Eliana Willis

In a city like Paris, full of monuments to famous conquests and heroic figures from history, the artist duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset take a different tack. For a new exhibition at the prestigious Musée d’Orsay, their vision is to bring a different cast of characters into the room, masculine protagonists, and ones of a more fragile nature. The artists will remind you, too, that these characters have always been there with us throughout history. We just tend to forget them, because they get written out of the hero tales we tell ourselves. They are in soft focus.
Their exhibition, called “L’Addition,” opens to the public this week at the French institution, a venue that presented some unique challenges even for these seasoned artists. The rules at the Musée d’Orsay are different. For one thing, the museum’s main concourse is open six days a week, so installation timelines were tighter than usual, leaving less room for improvisation or error. Another thing: The institution’s 19th-century sculptures and paintings had to remain in place, staying right where they have been for some 40 years, since the former Gare d’Orsay train station was first converted into a museum. Absolutely nothing could be rebuilt or reworked. “There are a handful of museums in the world that this is worth the sacrifice for,” said Dragset.
Elmgreen & Dragset L’Addition Musée d’Orsay Nave October 15, 2024 – February 2, 2025 Installation image credit: Image courtesy Elmgreen & Dragset, Musée d’Orsay. Photography by Andrea Rossetti, 2024
A Mirror World
For these two artists, subverting or playing with the museum structure is a core aspect of their practice. One of their early works was of an animatronic bird, installed between the interior and exterior glass at the Tate Modern in 2004. It was twitching on its back. Their very first sculpture was of a diving board, and it penetrated surrealistically between the interior and exterior of the museum wall at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark. “We always do some kind of transformation and we use a museum as our material,” noted Michael Elmgreen. “And the Musée d’Orsay is not a place that is normally up for big changes.”
Since 2006, the museum has been building contemporary art into its historic program with ongoing temporary exhibitions called “Correspondences.” But this marks the first time that the grand hall, with its most iconic Belle Époque clock looming above. It is a place of deep history and identity for Paris. The duo, then, have flipped the museum’s concourse on its head with some “additions,” an intervention Dragset described as a “queering of the space.”
In spite of the main hall’s epic beauty, it remains a passageway that visitors move through in order to get to the Van Goghs. “It’s an overlooked part of the museum in a way,” said Dragset. “People perceive it as almost ambient.”
Elmgreen & Dragset L’Addition Musée d’Orsay Nave October 15, 2024 – February 2, 2025 Installation image credit: Image courtesy Elmgreen & Dragset, Musée d’Orsay. Photography by Andrea Rossetti, 2024
They innovated a replica of the floor that hangs above the 19th century sculptures in marble and bronze. In this reflected area overhead, a sort of shadow world, Elmgreen and Dragset have hung their sculptures depicting soft and poetic visions of masculine youth upside down. “Fragile depictions of masculinity have been written out of art history,” Elmgreen said. The two wanted to focus on “the expectations one still has of young male persons and what they’re supposed to become.”
A hyperrealistic sculpture of a boy hunched over a piece of paper, drawing a stick figure rendition of David, which appears towering above him in a painting of a bacchanalian Roman scene, a sumptuous painted critique of Rome’s decadence. He’s also crossed the delicate barrier that protects the painting from the public. “We could somehow imagine that we are at a similar stage of our culture before it implodes,” said Dragset. “They are probably having more fun, but that also imploded when it became moralistic and puritan.”
Youth
Nearby Eugène Guillaume’s marble rendering of the Greek poet Anacréon, who has his arm outstretched to receive a small bird on his hand is Boy With Drone (2024). He echoes the gesture of the poet, but is about to let his toy machine lift off. Another young masculine figure sits (well, hangs) on a laundry machine, presumably waiting for his clothes to clean; it echoes a tradition in painting depicting society performing of quotidian tasks. Another of Elmgreen and Dragset’s figures gazes out from a V.R. headset, hands on his hips.
It is hard to say how old these figures should be—they seem to exist in a suspended period of youth somewhere between 12 and 20. “These are our children growing up in troubled times,” Elmgreen said before a large group of guests that had gathered in the hall during its press preview earlier this week.
Elmgreen & Dragset L’Addition Musée d’Orsay Nave October 15, 2024 – February 2, 2025 Installation image credit: Image courtesy Elmgreen & Dragset, Musée d’Orsay. Photography by Andrea Rossetti, 2024
Behind the two artists loomed one of the most striking works of the show: a boy standing at the edge of a diving board, contemplating the marble expanse below him. Carved in stark white, he cuts a peculiar figure against the ornate opulence of the museum’s domed ceiling. “When a child is looking off a diving board, which is the bravest decision, to jump or stand back down?” he added.
The metaphor of waiting for adulthood seems to also be a stand-in for wider societal change as well; a sense of a pent-up potential energy is almost palpable when you look at this new group of sculptures. Everyone is alone and waiting, in between two action points in a plot line. They feel deeply melancholic, captured in interior states.
Elmgreen & Dragset L’Addition Musée d’Orsay Nave October 15, 2024 – February 2, 2025 Installation image credit: Image courtesy Elmgreen & Dragset, Musée d’Orsay. Photography by Andrea Rossetti, 2024
Questions & Answers
The origin story of Elmgreen and Dragset is one of human connection, and it is both romantic and almost fateful. They met in a nightclub in Copenhagen.  They pieced together that, by chance, they lived in the same building; they were a couple for many years before amicably splitting—their art practice exists, they have said, as a child they share.
When we met at their studio in Berlin in late September, we stood among the sculptures set to head to the French museum. The converted water facility in Neukolln makes for a striking workspace: It is resplendent, and not far from the river, on a quiet cobblestone street, with towering factory-like ceilings (a good height for prototyping their towering boy on a diving board). The interior balcony is set up with working spaces for their team members, and an in-house chef was preparing lunch. They always eat together when possible. The top floor of the studio is an exquisite apartment with a grand piano, a library of books, and a suspended fireplace. We drink from Moomins mugs.
Elmgreen & Dragset L’Addition Musée d’Orsay Nave October 15, 2024 – February 2, 2025 Installation image credit: Image courtesy Elmgreen & Dragset, Musée d’Orsay. Photography by Andrea Rossetti, 2024
“We are attempting to understand what’s going on around us, what’s happening to the world,” said Dragset. “It’s probing and testing, a research into what’s happening to us emotionally rather than trying to find answers, because they are probably not there.” There is a political bent to all their work, but a tidy answer does not emerge, nor do their exhibitions preach a moral lesson. They do, however, conjure empathy.
It is an interesting moment to take up the question of the male gaze. There are important discussions about the male gaze as it is directed to women, but the male gaze also lingers on itself, on young men and idealized male bodies. “Feminism has been much better at discussing women’s position in society, whereas men are still finding complexity in conversations around masculinity,” said Dragset.
“Watching” (2024) presented at the Amorepacific Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Elmar Vestner
The Gaze and Technology
The two say they watch keenly how the public navigates their installations, which always have a dramaturgy that incorporates interactive elements. One feels a natural pull to build out a narrative, and they nurture this by planting some prompts. For their major exhibition that recently opened at the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Korea, a hyperrealistic sculpture of a young woman sits alone in a realistic restaurant that the duo completely designed and invented. She is on her phone, listening to a looping FaceTime call; a photograph of that same character seems to reappear in another part of the installation, a luxury apartment that they duo built inside the museum. The audience may try to piece these strands of a narrative together, but it would be in vain.
Visitors to their shows often pull out their phones, too. There is something particularly captivating about Elmgreen and Dragset’s work when it comes to online consumption. Their famous work Prada Marfa, installed in rural Texas in 2005, came years before Instagram; by now, it has become an influencer destination and a self-sustaining internet phenomenon and not the hidden land art project they intended it to be. Many of their sculptures reflect the duo’s concerns about the isolating aspects of technology and of how we, as viewers, relate to technology, with the audience’s own connection to it becoming an integral part of the experience.
“The Conversation” (2024) presented at the Amorepacific Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Elmar Vestner
The pieces invite a form of self-reflection—just as the VR-goggle-wearing youth in Paris is immersed in technology, so too is the woman in the Korean show, absorbed in her digital world, in a private moment in a public space. This mirroring highlights the pervasive role of technology in our lives, prompting viewers to question their own engagement with it.
The artists are always intrigued by which elements of their work resonate most with audiences. It’s often surprising which details capture attention. For example, in the Korean exhibition, a fridge magnet in the fictional restaurant that reads “Home is the place you left” has become a focal point, with many visitors sharing it online.
This detailed-oriented engagement, even through social media and phone screens, is something Elmgreen and Dragset find encouraging. “It creates a dialogue that previously didn’t exist in the art world. You’d present your work, people would visit, but you rarely got direct feedback or insight into their reactions,” says Elmgreen. “Now, there’s a whole new level of communication between the artist and the audience.”
The artists are comfortable with the varying interpretations and evolving meanings of their works. “It’s like parenting grown-up children,” Dragset explains. “Once they’ve left the house, you can’t control their lives. You offer something, and the world interprets and uses it in its own way.”
L’Addition is on view from October 15 through February 2 at Musee-d’Orsay. More

