Art & Exhibitions

Artists, musicians, and philosophers have long explored the value of stillness, emptiness, and silence. In his White Paintings (1951), artist Robert Rauschenberg painted monochrome canvases that allowed in life in the form of viewers’ shadows. Composer John Cage famously provoked the music world with his composition 4’33” (1952), in which a pianist sits still at their instrument for the allotted time, so that ambient noise helped define the music itself. Artist Yves Klein notoriously showed an empty white gallery in Paris, calling it simply Le Vide (1958).
Now, artist Marina Abramović is calling for a spell of silence at an event that is known for the opposite: the Glastonbury Festival, which started out five decades ago as a simple music festival on a farm in England’s Somerset region, and has since grown to mammoth proportions as an event for theater, comedy, dance, and various other art forms. 
Crowds at the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival, 2024. Photo: Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images.
At the festival’s iconic main forum, the Pyramid stage, Abramović will call for silence at 5:55 p.m. local time today, as part of a performance titled Seven Minutes of Collective Silence. The silence is in reply to the theme of this year’s iteration of the festival: peace. The performance is curated by Josef O’Connor through Glastonbury’s ongoing collaboration with Circa, a contemporary art platform.
“Silence is a powerful tool that allows us to connect with ourselves and each other in ways words cannot,” said Abramović. “At a festival like Glastonbury, where sound and energy are in constant flux, these Seven Minutes of Collective Silence offer a unique opportunity for unity and introspection. It’s about being present together, experiencing the power of silence as one.” 
For the occasion, Abramović will don a dress created by her friend, renowned fashion designer Riccardo Tisci, which, according to press materials, features “a surprise detail” that will come to light during the performance. 
It’s truly a gigantic stage for the performer, who has long sought to break out from the role of visual artist into something much larger. Glastonbury Festival provides a venue for that on an unprecedented scale: legend has it that, including gatecrashers, a record 300,000 people attended the 1994 festival, which was headlined by the Levellers. 
“We are honored to have Marina Abramović bring such a meaningful and profound experience to Glastonbury,” said Emily Eavis, the festival’s co-organizer. “Her work has always pushed boundaries and inspired deep reflection, and we believe this moment of collective silence will be a memorable and impactful addition to the festival.” 
Abramović will be followed by a set by English musician PJ Harvey. 
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The four grandes dames of the French Impressionist movement will be spotlighted in a major survey at the National Gallery of Ireland that opens today. “Women Impressionists” takes place at the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition, mounted in Paris in 1874, and focuses on Marie Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, and Berthe Morisot. It’s the first show to bring together the four artists under one roof on the Emerald Isle. 
Organized by the National Gallery in collaboration with Odrupgaard, a museum devoted to French Impressionism and sited in Charlottenlund, Denmark, the show features works from their collections along with examples on loan from private collections in the U.S. and Europe. The show is overseen by National Gallery curator of modern art Janet McLean and the Ordrupgaard’s senior curator Dorthe Vangsgaard Nielsen.
Eva Gonzalès, Children Playing on Sand Dunes, Grandcamp (1877-1878). Courtesy National Gallery of Ireland.
Cassatt and Morisot are nearly as well known as their male counterparts in the movement. Cassatt’s work appears in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; her Child in a Straw Hat (1886), which appears in the exhibition in Dublin, on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is an icon. 
Mary Cassatt, Child in a Straw Hat (ca.1886). Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Morisot, for her part, was married to Édouard Manet’s brother Eugène, and participated in many of the major exhibitions staged by the Impressionists. Her works appear in collections such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Marie Bracquemond, Afternoon Tea (Le Goûter) (ca.1880). CC0 Paris Musées / Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.
Bracquemond and Gonzalès are not the household names that Cassatt and Morisot have become, but moved in the uppermost circles of the French art scene of their day. 
Mary Cassatt, Susan Comforting the Baby No.1 (ca. 1881). Courtesy Columbus Museum of Art
Bracquemond began to show her work at the Paris Salon when she was just an adolescent, and while she didn’t study art formally, she did receive some instruction from Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, as well as advice from Paul Gauguin. 
Berthe Morisot, The Artist’s Daughter, Julie, with her Nanny (ca. 1884). Courtesy Minneapolis Institute of Art. Licenced under CC BY 4.0.
