Eliana Willis

For the past two decades, Katherine Bernhardt’s schtick has been throwing everyday stuff onto the canvas in exuberant, messy, color-pop paintings. Ketchup, hamburger, toilet roll, toothbrush, cigarette—to scan a gallery of Bernhardts is to see an artist who works instinctively, one who eyes something near-at-hand and then makes it massive, flat, and drowning in a sea of color.
Most recently, that thing within reach has been Pokémon cards. Bernhardt’s son began collecting the cards during the pandemic and soon she too was a fan. Bernhardt captures the fun, vibrant escapism of the Pokémon universe in her new show at David Zwirner Hong Kong—deep breath—“Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art,” set to run through August 20.
Installation view of “Katherine Bernhardt: Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art” at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, 2023. Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Most of the paintings on display in her first solo venture in Hong Kong replicate the formal components of a Pokémon trading card: a rectangular portrait with a delineated border and inscribed with the Pokémon’s Hit Points (HP), energy type, and skill moves, written in both English and Japanese.
As ever, Bernhardt is not one for pompous titles. Surfing Pikachu (2021) is as expected: a gleeful Pikachu racing through a sea of swirls on a pink surfboard. Chansey (2021) is typically affable, clutching her lucky egg that appears like a golden acorn, and labelled “#113” as per her Pokédex number.
The difference is in the execution. With Pokémon cards, which Nintendo released under the art direction of Ken Sugimori in 1996, the image appears glossy and computer-enhanced, the layout balancing artwork and gameplay information. Bernhardt’s “cards” have no such constraint. Colors collide and merge, and her creatures dominate the canvas, poking through borders in striking gestures that echo signature movements known from Nintendo’s video games.
Installation view, Katherine Bernhardt, Pikachu Pikaball and Ditto VMax Ju Ju (2021). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
This blurred, bold effect is a product of the frenetic pace at which Bernhardt works. In a process she has followed for much of her career, outlines are first hashed out in spray-paint, next she lays the canvas on the floor and layers on watered down acrylic paint, hence the bleeding of colors. Oftentimes, Bernhardt attacks multiple paintings simultaneously.
The rough repurposing of pop culture subjects is something of a Bernhardt staple. She’s previously painted Darth Vader, Pink Panther, Garfield, E.T., typically on hot tropical backgrounds. The show notes proclaim the St. Louis born artist is challenging “high-low dichotomies of contemporary painting” and by extension questioning art world value systems.
But she might just as readily be making Pokémon paintings because they’re fun.

“There was some criticism, like, ‘Oh, great choice of subject matter to paint.’ Like, what do you want me to paint? War zones and people dying and kids being killed? There’s enough of that on TV and in the real world,” she told the South China Morning Post.

“The art, for me, it’s more like an escape. And a world you can go into that’s colorful and good.”

See more images from the show below.
Installation view of “Katherine Bernhardt: Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art” at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, 2023. Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt, Chansey (2021). Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt, Gengar and Mimikyu Tag Team GX Poltergeist Horror House (2021). Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt, Galarian Rapid Dash (2023). Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt in her studio, St. Louis, 2023. Photo: Whitten Sabbatini.
“Katherine Bernhardt: Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art” is on view at David Zwirner, 5–6/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong, through August 20.
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In 1966, Ernest Cole fled his native South Africa, never to return. The nation’s first Black freelance photographer, he carried with him a secret cache of images documenting the evils of apartheid—photos he knew that could never be published in the county of his birth.
Instead, he went to New York City, where Magnum Photos and Random House published his House of Bondage, exposing South Africa’s horrific apartheid system to the world. The groundbreaking book became international news, helping fuel the anti-apartheid movement.
In 1968, Cole wrote in Ebony that he wanted his photography book “to show the world what the white South African had done to the Black.”
“I knew that if an informer would learn what I was doing I would be reported and end up in jail,” he continued. “I knew that I could be killed merely for gathering that material for such a book and I knew that when I finished, I would have to leave my country in order to have the book published. And I knew that once the book was published, I could never go home again.”
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Handcuffed blacks were arrested for being in a white area illegally. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
But Cole‘s fame was short-lived. He gave up photography in the 1970s, and died destitute, at just 49 years old, in 1990. His original negatives were believed to have been lost.
