On View

It’s both ironic and bittersweet that broad interest in and admiration for Shaker art and culture—which marks its 250th anniversary in the US this year—has been steadily growing over the years and is at a high, even as the population of the group has dwindled close to zero.
According to a recent report in the New York Times, only two Shakers remain; they reside at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine. The community, described as the longest-running Utopian experiment in the US, embraced communal living, simplicity, and celibacy (the latter because they didn’t believe in procreation and sought to emulate Jesus).
For years design aficionados and others have admired and sought their famously minimalistic and well-crafted furniture, remarkable for its clean lines. Now two well-received New York museum shows that opened almost simultaneously last month, are delving further into the art and culture to shine a light on lesser-known practices and aspects of Shaker life.
The first is “Anything But Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic,” a show of elaborate and intricate “gift drawings” at the American Folk Art Museum near Lincoln Square, that was years in the planning and originated at the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 2022.  Gift drawings, made by mainly untrained Shaker artists, record spiritual visions,  referred to as “gifts” in Shaker culture.

Polly Jane Reed, A Type of Mother Hannah’s Pocket Handkerchief New Lebanon, New York (1851). Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts.
Also on view is “Cradled,” which was jointly curated by actor Frances McDormand and conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra, who teamed up with the Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York, for this thoughtful show that examines the community’s lifetime approach to caring for and providing comfort to individuals right up until their death. It’s on view at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill in Kinderhook, New York. Both shows are fascinating in their revelations and have some interesting overlaps in terms of approach, and organization not to mention the obvious reverence of Shaker culture and life.
At the Folk Art Museum, the “gift” drawings on display “represent a departure from the simplicity typically associated with Shaker material culture,” according to a statement. These works, made by women in the mid-19th century, are believed to represent divine messages and are filled with intricate texts and symbols that offer a unique glimpse into their interior world.
“Most people have not encountered these drawings. It’s interesting how structured these are even though they’re meant to represent the celestial world and are representative of the heavenly sphere that is not accessible when you’re on Earth,” said Emelie Gevalt,  a curator at the Folk Art Museum and curatorial chair for collections, in a phone conversation. “They are also very controlled. You see that proclivity for structure and careful planning seen in other Shaker material,” she noted.
Polly Jane Reed, Heart-shaped Cutout for Rufus Bishop, New Lebanon, New York (1844)Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts,
Gevalt estimated that only about 200 of these drawings may still be in existence. Others may have been destroyed out of concern or apprehension about their interpretation by outsiders. The intentions of the drawings—and whether they were meant to be exhibited—remain a matter of debate.  Gevalt pointed out that the last major exhibition of gift drawings, which took place at the Drawing Center in downtown Manhattan in the early 2000s, included a photograph of one of the Shaker elder sisters, shown sitting in a living space with a framed gift drawing visible on the wall behind her.
“There’s a lot of discussion about visuality in the Shaker community,” said Gevalt, “In the way that you see these essentially all-text versions of the drawings, like leaf or heart-shaped ones, in some ways, it’s the purest or simplest manifestation of a gift drawing where its primarily text but then the shape becomes part of the gift itself.”
Gevalt also emphasized that the works were primarily executed by women, which is notable considering the works were made in the 18th and 19th centuries when women were not typically “given center stage.”
While it’s undoubtedly a spiritual show, she noted that the Shakers were also dedicated to the idea that “even the more mundane of daily activities could represent prayer, akin to what we might call mindfulness or grounding nowadays.”
Suzanne Bocanegra, Joan Jonas, Annie-B Parson at “CRADLED,” at Kinderhook Knitting Mill. Photo by Matt Borkowski, BFA
Similarly, in a phone interview with Bocanegra and McDormand, Bocanegra shared that her interest in Shaker culture dates back to at least the early aughts when she saw the aforementioned Drawing Center show.
“The way that they’re put together, and even though they’re very complicated and detailed, they’re very symmetrically laid out,” said Bocanegra. “This whole idea that the drawing is a gift and it is not owned by anyone, it has to walk this fine line with the Shaker religion.”
Along with being a longtime admirer of Shaker Furniture, McDormand developed a performance piece with the Wooster Group a few years ago titled “Early Shaker Spirituals”  based on a recording by Shaker women that had been passed down through successive generations via an oral tradition. Earlier, in 2005, McDormand acted in a Shaker-focused project that dancer Martha Clarke created.
Of the Kinderhook show focus, which was inspired in part by research of the Shaker Museum archives, McDormand said she loved “the idea that they built something that could hold an infirm or elderly person, who was bedridden, and that it was a communal act of giving to rock them and comfort them.”
“As a piece of furniture, the cradle has to involve other people,” said Bocanegra. “One person is in it, but it has to be activated by another person, otherwise it doesn’t work.”
“Bertha” Shaker dolls with custom-designed clothes at “CRADLED” at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill. Photo by Matt Borkowski/BFA
Adding another layer of fascination to this thoughtful project, the two invited 88-year-old performance artist Joan Jonas, whose acclaimed MoMA retrospective wrapped this summer, to be part of the opening night celebration. Jonas agreed to be rocked in one of the adult cradles. McDormand and Bocanegra pointed out that there are more adult cradles in existence than child cradles, given the emphasis on celibacy and not pro-creating.
After McDormand and Bocanegra came across some dolls in the archives and found that the Shakers made doll clothes for their catalogues, along with the many other products they sold, “we commissioned Angel Malerba, a seamster in Columbia County who make ‘limited edition’ ensemble and hangars.” So far they have sold seven of them, and are planning to auction another to raise funds for the Shaker Museum. The dolls are called “Bertha” dolls but they bear a striking resemblance to another iconic doll, famous for her love of pink, and whose name also begins with a “B.”
Hannah Cohoon, The Tree of Life (1854).Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts, 1963.117
The Shakers were interested in creating beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and excellent artifacts,” says McDormand. “And they were also very much selling everything. Making money was for the good of the community. They were really successful that way.”
As for “Cradled,” the show has just been extended until December 6 and there is a good chance that the show will travel to another venue. Stay tuned. More