Johnny Depp, not content with playing a gangster, chocolatier, and man with scissors for hands, has landed his greatest starring role yet: artist. Don’t believe it? The beloved actor and musician has now opened a massive exhibition of his art in New York to demonstrate his bona fides and illustrate how artistry just flows through his veins, man.
Titled “A Bunch of Stuff,” the show is billed as a “multi-layered immersive exhibition” bringing together various works that Depp has created over the years. “Some may call it art, some may not; I call it mine,” he wrote in introductory wall text. In effect, through his paintings and collages, we’re trailing the artist on his creative journey, which has closely mirrored his personal life. “His art,” as organizer Bau Art touts it, “is emotion made flesh.”
Installation view of “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
The expansive exhibition venue in Chelsea makes that journey literal. One enters the show through a winding path draped with lush red curtains, before being released into an area dubbed the White Box, featuring dozens of thematic works. Another room called the Black Box plays an animated film, while outside of it are pieces of furniture from the artist’s studio and a wall where visitors can leave messages for the star. You exit through a gift shop stocked with merchandise and silkscreen prints.
Installation view of “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
It’s as much a showcase of art as it is a trip into Depp’s mind and an unironic exercise in self-mythologizing, fitting for a man who’s come up in show business. (Of note, the exhibition opens as Modi, the Depp-directed Amadeo Modigliani biopic—that modern-day form of hagiography—is making the film festival rounds.) So, what kind of artist is Depp? What’s he been cooking up in the studio? What is his emotion made flesh? Here’s a bunch of stuff in the show.

