Art & Exhibitions

The Winter Show has again returned to the vaulted vastness of the Park Avenue Armory, on New York’s Upper East Side, to delight and dazzle spectators, professional and not, with a plethora of curious art and design objects that stretch back centuries. They hail from all corners of the world; however, the theme this year is Americana.
Now in its 70th year, the show has corralled 70 international exhibitors (those matching numbers were, apparently, just a coincidence). Newbies include Jill Newhouse Gallery (New York), which presents 19th- and 20th-century European drawings and paintings; Jon Szoke Gallery (New York), experts in Old Master material; Peter Harrington (London), showcasing rare books and manuscripts; and Galerie Léage (Paris), who, sharing a booth with Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz (Paris), is showcasing exceptional 18th-century objects and furniture.
With so much to see at the Winter Show—which benefits the East Side House Settlement in the Bronx, as it always has—we’ve put together the primer below with all the treasures that leapt out at us as we perused the aisles during a preview. That’s followed by the booths where we spent large amounts of time in deep conversation with the exhibitor.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Diana of the Tower (1899), azure vase by the studio of Artisti Barovier, and a diamond bee brooch from A La Vieille Russie.
A sensational azure vase by the studio of Artisti Barovier at Glass Past (New York) begged a touch, though we dared not. Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Diana of the Tower (1899) at Lillian Nassau LLC (New York), originally designed as a gilt bronze weathervane for Madison Square Garden’s tower in 1891, would have been very busy had it been placed outside on this frigidly windy day. Contemporary master woodworker Michael Coffey’s elaborately carved wood partition, from Maison Gerard (New York), stands sentry in the front, beautifying the bag check line. A stucco Buddha head dating from the 3rd to 4th century, found at Tambaran’s (New York) booth, is a sight to behold. And the New York gallery A La Vieille Russie’s 10-karat diamond bumble bee brooch (ca. 1870) with ruby eyes is deserving of all the buzz it gets.
Now on to the booths…

Bernard Goldberg
The Maene-Viñoly concert grand piano. Asking price: $525,000, with all proceeds going to the Viñoly Foundation. Courtesy of Bernard Goldman.
There’s so much to absorb chez Bernard Goldberg, a Winter Show stalwart, that it’s hard to know where to begin. One obvious contender is the statement-making centerpiece of the booth: a sumptuously elliptical grand piano that juts out into the front entrance—one of two made by the Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly (who designed the residential skyscraper at 432 Park Avenue) along with Chris Maene. Non-architectural works by architects are the theme here. Don’t miss a cypress-wood Frank Lloyd Wright chair (ca. 1940s) from his C. Leigh Stevens House in South Carolina; a Jacques Lipchitz bronze sculpture, Standing Figure (1916), with the artist’s thumbprint at the base (a limestone version can be found at the Guggenheim Museum in New York); and a laidback bench by I.M. Pei that once sat in the lobby of Dallas’s City Hall, a concrete 1970s brutalist structure that the architect also designed. 

Robert Simon

Giovanni dal Ponte, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint Anthony Abbott (ca. 1420). Asking price: $500,000. Courtesy of Robert Simon
Over at Robert Simon, the gallery has installed an exquisite altarpiece by Giovanni dal Ponte, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint Anthony Abbott (ca. 1420). It is in splendid condition, retaining its brilliant colors, including its original gilding. As Simon explained, other works of the late Gothic and early Renaissance periods in Florence were painted with layers upon layers of gold leafing. It’s always a curious treat to see Renaissance works on U.S shores, so don’t miss the opportunity. This piece was featured in a recent exhibition at the Accademia in Florence. 

Peter Harrington
Winston Churchill, The Entrance to the Gorge at Todhra, Morocco (1935–36). Asking price: $395,000. Courtesy of Peter Harrington.
Pom Harrington, owner of the London-based rare book seller Peter Harrington (his father), beamed when describing his remarkable selection of objects belonging to Winston Churchill. They hail from the collection of Steve Forbes, who famously auctioned off a stash of Churchill memorabilia in 2010 at a Christie’s sale which just so happened to be attended by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. This new stash includes books and letters that Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, either wrote or read, often inscribed to important people in his life, such as his military mentor Ian Hamilton. Among the literary treasures, however, another prize stands out: the artwork, The Entrance to the Gorge at Todhra, Morocco, which Churchill himself painted in 1935–36. He was a keen artist, first taking up the brush in 1915 as a form of art therapy and continuing until his death. That’s pretty heavy, sure, but not as heavy as a hulking wood desk on view, part of his private office in his Hyde Park Gate home and used while writing his war memoirs. 

