Art & Exhibitions

Opening at Paris’s Louvre Museum on April 24, “Olympism: Modern Invention, Ancient Legacy” celebrates the history of the Olympics and its designs from ancient times to today. The exhibition comes as Paris prepares to host its third Olympic Games, a whole century since it lasted hosted the event in 1924.
The show delves into the history and political context that birthed the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, tracing how its organizers sought to reimagine the gaming tournaments of ancient Greece. Celebrated here are figures, namely Pierre de Courbetin—known as the “Father of the modern Olympic Games“—as well as the event’s first official artist, French-Swiss artist Émile Gilliéron, and the first President of the International Olympic Committee, Dimitrios Vikélas.
Bréal Cup awarded to Spyridon Louis in 1896. © Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
One starring artifact is the very first Olympic Cup. It was awarded to a Greek water carrier called Spyridon Louis, who was the first-ever winner of the marathon race, which had been invented by the French linguist Michel Bréal for the inaugural modern Games in 1896. The ‘Bréal Cup’ has never before been exhibited in Paris.
Luc Olivier Merson, The Marathon Soldier. © Beaux Arts Paris.
Other commemorative objects round out the exhibition, not limited to postage stamps and flyers immortalizing the games. Ancient vessels and sculptures depicting runners, wrestlers, and disc-throwers further illustrate how Olympic sports have captured the creative imagination through the ages.
Plaster Plaque. © French School of Athens.
The exhibition is part of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games’ cultural program. Ahead of the competition—the Olympic Games commence July 26 and the Paralympic Games August 28—the city of Paris has unveiled this year’s medals, which were designed by jeweler Chaumet and are embedded with iron bits from the Eiffel Tower. Foreseeing a swell of visitors, museums in Paris, including the Louvre, have also raised admission fees.
Sneak a peek at the objects in the exhibition below.
Red Figure Cup. © RMN Grand Palais Louvre Museum.
Child’s Sarcophagus. © RMN Grand Palais Louvre Museum.
Commemorative Cover for 1896 Athens Olympic Games. © Olympic Museum Collections.
Modern Plaster Medici Wrestlers. © RMN Grand Palais Louvre Museum.
Commemorative Stamp for 1906 Mesolympiad. © Museum of Philately and Posts Athens.
Trophy Designs for 1906 Mesolympiad. © École Française d’Espagne.
Mesolympiad 1906 Marathon and Athletics Trophy. © Thessaloniki Olympic Museum.
Plaster Relief. © French School of Athens.
Runner Statuette. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Commemorative Stamp for 1906 Mesolympiad. © Museum of Philately and Posts Athens.
Red Figure Cup. © RMN Grand Palais Louvre Museum.
“Olympism: Modern Invention, Ancient Legacy” is on view at the Louvre, Paris, April 24 through September 16.
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Wander the painting galleries of a major museum on either side of the Atlantic and chances are you’ll encounter John Singer Sargent. The reasons are as much geographic as artistic. Born in Europe to American parents, Sargent flitted between London and Boston and by the final decade of the 19th century was the portraitist of choice for New England’s nouveau riche and Britain’s aristocracy.
On his death in 1925, his legacy seemed settled—Rodin, for one, had called him the era’s Van Dyck. But in time Sargent was labelled a pandering society painter, a traditionalist who devoted his talents to depicting the luxurious draperies of the elite.
Over the past decade, however, Sargent has received renewed attention. First came an exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery that suggested his paintings offered a prophetic glimpse at the modern world. Now a show fittingly co-organized by MFA Boston and the Tate Britain — organizations that supported Sargent during his lifetime— presents Sargent’s fastidiousness towards dress not as a shallow vanity, but as a powerful tool used to reveal the interiority of his subjects.
“Fashioned by Sargent”, whose three-month stint in Boston last year is followed in London from Feb 22 to July 7, marries 50-something Sargent paintings with period dresses and accessories, including exact items worn by sitters.
“By showing original garments alongside the paintings in which they are depicted, visitors have a unique opportunity to see exactly how Sargent translated clothing into paint,” Tate curator, James Finch said via email. ” His distinction as a portraitist derives from the special sensitivity he brought to the rendering of clothing and fabric.”
Costume worn by Carmen Dauset Moreno (c.1890). Photo: courtesy Houghton Hall.
