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    Years After Receiving a Gift of J.E.H. MacDonald Sketches, a Vancouver Museum Learns They’re Fakes

    In January 2015, the Vancouver Art Gallery was gifted 10 painted sketches by James Edward Hervey MacDonald, a modern landscape artist and founding member of the renowned Group of Seven. Supposed studies for larger paintings, the works were deemed long lost and forgotten, with the museum’s curator Ian Thom hailing their rediscovery at that time as lending “considerable insight into the transformation of [the artist’s] style.”  
    Eight years on, the pieces have gone on view at the museum, but with one significant caveat—they’re no longer attributed to MacDonald.
    “J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden” brings together the 10 paintings alongside the detailed findings that led the institution to reattribute them. It’s an effort, said Anthony Kiendl, CEO and executive director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, to unpack a “fascinating story” that has seen the undoing of a high-profile gift. 
    Unknown artist, Sketch after Falls, Montreal River. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
    The paperboard sketches were a gift from Ephry and Melvin Merkur, who had inherited them from their father Max Merkur, a Toronto-based art collector. According to the museum, the works were buried by MacDonald and his son Thoreau in the backyard of the family’s property for safekeeping in 1931. These boxes were then excavated in 1974, whereupon they were snapped up by Merkur. 
    But in the wake of the donation, questions were raised, most prominently by the Globe and Mail, about the authenticity of the works. Among their doubts, experts pointed out the anachronistic paint types used in the works and more egregiously, misspellings in the artist’s signature. The cloud surrounding the paintings led the museum to shelf a planned exhibition, and recruit art historians, handwriting experts, and the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) to untangle the matter. 
    Unknown artist, Sketch after Leaves in the Brook. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
    The CCI undertook scientific research and visual analysis of the paintings, supported by art history specialists who offered qualitative assessments. Their study found pigments that did not exist in MacDonald’s lifetime, as well as the use of boards that were unlike those the artist typically drew on. A handful of the purported sketches, too, were found to resemble the completed works in such a way that experts suggest they were created after, rather than for, the final compositions. 
    Based on these findings, the museum is now attributing the 10 pieces to an unknown artist. 
    “This investigation exemplifies how scientific examination can play an important role in the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage The CCI’s findings were crucial to the conclusive outcome of the investigation, which has led to the revised attribution of these 10 painted sketches,” said Kate Helwig, a conservation scientist at the CCI. 
    Unknown artist, Sketch after The Wild River. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
    Still, “A Tangled Garden” will feature an installation of oil sketches by J.E.H. MacDonald, as well as those of his Group of Seven peers. Active from 1920 through ’33, the cadre of artists were celebrated for their modern, almost romantic, approach to landscape painting. Defying the staid formalism of 19th-century naturalism, they produced deeply energetic and expressive canvases, exemplified by Tom Thomson’s The West Wind (1916–17), Lawren Harris’s Lake and Mountains (1928), and MacDonald’s Falls, Montreal River (1920).  
    While the new attribution might be humbling, particularly following the highs of the 2015 rediscovery, the museum sees moving forward with an exhibition of faked works as critical to its mission. Kiendl, for one, touts the project as reflective of “our commitment to research, artistic inquiry, and sharing new knowledge with our communities.”
    “The gallery seeks to foster an environment of critical inquiry and transparency,” he added, “in which our audiences participate in the discourse surrounding the meaning of these artworks.” 
    “J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden” is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, Canada, through May 12, 2024. 

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    See the Surreal Future Elmgreen & Dragset Imagine for Obsolete Libraries in Their Prague Show