His word paintings
Johnny Depp, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride (2021) on view at “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
These pieces feature hand-lettering by Depp that spells out various slogans, such as “Question Everything” and “The Joke Is on Us, But Aren’t Jokes Meant to be Funny.” The show’s accompanying leaflet informs us that they “recall” the work of Ralph Steadman—the artist best known for his illustrations for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a non-fiction touchstone by Hunter S. Thompson, who Depp depicted in a 1998 film—though that’s putting things delicately. Fear and Loathing has evidently shaped the actor enough that the show opens with a piece bluntly scrawled with “Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride,” a turn of phrase lifted from Thompson’s famed tome.
Installation view of “A Bunch of Stuff,” featuring Johnny Depp’s “Hedy Lamarr” series. Photo: Min Chen.
More interesting is his “Hedy Lamarr” series, a sequence of “graffiti-style paintings” with words taken from the Depp and Jeff Beck track about the Hollywood star and inventor. While still obviously aping Steadman’s style, they evince more care in composition, pops of color, and ink blots that echo the lyrics’ sentiment. The most vividly visual piece contains the song’s opening line: “Erased by the same world that made her a star.”

An actual… bunch of stuff
Installation view of “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
In a blue-curtained area is an installation featuring cables hanging from the ceiling and threaded with diverse artifacts. There are feathers, sketches, small collages, cigarette papers, postcards, bookmarks, and cryptic musings on hotel stationery. These are presumably relics pulled from the actor’s archive (or pockets?) and offer the promised peek into his creative thinking—the art of his life, as he might even put it.

The other paintings
Installation view of “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
As we know from his 2023 sale of prints that reportedly netted him millions, Depp enjoys capturing his friends and compatriots on canvas. In “A Bunch of Stuff,” he’s included studies of Marlon Brando, Jack Kerouac, and Keith Richards, as well as tender portraits of his son Jack and his darling dog Moohman. There are paintings of mysterious characters that Depp has imagined as well, among them “Everyman” and “The Bunnyman,” the exhibition text tells me.
These works vary in style; some have been painted on canvases composed of cigarette papers, which lend the works unique textures.
Johnny Depp, Moohman (2008) on view at “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
It seems the actor also has a thing for skulls (maybe because he once played a pirate). A whole series depicts skeletons and skulls as forms of memento mori. A pointillist work frames a skeleton with the stenciled phrase “Death by Confetti,” which Depp explains in an accompanying film thusly: “The business celebrates you… they build you up to this great height, but you’re choking on that. I think the skeletons understand that.”
Johnny Depp, Death by Confetti – Celebration (2019–24) (detail) on view at “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
Between this skull and the Hedy Lamarr tribute, one can’t help but sense Depp’s frustration about the damage to his public standing following his 2022 legal battle with ex-wife Amber Heard—his “cancellation,” per the parlance of our times. Or perhaps, in his own words, he’s just “cursed with a dark sense of humor.”

This desk
Installation view of “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
The space called the White Box is installed with pieces of furniture in what appear to be recreations of Depp’s private spaces. One looks like a studio, staged with an easel and a cabinet of paint supplies; another a living room, complete with an electric guitar in a corner and a cluttered coffee table. At the entrance to the exhibition, there’s an impressive antique writing desk stacked with a typewriter and all manner of knickknacks—a bell, a magnifying glass, a skull of course, and a cymbal case stickered with old backstage passes, among others. Is this Depp’s actual desk, a stage for his artsy inclinations, or both? No idea, but the desk is very nice.

