Eliana Willis

An upcoming exhibition in Venice will be the first major show to explore how artist Willem de Kooning was inspired by his two visits to Italy, in 1959 and 1969. Including some 75 works ranging from the late 1950s to the ‘80s, it’s the largest-ever presentation in Italy of the Dutch-American Abstract Expressionist’s work and, according to the organizers, the only show ever to closely study Italy’s influence on him.
Curated by Gary Garrels, formerly of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and art historian Mario Codognato, “Willem de Kooning and Italy” takes place at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice and opens April 17, just in time for the pre-opening festivities of the Venice Biennale.
According to Giulio Manieri Elia, the gallery’s director, the last de Kooning show in Italy took place some 18 years ago. Lenders to the show include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York; the Glenstone Museum, in Maryland; the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; the Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne; and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Dan Budnik, Willem de Kooning in his East Hampton Studio, New York (1971). © 2024 The Estate of Dan Budnik. All Rights Reserved. Artwork © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE
“Willem de Kooning collected from the cacophony of visual excitement, light and movement in daily life to create his own lexicon,” said Garrels and Codognato in a joint statement.
“The impact of any visual encounter could render or generate an idea for moving into a new drawing or painting. Observing how his New York and East Hampton environments worked into his paintings and drawings, the same occurred in Rome—a gestalt of ‘glimpses,’” they added. “During these formative periods of time in Rome, de Kooning synthesised from all around him a new way of looking and activating his medium, experiencing both classical Italian paintings and sculpture as well as the work of his new Italian artist friends.” 
Willem de Kooning, Red Man with Moustache (1971). © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE
De Kooning was one of the key members of a group of painters in New York. He worked alongside action painters, Abstract Expressionists, or the New York School, with artists including his wife Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still.
Some of his best-known works are his stark renditions of women that he began in 1950. He has become a giant in the market for 20th-century art: in 2015, music mogul David Geffen sold de Kooning’s 1955 painting Interchange to hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin for about $300 million, which was then the highest price paid for a painting.
Three paintings from 1960—Door to the River, A Tree in Naples, and Villa Borghese—will be on display together for the first time. Painted after his arrival back in New York, all three show the lasting influence of his Italian sojourn, say the curators.
Willem de Kooning, Villa Borghese (1960). © 2023 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. © FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao.
Thirteen small bronzes he made in Rome are also included. Resulting from a chance encounter with a sculptor friend, they stem from the artist’s first efforts with clay. He would turn intensively to sculpture back in New York between 1972 and 1974.
The show will also include a large selection of the “Black and White Rome” drawings that the artist made in 1959 on his visit to the Italian capital, and spans to paintings from the 1980s.
Willem de Kooning, Untitled #12 (1969). © 2023 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE.
Collaborating on the show is the artist’s foundation.
“The Foundation is delighted to be collaborating with the Gallerie dell’Accademia to present this important exhibition, as it allows us to share Willem de Kooning and the curators’ exceptional vision with a wide-ranging, diverse international community,” said Amy Schichtel, executive director of the foundation.
“De Kooning is one of America’s great innovators; we find that his risk-taking story continues to be of vital inspiration to many contemporary artists as well as to students and our young people.” 
Willem de Kooning, Pirate (Untitled II) (1981). © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE.
“Willem de Kooning and Italy” will be on view at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Calle della Carità, Vice, Italy, April 17 through September 15.
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Major works by Leonardo da Vinci will be brought to life in a new exhibition at Melbourne’s THE LUME exhibition space. As part of the show “Leonardo da Vinci—500 Years of Genius,” pages from the artist’s priceless Codex Atlanticus will be on display for the first time ever in Australia.
The book is a 12-volume set of drawings and writings made by Leonardo, gathered together in the late 16th century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni. Pages from the codex come to Melbourne after Bruce Peterson—THE LUME’s founder and owner of Rome’s Museo Leonardo da Vinci—spent a decade building a relationship with Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where the pages have been stored since 1637.