She and her husband, printmaker Félix Bracquemond, produced ceramic art for Haviland & Co, a maker of Limoges porcelain. She participated in three of the major Impressionist exhibitions, in 1879, 1880, and 1889. Much of her work disappeared into private collections, its whereabouts unrecorded.
Gonzalès was a model and the only formal student to Édouard Manet, who once painted her at her easel in a work now hanging in London’s National Gallery. She also sat for several other Impressionist painters. Her work was well received by critics of the periodic Salon exhibitions, including Émile Zola. She died in childbirth in 1883, at the age of 34. 
“Women Impressionists” is at the National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square West, Dublin 2, Ireland through October 6, 2024.
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Michael Wang is an elementalist. The multi-disciplinary conceptual artist and architect has spun the ephemeral qualities of air into the tactile, toyed with the transmutational properties of water, and now, with his upcoming exhibition, “Yellow Earth,” he contemplates and displays man’s relationship to uranium, the earth’s natural source of nuclear energy.
Michael Wang, 35°33’8”N 108°36’30”W (2024). Courtesy of the artist.
“A lot of my work is related to energy,” Wang said on a video call last week. “This show is the next chapter of looking at the natural origins of modern energy.” Through his practice, Wang examines the natural world, celebrating its beauty while considering humanity’s position within—or without—it. He is drawn to the constructive and destructive capabilities of energy and its iterations. In particular, he seeks to reveal, rather than expose, the hidden truths and cycles that connect everything together. “Yellow Earth” opens Thursday and runs through August 31 at the TriBeCa gallery Bienvenu Steinberg & C. 
The exhibit’s name is derived from the yellow color of refined uranium ore, the show’s central material. One of the objects on display is Collision Bar, (Three Balls)—a sleek hexagonal aluminum baton with a slit revealing three acid yellow glass marbles socketed within. The marbles’ eerie glow is at once inviting and ominous, a result of the pigmented uranium embedded within the glass. The artifact evokes the steel control rods of a nuclear reactor, a symbol of both power and danger. Other pieces in the exhibit incorporate small nuggets of slightly radioactive uranium ore. The ore samples are invisible, hidden within sculptural “containment structures” that completely block the transmission of radiation.
Michael Wang, (Left) Trinities (Fuel Cores) (2024). (Right) Yellow Painting (Tailings) (2024). Courtesy of the artist.
The show is not only a compelling meditation on the element, but also curated dialogue with the work of Walter De Maria (1935-2013), the father of Land Art (in fact, De Maria’s former lower Manhattan studio was located across the street from the gallery). “Walter De Maria was so interested in danger and its aesthetics. With this work, I am trying to activate the emotional power of his work,” Wang explained. “The muteness of De Maria’s works (and of the artist himself) erases some of the connections that I’m trying to make more visible, or more sensible.”Wang observes an “atomic” undertone in De Maria’s oeuvre. De Maria’s formal language and his exploration of invisible energies reflect the Nuclear Age’s influence on his art. In The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977), the precision of the artist’s interment of kilometer-long bronze rods mirrors the technical process of burying a nuclear cache for underground detonations. His iconic The Lightning Field (1977) is staged atop actual uranium reserves. Uranium mining in New Mexico, the site of the very first atomic testing, peaked the same year The Lightning Field was unveiled to the public. Wang’s work seeks to connect these dots, revealing “hidden chains of relations.” At the crux of the show is a corridor of seemingly innocuous sealed aluminum tubes. Contained within each tube are radioactive soil samples from New Mexico’s uranium mining belt. 
Michael Wang, Collision Bar (Three Balls) (2024). Courtesy of the artist.
Some ideas for the show have been germinating since Wang’s youth. His father was a geophysicist. “From a scientific perspective, from a young age I learned the earth itself is a system. That gave me an awareness of some of these processes,” he said. “My own interest in art was sort of looking for these almost new tools. Natural processes to me didn’t just seem like things that could be subject matter for art making, but they were things that I might actively engage with.”
Installation view of Michael Wang, Extinct in New York (2019). Courtesy of the artist.
Within Wang’s practice, there is a palpable tension between the sensual aesthetics of the earth and the political exigencies of today’s climate. Uranium’s charged symbolism and practical impact are juxtaposed with its existence as just another earthly mineral with its own intrinsic beauty and inextricable links within the natural order, both visible and invisible. The element is not presented as inherently positive or negative, but rather, Wang lets the material hang in the ambivalence that he himself is most comfortable in. This off-to-the side neutrality, presenting scientific data to an art viewer and letting them shape their own perspective is a through line in Wang’s diverse work.  