An animated “visual experience”
Inside the Black Box at “A Bunch of Stuff.” Photo: Min Chen.
A 13-minute film or “visual experience,” per the exhibition text, plays on loop in the Black Box, animating Depp’s artworks and featuring his narration. In it, he recounts episodes from his life—his nomadic upbringing, his friendship with Brando—and shares how he’s been guided by a creative impulse since he was a child drawing on the walls.
Created by the experiential team TAIT, the film is quite compelling, lending movement and meaning to Depp’s artistic oeuvre, while being unwittingly revealing. “I’ve been more people than most people have been,” he intones in his voiceover. “The question becomes, is there anything that I can offer? Is there anything uniquely me that I can add?” They’re good questions to ask.
“A Bunch of Stuff” is on view at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, 600 W 27th St, New York. More

A new exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna offers viewers the rare chance to see the work of the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn in conversation with his student Samuel van Hoogstraten.
“Rembrandt – Hoogstraten: Color and Illusion,” which the museum is billing as the largest showing of Rembrandt’s major works ever to come to Austria, features over 60 paintings and drawings by the artists side by side. It not only considers the teacher-pupil relationship but also looks at these two painters’ work in a 21st-century context. The exhibition features loans from museums from across the globe, including the National Gallery in London, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the Louvre in Paris, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. 
The show illuminates Rembrandt’s legendary technique, which captures dramatic scenes through sumptuous use of light and darkness. Similar qualities also became a part of the work of Van Hoogstraten, who also experimented with perspective and is known as a painter of architecture.
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Perspective View with a Young Man Reading in a Renaissance Palace (1662/67). © Dordrechts Museum. Photo: Bob Strik, Reprorek.
Van Hoogstraten’s 1632 painting Young Man Reading in a Renaissance Palace contains many of the hallmarks of his work. Within a trompe-l’oeil architectural frame, we see an impressive colonnade leading to a palatial home in the distance, as a young man studies a book in the middle ground, a faithful dog resting on the tiled floor nearby.
Rembrandt’s famous work Juno, painted between 1662-1665 and finished just four years before the artist’s death, is part of a series of female subjects the artist painted later in life. Here, the wife of Jupiter is depicted in an ornate dress with a crown and fur-trimmed cape. The use of shadows and darker colors helps to highlight the subject’s face and illuminate various details, including her jeweled brooch and scepter. 
Rembrandt van Rijn, Juno (1662/65). © Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Another Van Hoogstraten standout is The Slippers (1650). Here, perspective is used again to give viewers an intimate look into a domestic space. A checkered floor gives way to a threshold on which rests a pair of slippers; in the room beyond, cleverly, a Dutch painting of an interior hangs, artwork-within-artwork. 
Samuel van Hoogstraten, The Slippers (1650/75). Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Michel Urtado.
Rembrandt’s 1665 painting Self-Portrait with Two Circles is one of the Baroque artist’s most moving and mysterious late works; he is renowned for his revealing works in this genre, which number about 40. The artist can be seen holding brushes and a palate in a shallow space; the work almost appears to be left unfinished. 
Another factor setting Van Hoogstraten apart from his teacher and explored in this show is his use of perspective boxes. These small wood enclosures, produced in Amsterdam in the second half of the 17th century, allowed viewers to look through a peephole into a shallow painted interior that created an illusion of three-dimensionality. London’s National Gallery owns one by Van Hoogstraten; a replica was created for this show. 
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Old Man at a Window (1653). © KHM-Museumsverband.
The exhibition also studies the two artists’ efforts at illusionism, including, for example, Rembrandt’s Girl in a Picture Frame and the younger artist’s Old Man at the Window and Feigned Letter-Rack Painting, which attempt to fool the eye and confuse the boundary between actual and painted space. In a 21st-century nod to these illusionistic moves, the show features interactive spaces and projections, too.
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Feigned Letter-Rack Painting. © Creative Commons, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
“Rembrandt – Hoogstraten: Color and Illusion” will remain on view at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Maria-Theresien Platz, through January 25th, 2025. More