    The Scandinavian artistic duo Elmgreen & Dragset are back with another playfully conceptual sculptural installation, this time converting Prague’s Kunsthalle into a public library with a few surprise twists.
    The celebration of books pays tribute to the Czech capital’s illustrious literary past, while also drawing attention to the contemporary communal structures that allow us to access these works but are too often threatened by funding cuts and digitization. Always subverting the viewer’s expectations, the surreal installation contains everyday facilities that don’t quite work, like one disintegrating staircase that leads to an unknowable room marked “Filozofie” (Philosophy).
    Within this uncannily familiar yet dysfunctional setting, the pair have revived a long-running, international performance series known as the “Diaries.” Taking place every Wednesday and weekend throughout the show’s run, Prague Diaries (2023) sees five young men sit at a long table and fill their journals with private musings as museum visitors mill around, free to satisfy their curiosity by sneaking a peek over the diarist’s shoulder.
    “We approached this exhibition by asking ourselves: ‘What happens to libraries and the printed matter within them if digital technologies were to make them obsolete?’,” said Elmgreen & Dragset in a statement. “In the process, we have investigated how artists historically have reimagined and reworked the idea of what a book can be.”
    To do this, the pair selected works from the Kunsthalle’s collection to feature throughout the installation, whether tucked into a book shelf, stuck to the wall, or nestled among the stacks. These include Giorgio de Chirico’s Forbidden Toys (1916), a painting that abstracts books into anonymous geometrical shapes, and other historical works by artists like Kurt Schwitters and Endre Nemes. Contemporary sculptural pieces that explore the formal qualities of the physical tome in an increasingly online era are provided by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, Spanish performance artist Dora Garcia and the collective Slavs and Tartars.
    The Kunsthalle Praha is a new art space in Prague and Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” runs through April 22, 2024. Check out more images of the exhibition below.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Giorgo de Chirico, Les jouets défendus (Forbidden Toys (1916). Photo courtesy of Kunsthalle Praha.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, The Guardian (2023) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Elmgreen & Dragset, Prague Diareis (2023), a performance as part of “READ” at Kunsthalle Prague. Photo: © Jan Malý.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, Fruit of Knowledge (2011) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Slavs and Tatars, Kitab Kebab (Lviv and Wrocław) (2021). Photo: Alicja Kielan, courtesy of Slavs and Tatars.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, Other Lovers (2018) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Endre Nemes, Melancholy (1941). Photo courtesy of Kunsthalle Praha.
    Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
    Elmgreen & Dragset, Fruit of Knowledge (2011). Photo by: Elmar Vestner, courtesy The Aegidius Collection.
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    Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys Were Unlikely Pals. A New Show Delves Into Their Surprising Rapport

    A series of portraits of Joseph Beuys created by Andy Warhol during the 1980s are currently on view at London’s Thaddaeus Ropac, as part of an exhibition that delves into the relationship between the social sculptor and Pop legend.
    “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” marks the first time that the Beuys pictures are presented together for over 40 years. Made between 1980 and 1986, the series of screen prints feature Warhol’s characteristic use of scale and repetition, and variously bear vivid hues and others diamond dust—all of them recreations of a 1979 Polaroid photo he took of the German artist in his signature felt hat.
    The pair first officially met at an exhibition opening in Düsseldorf in 1979. Writer David Galloway described the moment as having “all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon.” Later that year, Beuys visited Warhol at his New York studio, the Factory, to be photographed—incidentally at the same time as the modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
    Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, Lucio Amelio [Gallery], Naples (1980). © DACS, 2023; Photo: Tate.Although the pair were not close friends and pursued dramatically different approaches to their practices, they showed great respect for each other’s work. Pre-dating their meeting in Düsseldorf, Warhol had created a propaganda poster for Germany’s Green Party at the request of Beuys.
    “He himself is sort of [a] ghost; he has spirituality,” Beuys said of Warhol. “Maybe this tabular rasa that Andy Warhol does [in his portraits], this emptiness and cleansing of any traditional signature… is something that creates the possibility of allowing radically different perspectives to enter.”
    Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys (1980–83). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Schellmann Art / DACS, London, 2023.
    The first exhibition of Warhol’s Beuys portraits took place at Galleria Lucio Amelio in Naples in 1980, the opening of which saw both artists in attendance. Later exhibitions of the images happened in Munich and Geneva; today, the portraits are held in major collections including that of London’s Tate Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
    The show at Thaddaeus Ropac will also include trial proofs and other rare works on paper by Warhol. It is, in a way, a full-circle moment for Ropac: in the 1980s, the Austrian gallerist served as an intern for Beuys, who he described to the Guardian as possessing “incredible charisma.”
    Ropac also highlighted how Warhol’s Beuys elaborate series stood out at a time when the Pop artist had taken to churning out one-off portrait commissions. That he had opted to develop and experiment with variations of the Beuys image—as a line drawing, a diamond-dusted canvas, a two-toned silkscreen—is proof of how the image captured his eye.
    “When you see the same face in all these variations, you realize there is an incredible connection,” Ropac added. “He caught the face, but also a state of mind.”
    See more images from the show below.
    Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
    Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys (1980–83). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Schellmann Art / DACS, London, 2023.
    Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
    Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
    Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys (1980–83). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Schellmann Art / DACS, London, 2023.
    Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
    “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” is on view at Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, through February 9, 2024. 