And, yes, the garb is gorgeous. There’s the costume of Spanish dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno as shown in La Carmencita (1890). It’s a thing of sun-golden satin trimmed with waves and florets of silver that must have dazzled as it twirled. There’s the flowing sylvan “Beetle Wing Dress” worn by Ellen Terry in her 1888 Macbeth production, so-called because it’s affixed with beetle wing cases. On canvas, Terry has the look of an awed zombie, the crown held aloft, her auburn locks tumbling down her sleeves.
These works, along with Vernon Lee (1881), a dashed portrait of the expansive English writer, speak to Sargent’s place amid the frenetic cultural movements of the late 19th century—he also painted the likes of W.B. Yates, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Edwin Booth. But most interesting are works in which Sargent uses fashion to express the difference and character of his sitters. There’s certainly something to the organizers’ comparison with a fashion shoot director. Here was a painter who would step away from the easel, cross the room to tweak and cajole garments precisely into place.
John Singer Sargent, Madame X (1883). Photo: courtesy TheMetropolitan Museum of Art.
Most notoriously, his submission to the Paris Salon of 1884, Madame X, depicted Mme Gautreau in a black satin evening dress with a jeweled strap loosed off the shoulder. It proved too salacious with Sargent correcting the strap a year later. In “Lady Sassoon” from 1907 he offers sharp intellect shrouded in refinement through flashes of pink that burst from the folds of a black taffeta opera cloak.
And how did the artist himself dress, you ask? With plain simplicity. “Sargent was not an extrovert, and preferred to dress in the dark suits of the bourgeois middle-class,” Finch said, noting that when the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt first met Sargent he called the painter a ‘superior mechanic’ on account of his suit and pot hat.
Other times, Sargent reconfigures dress entirely. In W. Graham Robertson (1894), in spite of the summer heat, he insisted that his sitter don a long woollen coat to complete the dandy look. In his wedding portrait for Ena Wertheimer he has her gleefully mocking societal conventions. She wears the garments of the male-only Order of the Garter and waves a broomstick as though a sword. It was broadly criticized when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1905 as crass and deliberately provocative.
This reception is a reminder to consider art in the context of its time. Sargent regarded himself an outsider and enjoyed painting those he found kinship with. His tweaks and subtle subversions may seem tame by today’s standards, but as “Fashioned by Sargent” insists, we would do well to pay closer attention.
See more images:
John Singer Sargent, Lady Sassoon (1907). Photo: courtesy Houghton Hall
Opera cloak worn by Lady Sassoon, c.1895. Photo: courtesy Houghton Hall.
John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Ena Wertheimer: A Vele Gonfie (1904). Photo: Tate Britain.
John Singer Sargent, Mrs Carl Meyer and her Children, (1896). Photo: courtesy Tate Britain.
John Singer Sargent, Dr Pozzi at Home (1881). Photo: courtesy The Armand Hammer Collection.
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On its 50th anniversary, in 1979, New York’s Museum of Modern Art coined the term “sound art” in the title of an exhibition of three female artists who were, as visionary curator Barbara London put it, trailblazing “the combination of the aural and the visual.” It cemented a focus on sound that had seen MoMA debut the Moog synthesizer in 1969 and platform the likes of Aaron Copland and John Cage.
MoMA is championing sound art again, this time in a bold, interactive, and overwhelmingly online affair. “Sound Machines” presents five artworks that leverage new technologies to create sonic experiences. It arrives courtesy of a collaboration with Feral File, the digital art platform that prides itself on being by and for artists.
Each of the five works is actually a series of 30 that will be minted on Ethereum and up for auction beginning March 14. Artists will receive 60 percent of proceeds, with Feral File and MoMA splitting the remainder.
Immediately arresting is Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s Cancel Yourself (2024), an unrelenting choose-your-own-adventure experience that forces the user to announce a moral failing and suffer being “canceled.” Against a setting of furious glitches and gifs reminiscent of ’90s HTML, users pass through the full cycle of publicly outing themselves. The soundtrack shifts subtly with the narrative: there are melancholic horns after the user posts their offense to social media; distorted moans while doom-scrolling through the backlash; and autotuned a capella vocals as the user posts an apology music video—using a ukulele, of course.
Yoko Ono, SOUND PIECE V (1996/2024). Courtesy the artist and Feral File.
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst revive the imitation games that Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman invented in the 1920s to teach children music in Play from Memory (2024). Just as Orff and Keetman used prompts, games, and symbols, Herndon and Dryhurst have created machine learning models that conjure both a soundscape and an accompanying image. Their cavernous world, conjured in a dark ink wash, teems with prodigious children and their fantastical instruments.