Parts of the codex have previously been displayed in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Paris’s Louvre, but have never been shown in Australia before. The precious artifacts are released from Milan for a three-month period, after which time they must be returned to Italy to recover from their exposure to light.
Codex Atlanticus pages. Image courtesy of THE LUME.
Peterson said that the pages “represent not just a collection of sketches and writings but a gateway into the brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci’s mind”, and that “their arrival in Australia is profound, allowing visitors to explore Leonardo in a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
Also included in the exhibition are to-scale inventions inspired by the pages of the codices; the only exact 360° replica of Mona Lisa in the world; a V.R. set-up allowing users to fly virtually over the streets of Florence’ and a Renaissance-themed bar called ‘Caffé Medici’. Other activities scheduled to accompany the exhibition are pilates and yoga sessions, sound baths, and an Italian long-table dinner by chef Guy Grossi, on the evening before the show opens to the public, priced at AUD $296 ($193). The venture has been entirely privately funded.
“Leonardo da Vinci—500 Years of Genius” Installation View. Image courtesy of THE LUME.
Melbournes’s THE LUME opened on November 1, 2021, inside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. It is the world’s largest permanent immersive digital art and cultural venue. It offers a 3,000-square-meter multi-sensory gallery, using A.I. and V.R. interactive technologies to project artworks and immerse visitors in their shows. Previous displays include a deep-dive into the works of Monet and the Impressionists, Vincent Van Gogh, and a showcase of more than 110 First Peoples’ art and music in THE LUME’s most recent exhibition “Connection”. The Leonardo show has been created by the immersive arts and culture company Grand Experiences and is presented in collaboration with Webuild, an Italian construction and civil engineering group.
“Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius” is on at THE LUME, Melbourne, from March 16, 2024. More information and ticket availability can be found on THE LUME website.
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Nadya Tolokonnikova, a cofounder of the anarchic feminist art collective Pussy Riot, has announced her first museum show at the OK Linz Center for Contemporary Art in Austria. “Rage” will spotlight the group’s most recent protest pieces that confront patriarchal and religious repression and Vladimir Putin’s aggressive regime.
A highlight of the exhibition will be the presentation a video work that was released shortly after the arrest of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2021. It called for his freedom and the release of all political prisoners in Russia, but filming of the work was interrupted by the authorities and its participants were arrested for “propaganda of homosexuality.” The video has gained new poignance following the recent news of Navalny’s death in a Russian prison.
“Most of my life, even after two years of imprisonment, I chose to stay in Russia, even though I had plenty of opportunities to immigrate,” Tolokonnikova said. “I tried to change Russia, make it a country that I would be proud of—peaceful, prosperous, friendly, democratic, loving.”
Instead, Tolokonnikova said she watched her “friends being murdered and revolutions suffocating under Putin’s boot,” something many fear in the wake of Navalny’s death. 
Pussy Riot cover of Time Magazine from 2012. Image courtesy of OK Linz.

“The most radical act of rebellion today is to relearn how to dream and to fight for that dream,” she added.
The OK Linz exhibition will spotlight many of the activitist actions led by Pussy Riot over the years. At the center is Tolokonnikova’s 2022 performance Putin’s Ashes in which she burned a portrait of Putin, collecting the ashes in small bottles with 12 women from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia who had also experienced repression and aggression at the hands of the Russian president.
An outspoken activist, Tolokonnikova grew up in a remote Arctic town in Siberia but turned to performance art upon moving to Moscow in 2007. Four years later, she co-founded Pussy Riot and the group began staging illicit live performances, eventually getting arrested and sentenced to two years in a labor camp for performing the anti-Putin anthem “Punk Prayer” in a Moscow cathedral.
Reflecting on her 17 years of protest performance art for the OK Linz show, Tolokonnikova recalled a mix of “camaraderie, harassment, arrests,” as well as great pain.
Cover for Pussy Riot’s Matriarchy Now mixtape from 2022. Photo: Ksti Hu, courtesy of OK Linz.