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    A Show of Early Hockney Works Places the Famed British Painter at the Heart of Art and Science

    Earlier this month saw the opening of “Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection” at Connecticut’s Bruce Museum. The exhibition shows rarely displayed works by the world-renowned artist, giving a unique insight into his early career starting from his student days at London’s Royal College of Art during the early 1960s.
    The Bruce Museum’s tagline is “Where art meets science,” and its CEO and exclusive director Robert Wolterstorff sees Hockney’s practice as a fitting combination of the two: “Hockney is endlessly fascinated with how we see the world and represents it through marks on paper or canvas. That act of seeing, interpreting and creating is at the heart of both art and science.”
    The exhibition, curated by Margarita Karasoulas, features 16 works loaned from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection. The couple built up a large collection of Hockney’s works in their Connecticut home over the course of several decades. Edith J. Simpson said “we never believed it was ours to keep forever, so it gives me great joy to share this special collection with the Bruce Museum and the greater community.”
    A key work in the exhibition is A Grand Procession of Dignitaries in the Semi-Egyptian Style (1961) made when Hockney was 24. The painting was inspired by Constantine P. Cavafy’s 1898 poem Waiting for the Barbarians. Cavafy was one of the first modern authors to write openly about homosexuality, and his work was impactful for Hockney who was living as a gay man before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain in 1967. The artwork won Hockney the gold medal at the 1962 “Young Contemporaries” exhibition at London’s Royal Society of British Artists Galleries.
    Hockney’s portfolio is vast and his inspiration has been taken from a multitude of places and styles. French Shop (1971) demonstrates the artist’s Pop Art inspirations, and Japanese House and Tree (1978) shows the influence of Fauvist Henri Matisse.
    Some of Hockney’s best-beloved paintings include water: his painting A Bigger Splash (1967) is perhaps his best-known painting and its title was used for the 1973 biographical documentary about the artist’s life and breakup with he artist and author Peter Schlesinger. “Hockney/Origins” includes two pieces from Hockney’s “Paper Pools” series – Diving Board with Shadow (Paper Pool 15) (1978) and Swimming Underwater (Paper Pool 16) (1978), made before Hockney made his move from London to California. The works were inspired by his visits to the artist Kenneth Tyler’s New York swimming pool and they mark the beginning of a new medium in Hockney’s practice -paper pulp. 
    The exhibition also includes portraits of friends and colleagues of Hockney’s, including Celia in Red and White Dress (1972) of his muse the textile designer Celia Birtwell. The pair first met in Los Angeles in 1964, and Birtwell sat for him several times over the course of 60 years. She was most famously depicted in Hockney’s 1970-1 painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, alongside her husband the fashion designer Ossie Clark. 
    The Bruce Museum was originally the private home of the Reverand Dr Francis L. Hawks. It was deeded the to the Town of Greenwich by its next owner, the textile merchant Robert Moffat Bruce, in 1908 and its first exhibition was put on in 1912. Its collection now spans more than 30,000 objects and a new exhibition space was opened in April.
    ‘Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection’ is on view at the Bruce Museum. Check out more works from the show below.
    David Hockney, Swimmer Underwater (Paper Pool 16) (1978). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
    David Hockney, A Grand Procession of Dignitaries in the Semi-Egyptian Style (1961). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
    David Hockney, Japanese House and Tree (1978). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
    David Hockney, Celia in Red and White Dress (1972). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
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    Ed Ruscha Has Always Seen America Like No One Else. Peer Through His Eyes in a Sprawling MoMA Exhibition