Two works offer different approaches to audience participation. Yoko Ono revives her Sound Piece V (1996) for the digital era. The original poem-cum-prompt reads, “Tape the sounds of friends laughing together,” and participants will now be able to add their recordings to the work, thereby creating “an ever-evolving archive of sound.”
0xDEAFBEEF looks back at the phone card as a precursor to the digitized token, and plans to attach live call-and-response performances to his images of imaginary phone cards.
0xDEAFBEEF, PAYPHONE, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Feral File.
A blue sea void is the backdrop for American Artist and Tommy Martinez’s work, which runs their sound piece Integrity Protocol/Lower Limb Lecture (2023/24) through a generative interface. Users can play mixer by manipulating the delay, pitch, speed, and feedback.
One promise that arrived with the recent explosion of interest in digital art was that the medium could genuinely interact with audiences. Here, MoMA and Feral File put forward five sound machines that speak to that potential.
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It’s Frieze week in Los Angeles, which means along with the tentpole art fair events, there are a slew of gallery shows across the city bursting with artworks to explore. L.A. is a big, sprawling city, so we’ve narrowed down the glut of shows to five standout exhibitions you don’t want to miss.

“Nery Gabriel Lemus: The Poetics of Place” at Charlie James Gallery
Through March 3, 2024
Nery Gabriel Lemus, They Got Pyramids Where I’m From (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles. © 2024 Nery Gabriel Lemus; Photo © 2024 Yubo Dong @ofphotostudio.
In extremely detailed watercolors, L.A.-based Nery Gabriel Lemus conjures distinct moments in time, capturing the tilt of a beloved dog’s head, the sheen of a glazed pot holding the spiky leaves of a red-tinged plant. The almost photographic quality of the works, all of which capture scenes or objects of domesticity in specifically Latinx interiors, is juxtaposed with found objects, often tapestries, that are affixed to the panels, creating a trompe l’oeil affect that begs for closer inspection. In works like On a Wing and a Prayer, They Got Pyramids Where I’m From, and A Gracious Welcome, traditional Guatemalan hupil—the colorful top portion of woven dress worn by Indigenous women—is juxtaposed with identifiable markers of Western culture: a pink leather belt, or strips from a hairy welcome mat found at the front stoop of houses all across suburbia. Like the medium of watercolor itself, used by the likes of John  James Audubon to document “exotic” birds and locales, Lemus has reclaimed these objects, and the method of creating them.

“Karyn Lyons: The End of the Night” at Anat Ebgi
Through March 2, 2024
Karen Lyons, The Dominion of Night (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi.
New York artist Karyn Lyons’ paintings have novelistic, even preppy coming-of-age quality in which adolescent girls exist suspended between solitary moments of pining and impassioned make-out scenes. In this, Lyons’ first solo exhibition with Anat Ebgi, a new series of paintings evokes the ferocity of such teenage emotions, while seemingly bidding them a fond farewell. One painting, The Dominion of Night (2024) is a nod to René Magritte’s The Empire of Light, pictures the exterior of a stately home at night, only the upstairs windows lights on. The curtains are provocatively drawn back. In one sense we can imagine this house as the soon-to-be adult protagonist’s home and her dollhouse at once, a space in which she tries on grown-up vices and pleasures—sneaking a cigarette or shots of Smirnoff while waiting, as though on a long summer day, for real-life to find her.  

“Justin Williams: Synonym” at Robert’s Projects
Through March 9, 2024
Justin Williams, I listened but only to sounds from the old boat, (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Robert’s Projects.
In “Synonym,” the Australian painter Justin Williams presents variated scenes that incite a mixed bag of feelings, namely that of familiarity and strangeness. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with suburban Australia as his stomping ground and Egyptian ancestry in the fold, the folkloric motifs that appear in his canvases are notably hard to place. It’s as if you have stepped into a dream or someone’s else’s memory. Across his quotidian setting, a strongly figured cast of characters seem deeply enmeshed in these moments that are like candid scenes from a film where the volume is off. While it may be impossible to know what his characters are thinking as they wait together for a Bialetti to boil, or gather around a hookah by the bed or under skinny trees, there is something electric passing between them.

“Charles Hickey: The Bathers The Brushers” at Albertz Benda
Through April 13, 2024
Charles Hickey, Clock Sail Basket (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Albertz Benda.