Joan B. Mirviss
Fujino Sachiko, Imagery ’23-1 (2023), left, and a red ceramic sculpture (2023) resembling a bag by Tanaka Yū’s. Courtesy of Joan B. Mirviss.
This eye-popping booth from Joan B. Mirviss—an American dealer and scholar on the au courant topic of Japanese ceramics—looks at the modern and contemporary clay art of 20 female Japanese artists spanning three generations. These women, according to the gallery, “overcame social and cultural barriers to express both eloquence and strength.” Especially eloquent are Fujino Sachiko’s Imagery ’23-1 (2023) and Tanaka Yū’s red trompe l’oeil glazed stoneware sculpture (2023) resembling a knotted wrapping cloth. Anyone interested in this genre should check out “Radical Clay: Contemporary Japanese Women Artists,” currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, featuring works by many of the same artists.

Peter Finer
Kentucky rifle by George Grace. Courtesy of Peter Finer.
Specialists in antique arms and armor from around the world—Bronze Age to the 19th century—with a London gallery on historic Duke Street, St James’s, Peter Finer was especially keen to talk about a rifle. Not just any rifle, but an elegant Kentucky rifle made in the year the country was formed, 1776. It is an elegant and clearly important piece made by gunsmith George Grace (about whom little is known) that one might not associate with the rifles of the Revolutionary War. Finer noted that no other American weapon is more evocative of this period than this gun, perfected in the American colonies by immigrant German gunmakers.
The Winter Show is on view at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave, New York, January 19–28.
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Daniel Clowes’s new book Monica recounts the life of its titular character from cradle to grave, but in ways so strange and sardonic that it could only come from the mind of the singular cartoonist. Typical of a Clowes joint, the graphic novel bears his signature blend of pathos and pitch-black humor, woven through with his evocative, shadowed detailing. It’s art that lends the proceedings narrative layers and an uneasy mystery, right down to the book’s otherworldly climax. “The book,” he said, “is in part about dealing with chaos.” 
After garnering raves since its release last October, Monica is now getting the gallery treatment. From January 24, Galerie Martel in Paris will stage a show of more than 30 works, featuring panels and sketches in ink and colored pencil that Clowes created for his latest release. The exhibition, Clowes’s second with the gallery, will also consist other pieces pulled from the artist’s storied oeuvre. 
Daniel Clowes self-portrait. © Daniel Clowes. Photo courtesy of Galerie Martel.
For a cartoonist who found his niche in the 1980s alternative comics space with a darkly zany vocabulary, Clowes has managed to land squarely within mainstream acceptance. He’s been showered with awards and courted by brands, his comics have been adapted for the big screen, and he’s emerged as one of America’s foremost graphic storytellers. 
Which is not to say his work has lost any of its edge: the biting humor of his early series Eightball (1989–2004) can still be located in his later works such as Ghost World (1997) and Wilson (2010), just as his narratives have grown in depth and offbeat daring, as in David Boring (2000) and Patience (2016). 
Daniel Clowes, Monica back cover sketch (2023). © Daniel Clowes. Courtesy of Galerie Martel.
In many ways, Monica marked a new creative height for Clowes—his friend, filmmaker Ari Aster, called the book the artist’s “magnum opus.” Five years in the making, the work sees Clowes visually tip his hat to genre comics, balancing tones from horror to romance as he unfurls the backstory of Monica’s birth. Color schemes throughout the book draw connections, narrative or otherwise, between its nine chapters. 
“I feel like the point of art is to express things that we don’t understand and we don’t know how to express in words,” he told NPR in 2023. 
Daniel Clowes, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron large cover sketch (2017). © Daniel Clowes. Courtesy of Galerie Martel.
Also on view at Galerie Martel is a curated selection of Clowes’s part art, notably original drawings from David Boring and Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993), and previously unseen sketches for Eightball. His commissioned illustrations for the New Yorker and the Criterion Collection (for Shock Corridor and Ghost World) are included too.  
The show is only the latest to bring Clowes’s work from the shelf to the gallery. Following his first exhibition in Los Angeles in 2003, the artist most prominently was feted by the Oakland Museum of California with a 2012 retrospective that spanned more than 100 works from drawings to gouache art.  
But it’ll also be a rare outing for an artist whose dedication remains to the page. “I never thought of myself as a museum artist who’s doing work for the wall,” he told the New York Times in 2012. “For me, the book is the final result.” 
“Daniel Clowes” is on view at Galerie Martel, 17 Rue Martel, Paris, France, January 24 through February 24. 