In a rare meeting between the classical and the contemporary, Gagosian’s Paris gallery has staged a show pairing an ancient Roman sculpture with work by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The sculpture of the goddess Venus juxtaposed with Basquiat’s 1982 painting offers viewers a new lens through which to view the late artist’s still-resonant oeuvre.
The painting, Untitled, which itself features the outline of a classical Venus statue, is part of a series Basquiat painted at the age of 21 while staying in Modena in northern Italy. He had been invited there by the dealer Emilio Mazzoli to produce an exhibition but, after the pair fell out, the eight works were eventually sold by the artist’s New York gallerist Annina Nosei. They were only seen together for the first time last year, at a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler near Basel, Switzerland.
Asked about his experience in Modena years later, Basquiat likened it to “a sick factory. I hated it. I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.” Shortly before this nightmare sojourn, however, he had enjoyed a visit to Rome with his then-girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk, who he used to refer to as “Venus.”
The ways in which the art that he saw on that trip must have informed Basquiat are particularly evident in his ambiguous Untitled. A Roman statue of Venus is paired with a typically expressive female figure with arms outstretched and a head crowned by dynamic ringlets. Above her shines a halo and to her left are pieces of fruit. The bunch of grapes evokes both classical Bacchanalian scenes and a similar still-life in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which Basquiat often admired at MoMA in New York. This painting has also been likened to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and canvases by Cy Twombly.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Venus” at Gagosian Paris, 2024. Photo: Thomas Lannes, courtesy Gagosian, licensed by Artestar, New York; © Fondazione Torlonia, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

“[Basquiat] had a great grasp of the history of art and visual culture and was brilliant at bringing the past to life in his paintings,” Larry Gagosian said. “His work reminds us of the common chords and resonances of beauty and identity throughout art history.”

Capturing the breadth of Basquiat’s references, Untitled has been reunited with another of its inspirations. The statue is on loan from the Torlonia Collection in Rome, the world’s largest private holding of Roman antiquities that is rarely seen in public. In turn, Gagosian is supporting the conservation of the marble figure.
“We want to bring the viewer closer to the influences that Basquiat was absorbing during his trip to Italy,” explained Gagosian’s senior director in Paris, Serena Cattaneo Adorno. “He was drawing on so many references, gathered on his travels, and he poured them back into the eight [Modena] works, in a series that is unique within his practice for its momentum, operatic emotion and overarching narrative.”
“The compositions are dominated mostly by single figures, so they give the impression of leitmotifs in an operatic narrative taking place in multiple acts,” she added, “through the characters of an angel, a devil, a prophet, a miser, a farmhand, and—of course—the goddess Venus.”
Adorno said Gagosian has chosen the Torlonia Venus for how its “complete and perfect form” provides “an evocation of classical motifs that we see strongly influencing Jean-Michel’s thoughts at the moment he created this unparalleled Modena series.”
“Jean-Michel Basquiat: Venus” is on view at Gagosian Paris through December 20.  More