Michael Wang, Wulai azalea (Rhododendon kanehirai Wilson), Feitsui Dam and Reservoir, New Taipei City, Taiwan. Courtesy of the artist.
First exhibited at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2017, Wang’s long-term project Extinct in the Wild equally grapples with the ethics and emotions of ecological complexities. Wang displayed flora and fauna in greenhouse-like structures with life-support systems designed to cater to the fragile organisms’ specific needs. The exhibit’s species are no longer found in nature, due mainly to human causation, yet they continue to survive by human stewardship. Specimens included the axolotl, a salamander that today can only be found in aquariums or kept as pets. The show’s curators were trained and assigned the task of tending to the organisms. Wang reverts curation to its etymological root—cura is care—by tasking curators with caretaking.
“The ambivalence and double-edgedness of that relationship is really what drew me to the work,” Wang said.
Installation view of Michael Wang, Taihu (Stones) (2022). Courtesy of the artist.
Another of Wang’s energy-focused projects was 10000 li, 100 billion kilowatt-hours, shown at the 2021 Shanghai Biennale. He constructed a massive machine that processed water from China’s Yangtze river which runs through the largest dam in the world, the Three Gorges Dam. The machine’s high-powered jets vaporized the water, turning it into snow.
Michael Wang, 10000 li, 100 billion kilowatt-hours (一万里，一千亿千瓦时) (2021). Courtesy of the artist.
Though the city of Shanghai is subtropical, the Yangtze’s waters are sourced from a melting mountain glacier in the “third pole”, the largest existing ice reserve outside of the north and south poles. Through Wang’s work, the river’s water returned to its genesis. “Art for me isn’t just about a strictly-defined human sphere,” he said, “but extends to touch all those entities we are inextricably bound up with.”

“Yellow Earth” will run from June 27th through August 31st, 2024 at Bienvenu Steinberg and C, 35 Walker St, New York, NY 10013. 
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The painter Adam Himebauch, increasingly known for his performance art, hung some of the work in his own solo show in South Korea, a performative statement pushing back against the haters that tell him to “just paint, dude.”
Himebauch, the Tribeca-based artist formerly known as Hanksy, debuted his show “Here Comes the Twister” at the Gana Art Nineone gallery in Seoul on June 20. The show contains paintings that collectively illustrate the chronological evolution of the tornado.
But during the opening reception, the walls of the gallery remained empty—until Himebauch arrived to put up six of the works himself, stapling the loose-canvas paintings directly onto the walls. In a video shared with Artnet News, Himebauch is seen stretching and doing some light exercise and a little dance to limber up for the install.
Adam Himebauch hanging up his own paintings as a performative statement. Photo courtesy of Gana Art.
When he’s finally ready to begin hanging the works, he grabs a standard stepladder and attempts to ready his staple gun but appears to have legitimate problems with loading it and can be seen nervously smiling until it clicks into place. He begins to hang the works halfway through the 15-minute performance.
After stapling the top of each work to the wall, Himebauch rolls the canvas down and unceremoniously allows the cardboard tubes to thud against the hard floor in the silent room before moving on to the next.
“It went superb and everyone agreed it was incredibly different and unique. Nobody knew what to expect and it was perplexing that the walls were empty and white upon entrance. I danced to the song ‘Fantastic Man’ by William Onyeabor and it went fantastic, man,” Himebauch said in a statement after the performance.
Adam Himebauch dancing during a performance in which he hung up his own paintings. Photo courtesy of Gana Art.
In a press release about the performance, he likened it to Michael Asher’s 1974 exhibition at the Claire S. Copley Gallery in Los Angeles, where the artist removed a wall separating the gallery office from the exhibition, exposing the gallery’s operational reality to the public.
“By integrating painting and performance in the confines of an exhibition setting, Himebauch challenges conventional expectations of what constitutes a ‘painter’ in the public eye,” his team said in the press release.
He noted that comments on social media from his fans telling him to “just paint” are common whenever he engages in artistic endeavors beyond traditional painting. “This underscores a prevalent anticipation for a serious ‘painterly’ identity from an artist primarily recognized for painting, prompting Himebauch to subvert these expectations in multiple ways,” his team said.
Adam Himebauch hanging up his own paintings as a performative statement. Photo courtesy of Gana Art.