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Berlin- and Amsterdam-based, Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana and Ersan Mondtag, a theater-based artist who was born and based in the German capital, will be headlining the German pavilion titled “Thresholds” at the upcoming Venice Biennale, organizers announced this week.
In addition to the German pavilion at the Giardini, the event curated by Çağla Ilk, co-director of Baden Baden Kunsthalle, and conceived by the pavilion’s commissioner Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), will also feature fellow Berlin-based artists Michael Akstaller, Nicole L’Huillier, Robert Lippok, and Jan St. Werner in an extended exhibition located on the island of La Certosa in the Venetian lagoon.
“‘Thresholds’ stands for the present as a place where no one can stay and that only exists because on thing has occurred and another still awaits,” organizers said in a statement. “For people with biographies characterized by migration, the temporal perception of the present as a threshold between the retrospective and the prospective is paired with a fundamental spatial and physical experience of living at the intersection of different belongings.”
Bartana, who works across film, installation, photography, and performance, will consider “a world on the brink of total destruction,” according to the press release and “search” for a way out, imagining “possibilities of future survival through a multifaceted work poised between dystopia and utopia.” For his part, Mondtag, an award-winning artist known for performances and interdisciplinary theater works, will explore other possibilities of the future by bringing history back to life in a dramatic setting that will contrast the monumental nature of the  nation’s pavilion.
“Thresholds” on the island of La Certosa will emphasize “the idea of passage through a threshold space.” It seems the element of sound will play a key role connecting the practices of the four artists featured in this exhibition: Akstaller is an artist who focuses on sound and space, L’Huillier is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher who explores sounds and vibrations, Lippok is a musician and visual artist, and St. Werner is co-founder of music group Mouse on Mars.
The Venice Biennale will open to the public from April 20 to November 24.
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The late British painter Harold Cohen once joked that he could be the only artist to have a posthumous show of new work. He had after all created a generative art system, one so autonomous that it could theoretically produce work indefinitely, outlasting its maker. His remark was intended a mere quip, but turns out, it’s quite a prophetic one.  
At an upcoming exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Cohen’s A.I.-powered art-making program, AARON, will be revisited—and revived. The show, titled “Harold Cohen: AARON,” will explore how the artist built the program in phases beginning in the late 1960s, and feature paintings and drawings that AARON has previously generated. It will also produce new work: the software, linked to pen plotters, will demonstrate its drawing process live in the galleries. 
For Christiane Paul, the museum’s curator of digital art, this view into an early form of machine-powered art-making is newly relevant at a time when A.I. tools are increasingly prevalent. More so, it underscores art’s long engagement with A.I. through Cohen’s decades-spanning experimentation with the technology. 
“AARON invites us to rethink what constitutes art and the intentionality of art in comparison to the current A.I. models,” she said over the phone. “At its core is this freehand line algorithm that Harold created. It really is a continuation of his work and at the same time, a radical break with painting and a shift to something entirely different.”
Harold Cohen, AARON KCAT (2001). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Digital Art Committee 2023.20. © Harold Cohen Trust.
While Cohen thrived as a painter in the early 1960s—he represented the U.K. at the Venice Biennale in 1966—he swiftly grew frustrated with his practice. Out of curiosity, he picked up coding with the thought of creating “a program to do some of the things human beings do when they make representations,” he recalled in 2004. 
Cohen’s burgeoning interest in programming coincided with his 1968 move to California, where he took up a professorship at the University of California, San Diego. There, he first conceived and built out a rule-based drawing software, programmed to autonomously create “evocative” images. It was coded, Paul explained, “as an art-making program that has external knowledge of the world and the objects in it, and internal knowledge on how to represent these objects.” 
The artist called his creation AARON after the biblical figure who served as a mediator for Moses. In a similar way, the program would be Cohen’s creative broker. 
Harold Cohen, AARON KCAT (2001). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Digital Art Committee 2023.20. © Harold Cohen Trust.
From 1973, Cohen would create increasingly complex iterations of AARON as his algorithm grew in sophistication to include compositional rules and other drawing strategies. Where the early models could only generate black-and-white shapes, the 1980s versions could create figures in a visual space and the 2000s editions abstract floral patterns. These works have since been collected by museums from the V&A to the Tate. 
Since 2017, with the launch of the Whitney’s acquisition committee focused on digital art, Paul has sought to collect variations of the AARON software, which number around 60. “What I would like to do is create for the Whitney an archive of the [program’s] crucial phases,” she said.
So far, the museum has acquired the more well-known KCAT version, which Cohen created in partnership with scientist Raymond Kurzweil’s CyberArt Technologies in 2001, and another from its so-called jungle phase around 2002. The institution has also just collected the 1960s iteration of Cohen’s freehand line algorithm, long before it was named AARON, which produced the artworks he exhibited at the 1972 show, “Three Behaviors for the Partitioning of Space,” at the L.A. County Museum of Art. 
Harold Cohen, AARON Gijon (2007). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Digital Art Committee 2023.21. © Harold Cohen Trust.
At the Whitney exhibition, two plotters will be creating from the KCAT software in black-and-white and from the 1960s program, which was restored, Paul said, using code that was discovered in one of Cohen’s notebooks. Originally written in BASIC, the code had to be recreated in Python. “As Harold’s son Paul Cohen put it,” she said, “we resurrected a dinosaur from three different skeletons.” 
Also resurfacing at the show are “questions of authorship and agency in the collaboration with machines,” Paul added. They’re issues that similarly entangle conversations about A.I. today. But, as she pointed out, where contemporary text-to-image generators work off a database of questionably scraped material, AARON has been coded entirely by Cohen and its outputs are a result of their partnership. 
So, an argument could be made that Cohen could never have his quipped-about posthumous show of new work—alas. “What AARON entails is Harold Cohen as an artist, the software itself, and the collaboration between the two, that constant back-and-forth,” said Paul. “That, of course, does not exist anymore.” 
It’s something that Cohen himself conceded in 2011, acknowledging that “AARON will end when I end” since probably nobody would want to pick up his collaborator where he left off. “People,” he added, “should build up their own other selves.”
“Harold Cohen: AARON” is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, February 3 through May.