    The buildings, billboards, and logos of Ed Ruscha’s 20th-century paintings don’t look like those that populate the world today. His were the product of a sparser, still-developing American West, before roads and cities were choked with cars and people and seemingly every facade was covered in the promotional copy of an overcrowded corporate landscape. Just imagine, for instance, a gas station with displays advertising… gas. Not energy drinks and e-cigarettes and Kit Kats and scratch-offs; just gas. 
    That’s exactly what’s depicted in Ruscha’s 1964 painting, Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half. It may seem quaint, but there’s something about this scene—and the artist’s subtle, perspective-shifting inclusion of a dime-store magazine floating in the upper right corner—that resonates in today’s ad-saturated America. In this painting, Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott recently wrote, “we get a perfect juxtaposition of two ideas: power and majesty occupying most of the space, then fiction and lies besmirching or staining it in the far upper-right-hand corner.” 
    Ed Ruscha. Photo: Sten Rosenlund. Courtesy of MoMA.
    Fittingly, Standard Station is the image that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has chosen to feature in the promotional materials for its major “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” show, organized in close collaboration with the now 86-year-old artist. With more than 200 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and books, it is the most comprehensive retrospective of his work ever staged.  
    The magnitude of the moment has not been lost on critics, many of whom have reached for the kind of superlatives not often seen in reviews these days. “To call it the show of the season is something of an understatement,” wrote Jason Farago of the New York Times.  
    Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.
    Even the critics who identified weaknesses in the MoMA presentation—some found sections of it, particularly those filled with Ruscha’s later work, inconsistent—were undeterred in their awe of Ruscha and his broader achievements. “If ‘Now Then’ strikes the same notes a few too many times for so inventive an artist,” wrote Linda Yablonsky for the Art Newspaper, “ultimately there is very little in it not to like. Anyone can connect to a picture with no fixed meaning; like the dual-action exhibition title, every Ruscha is a two-way street.” 
    Indeed, just about everyone seems to agree: the retrospective is a fitting swan song for a generationally important artist and it should not be missed. See more images from the show below. 

    Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.
    “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” is on view now through January 13, 2024 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

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    New York’s Corporate Lobbies Are Filled With Famous Art Commissions. Here Are the Coolest and Most Eye-Rolling Choices

    “Art has come out of its ivory tower and into the office building lobby,” New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in 1959. That is only more true today, as corporations have seen the advantage of wowing their visitors and potential clients with works by brand-name artists, especially as the art market has continued to grow and make global headlines.  
    These works extend the great tradition of public art in New York into the indoors, and allow office workers to have a moment of beauty, aesthetic challenge, or intellectual interest on their way to work each day. 
    The future of art in corporate lobbies can be subject to the vagaries of time and, especially, changes in ownership. For example, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi created a site-specific installation in the lobby at 666 Fifth Avenue in 1957; when Brookfield Properties took over the lease in 2020, they wanted to remodel, and argued that intervening renovations to the building that changed the context meant the installation no longer reflected Noguchi’s vision. They dismantled it and donated it to the foundation that cares for the artist’s work. 
    Lobby art doesn’t necessarily have the reputation of being the most interesting or cutting-edge. Never one to shy away from pronouncing a bold opinion, the New York Post once boldly prounounced that “Lobby art sucks.” But that’s not necessarily the case. Some does, some doesn’t, and Artnet News is here to guide you. 
    What are some of the best and worst choices for art installed in office lobbies across New York City? Here’s a quick roundup of five superlatives—from the worst to the best—to guide you as you look for art in different places in your travels throughout the city, if you are seeking something different from the museum and gallery circuit. 