As well as creating site-specific actions, Pussy Riot have also produced sculpture and installation works, including self-referential sex dolls dressed up in the group’s signature pink balaclavas. Pick Your Poison, a group of gaudily colored but enticing candy machines that will also be on view in the exhibition, makes sardonic reference to Putin’s penchant for poisoning his opponents.
Though Tolokonnikova has left Russia, doing museum shows in the West does not come consequence-free. The 2022 show “Putin’s Ashes,” which opened at Jeffrey Deitch’s L.A. gallery before traveling to venues in Sante Fe and Dallas, landed her on Russia’s federal wanted list. This time, she was being charged with disrespecting Christian imagery for peddling an NFT in which the Virgin Mary appears in the form of a vulva. The activist has a been categorized as a “foreign agent” by Russia since 2021.
Curated by Michaela Seiser and Julia Staudach, “Rage” will open at the OK Linz in June 2024.
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A new show in London unveils never-before-seen photos of rock superstars the Rolling Stones, taken by an official photographer to the band and hidden away in an attic for decades. “The Rolling Stones – Elegantly Wasted,” at London’s J/M Gallery, showcases snaps by Tony Sanchez—known affectionately as Spanish Tony—who worked as guitarist Keith Richards’ assistant for eight years, sticking close to the band throughout the ’60s and ’70s, including during their time in self-imposed exile in the South of France, when they fled the Labour government’s 93 percent tax on high earners.
Sanchez met the band via the art dealer Robert Fraser, and became one of two official photographers for the 1969 Stones in the Park festival along with Michael Cooper, documenting the band throughout their rise to fame. In 1979 the photographer released a memoir about his time with the band—Up and Down With the Rolling Stones: My Rollercoaster Ride with Keith Richards—which featured a selection of photographs he had taken over the last two decades, along with anecdotes of drug taking, international flights, and nights out with the Beatles.
Tony Sanchez, Onstage at The Rock and Roll Circus (1968). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
After Sanchez’s death in 2000, his collection of photographs went by inheritance to his son Steve, whose sons Nick and Matt later went searching in Steve’s attic for the photos. The treasure trove they found includes images of wild parties, iconic performances, and behind-the-scenes views of famous magazine photo shoots, as well as more intimate portraits.
The Rolling Stones formed in London in 1962, with original members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (who had met at five years old in primary school in Dartford), Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts. Over the band’s seven-decade career, they have sold over 200 million records. The opening of “Elegantly Wasted” falls between the recent release of the band’s 31st studio album, Hackney Diamonds (their first since the 2021 death of drummer Watts) and the start of their 18-date American tour on April 28.
J/M Gallery have called the photos “the most idiosyncratic shots of the band a collector could hope for” from a photographer with “unprecedented access.” The show has been created in partnership with Bayliss Rare Books, with owner and founder Oliver Bayliss saying that he “couldn’t be happier to be involved in this project. I spent months trawling through Tony’s archive—thousands of negatives and contact sheets—and am blown away by Tony’s unique eye and the quality of these images.” Limited edition prints produced by Bayliss Rare Books of photographs included in the exhibition are also available online.
“Elegantly Wasted” is on view at J/M Gallery, 230 Portobello Road, W11 1LJ, until March 5.
Tony Sanchez, Keith Richards, Olympic Studios (1969). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, The Lost Boys – Beggars Banquet album cover shoot, Swarkestone Pavillion (1968). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, Keith Richards and his motorbike, Redlands (early 1970s). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, Mick and Keith Backstage, USA (early 70s). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, The Glimmer Twins onstage (1970s). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
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A rare watercolor illustration from The Jungle Book, painted by a pair of precocious siblings, is now on display at Rudyard Kipling’s family home, 130 years after the publication of his timeless story.
The painting depicts a post-climactic scene: Rama, the great bull, overlooks a plain where the body of the villainous tiger Shere Khan lies, trampled to death by a stampede of buffalo led by the tale’s young protagonist, Mowgli.