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We’ve all become used to tapping any manner of information request into Google or ChatGPT and waiting just seconds to get our reply. Still, many of life’s bigger questions have no quick and easy answer. The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is embarking on what has been described as “an 81-day quest for enlightenment” through his latest work Ai vs AI. Every evening between now and March, he will pose mostly philosophical questions about subjects like humanity, science, and politics to an artificial intelligence.
Starting today, these questions, written by Ai and his close collaborators, will be publicly broadcast by CIRCA at 8.24 p.m. via London’s Piccadilly Lights and at several other international locations including Seoul, Berlin, and Milan. Ai plans to take a stab at answering these questions himself, and both his and the A.I.’s responses will be published online via CIRCA’s website and social media channels.
This is the first time that Ai has made an artwork using A.I., although the project ties into common themes from his traditional practice such as freedom, surveillance, and corruption, addressed by questions like: “Who profits when disinformation is sold?”, “Is true democracy possible?”, and “Are you controlled by the privileged class?”
Rendering of Ai Weiwei’s Ai vs A.I. on the Piccadilly Lights in London. Photo: © CIRCA.
The implication seems to be that, in an age of information overload, we must not shy from mulling over life’s more imponderable, divisive dilemmas that will inform the shape of our lives and societies. Other examples of Ai’s 81 questions include: “Is there a way to decolonize our minds?”, “Do human beings long for death?”, “Is polygamy or polyandry better?”, and “Can safety be built on the insecurity of others?”
The number 81 represents the number of days that the dissident artist spent imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2011, a time marked by unrelenting interrogation and yet no real freedom of speech. “Authorities always know more than you, and they play a game of not telling you what they know,” said Ai. “Everybody has the right to ask questions.”
In recent months, Ai has once again run into issues around freedom of expression after he posted a controversial take on the Israel-Hamas conflict on X: “The sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world. Financially, culturally, and in terms of media influence, the Jewish community has had a significant presence in the United States. The annual $3bn aid package to Israel has, for decades, been touted as one of the most valuable investments the United States has ever made. This partnership is often described as one of shared destiny.”
Behind the scenes of Ai vs A.I.. Photo: Leroy Boateng, courtesy of CIRCA.
The post was soon deleted and Lisson Gallery decided to put on indefinite hold an exhibition of new works by Ai that was originally going to open in November. Other shows planned in New York and Berlin were also called off. At the time, Ai told The Art Newspaper that Lisson had “good intentions” and that it wanted “to avoid further disputes and for my own wellbeing.” CIRCA chose not to comment on the X post or its decision to collaborate with Ai.
“A war is cruel in the sense that it destroys families, inflicts physical harm, and takes away innocent lives,” Ai Weiwei told Artnet News in October. “Censorship and the prohibition of thoughts are equally cruel if not crueler; it is a practice that hurts the soul of our society, a symbol of prevailing darkness, and it should be seen as a warning of a barbaric time.”
Since 2020, the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA) has been using the Piccadilly Lights to broadcast new works of art by celebrated artists so that they can be enjoyed by passersby for free. Artists previously commissioned by CIRCA include Frank Bowling, Douglas Gordon, Caroline Walker, Anne Imhof, Laure Prouvost, Shirin Neshat, Marina Abramović, Yoko Ono, and Vivienne Westwood.

