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      See the Modernist Masterpieces That Have Returned to View at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin After a Six-Year Hiatus for Renovation

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      The bustling city is visible outside its tall glass walls, but inside the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, there is a pristine kind of quiet. Little stirs except Alexander Calder’s large mobiles, which are gently spinning from an indiscernible wind. They are part of a monumental first exhibition at the German museum, which is opening for the first time in more than six years on August 22.
      One who did not know it would hardly guess the entire museum, designed by Mies van der Rohe, was just turned inside out. The bi-level museum has been meticulously restored by David Chipperfield Architects, paid for by the federal government. Few would argue that the €140 million ($168 million) renovation was unnecessary: The building had fallen into disrepair, with rust, cracks in the glass, and a pesky issue with condensation, among a longer list of issues.
      Six years on, entering the museum is somewhat like stepping into a deep past. Chipperfield, who worked with the brief to maintain “as much Mies as possible,” had his team dismantle the structure of glass and steel piece by piece, and each element was painstakingly restored to be as true as possible to the day the museum was unveiled to great acclaim in 1968. The architect died a year later; the building was his last. 
      Exhibition view of “The Art of Society 1900–1945: The Collection of the Nationalgalerie,” 2021. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / David von Becker
      Even a famous Calder piece that was there on that postwar opening day has returned. For the Calder exhibition “Minimal/Maximal,” Têtes et queue (1965) is back on the terrace where it stood, in what was then West Berlin. Dark carpets and restored Barcelona chairs, the celebrated seats made by the architect, are back on view and ready for guests.
      In the lower level, one finds the restaurant, renewed thanks to artist Jorge Pardo, who has created a contemporary intervention that sensitively draws on the room’s Anni Albers motifs, employing Mexican-Spanish references.
      Contemporary positions like Pardo’s will also be presented in temporary shows. Rosa Barba has the first slot, with a major installation called In a Perpetual Now, and more female contemporary artists, including Barbara Kruger and Monica Bonvicini, are on the docket. In 2026, the museum will host works from the Centre Pompidou in Paris when it closes for its own long-overdue renovation.
      Alexander Calder Untitled (1954). Calder Foundation, New York; Gift of Andréa Davidson, 2007. © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. VG-Bildkunst, Bonn 2021 / Photo by David von Becker
      The main rooms feature a presentation of the museum’s esteemed collection of modern art, which was painstakingly rebuilt after almost all of it was looted and lost during World War II. Since then, the holdings have outgrown the space capacities of the building, so a new and somewhat controversially-designed structure has broken ground next door to house a good portion of the collection, which waits in storage until the new space is ready in 2026.
      Like the building’s redesign, its first show, “The Art of Society 1900–1945,” also takes us back in time. The highlight opener is a poignant painting by German painter Lotte Laserstein’s Evening Over Potsdam (1930). A group sits outside, looking forlorn; in the background dark clouds reflect the looming rise of National Socialism. The museum bought it in 2010 at Sotheby’s for £421,250, according to the Artnet Price Database.
      Other areas focus on European art and the cultures that informed and surrounded the artists between 1900 to 1945. There is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s absinthe-soaked canvas Potsdamer Platz from 1914, which shows a landscape from nearby the museum that was totally flattened about three decades later. Powerful pictures evoke the devastations of World War I, too, like Otto Dix’s Die Skatspieler from 1920—a psychedelic collaged painting depicting amputee veterans with machinelike limbs.
      Lotte Laserstein, Evening Over Potsdam, 1930. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021.Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Roman März
      The museum will continue to focus on western modernism, in all its highs and lows; however, while the building may have been restored to the past, there are moments that bring it into the future, such as new didactic panels that address the racist gaze present in works by painter Emil Nolde and his cohort, made during colonial times in the South Pacific.
      At a recent press preview, the museum’s director lamented gaps in the collection, which he is eager to fill. “My hope is that we can add to the collection these positions that are missing,” Joachim Jäger said, noting that despite a limited collecting budget, he would love to bring more diversity into the collection. At the top of his list are long-overlooked artists like Irma Stern and Hilma af Klint, the latter of which has a work currently on loan for the show.
      See more images of the exhibitions and galleries below.