In Jane Austen’s 1814 coming-of-age novel Mansfield Park, Fanny Price, a young woman who learns to navigate high society when she moves into the estate of her aunt and uncle, receives an amber cross from her brother William, a navy officer who just returned from Sicily.
This detail, like many others in Austen’s work, is directly inspired by the author’s own life. Her brother Charles was a sailor, too, and would often bring back trinkets from his travels. Some of these trinkets—including a pair of topaz crosses gave to Austen and her sister Cassandra—are now on display at Jane Austen’s House, her onetime residence in Chawton, the U.K.
The museum’s newest exhibition, “Jane Austen and the Art of Writing,” opened on October 9. Included with general admission to the House, it explores the relationship between Austen’s writing—which aside from Mansfield Park includes such timeless novels as Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility—and the domestic setting in which she wrote.
Jane Austen’s House in Chawton. Photo: Jane Austen’s House.
Aside from those aforementioned crosses, the exhibition features rarely seen first-edition copies of Austen’s novels, two of which belonged to her brothers Frank and Edward. Also featured are several of Austen’s letters, which, while not as famous as her full-fledged novels, display her skill as a writer and offer insight into her private life.
Being Jane Austen’s former residence, the museum also houses some of her favorite pieces of furniture, including a custom-made, 12-sided display case and a 12-sided writing table, the latter of which is now located in the building’s dining room. (According to the memoirs of Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, her desk used to be located in the sitting room, because its creaking door warned the author of approaching footsteps.)
Jane Austen’s historic kitchen. Photo: Jane Austen’s House.
Items from the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland shed light on Austen’s relationship with her publishers, John Murray and Thomas Egerton. A check made out to “Miss Jane Austin” [sic], taken from Murray’s account book, show that Austen, unlike female authors from previous centuries, did not write under a male or gender-neutral pen name.
“This exhibition is a deep dive into Jane Austen’s creative process,” Sophie Reynolds, the House’s head of collections, interpretations and events, said in a press release. “We hope that it will unlock a new way for our visitors to understand Jane Austen as a dedicated, driven and professional writer, and to explore how her life and living arrangements affected her writing in the very house in which she lived and wrote.”
Jane Austen’s writing table. Photo: Luke Shears / Jane Austen’s House.
The show will lead the museum into the 250th anniversary of the legendary author’s birth. Throughout the incoming year, Jane Austen’s House will organize a variety of exhibitions, events, and festivals, starting with the annual Pride and Prejudice Day on January 28, which will include a public reading of the novel, and ending with musical performances, readings, and tours on December 16.
“Jane Austen and the Art of Writing” is on view at Jane Austen’s House, Winchester Rd, Chawton, Alton, U.K. More

The Middle Ages were not the ‘dark’ and somber antithesis to the Enlightenment that clichés may have us believe. It was also a time of fantasy and certainly playful humor. Now, a comedic character ubiquitous to medieval culture—the fool—is taking center stage as the subject of a Louvre exhibit in Paris titled, “Figures of the Fool,” from October 16 to February 3, 2025.
From witty jesters to lascivious buffoons, men gone mad and subversive artists who live on the margins of society, the show takes a fresh look at how this figure was regularly depicted from the 13th to the 16th century, and then again during the Romantic era. In the imaginations of those who painted, carved, and wove these figures of folly on everything from tableaux to, literally, bells and whistles, these subjects served as a canvas for exploring a world turned on its head. A mirror to the absurdity and contradictions of life that were hard to face, but important to express and attempt to understand. In the form of the fool, this was most often voiced through humor—possibly the ultimate, and only real salve to the weight of life’s troubles.
After Hyeronimus Bosch, Concert in the Egg Former Netherlands, mid XVIth century.© RMN-Grand Palais (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille). Stéphane Maréchalle
If this all sounds like it could as easily apply to contemporary life, it’s no coincidence. The jester —inspiration for the playing card, the Joker, more on that below—has continued to capture our imaginations for many of the same reasons. The Louvre exhibit, featuring over 300 artworks from Northern Europe, sheds new light on why that may be.
Who or what exactly is the fool, as it originated in the Middle Ages? A common depiction comes from the characters described in Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (1494), a hugely popular and influential, German satirical allegory. There, the fool, “plays a key role, because he is an outlet during a time of crisis in the church, and amid the mutations of a society in full upheaval, notably with the emergence of capitalism,” said Elisabeth Antoine-König, senior curator in the Department of Decorative Arts in an e-mail written in French. “The fool allows for a figurative representation of questions troubling society,” she added. Later, during the Romantic period, the fool—usually a male figure—is identified with the artist, and their struggle with inner thoughts and emotions.
The fool is “one thing and its opposite, he is the rejected marginalized figure, and the one who unites us, and bears the ridicule and anger of others,” added Antoine-König, who compares these ambivalent traits with the supervillain Joker, of DC Comics.
Marx Reichlich, A Jester. Tyrol (ca. 1519-1520). © Yale University Art Gallery.
By coincidence, Todd Philipps’s new film, Joker: Folie a Deux has come out at about the same time as the Louvre’s exhibit, though the latter was apparently in the making for over ten years. Far be it from the world’s largest museum to pass up a golden opportunity. The Louvre partnered with Warner Bros Pictures on a short clip promoting both endeavors. Lady Gaga, who stars in the Joker film, can be seen in the clip wandering through the Louvre halls at night, and painting a red lipstick smile over the glass protecting the Mona Lisa. From the right angle, it transforms La Joconde’s modest, soft smile, into a wide, cartoonish grin. Plus, La Joconde, as she is called in French, sounds a lot like Joker, points out the museum in a statement. Touché.
Aquamanile : Aristotle and Phyllis. South Netherlandish, (ca. 1380). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Yet as captivating and troublesome a figure as the fool still is, Antoine-König wonders whether there is still much we can learn from the fool of yesteryear, when it played a much more prominent role in social life. “I feel that the figure of the fool, as it existed in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is lacking today, in helping us face the crises we are experiencing… During that period [13th to 16th centuries], most subjects could be interpreted in a variety of ways. Today, we reflect little on the exercise of seeing things from different angles.”
Jan Matejko, Stanczyk during a ball at the court of Queen Bona in the face of the loss of Smolensk. Krakow, (1862). © Varsovie, Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie / Piotr Ligier
Antoine-König, who co-curated the Louvre exhibit with Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, also compares our current, fraught experience with digital technology and social media to the radical transformations brought by the invention of the printer. “But who is helping us manage this turning point?” She asks. “In the artworks we are exhibiting, the artists, and through them, the people of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, allowed themselves to laugh about a lot of particularly difficult things.” More