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When we think of early Renaissance Florence, great masters like Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Fra Angelico come immediately to mind. The National Gallery in London is making the case for us to reconsider another important painter, Francesco Pesellino, who was greatly admired in his lifetime has since been overlooked.
Born in 1422, Pesellino as a young boy was taken under the wing of his grandfather Giuliano Pesello, also a painter. By his 20s, he had established a reputation for producing delicate, small-scale work that was laden with rich detail. For this reason, he was often commissioned to make personal objects for private devotion or to decorate domestic interiors. Notably, he spent a period working in close collaboration with Fra Filippo Lippi. When he died in 1457, aged just 35, from the plague, Lippi even stepped in to complete an unfinished panel painting for the high altar of the church of the Holy Trinity in the nearby city of Pistoia.
Francesco Pesellino, The Triumph of David (Detail) (1445–50). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
Other highlights of the National Gallery show include panels depicting the life of David, which are newly conserved for the occasion. These pieces show off Pesellino’s talent for building up complex narrative scenes filled with exotic animals, ornate outfits, and heraldic symbolism set against atmospheric, wintry landscapes. The works are displayed in the round, allowing visitors to get up close and follow their unfolding storyline.
“From what we know of him, if he had lived longer, he would have achieved much more than he did,” was how the great 16th-century Italian art historian Vasari summarized Pesellino’s achievements. Luckily, this bountiful survey of all that the artist did manage to produce in 35 years offers plenty for new audiences to feast on.
Check out more paintings from the exhibition below.
Francesco Pesellino and Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Diptych – Annunciation (c.1450–55). Photo: © The Courtauld / Bridgeman Images.
Francesco Pesellino, The Triumph of David (Detail) (1445–50). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
Francesco Pesellino, The Story of David and Goliath (Detail) (1445–50). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
Francesco Pesellino, Virgin and Child (c. 1450). Photo: Alain Basset, © Lyon MBA.
Francesco Pesellino, King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land (1445–50). Photo: © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA.
Francesco Pesellino and Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Angel (Left Hand) (1455–60). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Saint Zeno exorcising the Daughter of the Emperor Gallienus: Predella Panel (Saint Zeno exorcising the Daughter of Gallienus) (1455–60). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Saint Jerome and the Lion: Predella Panel (1455–60). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
“Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed” is on at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, through March 10, 2024.

