worlds of her subjects. Through her explorations, Amy Sherald redefines common beliefs about American identity, weaving a broader visual story of history and belonging. Ultimately, she portrays everyday Black people as individuals, not in contention or inherently politicized, but simply existing.

In addition to the paintings on view in the galleries, Amy Sherald presents work on the facade of the Horatio Street building across from the Museum. The newly commissioned work, Four Ways of Being, brings together four portraits by the artist—some never before seen in New York—and explores the intersection of past, present, and future with each capturing a distinct way of existing in the world.

The Whitney presentation of this exhibition is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator, with David Lisbon, curatorial assistant. Amy Sherald: American Sublime is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and curated by Sarah Roberts, the former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA

Amy Sherald: American Sublime is accompanied by a publication—the artist’s first comprehensive monograph—representing the broad sweep of Sherald’s painting practice and her key influences and inspirations. Contributors include exhibition curator Sarah Roberts, Elizabeth Alexander, Dario Calmese, Rhea Combs, and Deborah Willis. Amy Sherald: American Sublime is published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Yale University Press.

THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

99 Gansevoort Street, New York City

whitney.org

03/04/25

Mary Corse @ Locks Gallery, Philadelphia

Mary Corse

Locks Gallery, Philadelphia

April 3 - May 17, 2025

MARY CORSE

Untitled (White Multiband With White Sides, Beveled), 2023

Acrylic and glass microspheres on canvas, 58 x 96 x 4 1/2 inches

“My interest is in more of what I think of as pure abstraction … just as in mathematics, you’ll make a formula. . . asking a question into an invisible world.” –Mary Corse, 2011

Locks Gallery presents its first exhibition with California-based artist MARY CORSE (b. 1945). This presentation features a selection of recent ethereal White Light paintings, a body of work she has been making since 1968.

Mary Corse is one of the few women associated with the 1960s Light and Space movement in Southern California. Her luminous White Light paintings are made of glass microspheres, an industrial material which refracts light and shifts in appearance according to the viewer’s position and environment. Prompted by her studies of quantum physics in the late 1960s, Corse was searching for a way to put light into her paintings. Driving on the Pacific Coast Highway at night, she was captivated by the changing luminosity of the street signs and highway lines. She began combining these tiny glass beads with acrylic paint to create the illusion of light as both the subject and material of her work.

Each of Corse’s paintings is composed of geometries with precise proportions, prompting specific physical and metaphysical experiences of light. The surface of her paintings are rarely pristine; visible brushstrokes reflect the physical labor and systemic application behind each painting. Some works feature vertical bands, activating the verticality of the viewer’s stance. The luminosity of each band shifts in appearance through space, activating a subjective experience of light. Stripes seem to appear and disappear. At times, the surface appears flat while at others, it emits an ethereal light, seemingly radiating from within the canvas. “Nothing’s static in the universe. So why make a static painting?” says Mary Corse. “It’s an outer light, but when you relate to it, it becomes an inner light,” says the artist.

With over five decades of experimentation with her White Light paintings, Mary Corse proves her unrivaled exploration into the abstract nature of human perception. In her paintings, materiality and light is both absent and present, visible and invisible. As put by Art historian Drew Hammond, Corse’s paintings “reveal innumerable oscillating variations between these two poles of unity and multiplicity.”

This inaugural exhibition celebrates Corse’s dedicated exploration of light in her subtle and powerful paintings. Her ongoing and evolving White Light paintings challenge world views based on external fixity and objectivity, honoring the power of subjective individual experiences, embodied perception, and change.

MARY CORSE (b. 1945) lives and works in Topanga Canyon, California. In 2018, Mary Corse: A Survey in Light was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and in 2019 traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her work has been exhibited worldwide and is found in permanent collections including the Dia Art Foundation, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

LOCKS GALLERY

600 Washington Square South, Philadelphia, PA 19106

www.locksgallery.com

Louise Fishman @ Van Doren Waxter, NYC - "always stand ajar" Exhibition

Louise Fishman

always stand ajar

Van Doren Waxter, New York

April 10 – June 27, 2025

LOUISE FISHMAN

Loose the Flood, 2009

Oil on jute, 66 x 39 in (167.6 x 99.1 cm) (LF 48)

Van Doren Waxter presents LOUISE FISHMAN: always stand ajar, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by the venerable American painter organized with the Louise Fishman Foundation. This is the gallery’s first exhibition of the artist since the announcement of representation in 2024. Accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog that includes an essay by poet Nathan Kernan, this exhibition highlights Fishman’s works titled after Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens’ poems and the artist’s long-standing curiosity about the synthesis of paintings and written language.

