On Ugliness: Medieval and Contemporary @ Skarstedt London - A rare convergence of paintings, sculptures and photographs spanning the twelfth century to the present day

On Ugliness 

Medieval and Contemporary

Skarstedt London

February 27 – April 26, 2025

Skarstedt London presents On Ugliness: Medieval and Contemporary, a rare convergence of paintings, sculptures and photographs spanning the twelfth century to the present day. Taking its title from Umberto Eco’s seminal publication On Ugliness, this curated presentation examines the grotesque as a universal theme, tracing its evolution across a millennium of artistic output. Four medieval stone heads form the crux of this exhibition, their contorted faces- ranging from grimaces to sneers- serve as a touchstone throughout art history and play a formative role in contemporary interpretations of the grotesque.

The exhibition features work by George Condo, Nicole Eisenman, Jameson Green, Martin Kippenberger, Barbara Kruger, Jacob de Litemont, Pablo Picasso, Stefan Rinck, Pensionante del Saraceni, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Schütte and a selection of unknown artists working between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.

Although the grotesque has been dismissed and deplored by various critics over the past millennium, it remains a recurrent fascination, continuously re-imagined by each generation. As a result, its etymology is in constant flux. Some argue that the grotesque is a collective tool for conceptualising difference and change, while others see it as a means of liberation, freeing the artist from earthly constraints. Regardless of the motif or iconography, the grotesque reveals aspects of the world that elude comprehension, therefore our experience of the genre should result in bafflement.

The most prevalent expression of the grotesque is through metamorphosis or hybridity – a motif discovered in the Roman Emperor Nero’s Villa Aurea upon its excavation in the fifteenth century. The ornamental scenes, later dubbed grottesche (‘from a cave’) captivated artists from Raphael to Pablo Picasso, who revelled in hybridity - first understood through his early proto-cubist works. During this period, he experimented with fragmentation and metamorphosis as exemplified in Tête de femme (1908), an exquisite drawing inspired by African and Iberian artefacts. Similarly, Nicole Eisenman explores corporeal distortion in Maquette: Sketch for a Fountain (Reclining Figure) (2019), where the figure’s exaggerated limbs merge into an amorphous whole. Whilst not traditionally beautiful, Eisenman imbues a serene reverie into the figure, originally conceived for a body of water.

George Condo and Jameson Green embrace metamorphosis, using it as a vehicle for anthropological exploration. Condo’s self-declared 'psychological cubism' dissects the human psyche through fragmentation and distortion, revealing its most sensitive aspects. In Study for Metamorphosis I (2006), the protagonist possesses an undeniably human spirit despite her animalistic appearance, while the compositional techniques pay homage to portraiture masters like Rembrandt and Velazquez. On the other hand, Jameson Green’s Head Study #26 (2024) is morphed beyond recognition, using an imagined hybrid creature to confront the challenging themes of racism and corruption.

The grotesque is deeply rooted in art history, yet it defies the ideals of harmony, proportion, and beauty. This is epitomised by Thomas Schütte’s landmark Wicht series (2006), a collection of twelve grotesque heads, of which one is featured. The bronze head, mounted high on a steel console, explores the complexities of the human condition, recalling the distorted medieval stone heads included in this exhibition. Often tucked under roofs, cornices, or atop columns in ecclesiastical buildings, these grotesque heads contrast with the serene saints and apostles that adorn the same spaces. Their exaggerated expressions lend them an air of irreverence, prompting James Lingwood to compare Schütte’s Wicht figures to ‘gargoyles looking down from the sides of medieval cathedrals.’[1] While their original purpose remains uncertain, some scholars interpret them as marginal jokes, lightening the solemnity of religious settings, others view them as caricatures or evil spirits. Regardless of intent, they have been described as ‘the most original physiognomic inventions of the art of the Middle Ages.’[2]

Stefan Rinck’s small-scale contemporary carvings engage with this same grotesque tradition, echoing the hybrid, exaggerated forms of the medieval heads. Carved from natural materials like sandstone or diabase, Rinck’s sculptures mimic the rough-hewn textures of their medieval counterparts, instilling a sense of permanence in his creations. His practice also draws on medieval illustrated encyclopaedias known as bestiaries, which catalogue real and imaginary animals, further rooting his work in the visual and conceptual language of the Middle Ages.