In Albertz Benda’s very unique exhibition space fittingly dubbed “The Bathroom,” Los Angeles-based artist Charles Hickey’s sculptures and canvases, depicting various objects that one might find in a real bathroom, but all of the pieces here are made of plastic. Hickey’s medium is essentially a handheld 3D printer in the form of a pen, functioning almost like a piping bag for icing, giving the canvases a textured, three-dimensional look, and replicas of shampoo, hand soap, toothpaste, and more, fully realized sculptures seemingly conjured by the deft flick of the tool. While the objects are clearly related to the show’s title, “The Bathers, The Brushers,” the paintings are more nuanced, referencing art historical gems like Cézanne’s The Bathers, Van Gogh’s Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, and Matisse’s Still Life with Blue Tablecloth. Is Hickey referring to hair and toothbrushes, or paint brushes? Perhaps brushes with greatness, as he reinterprets the great masters of still lifes, while he has chosen to use an ultra-contemporary method for his own artistic contributions.

“Ouattara Watts” at Karma
Through March 16, 2024
Ouattara Watts, Evolution 03 (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Karma, Los Angeles.
At Karma’s Los Angeles outpost, an exhibition of new paintings by the Abidjan-born, New York–based artist Ouattara Watts’s dynamic and luminous paintings take center stage. In his first-ever L.A. show, canvases embedded with the artist’s physical and immaterial experiences around the world come to bear in curious, engaging works. A specific and individual visual language including cosmological references, numbers, figures, and symbols, are informed by the artist’s global exposure to such diverse influences as the animist religion of the West African Senufo people, and the modernists he studied while at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. “I think universally…” the artist said, “about the history of the human soul. It’s not a history of clans, ethnic groups, or even artists, it’s what we can call the human condition.” In the vein of artists like Hilma af Klint and Jean-Michel Basquiat, beyond the specific and myriad references Watts is making, viewers can sense they are in the presence of something greater than themselves, even if they don’t know what it is.
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An upcoming exhibition in Venice will be the first major show to explore how artist Willem de Kooning was inspired by his two visits to Italy, in 1959 and 1969. Including some 75 works ranging from the late 1950s to the ‘80s, it’s the largest-ever presentation in Italy of the Dutch-American Abstract Expressionist’s work and, according to the organizers, the only show ever to closely study Italy’s influence on him.
Curated by Gary Garrels, formerly of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and art historian Mario Codognato, “Willem de Kooning and Italy” takes place at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice and opens April 17, just in time for the pre-opening festivities of the Venice Biennale.
According to Giulio Manieri Elia, the gallery’s director, the last de Kooning show in Italy took place some 18 years ago. Lenders to the show include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York; the Glenstone Museum, in Maryland; the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; the Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne; and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Dan Budnik, Willem de Kooning in his East Hampton Studio, New York (1971). © 2024 The Estate of Dan Budnik. All Rights Reserved. Artwork © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE
“Willem de Kooning collected from the cacophony of visual excitement, light and movement in daily life to create his own lexicon,” said Garrels and Codognato in a joint statement.
“The impact of any visual encounter could render or generate an idea for moving into a new drawing or painting. Observing how his New York and East Hampton environments worked into his paintings and drawings, the same occurred in Rome—a gestalt of ‘glimpses,’” they added. “During these formative periods of time in Rome, de Kooning synthesised from all around him a new way of looking and activating his medium, experiencing both classical Italian paintings and sculpture as well as the work of his new Italian artist friends.” 
Willem de Kooning, Red Man with Moustache (1971). © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE
De Kooning was one of the key members of a group of painters in New York. He worked alongside action painters, Abstract Expressionists, or the New York School, with artists including his wife Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still.
Some of his best-known works are his stark renditions of women that he began in 1950. He has become a giant in the market for 20th-century art: in 2015, music mogul David Geffen sold de Kooning’s 1955 painting Interchange to hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin for about $300 million, which was then the highest price paid for a painting.
Three paintings from 1960—Door to the River, A Tree in Naples, and Villa Borghese—will be on display together for the first time. Painted after his arrival back in New York, all three show the lasting influence of his Italian sojourn, say the curators.
Willem de Kooning, Villa Borghese (1960). © 2023 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. © FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao.
Thirteen small bronzes he made in Rome are also included. Resulting from a chance encounter with a sculptor friend, they stem from the artist’s first efforts with clay. He would turn intensively to sculpture back in New York between 1972 and 1974.