Over six decades, Louise Fishman dedicated her career to the pursuit of original, complex, and sincere imagery. As painter Amy Sillman wrote, Fishman was “a serious-ass painter” who held herself to the highest standard of experiment and self-reflection in her studio, tackling each painting with the fullest intention to connect with the surface, the paint, and the movement of her body. Alongside her rigorous and disciplined studio practice, Louise Fishman nurtured friendships with writers and activists such as Bertha Harris, Jill Johnston, and Esther Newton, who created pioneering works in lesbian and queer studies which informed the multifariousness of Fishman’s identity as an artist. While Louise Fishman resonated with the gestural and geometric language of abstract painting, she persistently challenged the boundaries of Abstract Expressionism and averted the disposition towards the removal of personhood in the movement. She maintained consciousness of her state of being, in her own words, “a working-class Jewish Lesbian” and of the impossibility of separating the paintings from her greater experience as a human. Fishman’s energetic yet precisely organized brushstrokes are an advertent extension of her athleticism, caring hands, and earnest inquiry into the mystery of what makes a painting.

The exhibition showcases Fishman’s refined and magisterial works from the final twenty years of her life, which she titled after phrases from poems by American poets Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens. She was first introduced to poetry by her paternal aunt, Razel Kapustin, who was also a painter. During her time at Tyler School of Fine Arts, Fishman learned from poet Gerald Stern, with whom she became lifelong friends. She took inspiration from the works of poets, as Grace Hartigan did with Frank O’Hara and Jane Freilicher with John Ashbery. Intuitively and profoundly, Fishman understood the pictorial roots of language and the parallel between text and brushstroke, the legible and illegible.

LOUISE FISHMAN was born in 1939 in Philadelphia. In 1956, she began studying art at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, then at Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art, where she earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking and a B.S. in Art Education in 1963. She completed her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana and headed directly to New York in 1965, where she lived and worked until her passing in 2021. Her work is represented in many public collections, including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; and the Jewish Museum, New York, among many others.

VAN DOREN WAXTER, NEW YORK

23 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021

vandorenwaxter.com

02/04/25

Richard Serra: The Final Works @ Cristea Roberts Gallery, London

Richard Serra

The Final Works

Cristea Roberts Gallery, London

Until 26 April 2025

RICHARD SERRA

Casablanca #3, 2022

Hand-applied oil stick, etching ink and silica

on Igarashi 430gsm handmade paper

Paper and Image: 167.9 x 152.9 cm - 66 1/8 x 60 1/4 inches.

Edition of 27

Marking the first anniversary of Richard Serra’s death at the age of 85, Cristea Roberts Gallery presents the final works made by the artist.

The first complete showing of these works outside the US focuses on two series of prints made using black oil stick. Serra, one of the most significant artists of his generation, was known for monumental steel sculptures. However, his explorations of form, mass and gravity informed every aspect of his art, including his works on paper.

Casablanca 1-6, 2022 and Hitchcock I-III, 2024 mark the culmination of over fifty years of printmaking. Although described as prints, none of these works passed through a press and the methods used are unlike those of traditional printmaking; Serra’s chosen media undermines our understanding of what constitutes an editioned work.

Each work was made using oil stick, a combination of pigment, linseed oil, and melted wax. The mixture was moulded into large cylindrical sticks, then pressed down into a meat grinder and blended in an industrial dough mixer with silica.

The mixture was applied in layers, by a gloved hand, directly onto handmade paper, pushing and rubbing in a downward direction. Each layer required weeks of drying time before an additional coat could be applied. As a result, each impression varies in its construction.

For each work, layer upon layer of black oil stick was built up so that an intensely textured and rich three-dimensional surface emerges, evoking a large void. This imposing effect of black absorbing and reflecting light, dominates Serra’s prints. When making works on paper Serra remained committed to using a single palette of black to investigate weight, stability, and density.

Richard Serra commented “Black is a property, not a quality. In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a larger volume, holds itself in a more compressed field. It is comparable to forging.”