Reviewing his own performance after the fact, Himebauch said his favorite part was walking through the crowd with the ladder because it was “very awkward.”
“I had trouble loading the staples into the stapler. It was a Korean model I wasn’t familiar with. You just learn to roll with things because it’s the perceived mishaps that make things unique. Imperfectly perfect,” he added. “Elevating everyday studio rituals into art with a capital A is all a matter of set and setting. Art and life in general is perspective.”
In February, the artist livestreamed a deceptive performance commenting on truth and reality in digital media. That performance, part of the show “Never Ever Land,” involved him claiming to be meditating for a month on a small platform in the middle of Ceysson & Bénétière’s Madison Avenue gallery in New York. He was not, in fact, consistently at the gallery.
“Here Comes the Twister” is on view at Gana Art Nineone, 91 Hannam-daero, Yongsan District, Seoul, South Korea, through July 21.
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Although it is principally a showcase for the decorative arts, the V&A is not condemned to try and interest new audiences with only ancient ceramics and medieval metalware. The London institution has long ago cracked a magic formula: high fashion = high footfall. The museum has refreshed this winning format with its latest exhibition dedicated to supermodel supremo Naomi Campbell.
Is there a more worthy member of fashion royalty to receive this place of prominence? Even among the OG set of nineties runway stars like Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer, and Linda Evangelista, few reached the same, enduring icon status as Naomi Campbell. “It is an honor,” the model said in a statement, “to share my life in clothes with the world.”
Installation view of “NAOMI: In Fashion” at the V&A Museum. Photo courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum.
Born in London in 1970, Campbell was always a natural performer; she appeared in the music video for Bob Marley’s “Is This Love” at the age of eight and went on to study dance at the renowned Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. She was scouted to be a model on the street in 1986 and by her 16th birthday had already appeared on the cover of British Elle. This feat was to be followed by a string of historic firsts: she was the first Black British woman on the cover of British Vogue in 1987, the first Black woman to ever appear on the cover of Vogue Paris in 1988, and the first Black woman to open a Prada show in 1997, to name just three.
Such an impressive career makes for an exciting spectacle at “Naomi: In Fashion” (on view until April 2025). Covering the past five decades, vintage pieces of couture, personal photographs, or other mementoes are placed in glass cases beside vast projections that mix up archival footage from catwalks and editorial photoshoots from star photographers including Peter Lindbergh. Campbell’s ability to compel a crowd is undeniable and it is impossible not to be drawn in by this sea of eye-catching imagery.
Installation view of “NAOMI: In Fashion” at the V&A Museum. Photo courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum.
However, as the V&A’s senior curator of fashion, Sonnet Stanfill, openly admitted at a press conference in March: “It is not for us to tell Naomi’s story, we want her to tell her story.” It is unusual to be given free reign to produce a blockbuster exhibition about your own life, and without a more rigorous curatorial eye the finished product is shiny but a tad one-dimensional.
“Naomi: In Fashion” offers little historical context or meaningful insight and the tone of its guiding wall texts sometimes veers into sycophancy. Fawning exaggerations like “Campbell’s impact on the catwalk and the page is unmatched,” do not feel necessary to convey the model’s import. The work speaks for itself. In another section, a grid of screens features figures like Anna Wintour, RuPaul, and Kate Moss, who each take their turn to provide reverential accounts of their relationships with Campbell.
Meanwhile, a stint of community service in 2007 after Campbell flung her phone at an employee—allegedly, not for the first time—is reframed as Campbell overcoming “media scrutiny,” by “chronicling the week in W magazine, sharing her remorse and her personal perspective.” On view is the glittering gown that Campbell wore while strutting out of the Manhattan sanitation garage where she had been put to work. Recorded by a swarm of paparazzi, the moment offers an irresistible mix of glamor and audacity, and it is more real and more memorable than the unadulterated adulation to be found elsewhere in this show.
Installation view of “NAOMI: In Fashion” at the V&A Museum. Photo courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum.
As the main lender to the show, Campbell has provided the original items associated with a host of memorable moments from her career. One showstopper is the golden dress with a blue skirt that she wore on her first, history-making cover with British Vogue. Also present are the Vivienne Westwood shoes that sent her toppling over on the runway in 1993 and the head-to-toe protective gear worn on a plane in early 2020, an image that went viral, and became iconic.