      Alexander Calder, Têtes et queue, 1965, from “Minimal/Maximal. “Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Photo: Stephanie von Becker
      Exhibition view of “The Art of Society 1900–1945: The Collection of the Nationalgalerie,” 2021. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / David von Becker
      Otto Dix, Die Skatspieler, 1920. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021. Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Jörg P. Anders
      Exhibition view of “The Art of Society 1900–1945: The Collection of the Nationalgalerie,” 2021. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / David von Becker
      Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Potsdamer Platz, 1914. © Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Jörg P. Anders
      Exhibition view of “The Art of Society 1900–1945: The Collection of the Nationalgalerie,” 2021. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / David von Becker
      “The Art of Society 1900–1945,” Alexander Calder’s “Minimal/Maximal,” and Rosa Barba’s “In a Perpetual Now” open at the Neue Nationalgalerie on August 22.
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      Duchess Kate Middleton’s Intimate Portraits of Holocaust Survivors Are Part of a Touching Tribute Exhibition in London

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      Two photographs by Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, are part of an exhibition honoring Holocaust survivors at the Imperial War Museums in London.
      “While I have been lucky enough to meet two of the now very few survivors, I recognize not everyone in the future will be able to hear these stories first hand,” Middleton said in a statement. “It is vital that their memories are preserved and passed on to future generations.”
      For “Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors,” Middleton and 13 fellows from the Royal Photographic Society photographed Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
      “We felt it was important to celebrate the survivors of the Holocaust through this exhibition and create a body of work that could be shown in the future, with family members in the photographs who would have a direct connection to them,” Michael Pritchard, the director of education and public affairs at the Royal Photographic Society, told Artnet News.
      Kate Middleton, portrait of Holocaust survivor Steven Frank and his two granddaughters, Maggie and Trixie Fleet, at Kensington Palace for “Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors” at the Imperial War Museums, London. Photo ©the Duchess of Cambridge. Steven Frank
      The exhibition grew out of a special issue of the Jewish News commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
      The show, which is a collaboration between the newspaper, the Royal Photographic Society, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and Dangoor Education, was delayed from a planned 2020 opening by the pandemic.
      Middleton photographed Steven Frank with his two granddaughters, Maggie and Trixie Fleet, and Yvonne Bernstein and her granddaughter, Chloe Wright, at Kensington Palace ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2020.
      Kate Middleton with Holocaust survivor Yvonne Bernstein during a portrait session at Kensington Palace. Photo courtesy of Kensington Palace.
      Frank, born in the Netherlands in 1935, was one of only 93 children to escape the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Remarkably, though his father was murdered at Auschwitz, Frank’s two brothers and mother also survived, in part thanks to the extra scraps of bread his mother acquired by secretly washing prisoners’ clothes through her job at the camp laundry. Frank brought the tin saucepan in which she would mix the bread with hot water to his portrait session with Middleton.
      Kate Middleton, portrait of Holocaust survivor Yvonne Bernstein and her granddaughter Chloe Wright at Kensington Palace for “Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors” at the Imperial War Museums, London. Photo ©the Duchess of Cambridge. Steven Frank
      Bernstein, born in Germany 1937, was separated from her parents at one year old, when they each individually managed to obtain visas to work in the U.K. War broke out before she could join them, and Bernstein was forced into hiding in France with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. The family was arrested and the uncle killed at Auschwitz, but Bernstein was released and eventually reunited with her parents in Britain in 1945. For her photograph, she posed with her German ID card, stamped with the letter “J” to identify her as a Jew.
      “They look back on their experiences with sadness but also with gratitude that they were some of the lucky few to make it through. Their stories will stay with me forever,” Middleton added.
      Kate Middleton with Holocaust survivor Yvonne Bernstein during a portrait session at Kensington Palace. Photo courtesy of Kensington Palace.
      This isn’t the first time that Middleton’s prowess with the camera has made headlines. In 2017, the Royal Photographic Society awarded her an honorary lifetime membership recognizing her tour photographs and family portraits. She has been a society patron since 2019.
      Prior to her life as a royal, Middleton also took photographs for her family’s party planning company, Party Pieces. She also majored in art history at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where she met Prince William.
      Last year, Middleton began working with the National Portrait Gallery in London on a community photography project documenting life during lockdown in the U.K. She had previously curated a Victorian photography exhibition at the NPG in 2018.
      “Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors” is on view at the Imperial War Museums, Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ, August 6, 2021–January 9, 2022.
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      A Major Survey on Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim Is Coming to MoMA—Take a Sneak Peek Here

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      The first U.S. survey in 25 years for the Surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim is coming to New York’s Museum of Modern Art this fall.
      “Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition” will feature more than 180 works by the Swiss-German artist, including paintings, drawings, collages, and sculptures. The show will go on view at the Kunstmuseum Bern before traveling to MoMA on October 22, followed by the Menil Collection in Houston later in the year.