The mass of black in each work, which almost fills the entire sheets in Casablanca and Hitchcock, is relieved by thin areas of paper that appear to rise or emerge from curved edges and corners. Serra examines tension and gravity through this unequal balance of heavy mass and handmade Japanese paper. The paper support almost appears precarious; each impression of Casablanca, measuring over 150cm in width, weighs nearly 10 kilograms.

Richard Serra was interested in how an artwork not only exists in space but reorientates it. His sculptures created environments that had to be walked through or around to be fully experienced. Serra’s printmaking extends these investigations, interrogating the physical relationship of mass and the flat surface, and the viewers relationship to it.

The exhibition also features examples of earlier uses of black oil stick and etchings by the artist dating from 2004, and a display of the tools used to create these groundbreaking works.

Richard Serra: The Final Works demonstrates how the artist’s radical techniques and exceptional approach to making editions, remains singular in the history of printmaking.

Since presenting the first exhibition in the UK devoted to Serra’s prints in 2013, Cristea Roberts Gallery has continued to exclusively exhibit the artist’s editions in Europe. The works on show were developed by Richard Serra with Gemini G.E.L., an artists’ workshop and publisher in Los Angeles, where Serra made all his editions, a collaboration that lasted for over fifty years.

RICHARD SERRA - BRIOGRAPHY

Richard Serra (1938 - 2024) was born in San Francisco, USA. He lived and worked in New York, and the North Fork of Long Island, and Nova Scotia. From 1957 to 1961 Serra studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara, and from 1961 to 1964 at Yale University, Connecticut, where he worked with Josef Albers on Albers seminal book, Interaction of Color (New Haven, 1963). His first solo exhibition was held at Galleria La Salita, Rome, in 1966 and the Pasadena Art Museum staged his first solo museum exhibition in 1970.

Serra’s large-scale, site-specific sculptures, featuring monumental arcs, spirals, and ellipses can be found all over the world. Selected solo exhibitions and retrospectives include Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel (2017); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2017); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2014); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2011); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011); Menil Collection, Houston (2011); Monumenta, Grand Palais, Paris (2008); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2008); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art (2006); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2005); Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples (2004); Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis (2003). His works are housed in major collections all over the world.

Richard Serra participated in international exhibitions including Documenta, Kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987); the Venice Biennale (1980, 1984, 2001, and 2013); and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Annual and Biennial exhibitions (1968, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1995, and 2006).

Richard Serra was the recipient of many notable prizes and awards. In 2015, he was awarded Les Insignes de Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, France, and in 2018 he received the J. Paul Getty Medal, which honors extraordinary contributions to the practice, understanding, and support of the arts. Prior to this he was also awarded Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España, Spain in 2008 and Orden pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, Federal Republic of Germany in 2002.

Richard Serra passed away aged 85 on 26 March 2024 in New York, USA.

CRISTEA ROBERTS GALLERY, LONDON

43 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JG

www.cristearoberts.com

Related Posts:

In English

Richard Serra: Every Which Way, David Zwirner, New York, November 7 – December 14, 2024

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 13 – August 28, 2011

Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, September 25, 1997 - June 14, 1998

En Français

Richard Serra : Casablanca, Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris, 14 mars - 30 avril 2024

Richard Serra : Clara Clara, 1983 , Musée du Louvre, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, 14 avril – 3 novembre 2008

Richard Serra: The Final Works

Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, 13 March - 26 April 2025

01/04/25

"Erotic City" An Exhibition Curated by Martha Edelheit @ Eric Firestone Gallery, New York

Erotic City

Curated by Martha Edelheit

Eric Firestone Gallery, New York

Through May 2, 2025

Eric Firestone Gallery presents Erotic City, a group exhibition of over forty artists, curated by Martha Edelheit. Edelheit (b. 1931, New York, NY) is a pioneering artist whose work confronts dominant art historical paradigms, foregrounding female gaze and desire. Her lush and vivid work is at once critical, sensual, and humorous. An important voice for feminist art, she is known for both her frank depictions of sexuality and her insistence on their place within an art historical tradition and society. Martha Edelheit, who has been represented by Eric Firestone Gallery since 2018, lived in Sweden from 1993 until 2024. Now in her 90s she once again lives and works in New York City.