The exhibition’s long run until next Spring is surely a bid for some fantastic visitor numbers and with a subject as iconic and headlining as Campbell, the museum is in good shape to achieve them. Even though the experience of “Naomi: In Fashion” is unusually concise and could probably be completed in about 20 minutes, those willing to simply bask in her glory will find more than enough to marvel at. Anyone hoping for a deeper or more candid insight into Campbell’s life may be left wanting more.
“Naomi: In Fashion” is on view at the V&A in London through April 6, 2025.
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“If people say: ‘Whose eyes are those?’ I am good with that.”
Artist Sonya Clark was talking about her latest major project, a public artwork titled The Descendants of Monticello, that officially debuts today, June 24, at Declaration House, the Philadelphia landmark where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Clark, in partnership with nonprofit public art, history, and design studio Monument Lab, is shining a light on a lesser-known and discussed aspect of the historical narrative behind one of America’s founding documents. During that summer of 1776, Jefferson was accompanied by 14-year old Robert Hemmings, an enslaved valet that he brought with him from his plantation at Monticello, just outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Hemmings was also the half brother of Jefferson’s wife Martha Wayles Skelton.
Amid extensive research and a site visit to Monticello earlier this year, Clark realized that there are no known historical images of Hemmings. It became a driving force for the resulting art project: documenting the eyes of the descendants of the roughly 400 people enslaved at Monticello alone. The Descendants of Monticello encompasses a multichannel video installation facing the intersection of 7th and Market streets in Philadelphia.
Sonya Clark, The Descendants of Monticello (2024), on view at Declaration House, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, PA. Photo: Steve Weinik/Monument Lab.
Contemporary video portraits of the eyes of living descendants are juxtaposed with photographs of those in Monticello’s archives. It is visible to anyone walking or driving past the site.
The videos “play in each window, blinking, watching, and haunting the space,” Clark told me. “But I also think of it as being a lighthouse in a way. I think of it as a reclamation.” Her last word nods to the title of the book of the same name, written by her friend Gayle Jessup White, who is herself a descendant of Jefferson.
From the very start of the project, Clark knew she would be working with the facade of Declaration House and that it would be a public-facing artwork. “I think of the windows as being like the soul of the building—what allows you to see in and see out—aligned with the idea of eyes being the window of our souls. The soul of the nation necessarily is these Black descendants and their eyes.”
The building itself, which is overseen by the National Park Service, is currently closed. The original was demolished in 1883, before it was reconstructed by the NPS in 1975.
Sonya Clark at Declaration House, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, PA, 2024. Photo: Terrell Halsey/Monument Lab.
Clark said the windows are constantly in movement so viewers never see the same eye appear at the same time. “There is something really haunting about having a lot to singular eyes look at you. And you can tell there is so much information even in the reduction or cropping of the image.”
She worked directly with Jessup White, who also works at Monticello, and the Getting Word African American Oral History Project. Later the installation may travel to and be on display Monticello itself, where historians have recently uncovered new archival information about Hemmings such as samples of his handwriting.
In a previous project that was shown at the Fabric Workshop in 2019, titled Monumental Cloth, the Flag We Should Know, Clark delved into the history of a lesser-known flag in U.S. history, the one that was flown by the Confederacy during the Civil War and was used to surrender.
L to R: Paul Farber, director and co-founder of Monument Lab, author Gayle Jessup White, and artist Sonya Clark on a site visit to Monticello in connection with Getting Word, Declaration House, Charlottesville, VA, 2024. Photo: AJ Mitchell/Monument Lab.
The history of that flag of truce dates back to April 9, 1864, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee sent a rider forward waving it, putting an end to the long and deadly national conflict. Union General Ulysses S. Grant accepted the Confederacy’s surrender and cut the flag in half so that the rider, who had purchased the repurposed dishtowel just days before in Richmond, Virginia, could ensure safe passage back across Union lines. For that project, Clark teamed up with the Fabric Workshop to create 101 replicas of the cloth, including a massive one that was 100 times the size of the original.
As for Philadelphia and Declaration House, the official unveiling of the project today will be celebrated with a block party, as part of the city’s Welcome America festival, and 15,000 copies of a printed newspaper detailing the project and the significance of the Declaration of Independence will be distributed.
Sonya Clark, The Descendants of Monticello (2024), on view at Declaration House, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, PA. Photo: Steve Weinik/Monument Lab.