The Return of the Buffalo Herd is one of four watercolors remaining from an original set of 16 painted by the Detmold brothers at the turn of the 20th century. Edward Julis Detmold, who signed the painting with his monogram “EJD”, and his twin brother Charles “Maurice” Detmold were prolific book illustrators of the time. Born in 1883, they began their prodigious art careers in their early teens. At the age of 13, they were the youngest people to exhibit watercolors at the Royal Academy. They were only 18 years old when they were commissioned to illustrate The Jungle Book.
Sadly, the twins lived troubled personal lives. Maurice died by suicide at 25 years old. He left a note which read “This is not the end of a life. I have expressed through my physical means all that they are capable of expressing, and I am about to lay them aside.” Edward followed a similar path almost 50 years later when, depressed after losing sight in one eye, he too died by suicide.

A sketch of Edward Julius Detmold by his brother Maurice. Photo: National Portrait Gallery London
The painting is being displayed at Bateman’s, Kipling’s home in Burwash, Sussex, now owned by the National Trust. Speaking on the artwork, Hannah Miles, Collections and House Manager at Bateman’s, said, “comparisons could be drawn between the Detmold twins and Mowgli, who in the original story of The Jungle Book was a rather troubled character trapped between two worlds.”
“It feels poignant therefore to display their magnificent illustration alongside a copy of the book featuring all of the twins’ original pictures, in the place that meant so much to the story’s author Rudyard Kipling.”

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Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum is pairing its namesake with a latter-day expressionist artist who named the Dutch painter as a principal inspiration. “Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort” will be the largest show yet of the beloved Chinese-Canadian artist’s work in Europe, according to the museum. Speaking to Artnet News at the time of Wong’s death, his friend, artist Jonas Wood, even called Wong (1984-2019) “the modern day Van Gogh.” 
“I see a sincerity, a conviction and total commitment in Wong’s work that you also see with Van Gogh,” said Joost van der Hoeven, curator of the exhibition and a researcher at the museum. “They are unparalleled in their ability to combine emotional depth with a highly accessible visual language.”
The two artist’s canvases are similarly soulful, vividly colored, and expressionistic; both made extensive use of impasto. Self-taught as a painter, Wong took up the medium after studying photography, and also named artists like Gustav Klimt and Henri Matisse as touchstones.
Besides the similarities in their work, the artists also share a tragic commonality: Van Gogh died at 37, Wong at 35. When it comes to the market, the artists diverge dramatically. Wong found success during his lifetime, with New York gallery Karma displaying his work; shortly after his death, New York Times critic Roberta Smith lauded him as “one of the most talented painters of his generation”; and his market rocketed to surreal heights shortly after his death, as Eileen Kinsella reported in October 2020, when a Wong painting that went on the block at Christie’s with a high estimate of $700,000 fetched some $4.47 million.
Van Gogh, meanwhile, sold only one known painting during his life, and even posthumous success came slowly. 
“When I saw Wong’s work for the first time, it gripped me instantly, and I saw in it a whole range of art historical references,” said Van der Hoeven. And yet it remains completely original and contemporary. I am fascinated by this tension between recognition and originality, and that is what inspired me to make this exhibition.”
If you can’t make it to Amsterdam (or if tickets sell out), there’s also a catalogue featuring contributions by Artnet contributor Kenny Schachter, Richard Shiff, Sofia Silva, and John Yau.
“Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort” will be on view at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, from March 1 to September 1, 2024. See more images from the exhibition below.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with a Reaper, 1889. Courtesy Van Gogh Museum.
Matthew Wong, See You on the Other Side, 2019, © 2023 Matthew Wong Foundation / c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2023.
Matthew Wong, Unknown Pleasures, 2019, Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2023 Matthew Wong Foundation / Pictoright Amsterdam, 2023. Digital image courtesy of MoMA
Matthew Wong, Coming of Age Landscape, 2018. Matthew Wong Foundation / © Matthew Wong Foundation c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2023.
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A forthcoming exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is making the case that music is as much a sonic experience as it is a visual one. 
“Art of Noise” will gather a staggering 800 art and design objects that have enhanced and vivified the experience of music over the past century. They range from product to graphic design, and span ages, but all of them have enhanced our relationship to music. Or, as curator Joseph Becker told me over a video call: “The artifacts that accompany the music lend presence to the music itself.”