Amid a bustling week in Paris, as the art market continues to clamor for bits of real estate and attention in the city of lights, the French capital’s institutions continue to shine with major art exhibitions. Here are five shows that you must not miss on your next visit.

“Barbara Chase-Riboud: Everytime A Knot is Undone, A God is Released”
Several Locations
September 17, 2024—January 13, 2025
Barbara Chase-Riboud, Mao’s Organ (2007). 2024 Musée Guimet © Barbara Chase-Riboud.
In a never-before-seen synchronized collaboration, eight major museums in Paris—including the Musée d’Orsay, Louvre Museum, Centre Pompidou, and the Palais de Tokyo—are concurrently showing work by a living artist. “Everytime A Knot is Undone, A God is Released” is named after Barbara Chase-Riboud’s poetry collection released in 2014, and celebrates the artist’s seven-decade career. Sculptures by Chase-Riboud, made from a variety of materials from bronze to wool, act like markers of Chase-Riboud’s life in the city where she has lived since 1961, spread across the city over the course of four months. “Everytime A Knot is Undone, A God is Released” is the first multi-museum exhibition of a solo artist ever in the French capital, let alone the first to unite eight of the country’s most important galleries and museums.

“Arte Povera”
The Pinault Collection
October 9, 2024–January 20, 2025
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Venus of Rags (1967). © Pinault Collection, 2024.
The Arte Povera movement, born in Northern Italy in the 1960s, was not so much “Povera” as in “poor,” but as in “humble.” Artists created artwork from non-traditional materials and brought their unusual sculptures into the formal gallery space. Curated by Arte Povera specialist Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the major show at the Pinault Collection includes historically significant works from the collection as well as new commissions and loans from international collections.
Including Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Venus of Rags (1967), Alighiero Boetti’s Castasta (1967), and one of Mario Merz’ igloos among over 250 artworks made by or in response to the Arte Povera group, the show at Paris’ Pinault Collection is sure to be a comprehensive guide through one of Italy’s most influential conceptual art movements.

“Jackson Pollock: The Early Years (1934 – 1947)”
Musée Picasso
October 15, 2024–January 19, 2025
Jackson Pollock, The Key (1946). © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / ADAGP, Paris 2024.
His first exhibition in France for over 15 years, “Jackson Pollock: The Early Years (1934–1947)” is a comprehensive showcase of the Abstract Expressionist icon’s early career. Evidencing Pollock’s interest in Native American art, contemporary avant-garde artwork from Europe, and the work of the Mexican Muralists, in The Early Years we see how Pollock moved towards the development of his signature “drip” action paintings begun in 1947.  These earlier works, which include figurative Expressionist-inspired paintings, drawings—some of which the artist may have brought with him to Jungian therapy sessions he undertook in the 1930s to address his alcohol issues—as well as sculptures, have not often been exhibited in their own right.