Martha Edelheit writes of Erotic City:

What is the difference between pornography and erotic art? I’m 93 years old. In our culture it wouldn’t be unusual to ask what someone my age is doing curating an erotic exhibition. While it may not be common knowledge, most of my peers still have erotic lives, some more active than others. Behind that sometimes bent and wrinkled exterior a very intense sensory life can still be functioning. Since the 1960s I’ve been doing work that has been called erotic. I never set out to do erotic drawings. I never thought of my work as erotic. I was drawing amusing stories I made up for myself. I can’t do these drawings, or stories, on demand. They happen to me. In 1959–60 a friend showed me his copy of the Japanese Pillow Book. It was my first encounter with erotica and it profoundly affected my imagination and art making. It is still the lens through which I view erotic art. A writer of novels once stated that “pornography is a book you read with one hand.” Erotic works are images and writings you can also look at with one hand. Concepts of the erotic and pornographic change over time, and reflect the culture and politics of the era. Religion and politics define what is and isn’t pornography or erotica. The erotic novels of D.H. Lawrence were condemned as pornography when first published. When I was twelve or thirteen years old the erotic book being passed under the desks in my public school was “Gone With the Wind”.

I think of pornography as cold, abusive, nonconsensual, painful, humiliating, mean, degrading, clinical. Pornography is a commercial endeavor. Money is exchanged for specific services rendered, either in person, film, books, pictures. It often supplies services for what is sometimes called deviant needs…..punishment, pain, humiliation, infantile fantasies. Stomping, spanking, beating, binding, hitting, exposing, choking, submission to a dominating person, or dominating someone else. It has a much clearer delineation than erotica.

I think of the erotic as sensual, nonviolent, consensual, warm, inviting, sometimes funny, witty, amusing. Erotica can include some of the pornographer's stock in trade, but it is lighter in touch, sometimes humorous, often witty, and aesthetically pleasurable. Erotica assumes shared association, touching, stroking, licking, looking, playing, exposing….it digresses, teases, laughs, arouses, without harming.

Genitalia, vaginas, breasts, and penises are not pornographic or erotic. They are normal mammal body parts, usually used in reproduction. They depend on context to become pornographic or erotic.

While pornography will arouse, it will not delight. Pornography can give immediate physical relief. Erotica can arouse but it also can give lasting aesthetic pleasure on many levels.

I hope this small selection of what I and the Eric Firestone Gallery consider erotic imagery will give you, the viewers, that experience.

Martha Edelheit has selected over forty artists who express this vision of the erotic, with works ranging from the 1950s to the present. Erotic City includes both historic and contemporary artists and showcases artists whose sensual work would immediately come to mind—such as Joan Semmel and Marilyn Minter—alongside artists for whom the erotic has been a significant, though not always highlighted, focus.

Featured Artists: Helen Beard, Judith Bernstein, Paul Cadmus, Miriam Cahn, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, William R. Christopher, Jimmy DeSana, Lauren dela Roche, Jane Dickson, Rosalyn Drexler, Martha Edelheit, Sarah Faux, Mary Frank, Louis Fratino, Eunice Golden, Jenna Gribbon, Duncan Hannah, Jane Kogan, Joyce Kozloff, Sophie Larrimore, Pierre le Riche, Marcus Leslie Singleton, Kim Levin, Lee Lozano, Christabel MacGreevy, Keith Mayerson, Marilyn Minter, Jay Miriam, Rose Nestler, Janice Nowinski, Tom of Finland, Letitia Quesenberry, GaHee Park, Claudia Renfro, Kathy Ruttenberg, Sal Salandra, Mira Schor, Carolee Schneemann, Lara Schnitger, Joan Semmel, Patrick Siler, Laurie Simmons, Anita Steckel, Betty Tompkins, Katarina Janečková Walshe, Mia Weiner, Hannah Wilke, Didier William.