The show will also include a large selection of the “Black and White Rome” drawings that the artist made in 1959 on his visit to the Italian capital, and spans to paintings from the 1980s.
Willem de Kooning, Untitled #12 (1969). © 2023 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE.
Collaborating on the show is the artist’s foundation.
“The Foundation is delighted to be collaborating with the Gallerie dell’Accademia to present this important exhibition, as it allows us to share Willem de Kooning and the curators’ exceptional vision with a wide-ranging, diverse international community,” said Amy Schichtel, executive director of the foundation.
“De Kooning is one of America’s great innovators; we find that his risk-taking story continues to be of vital inspiration to many contemporary artists as well as to students and our young people.” 
Willem de Kooning, Pirate (Untitled II) (1981). © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE.
“Willem de Kooning and Italy” will be on view at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Calle della Carità, Vice, Italy, April 17 through September 15.
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Major works by Leonardo da Vinci will be brought to life in a new exhibition at Melbourne’s THE LUME exhibition space. As part of the show “Leonardo da Vinci—500 Years of Genius,” pages from the artist’s priceless Codex Atlanticus will be on display for the first time ever in Australia.
The book is a 12-volume set of drawings and writings made by Leonardo, gathered together in the late 16th century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni. Pages from the codex come to Melbourne after Bruce Peterson—THE LUME’s founder and owner of Rome’s Museo Leonardo da Vinci—spent a decade building a relationship with Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where the pages have been stored since 1637.
Parts of the codex have previously been displayed in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Paris’s Louvre, but have never been shown in Australia before. The precious artifacts are released from Milan for a three-month period, after which time they must be returned to Italy to recover from their exposure to light.
Codex Atlanticus pages. Image courtesy of THE LUME.
Peterson said that the pages “represent not just a collection of sketches and writings but a gateway into the brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci’s mind”, and that “their arrival in Australia is profound, allowing visitors to explore Leonardo in a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
Also included in the exhibition are to-scale inventions inspired by the pages of the codices; the only exact 360° replica of Mona Lisa in the world; a V.R. set-up allowing users to fly virtually over the streets of Florence’ and a Renaissance-themed bar called ‘Caffé Medici’. Other activities scheduled to accompany the exhibition are pilates and yoga sessions, sound baths, and an Italian long-table dinner by chef Guy Grossi, on the evening before the show opens to the public, priced at AUD $296 ($193). The venture has been entirely privately funded.
“Leonardo da Vinci—500 Years of Genius” Installation View. Image courtesy of THE LUME.
Melbournes’s THE LUME opened on November 1, 2021, inside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. It is the world’s largest permanent immersive digital art and cultural venue. It offers a 3,000-square-meter multi-sensory gallery, using A.I. and V.R. interactive technologies to project artworks and immerse visitors in their shows. Previous displays include a deep-dive into the works of Monet and the Impressionists, Vincent Van Gogh, and a showcase of more than 110 First Peoples’ art and music in THE LUME’s most recent exhibition “Connection”. The Leonardo show has been created by the immersive arts and culture company Grand Experiences and is presented in collaboration with Webuild, an Italian construction and civil engineering group.
“Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius” is on at THE LUME, Melbourne, from March 16, 2024. More information and ticket availability can be found on THE LUME website.
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Nadya Tolokonnikova, a cofounder of the anarchic feminist art collective Pussy Riot, has announced her first museum show at the OK Linz Center for Contemporary Art in Austria. “Rage” will spotlight the group’s most recent protest pieces that confront patriarchal and religious repression and Vladimir Putin’s aggressive regime.
A highlight of the exhibition will be the presentation a video work that was released shortly after the arrest of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2021. It called for his freedom and the release of all political prisoners in Russia, but filming of the work was interrupted by the authorities and its participants were arrested for “propaganda of homosexuality.” The video has gained new poignance following the recent news of Navalny’s death in a Russian prison.
“Most of my life, even after two years of imprisonment, I chose to stay in Russia, even though I had plenty of opportunities to immigrate,” Tolokonnikova said. “I tried to change Russia, make it a country that I would be proud of—peaceful, prosperous, friendly, democratic, loving.”
Instead, Tolokonnikova said she watched her “friends being murdered and revolutions suffocating under Putin’s boot,” something many fear in the wake of Navalny’s death. 
Pussy Riot cover of Time Magazine from 2012. Image courtesy of OK Linz.

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