“Elmgreen & Dragset: L’Addition”
Musée d’Orsay
October 15, 2024–February 2, 2025
Elmgreen et Dragset © Musée d’Orsay Sophie Crépy
Nestling a new series of figurative artworks into the museum’s sculpture nave in a site-specific curation that straddles sculpture and performance, L’Addition is a never-before-seen architectural installation at the Musée d’Orsay. Such innovation comes as no surprise to fans of Elmgreen & Dragset, the Scandinavian duo who have built their reputation on subversive artworks and humorous installations. Exploring notions of masculinity in dialogue with works in the permanent collection of the Musée d’Orsay, “L’Addition” is guaranteed to highlight both subtler themes in and surprising similarities between both collections.

“Martine Syms: Total”
Lafayette Anticipations, Fondation Galeries Lafayette
October 16, 2024–February 9, 2025
Martine Syms, This Is A Studio / Aunty (35) (2022-23). © Martine Syms. Courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers.
Syms’ first retrospective in France, “Total” is the American artist’s attempt to entirely envelop the Lafayette in a total work of art. Including pieces from all stages of Syms’ career from 2007 onwards, this show tackles and breaks down the boundaries between public exhibition space, private artist studio, and gift shop by asking conceptual questions about the intersections between images and identities.
These intersections are referred to in the show’s promotional materials as the “theatre of the everyday.” A selection of works and motifs from the show have been produced in editions for purchase, continuing the show’s dialogue about consumption and ownership. Offering visitors a colorful, multi-media experience, “Total” delves into what it means to live life in public spaces in a surveillance-heavy era.

“Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &…”
The Fondation Louis Vuitton
October 17, 2024–February 24, 2025
Tom Wesselmann, Mouth #14 (Marilyn) (1967). © Adagp, Paris, 2024, Jeffrey Sturges.
Taking over all floors of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, “Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &” is putting over 200 works by Pop Art legends on display in Paris. Alongside 150 works by Wesselmann are pieces by Ai Weiwei, Andy Warhol, Marisol, Claes Oldenburg, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, and Roy Lichtenstein. This exhibition is a celebration of all-things Pop Art, in all of its manifestations from the Surrealist and Dada-inspired beginnings to artists today influenced by Pop’s pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s. Key works on display will include Wesselmann’s early collages made in the 1950s as well as his later landscapes made shortly before his death in 2004, as well as Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964), and Jeff Koons’ Three Ball 50/50 Tank (1985). More

In April 1874, 150 years ago, the Impressionists held their first exhibition together in the studio of Felix Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. It was a less-than-complimentary review by the critic Louis Leroy of this show that would give the burgeoning art group their name: Leroy describing how Monet’s Impression, Sunrise was less finished that “wallpaper in its embryonic state” and “Impressionism” being reclaimed.
Now, Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum is the site of the new exhibition “Vive l’impressionnisme! Masterpieces from Dutch Collections,” marking the revolutionary art movement’s 150th anniversary.
Paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and decorative plates by major Impressionists are being brought together for the exhibition, including work by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Auguste Rodin, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-August Renoir. Artworks on display have been loaned from collections across the country, including from some of the Netherland’s most significant arts institutions including the Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum, Kröller-Müller Museum, and the Kunstmuseum the Hague as well as numerous Dutch private collections. 150 Years of Impressionism – The Netherlands Sees the Light, an accompanying publication to the exhibition, includes texts by 13 Impressionist curators and scholars.
Claude Monet, Poppy Field (Champs de coquelicots) (1881) © Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
The exhibition homes in on how Impressionism was received in the Netherlands, and looks at the role that key Dutch collectors like Theo van Gogh played in the movement’s spread outside of France. The catalogue accompanying “Vive l’impressionnisme!” explores the questions the exhibition attempts to tackle, including “when did interest in Impressionist art arise in the Netherlands; who exhibited these works; who purchased them for their own collections; and which works were not appreciated or acquired in time?”
The art dealer Theo van Gogh is best-known for financially supporting his brother, Vincent van Gogh, acting as his dealer, financier, and confidant throughout his life. After Vincent’s death in 1890 and Theo’s in 1891, Theo’s widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger collated and published a collection of some of the hundreds of letters that the brothers had sent back and forth to each other over many years. This published collection helped to cement Vincent’s legacy after being famously under-appreciated during his lifetime.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, In the Café (Au café) (c. 1877) © Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
The Van Gogh Museum opened in Amsterdam’s Museum Square in June 1973, 83 years after the artist’s death, displaying—among other major artworks—previously unsold work by van Gogh. These unsold works had passed from Johanna to her son, also named Vincent, and were subsequently loaned to the Stedelijk Museum for many years before the Dutch government commissioned a permanent museum dedicated to the artist in 1963.
While the Van Gogh brothers did have their own collection which included several Impressionist works, the Van Gogh Museum has been on a mission since the 1990s to expand their collection of Impressionist art. Recently the Museum has been focused on acquiring work by female Impressionists, most recently collecting pieces by Marie Bracquemond, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt: Impressionism’s “Trois Grandes Dames”. Part of the exhibition, a virtual installation called the Gallery of Lost Opportunities will highlight masterpieces which were once held in Dutch collections but were sold to collections abroad.
Berthe Morisot, Walk in the Woods (Au bois) (1876) © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Other 150th anniversary celebrations have been held around the world, including an auction at Christie’s New York, an exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay, Paris, and a festival in Normandy.
Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho, the curator of the show, told Artnet News: “I am thrilled to finally share this exhibition with the world. It presents a broad picture of the Impressionist movement, celebrating artists who refused to stick to a singular medium—they moved fluidly between different art forms, ignoring all of the age-old hierarchies that ranked painting at the top. Here colorful watercolors and pastels are shown with experimental sculptures and prints, which we hope will challenge the prevailing image of the Impressionists as mere painters of light and color.”
Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing (1890–91) © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
“I’m also really honored to bring these Dutch collections together under one roof for the first time. It’s my hope that the show will inspire other museums and private collectors to continue to work together on an ambitious collecting policy for Impressionist art that transcends national boundaries.”
“Vive l’impressionnisme! Masterpieces from Dutch Collections” will be on display at the Van Gogh Museum from October 11 2024 to 26 January 2025. More