During the medieval period, expressive faces were linked to sin, while an ordered, expressionless face reflected discipline and morality. Conversely, Renaissance and Baroque artists sought to capture the essence of the individual, often at the expense of beauty. With the rise of humanist philosophy in the fourteenth century, the artistic focus shifted from the divine to the human epitomised through an exceptionally rare portrait of King Louis XI of France (circa 1469), attributed to Jacob de Litemont. King Louis XI’s profile is starkly contrasted against a dark background, with his regal status signified by a rich red velvet robe. Nevertheless, his face is unidealised, marked by a crooked nose, heavy features, and baggy eyes. Devoid of flattery, this harsh portrayal reflects the period’s tendency to depict sovereigns with a ‘disarming and intimate sincerity.’[3] The shift towards naturalism intensified in the seventeenth century with Caravaggio’s radical use of live models and violent scenes. Followers like Pensionante del Saraceni (active in Rome circa 1610) emulated his work, particularly in A Boy Being Bitten by a Freshwater Crayfish, embracing his aptitude for theatrical, violent imagery.

The transition towards naturalism paved the way for social satire, as seen in the works of Martin Kippenberger, Cindy Sherman, and Barbara Kruger. Developed in the nineteenth century, it remained a potent force in fine art and popular culture, influencing Kippenberger’s sardonic critique of the artist and art market. His provocative sculpture Fred the Frog Rings the Bell (1990) depicts a crucified frog, his alter-ego, externalising the existential anxiety of exhibiting one’s work. While Kippenberger’s grotesque satire reflects personal turmoil, Sherman and Kruger use unsettling imagery to explore identity politics. In Untitled #140 (1985) from the Fairy Tale series, Cindy Sherman transforms into a pig, exposing what lies behind a polished façade. The self, she suggests, is a stage, shaped through metamorphosis. On the other hand, Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Striped 2) (2019) overlays a disturbed male face with declarative statements, using monumental scale and advertising techniques to expose the power structures behind identity, desire, and consumerism.

Each work on view simultaneously delights and disgusts, confronting the viewer with distorted faces, surreal imagery, and hybrid forms, oscillating between the hellish and the carnivalesque. On Ugliness highlights the power of the grotesque to defy artistic conventions through exaggeration, fragmentation, and metamorphosis—an enduring genre that has captivated civilisations throughout history.

[1] James Lingwood, quoted in Public/Political: Thomas Schütte, Germany 2012, p. 157.

[2] C. Little, Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, p.5.

[3] J. Dupont, ‘A Portrait of Louis II Attributed to Jean Perréal’, The Burlington Magazine, 1947, vol. 89, p. 236.

SKARSTEDT LONDON

8 Bennet Street, London SW1A 1RP

www.skarstedt.com

Barbara Kruger @ National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

In the Tower: Barbara Kruger
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
September 30, 2016 – January 22, 2017

Barbara Kruger

Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything), 1987/2014

screenprint on vinyl

overall: 274.32 x 342.05 cm (108 x 134 11/16 in.)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee, Sharon and John D. Rockefeller IV, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Denise and Andrew Saul, Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund, Agnes Gund, and Michelle Smith

© Barbara Kruger

The striking works of BARBARA KRUGER (American, b. 1945) will be featured in a focused exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, timed to celebrate the newly renovated East Building galleries. On view September 30, 2016, through January 22, 2017, In the Tower: Barbara Kruger is the first exhibition in the Tower Gallery in three years, renewing the series devoted to the presentation of works by leading contemporary artists. The exhibition presents fifteen of Kruger's profile works — images of faces and figures in profile over which the artist has layered her attention-grabbing phrases and figures of speech — from the early 1980s to the present, varying in scale from magazine-size to monumental.

Inspired by the Gallery's recent acquisition of Barbara Kruger's Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything) (1987/2014), the exhibition centers on the artist's profile works, among her strongest commentaries on cultural production. They present Barbara Kruger's distinctive direct-address texts (using active verbs and personal pronouns) that confront the viewer head-on and contrast with the underlying images of (mostly passive, often female) figures looking off the picture plane, and receiving or denying the viewer's attention. This tension creates conceptual works of great visual power.