      Though best known for her 1936 work Object (Objet), the artist’s oeuvre extends well beyond furry flatware. In painting, drawing, and mixed media collage, Oppenheim tapped into her interest in psychoanalysis and a knack for subverting convention to humorous and disturbing ends.
      Meret Oppenheim, Glove (for Parkett no. 4) (1985). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
      Oppenheim’s fascination with the body is also apparent in works like Bees Knees—a sterling silver platter with a pair of white women’s pumps bound together at the heels, which end in paper frills, like a bondage-inspired Norman Rockwell turkey dish. Oppenheim was also fascinated by hands and gloves, and many of her objets d’art used the garment in some way, with hand-painted and embroidered veins splayed on top of a pair of white leather gloves or a pair of hands ensconced in hirsute coverings from which red-painted nails poke out, like the extremities of a female werewolf in Pelzhandschuhe, 1936.
      The artist was also a muse and model for her peers, most notably in Erotique Voilée a photographic series by Man Ray that placed a nude Oppenheim next to a printing press with one arm and hand covered in sticky dark paint. The lithe nude woman juxtaposed next to the large wheel with its iron spokes and phallic wooden handle creates a tableaux ripe for analysis.
      Below, see some of Oppenheim’s most famous works.
      Meret Oppenheim, Octavia (Oktavia) (1969). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
      Meret Oppenheim, Stone Woman (Steinfrau) (1938). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
      Meret Oppenheim, New Stars (Neue Sterne) (1977–82). Kunstmuseum Bern. Meret Oppenheim Bequest. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
      Meret Oppenheim, X-Ray of M.O.’s Skull (Röntgenaufnahme des Schädels M.O.). (1964/1981). Hermann and Margrit Rupf Foundation. Kunstmuseum Bern. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
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      Abandoned for Decades, a Small and Ecologically Marvelous Island in Finland Is Home to the First-Ever Helsinki Biennial

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      In his Pulitzer Prize-winning paean to the natural world, The Overstory, American novelist Richard Powers describes, in Proustian detail, the rich and wondrous stratum of a forest floor. It’s a vital feature of a forest’s ecosystem, with dead wood’s natural decay playing an essential role in maintaining its health and stability. Constantly at work in the moist shadows beneath the understory, the forest floor is bustling with energy, activity—and noise.
      What does the slow decomposition of organic matter sound like? Finnish artist Teemu Lehmsuruusu lets visitors to the inaugural edition of the Helsinki Biennial listen in on the life-giving hum of decay. His solar-powered artwork, House of Polypores (2021), picks up changes on the forest floor via a system of sensors and converts these movements, through organ pipes covered with self-grown mycelium bricks, into meditative drones.
      Like most of the works in the Biennial, the piece is installed on Vallisaari Island, a stunning location in the Helsinki archipelago that, though only a 15-minute ferry ride from the city center, has only recently opened to visitors. Entangled by the region’s geopolitics, it was used as a military fortification by the Swedes in the 19th century, then the Russians, and finally by the Finnish army. Abandoned since the 1990s and cleared by the Finnish Defense Force in 2008, the island has grown so rich and diverse in nature that some areas were deemed off-limits by the biennial in order to protect the organisms that inhabit it.
      Vallisaari, home to the Helsinki Biennial. Photo: Matti Pyykkö.
      “They’re very sensitive,” the biennial’s cocurator, Pirkko Siitari, told a group of journalists while pointing at a lake that has become a habitat to six different species of bats. “All works were developed with environmental concerns and local species in mind.”
      Titled “The Same Sea” to evoke the interconnectivity of all life on Earth, the first Helsinki Biennial opened to the public on June 12 after a pandemic-related one-year delay and with the tall aim of leading the way in responsible exhibition-making. In line with Helsinki’s 2035 carbon neutrality goal, an EcoCompass sustainability management system, developed by the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, has been in use by the biennial team since 2019. (The press trip, for which six journalists were flown in from England, Germany, Holland, and Spain, will be offset in accordance with its guidelines).
      In practical terms, this translates to curators Pirkko Siitari and Taru Tappola focusing on local productions and video installations to reduce shipping. Two large-scale sculptural works by Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade—Pars Pro Toto (2018), shown at the 57th Venice Biennale, and Big Be Hide (2019)—were transported to Vallisaari, but will join Helsinki’s public art collection with a permanent location on the mainland.