Until a few years ago, that is. In 2018, Cole’s heirs found 60,000 negatives in a Stockholm bank vault. Now, the first exhibition featuring works from Cole’s rediscovered archive is on view at at FOAM, the Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam.
“Ernest Cole: House of Bondage” showcases Cole’s pioneering work, and the obstacles he overcame in order to capture the groundbreaking images of oppression.
Born in 1940, Cole started taking photographs at just eight years old. South African authorities greatly restricted the movement of Black people, but Cole was able to change his registration to the less constrained category of “colored.” (One of the tests was whether or not a pencil would get stuck in your hair.)
This relative freedom of movement gave Cole the ability to photograph shocking scenes of South Africa life.
He went to the mines, where men lined up to be processed for grueling manual labor, living in harsh barracks far from home. He went to schools where Bantu children worked on the floor due to lack of desks. He visited Black servants working for white families, their living quarters furnished with milk crates and newspaper carpeting.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Students kneel on the floor to write. The government did not always provide schools for black children. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Other photos show Black men handcuffed and young boys behind bars, arrested for being caught in a white neighborhood. There are packed segregated trains, the Black passengers clinging precariously to the outside of the cars in order to travel during rush hour, and overcrowded hospitals with Black patients in desperate need of treatment.
When Cole finally published House of Bondage in 1967, the images shocked the world—as the artist knew they would. Ahead of the FOAM exhibition, Aperture reissued the book, introducing this first-person account of the everyday violence under apartheid to 21st-century audiences.
See more photos from the exhibition below.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. It is against the law for black servants to live under the same roof as their employers. In a private home, servants would have a separate little room in the backyard. She lives on the edge of opulence, while her own world is bare. Newspapers are her carpet, fruit crates her chairs and table. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Servants are not forbidden to love. The woman holding this child said: “I love this child, though she’ll grow up to treat me just like her mother does. Now she is innocent.” Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Acres of identical four-room houses on nameless streets. Many were hours by train from city jobs. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Africans throng Johannesburg station platform during late afternoon rush hour. The train accelerates with its load of clinging passengers. They ride like this through rain and cold, some for the entire journey. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. With no room inside the train, some ride between cars. Which black train to take is a matter of guesswork. They have no destination signs and no announcement of arrivals is made. Head car may be numbered to show its route, but the number is often wrong. In confusion, passengers sometimes jump across tracks and some are killed by express trains. Whistle has sounded, train is moving, but people are still trying to get on. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. These boys were caught trespassing in a white area. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
“Ernest Cole: House of Bondage” is on view at FOAM, Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam, Netherlands, January 26–June 14, 2023. 
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It’s been 30 years since Ethel Schwabacher had a proper solo show in New York City. But in the 1950s, she was at the forefront of the Abstract Expressionist movement, showing vibrant canvases with bold colors, fluid brushstrokes, and even snippets of poems at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.
“Ethel was a poet as well, so she would put lines of her poetry in her paintings—which for the 1950s was way ahead of its time,” Christine Berry, cofounder of New York’s Berry Campbell Gallery, told Artnet News.
Now, the late artist—who has work in the collections of institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—is having enjoying a well-deserved revival at Berry Campbell.
At the Chelsea gallery, a nearly sold-out exhibition is on view through this weekend. The works, priced at $165,000 to $400,000—far above the artist’s auction record of $56,250, set in 2020, according to the Artnet Price Database—focuses on the artist’s works from the 1950s.
Ethel Schwabacher, Seasons and Days: July (1955). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
For decades, the Schwabacher estate was represented by Anita Shapolsky Gallery, an elderly dealer on the Upper East Side who stages about three shows a year out of her townhouse.
The past few years have been a moment of rediscovery for many other women of the Ab Ex movement, with the acclaimed Mary Gabriel book Ninth Street Women, and in the landmark 2016 Denver Art Museum show “Women of Abstract Expressionism.” But it seemed as though Schwabacher—one of the 12 artists in the Denver show—might be left behind.
Enter Berry Campbell, which also represents the estates of Judith Godwin and Perle Fine, two of the other women in the Denver show.
When the dealers got in touch with the artist’s son, lawyer Christopher Schwabacher (who for years represented Parsons), they were shocked if delighted to discover hundreds of paintings, not seen for decades, carefully packed away in storage. That included the show’s centerpiece, Prometheus, a 1959 canvas that had to be unrolled and stretched for the occasion.