Like most artists, Clark does not want to be prescriptive about what viewers take away but said it’s fine if people “walk away with an open-ended question.” She added: “That will allow the work to do what I believe artwork does very well. I love the capaciousness and generosity of artwork to hold as many thoughts and ideas as possible.”
The Descendants of Monticello is on view at Declaration House, 700 Market St, Philadelphia, through September 8.
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“My aim is to make from my obsessions and ideas the strongest, most coherent visual statement possible,” artist Christina Ramberg once said, describing her process and intentions.
Closely affiliated with the Chicago Imagists, a loose group of artists formed in the mid-1960s who favored representation and bold aesthetics, Ramberg (1946–1995) produced a powerful body of work with a distinctive personal style during her comparatively short life and career.
Ramberg’s work is immediately recognizable, primarily focused on figural elements of the female form—such as hands, hairstyles, garments, and, most notably, torsos—and rendered in a graphic and highly stylized aesthetic. Tapping contrasting themes and ideas and embracing experimental modes of framing and cropping, Ramberg forged an intrepid path along the boundary between abstraction and representation.
Installation view of “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective” (2024). Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Heralding a resurgence of interest and critical attention to Ramberg’s singular oeuvre is the exhibition “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective,” on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through August 11, 2024—the first comprehensive survey of her work in nearly three decades. Bringing together roughly 100 works from the Art Institute’s collection as well as from other public and private collections, the show traces her evolving style from early paintings that explored pattern and form through to her mature (and most recognizable) works that feature female torsos, lingerie, and restraints.
Marking this pivotal retrospective, we took a deep dive into Ramberg’s life and work, and below are (just) the essentials you should know about her practice.
Installation view of “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective” (2024). Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Early Inspirations
Even while still a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Ramberg’s fixation with elements of the human body—namely hair, hands, and women’s garments—was evident in her work. Studying under some of the institution’s most historically influential teachers, including Ray Yoshida, a primary mentor of what would become the Chicago Imagists, Ramberg along with her classmates produced work that focused on what the present retrospective terms “furtive figuration.”
Christina Ramberg, Belle Rêve (1969). Photo: Jamie Stukenberg. © The Estate of Christina Ramberg. Collection of Michael J. Robertson and Christopher A. Slapak.
This approach to figuration first fully coalesced in a series of student exhibitions with SAIC as well as in two exhibitions, “False Image” and “False Image II,” organized by Ramberg and fellow students in 1968 and 1969 at Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center. “We are interested in the effects gained by withholding information in a work,” Ramberg told the Chicago Daily News while describing the ethos of the work created by the False Image exhibition artists. And withhold her work did.
Christina Ramberg, Hair (1968). Photo: Kris Graves. © The Estate of Christina Ramberg. Collection of Joel Wachs, New York.
An isolated bustier, a cropped foot in a heeled shoe, or, most well-known from the period, depictions of women’s heads from behind, with only the details of their hairstyle shown, Ramberg’s early works were nearly as recognizable for what they showed as for what they didn’t. Within the context of Ramberg’s oeuvre, they foreshadow the artist’s creative trajectory and the themes and motifs that ultimately served as the foundation for her most important works.
Iconic Forms
The 1970s saw Ramberg produce her most iconic body of work. Continuing her exploration of isolated body parts and their configuration, which can be traced in her meticulous sketches and studies of hands, the feminine elements of her work took a turn to the risqué. Corsetry and black lace, brassieres and other lingerie coupled with suggestive poses as well as hands in contorted shapes with carmine-painted nails—and never featuring the subjects’ face—each of Ramberg’s compositions allude to the various ways women’s bodies can be shaped and fashioned.
Christina Ramberg, Probed Cinch (1971). Photo: Clements/Howcroft, Boston. © The estate of Christina Ramberg. Private Collection, New York.
Ramberg’s memories of watching her mother dress informed the works, with Ramberg describing “… I think that the paintings have a lot to do with this, with watching and realizing that a lot of these undergarments totally transform a woman’s body … I thought it was fascinating … in some ways, I thought it was awful.”
Operating along the line between “fascinating” and “awful,” Ramberg’s paintings are at once uncanny and sensually alluring, tapping into the language of fetishism.
Christina Ramberg, Black ‘N Blue Jacket (1981). Photo: Jamie Stukenberg. © The Estate of Christina Ramberg. Collection of Kathy and Chuck Harper, Chicago.