      Paweł Althamer, Seven Prisoners (2020). © Maija Toivanen HAM Helsinki Biennial 2021.
      Though abandoned, the island is not free of human activity. When invited to produce a work for the biennial, Paweł Althamer learned that inmates from the open prison on the adjacent island do maintenance work on Vallisaari. He cast six inmates to co-develop and star in the VR film Seven Prisoners (2020), with the seventh played by the artist himself. The result is a magical realist jailbreak adventure that brings the escapees closer to nature, their feminine sides, and themselves. The artwork’s second part is a “making-of” documentary providing insights into the working process, and is more an art-therapy session than strict storyboarding.
      With the biennial’s many open-air installations, the breathtaking and potentially transformative experience of meandering through the island’s lush nature is a well-thought-out curatorial device. It is all the more meaningful, then, to encounter works that illustrate the disastrous effects of global warming on the archipelago.
      Jaakko Niemelä’s installation Quay 6 (2021) consists of a bright red wooden platform. It is shaped like the stone quay it is poised over, supported by 20-foot-tall scaffolding to indicate where the sea level would be if Greenland’s northern ice sheet were to melt completely.
      Samnang Khvay, Preah Kunlong (The Way of the Spirit) (2016–17). © Maija Toivanen HAM Helsinki Biennial 2021.
      Elsewhere, artists mourn mankind’s lost connection with nature. The video installation Preah Kunlong (The Ay of the Spirit) (2016–17) by Samnang Khvay focuses on Cambodia’s indigenous Chong community and their rituals. Installed nearby, the work Here to Hear (2021) is the first artistic collaboration between Sámi dancers Birit and Katja Haarla and their mother, artist and activist Outi Pieski. Inside a cavernous former fortification, they invoke Sámi deities with bass-heavy electronica and traditional handicraft.
      Marked by its former military use, Vallisaari Island is dotted with bunkers and gunpowder cellars, which now house some of the biennial’s artworks. (There’s also a complex system of underground tunnels crisscrossing the island, which remains inaccessible for now.)
      The location’s history is engaged through a number of artworks that touch on soldiers’ experiences and PTSD. Hayoun Kwon’s poignant animation 489 Years (2016) is based on a South Korean soldier’s account of reconnaissance operations in the Demilitarized Zone between the South and the North. She recounts being saved from certain death by noticing the striking beauty of a flower growing out of a landmine he’d nearly detonated. It is estimated that it would take up to 489 years to clear the DMZ of its landmines.
      Hayoun Kwon, 489 Years (2016). © Maija Toivanen HAM Helsinki Biennial 2021.
      Elsewhere on the island, artworks are installed inside the abandoned standard-issue apartments of the Pilot’s House. A series of oil landscapes, still lifes, and a self-portrait in uniform by Topi Kautonen are hung on the walls of the unit in which he used to live when he served as the army’s meteorologist on the island, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and drew inspiration from its dramatic shorelines.
      Kautonen, who later worked as a museum guard, died in 2011. He never got to see his works return to the environment that had inspired them. If the biennial’s approach is any indication, the natural sceneries he had captured will remain protected.
      “The Helsinki Biennial: The Same Sea” is open through September 26, 2021.
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      KAWS Wants His New 18-Foot-Tall Cartoon Couple at Rockefeller Center to Make You Feel Good—See Images Here

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      Street art and collectibles sensation–turned art market darling KAWS (born Brian Donnelly) unveiled his latest work at New York’s Rockefeller Center this week: an 18-foot-tall bronze sculpture perched above the ice skating rink where the famed Christmas tree lives during the holidays.
      The piece, commissioned for the occasion, is titled SHARE, and features KAWS’s Mickey Mouse-like “Companion” character carrying a miniature “BFF” figure, a furry Elmo knockoff the artist first introduced in 2016. Both have the artist’s signature crossed-out eyes. The design was first introduced as a series of vinyl figurines in February 2020.
      When deciding what work to create for the public art exhibition, “I was thinking about what this area means to me,” Donnelly said at the sculpture’s unveiling. “The verticality of all the architecture and visiting Rockefeller Center as a kid and looking up and being overwhelmed, I wanted a sculpture that could relate to those feelings.”
      The artist KAWS unveils his new sculpture SHARE at Rockefeller Center in New York. The 18-foot-tall bronze figure features two of the artist’s iconic motifs, “COMPANION” and “BFF.” Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
      “KAWS has created a universal language for anyone who interacts with his instantly recognizable figures,” E. B. Kelly, Tishman Speyer’s managing director overseeing Rockefeller Center, said in a statement. “KAWS’s work subverts expectations while feeling both familiar and stylized.”