    Most Lame Visual Joke: Anish Kapoor at 56 Leonard 
    A new permanent public artwork by artist Anish Kapoor at 56 Leonard Street in Manhattan. Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images.
    The British-Indian artist’s first public artwork in New York is, in a way, a miniature cousin of his massive Cloud Gate, which has graced Chicago’s Millennium Park since 2006. 
    Estimated to have cost as much as $10 million, the as-yet-untitled shiny sculpture is 48 feet long, weighs 40 tons, and is installed under the corner of a new Herzog & de Meuron–designed luxury tower at 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca. The new Lower Manhattan skyscraper is commonly referred to as the Jenga Tower for its distinctive shape.
    While it might be a stretch to call the piece lobby art, since it’s outdoors, we think it’s close enough. And while the Chicago work is rightly beloved as a unique piece of public art, this one makes a lame joke, seeming to be bulging under the weight of the building that hosts it.
    ArtNews’s Alex Greenberger wrote when it was unveiled that “this sculpture is no Cloud Gate, and personally, I wouldn’t mind if the building above it made good on its promise and crushed the thing altogether.”

    Most Predictable: Jeff Koons, Balloon Rabbit (Red), at 51 Astor Place
    Jeff Koons, Balloon Rabbit (Red) (2005–10). Photo: Tom Powel Imaging. Courtesy the artist. © Jeff Koons.
    Balloon Rabbit (Red), 2005–10, which stands 14 feet tall and tips the scales at 6,600 pounds, has squatted (or whatever it is rabbits do) in the lobby of 51 Astor Place since 2014. 
    It comes from the collection of Edward J. Minskoff, whose equity company erected the 13-story, 430,000-square-foot building, where IBM is the anchor tenant in a neighborhood that has drastically gentrified over recent years. Just a few feet away, at Cooper Square, legendary conceptual artist David Hammons once performed his Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983), in which the artist commented on the salability of whiteness and the absurdity of the art market by offering snowballs in various sizes to passersby on the sidewalk. 
    And speaking of the selling of whiteness and market madness, in 2019, Koons’s 3-foot-tall stainless-steel Rabbit (1986) fetched $91.1 million at Christie’s New York, setting a record for the priciest work ever sold at auction by a living artist.
    Having an artwork by a former Wall Street commodities broker from the collection of an equity guy dominating a lobby where giants like IBM are tenants is just so on the nose that to call it on the nose would be too on the nose. 
    Most Journalist-Friendly: Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, Moveable Type, at the New York Times Building
    Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, Moveable Type (2007). Courtesy: New York Times.
    When the New York Times moved into its $1 billion, Renzo Piano–designed Midtown Manhattan headquarters in 2007, the paper’s architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote (where else?) in the Times that he was “enchanted” with the building. 
    Though Ouroussoff didn’t mention it in his review, one element that enchants most people’s  visiting the building is Moveable Type, a digital artwork by New York artist Ben Rubin and Columbia University journalism professor Mark Hansen. 
    The piece uses algorithms to parse selections of text from the paper’s daily output, as well as its archive and reader comments, which appear on some 560 small digital displays arrayed in two nearly 54-foot-wide grids. One algorithm, for example, pulls out noun phrases, another maps, another phrases containing numbers, yet another questions, as Rubin explains in a video (which, impressively, explains how many bad ideas they went through to arrive at this one).
    Most Literary: Jenny Holzer, 7 World Trade Center 
    Jenny Holzer, For 7 World Trade (2006). Photo: Joe Woolhead, courtesy Silverstein Properties.
    Rebuilt at a cost of some $700 million, 7 World Trade Center was the first office building to reopen at Ground Zero, five years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. So a public art commission for this emotionally fraught site must have been daunting. But Jenny Holzer (who indeed told the New York Times that she was “taken aback at the gravity of the project”) rose to the challenge with a work that captures decades of expressions about the city’s pleasures. 
    Stretching 65 feet wide and 14 feet high, Holzer’s For 7 World Trade was inaugurated in May 2006. The five-foot-high scrolling letters come from poems and prose texts about “the joy of being in New York City,” she told Art21, including works by writers like Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams, each writing about their first impressions of Gotham. In 2019, she added writing from 18 New York schoolchildren, and the text runs for a full 36 hours before repeating itself. 
    Besides the literary content, Holzer focused on a satisfying chromatic experience, saying, “I want color to suffuse the space and pulse and do all kinds of tricks.”
    Most Straight-Up Coolest: James Turrell, Plain Dress 2006, at 505 Fifth Avenue 
    James Turrell, Plain Dress (2006), at 505 Fifth Avenue. Photo: H.G. Esch, courtesy KPF.
    California Light and Space artist James Turrell is globally known for his Skyspaces and other installations that employ natural light and illumination to cast a spell. Construction is ongoing on his magnum opus, Roden Crater, in Northern Arizona.
    While we wait for that, we can see a small and subtle work, a collaboration with architects Kohn Pederson Fox, in the lobby of Midtown’s 505 Fifth Avenue. As recounted in Architect magazine, the client wanted to invite an artist to create a work in the lobby in collaboration with the architects. During the building’s development, KPF design principal Douglas Hocking made an offhand remark about the light in a rendering of the lobby reminding him of Turrell, and it was off to the races.
    Turrell transformed the lobby into a forced-perspective lightbox. Cabinets of light, vertical rectangles reminiscent of Mark Rothko paintings, anchor the installation. Behind their resin surfaces, a bank of LED lights is programmed to change color over a 24-hour cycle. The meditative interior provides a sublime contrast to the traffic and bustle of Fifth Avenue, just outside the glass entrance doors. 
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    10 Must-See Shows in Europe in 2024, From Naomi Campbell at the V&A to Anselm Kiefer in Florence