As her practice evolved, however, Ramberg’s figures became less erotic—and less human overall. Pieces from the late 1970s and early 1980s once again feature her signature cropped female torsos but they instead appear robotic, and even diagrammatic; the core elements of painting, such as color, line, shape, and more specifically their precision (a facet of work she had then become most well-known for) became as much the subject of her work as the figures depicted.
Artist as Collector
Although Ramberg is best known for her paintings, a consideration of her oeuvre would be incomplete without mentioning her penchant for collecting.
Ramberg was a prolific collector of objects that in turn served as potent sources of inspiration for her formal works. Frequenting thrift stores and garage sales, as well as the Maxwell Street Market by Chicago’s Southside, Ramberg sought what SAIC Professor Ray Yoshida dubbed “trash treasure,” a term used for one of the sections dedicated to her collecting within the retrospective.
An iteration of Christina Ramberg’s “Doll Wall” installed in her Chicago apartment (1972). Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Of the myriad things she collected—from comic book pages to medical illustrations—Ramberg’s collection of dolls, which numbers into the hundreds, stands out the most. In several of the apartments Ramberg lived in throughout her life, she mounted many of these dolls on the wall as well as in exhibitions of her work, but never in the same arrangement twice. In the Art Institute’s retrospective, 155 of her dolls are on view in a manner similar to how she would have presented them. The collection of dolls speaks to her fascination with the body, and her collection ranged from relatively new, mass-produced pieces that reflected racial and gender stereotypes of the time to unique, handmade dolls that give insight into both the doll’s maker and its intended recipient.
Installation view of “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective” (2024). Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ramberg discussed her doll collection in a 1989 Chicago Tribune interview, saying, “I was interested only in the dolls that had been owned by someone. The ones where the face was worn off and redrawn in, or where something very strange had transpired. What I like about them is their sense of history. I’m interested in what is implied. And the simple fact that they had a life.”
A Turn to Textiles
While Ramberg had long engaged with quilting as a pastime, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that it became a central aspect of her formal artistic practice, allowing her to step back from painting for several years. Beginning in 1983, her quilts were exhibited in gallery and museum shows, with each highlighting the experimental, explorative nature of her work—and harkening back to her penchant for collecting. Though Ramberg relied on traditional quilting techniques and construction, she frequently employed unusual color schemes and patterns as well as fabrics, which were sourced on her travels as well as “trash treasure” missions.
Christina Ramberg, Japanese Showcase (1984). Photo: Jamie Stukenberg. © The Estate of Christina Ramberg. Courtesy of the Estate of Ray Yoshida and Corbett vs. Dempsey.
Just as her habit of collecting provided creative inspiration, her time spent focused on quilting ultimately fostered new ideas and approaches to painting, which she returned to in the mid-1980s with her “satellite paintings.” These new works were markedly different from her previous paintings in both style and material; where previously she favored acrylic on Masonite and applied delicate layers of paint and used careful brushstrokes, she now worked entirely in oil on canvas with impasto paint application, intense scumbling, and visible underpainting.
Christina Ramberg, Untitled #123 (1986). Photo: Jamie Stukenberg. © The Estate of Christina Ramberg. Courtesy of Corbett vs. Dempsey.
Ramberg’s compositions too were a departure from her usual subject matter. The sketch-like geometry and lines, surely inspired by the grids and repetition of quilt patterns, are evocative of a satellite or transmission tower, and their inscrutability evokes the air of abstraction.
Installation view of “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective” (2024). Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Despite a return to painting, Ramberg never ceased quilting. The year before her diagnosis with Prick’s disease—also known as frontotemporal dementia, a rare neurodegenerative disease, which would take her life at the age of 49—she created some of the most innovative and dynamic quilts of her career. Synthesizing material from her archive of collected materials and compositional elements from her earlier paintings, she numbered these late quilted works starting with the Roman numeral “I,” as opposed to her other works of the period which were already numbered into the hundreds, indicating she saw these pieces as a fresh start and new horizon even at the twilight of her life.
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Over her brief but dazzling life, Frida Kahlo was photographed by some of the greatest talents of her generation, from her lover Nickolas Muray to Edward Weston to her dear friend the Swiss artist Lucienne Bloch.  
Nickolas Muray, Frida Kahlo with Magenta Rebozo “Classic” (1939). Courtesy of Throckmorton Fine Art.
In the decades since her death in 1954 at the age of 47, Kahlo’s image has seemingly become an extension of her painting practice in a way unlike really any other artist. Her iconic brow and black coils of braided hair burned into popular consciousness, along with her self-adornment in indigenous dress and Aztec jewels. 