      Known for his cartoon aesthetic that draws on pop culture references from the Smurfs to the Simpsons, Donnelly is currently the subject of his first New York museum show, “KAWS: What Party,” on view at the Brooklyn Museum through September 5.
      “What motivates me? I think communication and having a dialogue with people and having opportunities to put my work into the world,” the artist said, describing his work as “optimistic, personal, [and] inviting.”
      In SHARE, the “Companion” is meant to represent a sense of sadness, fear, and isolation, while the smaller “BFF” doll it carries suggest the comfort that so many of us need.
      “With the city opening up again and up coming out of the last year that we did, I feel like it’s a really important time to have public art,” Donnelly added.
      See more photos of the work below.
      KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
      KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
      KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
      KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
      The artist Brian Donnelly, better known as KAWS, unveils his new sculpture SHARE at Rockefeller Center in New York. The 18-foot-tall bronze figure features two of the artist’s iconic motifs, “COMPANION” and “BFF.” Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
      “KAWS: SHARE” is on view at Rockefeller Center, 45 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, August 11–October 8, 2021.
      “KAWS: What Party” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, February 26–September 5, 2021.
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      The Late Artist and Psychic Paulina Peavy Communed With a UFO to Create Her Work. A New Show Revives Her Otherworldly Legacy

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      Many artists throughout history have claimed some sort of otherworldly inspiration (the muses, for instance). But the visionary American artist Paulina Peavy (1901–1999) may be one of the only to attribute her talents to communications with a U.F.O.—specifically one named Lacamo. 
      During Peavy’s lifetime, she enjoyed many early successes, including showing with Los Angeles’s Stendahl Gallery, studying with Hans Hoffman, and exhibiting work at the opening of the San Francisco Museum of Art—all before falling into art world obscurity.
      The new exhibition “Paulina Peavy: An Etherian Channeler,” on view at the Beyond Baroque art center in Venice Beach, is hoping to reintroduce Peavy as a powerful and one-of-a-kind creative force in the nascent southern California art scene of a century ago. 
      Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1930s–1980s). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
      The fascinating show, curated by Laura Whitcomb, marks the first exhibition of Peavy’s work on the West Coast in 75 years, and traces her myriad creations —paintings, films, drawings, intricate masks—from the 1930s into the 1980s. Various ephemera related to theosophy and astroculture are also on view in a series of vitrines, along with some of Peavy’s own writings, which detail the elaborate occultist belief systems that informed her work. 
      Even before UFOs got involved (and we’ll get to that later), Peavy’s story was one against the odds. She was born in Colorado to a miner father and a Swedish immigrant mother. In 1906, the family moved to Portland in a covered wagon following the Oregon Trail. Peavy’s mother would die tragically a few years later. In spite of the gender conventions of the time and her own humble origins, Peavy would attend Oregon State College (now Oregon State University), studying art with Farley Doty McLouth and Marjorie Baltzell. After winning fourth place in a national competition hosted by the Art Students League in New York, Peavy was accepted to the Chouinard Art Institute to study with Hans Hofmann. 
      Paulina Peavy holding masks. Photo by Sam Vandivert. Courtesy of Beyond Baroque.
      In the 1920s, Peavy began to play a pivotal role in the emerging West Coast art scene. She established the Paulina Peavy Gallery, which also functioned as a salon and school, hosting classes for the Los Angeles Art Students League. Like many other artists of the age, Peavy had interests in the supernatural and was loosely affiliated with the occultist art group the Group of Eight, as well as the Synchromists and a group of West Coast surrealists led by artist Lorser Feitelson.
      But her true moment of breakthrough came in 1932, when Peavy, by now the mother of two and in the midst of a divorce, attended a seance at the Santa Ana home of Ida L. Ewing, a pastor of the National Federation of Spiritual Science. During the seance, Peavy claimed to have encountered a discarnate entity she called Lacamo, which she later described as a “wondrous ovoid-shaped UFO.”  It was an event that would have a profound impact on Peavy and her work for the rest of her life—because Lacamo, she said, revealed great universal truths which she attempted to convey through her art. (She sometimes co-signed her works with Lacamo.) 
      Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1980). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
      At the core of these revelations was a complex cosmology consisting of 12,000-year cycles with 3,000-year seasons. The summer of these seasons harkened a kind of utopia in which human beings transcended the limits of their earthly bodies to become spirits, freed from their sexes and entering “one-gender perfection,” as well as a singular cosmic race. 