Barbara Kruger's works are by turns so strong, shocking, or humorous that they grab the viewer's attention. This is due to her signature style which includes pronouncements printed in white Futura Bold Italic typeface across red bands reminiscent of the Life and Look magazine banners from the golden age of picture magazines. Kruger's text slashes the black-and-white images beneath, effectively shattering the clichés represented in both words and images. Using the language, color, image, and scale derived from the media-saturated world she queries, Kruger's work illuminates and interrupts cultural tropes to encourage an active visual readership.

"Barbara Kruger's profile works count among her most iconic images," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington. "We are delighted to present to our visitors from around the world this exhibition featuring such an outstanding artist."

Exhibition Highlights

Among the key works on view will be Kruger's Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face) (1983) that served as inspiration for Craig Owens's 1983 essay, "The Medusa Effect, or The Specular Ruse." At the time they were made, Kruger's 1980s works powerfully engaged and promoted theoretical discussion of "the gaze" around the construct of the viewer and the subject of representation. More broadly, these works resound with the use of the profile in the genre of portraiture in the long arc of history, while also probing matters of identity in contemporary philosophy. For this work and others, the exhibition will present Kruger's original paste-ups to illuminate the artist's process.

Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything) (1987/2014), acquired for the Gallery by the Collectors Committee and a group of generous patrons, presents an image of a woman in profile, lying prostrate and receiving medical treatment to her eye through a large, funnel-like device. Over the image are three red bands with the artist's admonitions emblazoned in white text that warn against the pleasures and perils of our "truthy" photography-based mass media and the knowledge, beliefs, and memories that it imparts.

Untitled (Half Life) (2015), a monumental wall work measuring fifty-five feet wide and twenty-five feet high and covering the entire west side of the Tower Gallery, was created by the artist for the exhibition. As visitors enter the large Tower Gallery they will confront the stare of the floor-to-ceiling, black and white female face, half in profile and the other half covered by a sculptural mold. On the upper right of the image read the words "Half Life" in white letters on a block of red.

A new five-minute film will feature excerpts from an interview with the artist discussing works in the exhibition. Made possible by the H.R.H. Foundation, the film will play continuously in the anteroom of the Tower Gallery.

Related Programs

Barbara Kruger, a professor in the art department at UCLA since 2006, has long maintained a commitment to teaching as a part of her practice. In December she will visit the National Gallery to talk with high school art students from DC Public Schools. The students will participate in education programs throughout the fall with Gallery educators, studying Kruger's work in the Tower exhibition and exploring the construction of identity in artworks across the museum's collection. This program marks the first time that an artist with an exhibition currently on view has worked with local students at the Gallery, and highlights Kruger's commitment to teaching and inspiring the next generation.

As a former film and television critic for Artforum, Kruger has acknowledged a deep interest in the moving image. In December the Gallery will feature an extensive film series, "Barbara Kruger Selects," chosen by the artist around the theme of the show and the artist's methodologies.

Exhibition curator Molly Donovan, associate curator, department of modern art, National Gallery of Art, will present a lecture on Sunday, October 23, 2016, at 2:00 p.m.

BARBARA KRUGER (b. 1945): Short biography

Barbara Kruger's higher education began at Syracuse University and continued at Parson's School of Art and Design in New York, where she studied with Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel in 1966. Beginning in 1967 Kruger worked as a layout editor at Condé Nast for twelve years, including posts at Mademoiselle, House and Garden, and Aperture. In 1969 Barbara Kruger began to make her own art while also writing poetry and film and television reviews. A decade later she had developed her "picture practice" with photographs repurposed from 1940s–1970s manuals and magazines that she overlaid with her own texts or commonplace phrases. The completed works alter her found materials, inscribing her admonitions and questions over the images to stimulate and rouse the viewer from passive acceptance.

Barbara Kruger's background in design is evident in these works, for which she is internationally renowned. Owing to her interest in the public arena and the everyday, Kruger's work has appeared on billboards, bus cards, posters, T-shirts, matchbook covers, in public parks, and on train station platforms. Recent work has included immersive installations of room-wrapping images and text, and multiple-channel videos.