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Going on view at Gagosian in Beverly Hills is a series of sepia prints by filmmaker Bennett Miller, depicting enigmatic and downright eerie scenes. They recall the portraiture and documentary feel of early photography, right down to their grainy surfaces. The catch? None of them are real. 
The show brings together Miller’s latest experiments with artificial intelligence. Specifically, he has used the text-to-image generator DALL-E to produce images that mimic the look and feel of 19th- and 20th-century photographs, imbued with an air of disquiet and uncanniness. With them, Miller hopes to demonstrate A.I.’s increasing ability to deep-fake reality, skew history, and ultimately, reshape perceptions. 
Bennett Miller, Untitled (2023). Courtesy of Gagosian.
It’s an exploration the director embarked on with his first body of images, which was showcased at Gagosian New York last year. His new series remains just as resonant as A.I. gains in capabilities and popularity, with machine-imagined art increasingly closing the gap between what’s real and what’s generated. 
“The emergence of A.I.,” Miller told Artnet News at the launch of his first show, “has brought us to the precipice of imagination-defying transformations and there do not seem to be any adults in the room.”  
Bennett Miller, Untitled (2023). Courtesy of Gagosian.
The director is well-placed to interrogate the meeting of reality and artificiality. His previous films such as Capote (2005) and Foxcatcher (2014) have adapted real-life events for the cinema; he is also currently developing a documentary on this “extraordinary moment” when A.I. is impacting our perceptions (Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is set to be featured). 
His latest images offer a view of a shaky reality. In one, an enormous whale appears to have landed on a theatrical stage; in another, an unconscious woman is bundled up in a snow-white bed, her silhouette deeply out-of-focus. The aesthetic is recognizable, but the scenarios are illusory—an ambiguity meant to jar the viewer into what Miller termed “real awareness and consideration.” 
Bennett Miller, Untitled (2023). Courtesy of Gagosian.
In its media release, Gagosian likened Miller’s latest works to spiritualist photographs, in particular “Cottingley Fairies,” a series of otherworldly snapshots staged by two young girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, in 1917. But where the pair sought to make real the mythical being of the fairy, Miller’s ongoing ventures into A.I. accomplish the opposite in their pursuit of the unreal. His fairies remain fairies.  
“Bennett Miller” is on view at Gagosian, 456 N Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, January 11 through February 10. 

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Poland’s new government has controversially withdrawn the submission for its national pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, which had been organized by the previous right-wing populist ruling party Law and Justice. Now instead, Poland will showcase a performance video by the Ukrainian art collective Open Group.
The previous plan for Poland’s pavilion was an exhibition titled “Polish Exercises in the Tragedy of the World: Between Germany and Russia” by the painter Ignacy Czwartos. His paintings speared both Germany and Russia, detailing their various mistreatments of Poland throughout modern history. One painting shows former German chancellor Angela Merkel connected to Vladimir Putin by a St Andrew’s cross manipulated to look like a swastika.
The exhibition was branded “an anti-European manifesto” by Polish art critic Karolina Plinta, according to the Guardian, and its nationalist tone was widely regarded to be out of step with the biennale’s inclusive theme of “Foreigners Everywhere.” Even members of the jury that recommended Czwartos told the Art Newspaper that the submission represented a retreat into a “narrow-minded, ideologically paranoid and shameful position.”
Installation view of “The Painter Was Kneeling When Painting” exhibition by Ignacy Cwartos at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland. Photo: Juliusz Sokołowski, courtesy of Zachęta National Gallery of Art.
The Law and Justice party had announced the pavilion on October 31, during the final few weeks of its eight year rule. It had just lost the majority vote in a significant parliamentary election held on October 15, which eventually saw a coalition formed by three opposition parties, ushering in a new centrist prime minister in Donald Tusk (who was previously in office from 2007-2014).
Poland’s new culture minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz wasted no time in withdrawing the submission, deciding instead to give the spotlight to a back-up option Repeat After Me by Ukrainian art collective Open Group. This performance video with a karaoke-style installation features Ukrainian refugees sharing their experiences of Russia’s war on Ukraine through spoken dialogue and by immersing viewers in the sounds of shelling, gunfire, and air raid sirens.
Speaking to the Art Newspaper, Czwartos branded the move an act of “censorship.” “The project refers also to the present day, above all to Putin’s brutal attack in Ukraine,” he added. “It is not an anti-European project at all, but rather it refers to the forces that had destroyed Europe in the past and today.”
Sienkiewicz has also removed the right-wing painter Janusz Janowski from his post as director of Zachęta National Gallery of Art, replacing him with former deputy director Justyna Markiewicz. Zachęta is Poland’s foremost contemporary art museum and its director oversees Poland’s participation at Venice. Czwartos was originally selected thanks to Janowski’s recommendation based on an exhibition that he had co-curated himself at Zachęta just a few months prior.
Check out our continually updated list of every national pavilion that will be on view at the 60th Venice Biennale, which runs from April 20 through November 24, 2024.

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