      She also looked to other artists for inspiration. Peavy was fascinated by the Mexican muralists, particularly José Clemente Orozco who also shared a deep interest in hermetic and indigenous traditions, particularly philosopher José Vasconcelos’s belief that a great cosmic race would be born out of the Americas (Peavy exhibited 30 of her paintings at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40, where Diego Rivera exhibited mural work. She also painted a 14-foot mural titled The Eternal Supper, depicting a “Last Supper” filled with androgynous, racially ambiguous figures for the 1939 San Francisco Exposition.)
      In numerous drawings on view in the exhibition, one sees Peavy alluding to pyramidal shapes and the icon of the Pharaoh, an image that would remain central to her visual lexicon. Within her complex cosmology, the Egyptian era stood as paramount, but one can also see these forms as drawings from the Maya and Aztec lineages heralded by the muralists. 
      Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1930s–1980s). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
      Undoubtedly, the most striking part of the exhibition are Peavy’s paintings, in which androgynous faces appear against darkened foregrounds, veils and wisps of colors hauntingly hovering above. For Peavy, who didn’t title or date her works, these paintings were ongoing revelations, and many are the result of 50 years of experimentation. Starting in the 1930s, Peavy employed a signature technique of layering translucent colors, then later, in the 1970s and ‘80s, she often returned to these paintings adding abstract crystal shapes that she believed would make viewers’ more receptive to transcendence and Lacomo’s unearthly wisdom. 
      “She was instructed [by Lacomo] that her painting could change viewers’ neural pathways so that the viewer could become, over time, a receiver. In other words, the paintings were meant to increase neuroplasticity that would make viewers more psychic and more receptive as channelers themselves,” said Whitcomb. 
      Paulina Peavy, Ghazi Khan (circa 1950s). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy estate.
      Another fascinating portion of the exhibition includes a collection of intricately adorned masks that offer a window into Peavy’s practice as a channeler. As art objects, these many-layered masks, which she would wear while communicating with Lacamo, straddle both Surrealist objects and indigenous traditions. As with many women artists before her, Peavy also worked in costume design. In college, she had drawn Surrealist costumes for Oregon State’s newspaper. Later, in New York, she helped support herself by making costume designs for a fashion house. 
      Still, everything Peavy created was primarily intended to celebrate her belief system. “Paulina considered herself a philosopher and wrote a number of manuscripts, but most poignantly made films which could elucidate her cosmology,” said exhibition curator Laura Whitcomb. Yet, in her time, these beliefs cast Peavy out of the mainstream art world.
      “She has this incredible pedigree where she showed with Delphic Studios—Alma Reed’s gallery—and alongside Agnes Pelton. Peavy was articulate, intelligent, very well educated in the arts, but when she identified her discarnate entity Lacomo, in the aftermath of the war, when there was this fear and anxiety over the UFO phenomenon and the Roswell incident, everyone dropped her and thought she was absolutely crazy,” explained Whitcomb. “These were dangerous ideas to be affiliated with and could get you in a lot of trouble, even on an FBI list.”
      Peavy at work in her studio. Courtesy of Beyond Baroque.
      Peavy made her way henceforth by selling her work, not through galleries but through Albert Bender’s Space Review, one of the most important periodicals of UFO culture of the era, and showing work in astroculture conventions. “She became something of an astroculture celebrity,” said Whitcomb. “She realized the art world was very fearful.” 
      Now, times have changed and spiritualist women artists such as Hilma af Klint, Georgiana Houghton, and Agnes Pelton are widely celebrated. “In the lead up to the Second World War, many artists were experimenting with the occult—Artaud was casting spells against Hitler. And the past years have been very scary,” said Whitcomb. “I feel like recent interest in the occult had to do with creating a cosmic balance and then we’re reminded of artists’ roles as shamans.” 
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      Tomás Saraceno Convinced His New Art Gallery to Shorten Its Hours and Switch to Renewable Energy for His Debut Exhibition

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      For Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno, air is not light matter. It carries symbolic and sociological weight, and is a major consideration in the suspended interactive web installations and landscapes he builds (which are in fact created and occupied by living spiders).
      Now, the artist is embarking on a new project with a new gallery. “We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air”—which will open on September 17 at Neugerriemschneider in Berlin and is spurred by the pandemic and the climate crisis—is dedicated to a more intimate aspect of air: breath.