    Art lovers the world over will be swarming Europe next year for the Venice Biennale, which as per usual boasts dozens of national pavilions and the highly anticipated main exhibition, “Foreigners Everywhere,” curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Anyone hoping to stay on for an early vacation is in luck, as the continent is anticipating a bumper crop of blockbuster museum shows, from a celebration of supermodel Naomi Campbell in London, to a retrospective honoring American land artist Nancy Holt in Berlin. There is also the opening of a shiny new museum dedicated to Nordic modernism in Kristiansand, a coastal city in southern Norway.
    Our European team has hand-picked what they are most excited to see in 2024.

    “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind”Tate Modern, LondonFebruary 15—September 1, 2024
    Yoko Ono, Half-A-Room, from Half – A Wind Show at Lisson Gallery London. Photo by Clay Perry ©Yoko Ono
    London played a tremendous role in the life and artistic career of Yoko Ono (born 1933, Tokyo). During her five-year stay, the U.K. capital was where the Japanese-born artist and activist encountered a web of artists and creative minds that had gathered there in the mid-1960s; it was also a place where she created some of her radical works, and the city where Ono met John Lennon, her future husband and long-time collaborator.
    In 2024, London will make a mark on Ono’s artistic trajectory again as Tate Modern stages “Music of the Mind,” the artist’s biggest exhibition in the U.K. to date. The show will feature more than 200 works ranging from installations, films, music, and photography that chart Ono’s path as a multidisciplinary artist and her profound impact on contemporary culture over the decades. Ono’s body of work created during her London years, including installations at Indica and Lisson Gallery such as Apple 1966 and Half-A-Room 1967, will be among the highlights.
    —Vivienne Chow 
    “Vera Molnár”Centre Pompidou, ParisFebruary 28—August 26, 2024
    Vera Molnár, Icône (1964). Photo: © Centre Pompidou / Dist. Rmn-Gp.
    This pioneer of computer art, who died in December at the age of 99, had a creative vision that was decades ahead of her time. When she began making generative artworks in the 1960s, using the early coding language of Fortran and computers that had mechanical plotters for printers, her peers could not understand it. In their eyes, she had “dehumanized” art, she said in an interview from her Paris nursing home in early 2022.
    Much has changed over the past ten years, as the world finally caught up with the significance of Molnar’s experiments with the creative relationship between systems and randomness. This retrospective ranges from drawings produced as early as 1946 to new work made in 2023.
    —Jo Lawson-Tancred

    “Roy Lichtenstein”The Albertina Museum, ViennaMarch 8—July 14, 2024
    Roy Lichtenstein, Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior (1992). © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Photo Courtesy of Albertina, Vienna.