“Dalí Alive,” a multimedia exhibition at the Lume at Indianapolis’s Newfields, has redirected attention to a mysterious case of a missing watercolor by the famed Surrealist whose designs the show is devoted to.
The exhibition, spread across 30,000 square feet, sees Salvador Dalí artworks enlarged and projected onto the walls and floors, promising an immersive experience. “Dalí Alive” follows on from the Lume’s first two immersive shows devoted to reliable crowd-pleasers, one each to Impressionism and to Vincent van Gogh.
The display includes four Dalí watercolors (remember that number!) from the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, part of the Newfields complex.
Salvador Dalí, Tragedy and Comedy (1961). © 2023 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
The Spaniard created the watercolors as part of his commission to design sets and costumes for the 1961–62 production of Baroque composer Alessandro Scarlatti’s 1714 opera The Spanish Lady and the Roman Cavalier, produced by Lorenzo Alvary. A Hungarian-American operatic bass, Alvary created his own company in order to put on the opera, in which he played the male lead.
Dalí was in some ways a sensible choice: he had already some experience as a designer for theatrical productions, including several ballets throughout the 1940s.
The opera follows a love story between a Roman centurion and a Catalan woman following the fall of the Roman Empire. The production traveled to Venice, Brussels, and Paris, a tour apparently so physically grueling that a principal ballerina (who had been performing without an understudy for seven months) collapsed on stage during a Paris performance.
Salvador Dalí, The Elephants (1961). © 2023 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Decca Records released a 1962 record of the opera that featured an interview with Dalí. The album cover features one of the watercolors, Apotheosis (1961), emblazoned with a large signature; other Dalí works are included on the reverse and inside of the record sleeve, including Tragedy and Comedy.
In addition to Apotheosis, which features Dalí’s trademark melting clocks among other Surrealist details, and Tragedy and Comedy, Lume is also displaying Musicians and The Elephants, which which Dalí created for the opera and which stars long-legged pachyderms that are also seen in Dalí’s 1948 The Elephants.
Dalí had extravagant plans for The Spanish Lady. Actors blew bubbles filled with Guerlain perfume (though they failed to achieve the square bubbles that Dalí wanted). A Time magazine review of the show gives a long list of things that went awry during a performance at Venice’s La Fenice theatre. These oddities included Dalí himself throwing paint onto a canvas (and onto some audience members) while dressed as a Venetian gondolier, and several “visual distractions” like a walking violin, a blind man seated in front of a TV, some uncomfortably erotic dancing, and liquid carbon dioxide “milk” flowing onto the stage from underneath the rafters.
Salvador Dalí, Musicians (1961). © 2023 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
The collaboration between artist and producer was not a peaceful one. Dalí took Alvary to court when he claimed that he was not staying true to his creative vision. (The case was dismissed.) Plans to take the show to London and New York were duly scrapped.
“Dalí Alive” is the first time the watercolor set designs from The Spanish Lady have been on public display for over 45 years. Alvary and his wife Hallie, who owned the paintings, donated them to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1973; their agreement with Dalí stipulated that they would not be allowed to sell them.
But here’s the mystery: there were five watercolors, not just the four on view in Indianapolis. The location of the final watercolor is unknown, and it was not donated to the IMA.
Also missing are the costume designs. Their whereabouts are entirely unknown.
“Dalí Alive” is on view at the Lume Indianapolis at Newfields, 4000 N Michigan Rd, Indianapolis, through December 29.  More