      “We know exactly what the cure to [bad air quality] is,” Saraceno told Artnet News. “We know that if we stop burning fossil fuels, mortality rates will drop. Why were we able to respond so actively to the immediacy of the coronavirus, but can do nothing against a collective threat that is three times more deadly?”
      The show considers the inequalities inherent in the way oxygen flows around the earth: different parts of the world, namely the Global South, experience the pandemic and the climate crisis in a different and more extreme way the many Western nations. A 2018 work, Printed Matter(s), uses ink the artist made from black carbon pollution extracted from Mumbai’s air. His beloved spiderwebs will also feature in the show, but their webs are laced with pollution, changing their color. Another installation will render the air in the room, and all its particulate matter, visible.
      Tomás Saraceno. Particular Matter(s) (2021). Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin © Tomás Saraceno. Photo: Tomás Saraceno studio.
      In keeping with Saraceno’s ongoing environmental concerns, the gallery will switch over to 100 percent renewable energy, and shift its hours to correspond with darkening days in October, so that less lighting will be needed during opening times.
      The exhibition is even more pertinent given the landmark report published this week, approved by 234 scientists from more than 60 nations, suggesting that the climate is in a more dire state than we even knew.
      “The capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal structures many of us are entrenched in throw up huge roadblocks to normalized problems, including climate change,” Saraceno said. “What could happen if the climate crisis was treated with the same sense of urgency as the pandemic?”
      Tomás Saraceno, Part icular Matter(s) (2021). Courtesy the artist Nnd neugerriemschneider, Berlin. © Tomás Saraceno
      The artist has been working to make his Berlin studio, a brick-built former factory, more sustainable by regenerating its grounds into a garden to feed his employees. He is also collecting rainwater from the roof and installing solar panels come September. The studio will also shift its working hours to accommodate darker winter days.
      “This last year has refined my approach, and challenged me towards new aspirations,” the artist said. “I have decided that a shift in my environment and reconnection with my first supporters will bring a positive influence to my work, though I remain grateful to fruitful past relationships and stay close with many artists there.” (The Spanish artist and his longtime dealer in Berlin, Esther Schipper, parted amicably in late 2019.)
      Tim Neuger of Neugerriemschneider, which will represent the gallery with Tanya Bonakdar in New York, described Saraceno as “an artist of radical imagination, visionary creativity, and extraordinary insight.”
      “Working with us, Saraceno is amongst many friends and peers, and having known him well since the beginning of his career, we couldn’t be happier for this opportunity to expand our relationship, and step forward together toward new horizons,” Neuger added.
      After the Berlin exhibition, Saraceno will continue on a similar research path for an upcoming exhibition at the Shed in New York planned for 2022. 
      “I was very much inspired and moved by the research of [U.S. author and medical ethicist] Harriet A. Washington on the uneven distribution of pollution along geopolitical and racial lines,” he said. “What is floating in the air today? What are we breathing in? And who has the capacity and possibility to breathe at all? These are important questions we can’t stop asking ourselves in the age of the anthropocene.”
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      in Exhibitions

      In Her First Major U.S. Exhibition, French-American Sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle’s Vision of the World Shines at MoMA PS1

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      A legendary figure who fought against and transformed the rigidity of the art world, French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle has finally received a well-earned U.S. reception honoring her trailblazing artwork at MoMA PS1.
      During her five decade-long career, the French-born, New York City-raised artist fearlessly defied categorical constraints to explore a boundless artistic practice. And the MoMA PS1 exhibition, underwritten by Swiss luxury skincare house La Prairie and entitled “Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life,” over 200 works spanning sculpture, drawings, video, and more reveal the vast expanse of Saint Phalle’s imagination and a steadfast dedication to her craft.
      Niki de Saint Phalle, L’Estrella Carta No. XVII (The Star) (1997). © 2021 Niki Charitable Art Foundation.
      As a child, Saint Phalle was subjected to a violent and tumultuous household. Deeply rooted trauma stemming from emotional and physical abuse would remain with Saint Phalle throughout her entire life. But rather than letting it swallow her, Saint Phalle channeled tragedy into an artistic practice.
      At her psychiatrist’s recommendation, she began to translate the lingering pain of her early life into paintings. With the intention of creating joy, she began to adopt a visual vocabulary of almost childlike iconography, using a distinct palette of primary colors to build worlds of optimism and hope. 
      From the onset, Saint Phalle’s practice explored human complexities. She welcomed hard-hitting subject matter, closely analyzing, for example, the treatment of women in society, and sought to transform and transcend these themes into a utopian existence.