    In celebration of what would have been Roy Lichtenstein’s 100th birthday in 2024, Vienna’s Albertina Museum (with assistance from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and Estate) is putting on a major retrospective of the Pop Art legend’s work. The exhibition will include works on loan from private international collections and major institutions including New York’s Whitney Museum and MoMA, Vienna’s Museum Ludwig, and Madrid’s Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. The show follows the course of the artist’s five-decade career, starring his world-renowned large-scale comic-book inspired paintings from the 1960s. Other works on display include his 1970s mirror series, landscapes, and interiors.
    –Verity Babbs

    “Anselm Kiefer: Fallen Angels”Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, FlorenceMarch 22—July 21, 2024
    German artist Anselm Kiefer “These Writings, When Burned, Will Finally Give Some Light” exhibition during the preview at Palazzo Ducale on March 25, 2022 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Roberto Serra – Iguana Press/Getty Images)
    Anselm Kiefer returns to Italy after his major presentation at Palazzo Ducale in Venice 2022, this time taking over the historic Palazzo Strozzi for his major solo show “Fallen Angels.” Born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany, Kiefer is known for his exploration of intricate emotions, memory, war, myth, and existence through his epic works, whether in the form of painting, or sculpture and installation. Curated by Arturo Galansino, director of the foundation, “Fallen Angels” will feature historical titles and new works, aiming to channel the “vital complexity” embodied in the art of the German artist.
    The show opening at the heel of 2023’s release of Anselm, the 3D documentary dedicated to the artist by the acclaimed Wim Wenders, who was also born in the same year as Kiefer and brought up in post-war Germany.
    —Vivienne Chow 

    “Nancy Holt: Circles of Light”Gropius Bau, BerlinMarch 22—July 21, 2024
    Archival image of Nancy Holt’s Holes of Light at the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition “Light Show” in 2013 (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
    Born in 1938 in Worcester in Massachusetts and grew up in New Jersey, Nancy Holt was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. She was known for her site-specific installation and moving image through which she explored how we understand our place on earth for five decades. Featuring works including film, video, photography, poetry, sculptures, and installations drawn from over the past 25 years, “Circles of Light” at Gropius Bau is the most comprehensive survey exhibition of the artist in Germany to date. The show will also shine a spotlight on Holt’s working process through the presentation of texts and recordings by the artist.
    —Vivienne Chow 

    “Histórias indígenas / Urfolkshistorier”Kode Art Museum, BergenApril 26—August 25, 2024
    Duhigó, Nepu Arquepu (2019). Photo courtesy of Kode Bergen.

    Following its appearance in Brazil at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, ‘Histórias indígenas / Urfolkshistorier’ will arrive at Bergen’s Kode Art Museum for a four-month run. The exhibition explores Indigenous experiences across South America, North America, Oceania, and Scandinavia. Some 285 works by over 170 Indigenous and Indigenous-descent artists are brought together in the show, making sure to recognize the deeply complex and individual experiences of Indigenous people in each of the geographical areas explored in the exhibition. The show is also accompanied by two publications, a catalogue, and an anthology, which further explore the research put into the exhibition.
    —Verity Babbs

    “Passions of the North”Kunstsilo, NorwayOpening May 11, 2024
    Franciska Clausen, Contrastes des formes (1927). Photo: © Øystein Thorvaldsen.
    Nordic modernism will be put on Europe’s cultural map next spring with the opening of the Kunstsilo in Kristiansand, southern Norway. The unique 1930s silo building has been converted into a state-of-the-art museum to house the expansive collection of Norwegian collector Nicolai Tangen. Its inaugural exhibition offers a greatest hits tour of this new holding, with a mix of avant-garde artists representing not only Norway but Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.
    —Jo Lawson-Tancred

    “When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting”Kunstmuseum BaselMay 25—October 27, 2024
    Zandile Tshabalala, Two Reclining Women (2020). Photo courtesy of the Maduna Collection, © Zandile Tshabalala Studio.
    Traveling to Europe after a critically acclaimed debut at the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, South Africa, this survey show brings together over 200 artworks by African artists like Ben Enwonwu and Zandile Tshabalala alongside those from the Diaspora, including Michael Armitage, Amy Sherald, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. It may well be the most comprehensive study of the Black figure in painting to date.
    With a title that inverts When They See Us, a Netflix drama from 2019 about the prejudiced incrimination of the Central Park Five, the show celebrates artworks that defy racist assumptions, organizing its exhibits under themes like “Joy & Revelry” and “Sensuality.”
    —Jo Lawson-Tancred

    “NAOMI”Victoria & Albert Museum, LondonJune 22, 2024–April 6, 2025
    Naomi Campbell (2023). Photo by Marco Bahler for V&A.