ERIC FIRESTONE GALLERY

40 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012

www.ericfirestonegallery.com

Erotic City - Curated by Martha Edelheit

Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, March 13 – May 2, 2025

Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh @ Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York - "The Human Situation" Exhibition

The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh

Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York

April 10 – June 21, 2025

Sylvia Sleigh

The Blue Dress, 1970

Oil on canvas, 66½ × 34½ inches (168.9 × 87.6 cm)

Collection of Audrey and Joseph Anastasi

courtesy of the Estate of Sylvia Sleigh and Lévy Gorvy Dayan

Alice Neel

Pregnant Nude, 1967

Oil on canvas, 36½ × 57¼ inches (92.7 × 145.4 cm)

Private Collection, New York, courtesy of AWG Art Advisory

courtesy of the Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner

Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh. The exhibition, conceived by Saara Pritchard, marks the first focused presentation of Marcia Marcus (b. 1928), Alice Neel (1900–1984), and Sylvia Sleigh (1916–2010), who each worked in New York City and shared in its artistic circles in the dynamic decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. During this period, they portrayed mutual sitters, exhibited together, and participated in public discussions. Their representations of loved ones, friends, and acquaintances are distinctive in form and style, yet share in their evocation of the human spirit, capturing Sylvia Sleigh’s reflection “The human situation adds a certain poignancy to portraits...”

In 1973, paintings by the three figurative artists were on view in the unprecedented exhibition Women Choose Women, organized by Women in the Arts and presented at the New York Cultural Center. The three painters would exhibit together again in the following years, notably in Women’s Work: American Art 1974, Philadelphia Civic Center and In Her Own Image, Samuel S. Fleischer Art Memorial, administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (both part of Focus on Women in the Visual Arts, 1974)—as well as Sons and Others: Women Artists See Men, Queens Museum (1975). Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, and Sylvia Sleigh too were early participants in the collaborative installation The Sister Chapel, PS1, New York (1978)—from which Marcia Marcus eventually withdrew due to teaching and other exhibition commitments—with Alice Neel and Sylvia Sleigh unveiling large-scale paintings.

In their works, each artist differentiated herself from prevailing modes of Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism—capturing Neel’s predecessor Robert Henri’s principle “Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.” Their distinguished images depicted many of the same artistic and critical figures, including David Bourdon, Sari Dienes, Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, and John Perreault, among others, as well as self-portraits. They also each painted or collaborated with writers and curators such as Lucy Lippard, Cindy Nemser, Linda Nochlin, Barbara Rose, Marcia Tucker, and Sleigh’s husband Lawrence Alloway.

While working at different phases of maturity in their practices during the 1960s and 1970s, they experienced the period’s socio-political movements, including for civil and women’s rights. This historical environment is described by Lucy Lippard in her exhibition catalogue introduction for Women Choose Women:

“A largescale exhibition of women’s art in New York is necessary at this time for a variety of reasons: because so few women have up until now been taken seriously enough to be considered for, still less included in, museum group shows; because there are so few women in the major commercial galleries; because young women artists are lucky if they can find ten successful older women artists to whom to look as role models; because although seventy-five percent of the undergraduate art students are female, only two percent of their teachers are female. And above all—because the New York museums have been particularly discriminatory, usually under the guise of being discriminating.”

Although the three artists aligned with and participated in feminist causes to varying degrees, the energies of the movement created a focus on women’s art, resulting in exhibitions, galleries such as AIR Gallery and Soho 20 Gallery, grassroots publications, organizations including Women’s Interart Center and Women’s Caucus for Art, and panel discussions, in which they each featured. The portraits by Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, and Sylvia Sleigh gesture towards this critical art-historical moment, while illuminating for viewers each artist’s distinctive point of view.

As a testament to their legacies, the exhibition features works by contemporary figurative painters Jenna Gribbon, Karolina Jabłońska, Chantal Joffe, Nikki Maloof, Wangari Mathenge, and Claire Tabouret, who carry forward the tradition of rendering lived images of self, family, friends, and the home. Presenting recent and new canvases created on the occasion of the exhibition, the contemporary artists share in the history and atmosphere of community, and expand upon the themes of womanhood, intimate portraiture, the nude, and the still life that underlie The Human Situation.

LEVY GORVY DAYAN, NEW YORK

19 East 64th Street, New York City

www.levygorvydayan.com

Related Posts:

Marcia Marcus, Role Play: Paintings 1958-1973 @ Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, October 12 - December 2, 2017

Alice Neel: The Early Years @ David Zwirner, New York, September 9 - October 16, 2021

Alice Neel: Freedom @ David Zwirner, New York, February 26 - April 13, 2019

Alice Neel @ Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 18 - April 15, 2001

Sylvia Sleigh: Every leaf is precious @ Ortuzar, New York, February 12 – April 5, 2025