Prior to teaching at UCLA, Barbara Kruger taught at California Institute of the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2005 Kruger received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 1973, 1983, 1985, and 1987; the Venice Biennale in 1982, 1993, and 2005; and Documenta 8 in 1987. Notable solo exhibitions include P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York (1980); Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1983); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1985); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1999, traveled to Whitney Museum of American Art in 2000); South London Gallery (2001); Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2005); the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008); the Museum Of Modern Art, Oxford (2014), and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2012–2016). Kruger lives and works in Los Angeles and New York City.

The exhibition is presented with support from the Tower Project.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
www.nga.gov

Barbara Kruger: Belief+Doubt, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Barbara Kruger: Belief+Doubt 

Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC 

August 20, 2012+2013+2014

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, has commissioned internationally renowned artist BARBARA KRUGER to create a site-specific installation for one of the museum’s most-visited public spaces. Belief+Doubt (2012) will fill the lower-level lobby and extend into the newly relocated museum bookstore. Approximately 6,700 square feet of surface—including walls, floor and escalator sides—will be covered in text-printed vinyl, surrounding viewers with lettering up to 12 feet high in a high-contrast color scheme of red, white and black.

Belief+Doubt speaks to the social relations and networks of power that define daily life. At a time when the value of certitude is taken for granted, Kruger says she is “interested in introducing doubt.” Large swaths of the floor are covered in open-ended questions WHO IS BEYOND THE LAW? WHO IS FREE TO CHOOSE? WHO SPEAKS? WHO IS SILENT?, while the area facing the bookstore explores desire and consumption YOU WANT IT. YOU BUY IT. YOU FORGET IT.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity,” said Barbara Kruger, noting the particular resonance these themes have in Washington, a city preoccupied with power.

Belief+Doubt will remain on view through 2014, the year the Hirshhorn celebrates its 40th anniversary. Like the recent presentation of Doug Aitken’s “Song 1” on the façade of the museum, Kruger’s installation is part of an initiative to activate new sites in and around the Hirshhorn. “Throughout the museum, we are emphasizing the artist’s voice,” said Richard Koshalek, director of the museum. “In addition, we are committed to curating all of the Hirshhorn’s public areas, not only those already thought of as exhibition spaces. Barbara Kruger’s work interrogates the way power and money flow in contemporary society. Having her intervene in a part of the building that is at once a social site and a place of commerce amplifies both her concerns and those of the Hirshhorn.”

Assistant Curator Melissa Ho, coordinator of the project, said, “Kruger’s command of architectural space and her ability to engage an audience amidst busy, lived experience make her the ideal artist to work with this site. ‘Belief+Doubt’ takes advantage of the constant movement through the lobby. As visitors descend the escalators, they are surrounded by language that beckons from all sides but only fully reveals itself as they pace and circulate through the entire space.”

In the 1980s, Barbara Kruger’s work helped bring photographic illustration and the techniques of mass media into the mainstream of contemporary art. Her signature photomontages, in which images from old books and magazines are emblazoned with banners of text designed to complicate the original meaning of the pictures, are some of the decade’s defining artworks. Kruger built on her early experience as a magazine photo editor and designer and book jacket designer to reconceive conceptual art as a vibrant public discourse by endowing it with a provocative visual identity and graphic punch. A profound influence not only on the development of visual art but also on movements in graphic design and street art, her work has moved fluidly between white-cube galleries and urban spaces, being equally at home printed on matchbooks, T-shirts, billboards, shopping bags, magazine covers and the sides of buses.

Since the 1990s, Barbara Kruger has focused increasingly on creating environments that encompass the viewer in language, either through sound and video projection or, as at the Hirshhorn, the enclosure of a space with text. In recent years, her site-specific vinyl installations have been mounted at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her room-sized multichannel video work The Globe Shrinks (2010) has been shown in Berlin, New York, London and Los Angeles. In 2005, Barbara Kruger was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 51st Venice Biennale.

The materials for this project have been donated by 3M. Additional funding was provided by L&M Arts and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden's website: www.hirshhorn.si.edu