      In this way, Saint Phalle gifted herself a form of escapism from the sadness she carried. Play would also remain at the heart of Saint Phalle’s work throughout the entirety of her career, something she acknowledged kept her from falling into the pitfalls of depression. Though many in the mainstream art world would reject inviting in such a concept, for fear of not being taken seriously, Saint Phalle brilliantly adopted frivolity as a mechanism by which to connect with audiences around the world. 
      Niki de Saint Phalle, La fontaine Stravinsky (c. 1983). Photo: Green Moon Marketing. © 2021 Niki Charitable Art Foundation.
      From the onset of her public life, Saint Phalle was unafraid to rebel against the expectations placed upon women. Called by Gloria Steinem “the first free woman I have ever seen,” her practice was purposefully loud and unapologetic. Carving out a lane for herself during the 1950s was no easy feat. Women at this time were both explicitly and implicitly instructed to take up little space, remain submissive to their male counterparts, marry young and live for the sole purpose of producing children and taking care of the home.
      Though Saint Phalle began her adult life entering into the roles of wife and mother, she would reclaim her life through her artistic practice. She soon found herself part of a close-knit artist community made up of almost entirely men, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Jean Tinguely, who would become her second husband. 
      Though Saint Phalle first began garnering attention for “Tirs,” a body of paintings produced by firing a gun at plaster reliefs that released pockets of paint, her work would be cemented into the iconography of art history via the “Nanas” series. As female-inspired figures with curvy, exaggerated bodies, Saint Phalle’s “Nanas” looked toward art history and the ways in which women have been depicted since ancient times, and additionally looked to dismantle notions of the female form as a kind of object. The “Nanas” were eye-catching, bold, and highly memorable, nurturing an ongoing dialogue.
      Niki de Saint Phalle, “Mini Nana maison” (c. 1968). © 2021 Niki Charitable Art Foundation.
      A key aspect of the “Nanas” that existed elsewhere in Saint Phalle’s practice is a “disarming simplicity,” a term coined by Ruba Katrib, curator of “Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life.” The undertones of the artist’s work were always far more complex than what the visual language might offer. Saint Phalle did not want to isolate audiences with complexities; rather, she invited the masses to enjoy her work as a shared human experience. “Her Nanas confront Western standards of femininity and decorum: they are brash, ecstatic, and embrace sexuality,” noted Katrib, in a statement from La Prairie. “She created her Nanas at such a large scale specifically so that they could dominate – literally tower over – men. Saint Phalle was also an iconoclast in her personal style and way of life.”
      Though always intrinsically a part of Saint Phalle’s work, political and social issues would become more obviously woven into the artist’s work toward the latter part of her career. 
      Niki de Saint Phalle, book cover of AIDS, You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands (1986). Photo: NCAF Archives. © 2021 Niki Charitable Art Foundation.
      During the 1980s, as AIDS enveloped her community, Saint Phalle used her established platform to create work that directly called out the systems at play for insufficiently addressing the crisis.
      Much of the work she would create at this time and in the decades until her death in 2002 feel astoundingly contemporary, especially as climate change, inadequate social and political leadership, and corruption remain crucial issues. 
      La Prairie’s Nighttime Oil from the Skin Caviar collection. Photo courtesy La Prairie.
      La Prairie’s involvement in “Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life” is a seamless fit for the brand, which has  taken inspiration from Niki de Saint Phalle’s monumental career since 1982, when the La Prairie team first encountered her work—and her compelling use of cobalt blue, which she once described as “the color of joy and luck”—in a shared New York design studio.
      With an oeuvre of work that welcomed many forms of creating as a means to self-fund her more ambitious projects, Saint Phalle was, at the time, working on producing her own perfume, Flacon de Parfum. From then on, the cobalt blue of Saint Phalle’s perfume bottle would go on to serve as the direct inspiration for the color of La Prairie’s iconic Skin Caviar Collection. This Fall, the iconic collection goes beyond lifting and firming, and journeys into the depths of the Cobalt Night with the Skin Caviar Nighttime Oil, imbued with Caviar Retinol. An innovative, Bauhaus-inspired, double-glass encasement houses and protects an elusive and powerful new ingredient—Caviar Retinol—derived from La Prairie’s legendary Swiss caviar extract. Niki de Saint Phalle committed her life toward progressivism, so too has La Prairie demonstrated an unwavering duty to pioneering discoveries. 
      For more content, see the below links. 
      Art Basel x NikiLa Prairie x MoMA PS1: “Encountering Niki” Art TalkLA Prairie on Niki de Saint Phalle
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