Ethel Schwabacher, Prometheus (1959). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
“These all have Betty Parsons labels on the back,” Berry said. “It’s incredible.”
The artist continued painting until her death in 1984, and the dealers hope to build an appreciation of Schwabacher’s oeuvre with a series of shows spanning her entire career.
“Originally, we thought we would have to do a retrospective since no one knew who she was—but the paintings were so strong,” gallery cofounder Martha Campbell added.
When Artnet News visited “Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s),” it was a busy afternoon.
Ethel Schwabacher (ca. 1955). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Christopher Schwabacher and his wife, Hannelore, had stopped by to visit, and there were repair men in the space—a construction project next door had dropped an anvil on the gallery skylight, causing pane of glass to shatter. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the paintings were not damaged.
Christopher Schwabacher, now age 81, was unfazed by the incident, and happy to share childhood memories of his mother painting—a widow, she would put on classical music to drown out the noise of him playing with his sister, Brenda Webster, while she worked. The living room was pressed into service as an art studio.
“I’ve never seen so many paint tubes of paint. As kids we were fascinated by them,” Christopher Schwabacher told Artnet News. “When we could sort of let loose and not be so careful was when she would bring her brushes out to the faucet in the pantry to wash them.”
Decades later, the artist’s son is hopeful the time is ripe for a reappraisal of Schwabacher’s career—and he sees the skylight incident as a good omen: “We have a smashing success right here!”
See more paintings from the show below.
Ethel Schwabacher, Origins I (1958). Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Pennington: Return and Departure of Birds (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Return No. 3 (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Steps of the Sun (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Return and Departure (1956). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
“Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s)” is on view at Berry Campbell, 524 West 26th Street, New York, New York, April 20–May 26, 2023.
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Commuters on the London Underground passing through Gloucester Road station are in for an unexpected treat. On a disused platform, British performance artist Monster Chetwynd—born Alalia Chetwynd, and formerly known as Spartacus and Marvin Gaye—has installed giant statues of lily pads, toads, and other amphibian creatures.
The exhibition, titled “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily,” is on view until May 2024. It’s inspired by the history of the station as it connects to the Great Exhibition of 1851, staged by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, held in nearby Hyde Park in the famed Crystal Palace designed by the architect Joseph Paxton.
A former gardener, Paxton drew on the structure of the water lily and its ribbed veins to come up with his modular design for the groundbreaking building. In Chetwynd’s work, the animals—beetles, lizards, salamanders, dragonfly larvae, tadpoles, and tortoises—are working together to build the Crystal Palace.
“Normally my work is linked to bad taste and disarming humor, but these look oddly delicate, almost like Wedgwood porcelain,” Chetwynd told the Guardian, marveling over the craftsmanship of the original Crystal Palace. “To read that each pane of glass was individually hand blown—I get really genuinely excited about things like that.”
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
The first performance artist ever nominated for Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize, in 2012, Chetwynd is known for her offbeat works. She has enlisted both friends and strangers to take part in elaborate costumed parades, built a creepy indoor children’s playground called The Idol in East London, and has an ongoing film project, Hermito’s Children, about a transgender detective investigating a woman who died from orgasming on a dildo seesaw.
For her new Art on the Underground commission, the artist was on hand for the unveiling, clad in a glittery pink body suit and a blonde wig. This was Chetwynd’s costume for the Fact-Hungry Witch, a character in her film Who named the Lily?, currently on view in the station. It presents a history not only of the Amazonian lily and the Crystal Palace, but also of the subway, architecture, industry, and colonialism.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
“The poetic connection between a Lily from the Amazon (that smells of pineapple and entraps beetles in its pink interior overnight) and the arches and rumbling tunnels of Gloucester Road, this connection needs to be brought forward,” Chetwynd said in a statement. “How history is re-examined and allowed to be accessible is also in need of discussion.”
The installation also includes seven poster artworks in the station, which each hide clues for an interactive detective hunt that the artist hopes will engage local families.
“I’m hoping that when people see the work on the platform that they’re delighted, and they get some joy from it, because it’s quite fun and playful,” Chetwynd told the BBC. “I also hope that are interested and intrigued into the history that I researched.”
See more photos of the installation below.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd’s “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” is on view at Gloucester Road Station, South Kensington, London, U.K., May 2023–May 2024. 
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