    Taking to the runway for the first time at 15 after having been scouted in London’s Covent Garden, Naomi Campbell was just 18 when she became the first Black model on the cover of Vogue Paris, and has since starred on the front cover of more than 500 magazines.
    From June, the V&A in London is celebrating the supermodel with an exhibition exploring her 40 year career in fashion. Around 100 outfits from Campbell’s personal wardrobe, including loaned pieces from her illustrious catwalk career and photographs by Tim Walker and Steven Meisel will be on display in this first-of-its-kind exhibition tracking Campbell’s work as a model, activist, and actress. This is a dream exhibition for fans of cultural history.
    —Verity Babbs

    “Art Povera”Bourse de Commerce, ParisOctober 9, 2024–March 24, 2025

    Giuseppe Penone, Essere Vento (2014). Photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Giuseppe PENONE © Adagp, Paris, 2023

    Curated by Arte Povera expert Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the upcoming exhibition at Bourse de Commerce looks back at the history of the Italian “Poor Art” movement. The radical Arte Povera group exhibited together from the mid-1960s through into the ’70s, focused on the boundaries and mutualities between nature and culture, daily life and tradition, and using non-traditional everyday materials. The informal group was made up of artists across Italy, including key figures Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, and Mario Merz. This show examines how the movement influenced the course of art history, using works from the Pinault Collection and pieces on loan from major European collections both private and public, including works owned by original Arte Povera artists.
    —Verity Babbs

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    Musician Nick Cave Will Debut His New, Devilish Ceramics at a Brussels Show in 2024

    Musician and artist Nick Cave will have his debut commercial exhibition at Xavier Hufkens gallery in Brussels in 2024. Cave has called the work going on display as “a journey towards some kind of absolution from a series of shattering events.”
    Cave was born in Australia in 1957 and has achieved worldwide recognition as a singer, songwriter, author, and composer. He studied painting at Melbourne’s Caulfield Institute of Technology before turning his attention to a musical career that has seen him lead bands including The Birthday Party and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds since the late ’70s. In recent years, Cave has released a memoir Faith, Hope and Carnage, and has been exploring ceramics as a medium.
    The show will open in April 2024 and presents Cave’s first major body of visual work, entitled “The Devil—A Life (2020–22).” The collection is made up of 17 glazed ceramic figurines following the cradle-to-grave story of the Devil. Stylistically, the sculptures are reminiscent of Victorian Staffordshire “flatback” figurines which were made from the mid-18th century and were popular for display on mantlepieces.
    Nick Cave. Photo by Megan Cullen, courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
    Cave’s ceramic works were first shown in Finland in September 2022 at the Sara Hildén Art Museum as part of the group exhibition “We,” which also included works by actor Brad Pitt and artist Thomas Houseago.
    In this new series, Cave frames the character of the Devil as a complex, flawed, everyday character. Told through the series of ceramic figurines, we watch as the Devil is born, inherits the world, falls in love, fights a lion, rides off to war, and is shunned for causing the death of his child, before he himself dies. This arc is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” from the 1623 comedy As You Like It: infant, schoolchild, lover, soldier, judge, dotage and decrepitude. As major changes occur in the Devil’s life, his appearance is altered, particularly the shape of his horns.
    Nick Cave, Devil As Child (2020–22). Courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
    Cave has long held an intense, if conflicted, interest in Christianity: “I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it,” he said in 2010. Over the years, themes related to faith and the Devil have popped up in his songs (“Up Jumped the Devil,” “Jesus Alone“), just as they were woven into his first novel, 1989’s And the Ass Saw the Angel.
    In a statement, he characterized the ceramic series headed to Brussels next year, along with his songs, as centered on “the idea of forgiveness, the idea that there is a moral virtue in beauty. It’s a kind of balancing of our sins.”
    “The Devil—A Life (2020–22)” is on view at Xavier Hufkens, 6-8, Sint-Jorisstraat, 1050 Brussel, Belgium, April 5 through May 11, 2024.

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