When it came to building the exhibition, Becker was spoilt for choice. Most of the works on view emerge from SFMOMA’s permanent collection, which include such highlights as record sleeves, ads, and flyers from the Bay Area’s psychedelic rock heyday. In particular, the museum holds the complete collection of rock posters printed by legendary promoters Bill Graham and Family Dog Productions during the 1960s and ’70s. All 460 of them are going on view as a set for the first time. 
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures poster (1979), designed by Factory Records after Peter Saville. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase through a gift of Jenny Emerson and Accessions Committee Fund; © Peter Saville; photo: Tenari Tuatagaloa
Also given an outing are works designed by the likes of Milton Glaser, best known for his 1966 poster of a fiery-haired Bob Dylan; Emmet McBain, who left his primary-colored imprint on jazz records; and Victor Moscoso, designer of the 1960s’ trippiest posters. 
The show’s focus on music’s aesthetics stretches to encompass product and industrial design as well, namely the technology that’s made music playback possible. The gadgets arrayed here will trace a century’s worth of design and engineering evolutions from early phonographs to boomboxes and stereos to iPods. Sculptures by artists Ron Arad and Tom Sachs also feature. These devices, said Becker, “have allowed us to have different relationships to music.” 
Ron Arad, Concrete Stereo (1983). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee fund purchase; © Ron Arad Associates.
The curator is especially jazzed about interactive installations dotted throughout “Art of Noise.” One work by Teenage Engineering, titled Choir, will feature wooden figurines programmed to “sing” in various music genres in different tonal ranges. Another work, by celebrated engineer Devon Turnbull, will take over a gallery with giant custom speakers that will play a selection of rarities and master recordings in devastatingly high fidelity. For those conditioned to the playback quality of AirPods, Turnbull’s immersive installation promises “an awakening experience,” Becker said. 
Yuri Suzuki’s commission, Arborhythm, offers a similar listening experience outdoors, where visitors can recline amid tree-like sculptures. “The natural and urban sounds are remixed into this wellness soundtrack,” Becker explained. “It gets a little bit like a sound bath, a sonic conditioner.”
Teenage Engineering, Choir (2022). © teenage engineering.
The show will be rounded off by SFMOMA’s latest acquisitions, including a 1965 Brionvega RR126 stereo system, designed by Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, as well as the DJ deck custom-designed by Teenage Engineering for Virgil Abloh’s set at Coachella in 2019. 
“This has been such a wonderful project to work on,” Becker reflected. “There are so many different access points to music because it’s so deeply ingrained in cross-cultural experiences. I think music just touches people in a way that is similar to art, but also in a way that is more universal.” 
See more images from the exhibition below.
Jason Munn, School of Seven Bells / Black Moth Super Rainbow (2010). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jason Munn, © Jason Munn; photo: Don Ross.
Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, RR126 Stereo System, manufactured by Brionvega (1965). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; photo: Don Ross.
Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot, Braun SK-4 (1956). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot; photo: Katherine Du Tiel.
Lee Conklin, Canned Heat and Gordon Lightfoot at the Fillmore West, October 3–5, 1968 (1968). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jim Chanin; © Wolfgang’s Vault; photo: Don Ross.
Bonnie MacLean, The Yardbirds and The Doors at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, July 25–30, 1967 (1967). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jim Chanin; © Wolfgang’s Vault; photo: Don Ross
Teenage Engineering, Virgil Abloh DJ deck (2019). © teenage engineering; photo: Pelle Bergström, Skarp Agent.
Tom Sachs, Model Thirty-Six (2014). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase through a gift of the FOG Forum; © Tom Sachs.
David Singer, Grateful Dead and Taj Mahal at the Fillmore West, February 5–8, 1970 (1970). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jim Chanin; © Wolfgang’s Vault; photo: Don Ross.
Mathieu Lehanneur, Power of Love (2009). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee fund purchase; © Mathieu Lehanneur; photo: Don Ross.
“Art of Noise” is on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St, San Francisco, May 4 through August 18. 
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