A new exhibition “Frida Kahlo: Forever Yours” at New York’s Throckmorton Fine Art makes the case that these photographic portraits of Kahlo are, in fact, a unique expression of the Mexican artist’s creative persona. 
The dazzling exhibition (through September 7) presents 50 high-quality photographs of Kahlo dating from 1929 to 1951, including iconic portraits, tender moments with her husband, the artist Diego Rivera, and playful, as well as irreverent moments with friends (Kahlo with a lampshade on her head? You bet.) The images represent just a small fraction of “Frida photographs” from the collection of dealer Spencer Throckmorton who started collecting photographs of the artist in 1977. 
Guillermo Kahlo, Portrait of Frida Kahlo, Oct 16, 1932. Courtesy of Throckmorton Fine Art.
“I have photographs of Frida since she was four years old,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month (you can see a video of the dealer discussing the show here). For Throckmorton, the show charts both the artist’s maturation over the decades but also her finesse and dexterity in engaging with the medium of photography. “Through these photographs see her become a totally self-assured and mature painter, believing in herself as she grows,” he said, “We see that the photographs are beautiful and beautifully posed—Frida had worked for her father who was a photographer when she was very young and he taught her how to pose for the camera.”  
A portrait of Kahlo by her father, Guillermo Kahlo, appears in the show—a piercing image that shows the young artist staring out from the camera with penetrating intensity. The portrait was taken when Kahlo returned to Mexico by train from New York following her mother’s death in 1932.  
The poignancy of these photographs is often rooted in Kahlo’s intimate connections to the photographers themselves. Several brilliantly colorful photographs of Kahlo taken by her lover Nickolas Muray appear in the exhibition, including the iconic image Frida Kahlo with Magenta Rebozo “Classic”. In several of these portraits, Kahlo adopts classical stances seemingly plucked out of Rennaissance paintings—an artful positioning Throckmorton says reflects their relationship.
Lucienne Bloch, Frida, and Diego, with Colleagues, Viewing a Solar Eclipse on the DIA roof (1932). Courtesy of Throckmorton Fine Art.
“Nickolas Muray came along and taught her classical poses. She was a natural because she was studying art history. A lot of the poses he took of Frida were based on Renaissance and 17th- and 18th-century paintings,” Throckmorton explained.  
Other photographs by the artist Lucienne Bloch are delightfully informal. “Lucienne was a friend of hers so Frida lets her hair down. One photographer shows Frida with a doily on her head—another one with a bottle of wine. There’s the one of her with a lampshade on her head!”
Nickolas Muray, Frida with Olmeca Figurine, Coyoacán (20/30) (1939). Courtesy of Throckmorton Fine Art.
Other images highlight Kahlo’s considered and passionate engagement with fashion and the ways dress and jewelry became her embodied mode of celebrating indigenous culture and Aztec heritage. “In 1929, Frida started to wear Mexican indigenous clothing from the Indians of the coast of Mexico and Tijuana with long skirts. She loved jewelry and a lot of her jewelry was made by William Spratling, an American. It was a very specific way of presenting herself,” he explained.  
Edward Weston, Frida Kahlo Side Pose / Abstract drawing by Frida on verso (1931). Courtesy of Throckmorton Fine Art.
In other ways, the photographs influenced Kahlo’s painting practice directly. One portrait in the show by Leon DeVos shows Kahlo with a downward gaze—it is an image Kahlo would later base a self-portrait. “She used the photograph as a model to paint her Self-Portrait with Jade Necklace, 1933. It’s almost identical to the pose of the photograph,” said Throckmorton, “I talked to Solomon Greenberg [the leading expert on Kahlo] and he says a lot of the photographs relate to her paintings.”  
Other highlights in the show include three photographs from 1931 taken in San Francisco by Edward Weston each of which Kahlo doodled on the back of. Another gem: a print of Kahlo and Rivera on the roof of the Detroit Institute of Art, watching the solar eclipse with a crowd—it’s the only vintage print none to exist.  
For painting devotees, the exhibition also includes the Kahlo painting La Risa, which features a Mexican folk mask used in indigenous dances in festivals, as well as two drawings, which Frida made after she came back from Paris in 1939, made in purple crayon.
The exhibition, Throckmorton says is a chance to glimpse, “just how fabulous and intelligent Frida really was.”

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