A deep dive into the life and career of a dancer and choreographer might not seem like a natural fit for the Whitney Museum, but it turns out that its new exhibition on Alvin Ailey (1931–89), “Edges of Ailey,” feels perfectly at home at the New York institution.
The stunning multimedia show, which has taken over the Whitney’s entire fourth floor, is an immersive feast that seamlessly presents video, music, contemporary art, and archival material against eye-catching, sumptuous red walls. Six years in the making, it was put together in collaboration with the Alvin Ailey Foundation by Adrienne Edwards, a senior curator at the Whitney, who has skillfully blended together the mediums on view.
Ailey was born in segregated Texas at the height of the Great Depression; his father left when he was three months old. He and his mother worked in cotton fields and as servants in white households before moving to Los Angeles; he later decamped for San Francisco, then New York.
Throughout his career, Ailey engaged with questions about race, sexuality, and identity, using dance to elevate and celebrate the experience of Black people in America. “Edges of Ailey” charts Ailey’s life and legacy, using a wide variety of art and music to contextualize his achievements. The Whitney’s director, Scott Rothkopf, called it “one of the most glorious exhibitions in the history of this museum” at the opening-day press conference.
“I’ve been asked a number of times: Why is the Whitney doing an Alvin Ailey show?,” Rothkopf said. “And the short answer to that question is we believe Ailey is one of the greatest artistic geniuses of the 20th century, not just in dance but in any medium.”
“To me, Alvin Ailey’s work is everything,” he said later. “It touches on his celebration and exploration of the Black experience, from his time growing up in Texas in the South, to L.A. to Broadway, to Soul Train to the White House, to dancing all around the world . . . and sadly at the end of his life, to the AIDS crisis.”
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Anonymous, AIDS Memorial Quilt with Alvin Ailey panel, 1987.  Photograph by Jason Lowrie/BFA.com. © BFA 2024. “Edges of Ailey” is part of the National AIDS Memorial’s efforts to bring the Quilt to communities across the United States to raise greater awareness and education about HIV/AIDS and to remember those lost to the pandemic.
Edwards said at the press conference that organizing the show was “a journey,” and involved not just the Ailey Foundation but also the Kansas City-based Allan Gray Family Personal Papers of Alvin Ailey. (The dancer entrusted his papers to Gray, a longtime friend, before he died at the age of 58. He’s now chairman of the Allan Gray Alvin Ailey Archives Family Foundation.)
The press preview had a feeling of a family reunion, with Gray present, as well as Sylvia Waters, whom Ailey asked to found his second dance company in 1974, and Bennett Rink, who’s the executive director of Ailey today.
The show has a fluid, open floor plan that invites exploration rather than prescribing a single path. Edwards described the layout as “a series of islands, an archipelago in the sense of visual connectivity” that includes 18 projectors that offer a montage of dance and music from over 200 videos.
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, A Knave Made Manifest, 2024. Photograph by Jason Lowrie/BFA.com. © BFA 2024
“You could take an experience of the show that is really just looking at the archival material,”  Edwards said. “Or you could just start over and have a visual art experience, or watch video, or meander through all of it.”
Visual art fans have plenty to enjoy. There are works on display by 82 artists, many of them active during Ailey’s life, like Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, and Alma Thomas. Four artists made work specifically for the exhibition: Lynette Yiadem-Boake, Karon Davis, Jennifer Packer, and Mickalene Thomas.
One of the earliest artworks, from 1851, is Robert Duncanson’s View of Cincinnati, Ohio from Covington, Kentucky. “The question of freedom and liberation in connection to Blackness and Queerness” was an important one for Ailey, who was born in the segregated South, Edwards said. “One of the ways we foreground that” is with this work, with a view that “at that time depending on where you stood [determined] if you were free or not.”
Rashid Johnson’s Anxious Men (2016) is juxtaposed with a notebook in which a distressed Ailey wrote in 1980, “nervous breakdown, hospitalized seven weeks.”
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
The show has a robust dance and performance schedule, too, which Edwards described as “Uptown comes Downtown,” with the Ailey dance company in residence at the museum for one week each month during the exhibition, which runs through February 9, 2025. (A full list of performances is available here.)
“To the best of my knowledge, no art museum has ever before organized such a deeply researched, extensively programmed, or comprehensive exhibition, about the life and work of a performing artist,” Edwards said. “I’m proud that the exhibition will include all aspects of Ailey.”
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
“Edges of Ailey” is on view at the Whitney Museum through February 9, 2025. More

London is suddenly brimming with new public art installations ahead of its third London Sculpture Week, which runs from September 21–29. Among the biggest headline-grabbers is the annual Frieze Sculpture exhibition, which this year sees experimental pieces by artists like Theaster Gates, Yoshimoto Nara, and Zanele Muholi dotted around Regent’s Park, and the always hotly-anticipated unveiling of the latest Fourth Plinth commission.
What many of these varied artworks share this year is a sense of impermanence—which is perhaps counterintuitive for public sculpture, a genre that is traditionally meant to be able to withstand both the elements and the effects of time.
Returning as curator of Frieze Sculpture’s 12th edition, Fatoş Üstek has challenged herself to bring together an impressively wide range of artistic interpretations of sculpture as a medium, embracing a diversity of concepts, materiality, and execution. To this end, the program includes a loose mosaic by Nika Neelova, Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s intricate choreographies of movement, and even surprise performances by FOS. Speculative works like these may merely “allude to a sculptural experience,” the curator said. Guiding audio interpretations are offered via Bloomberg Connects.
Theaster Gates, The Duet (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2024. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
“This expandedness is really about pronouncing the difference between the monumentality that we’re very much used to seeing in our cities and the ephemerality that sometimes touches us even more,” Üstek explained at the show’s launch. “This year is for your eyes, but also for your third eye, for your introspective qualities, for your contemplative qualities, or for your forces of imagination.”
One of the most widely discussed works is Ent- (non-earthly delights) by Libby Heaney, who has gained a cult following for complex artworks emerging from her expertise in quantum computing. It is the first sculptural manifestation of an ongoing project inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (ca. 1500) but invites viewers to step into the digital realm via two A.R. artworks accessed via Q.R. codes near the sculpture. In one, a virtual sculptural form that appears on screen against the backdrop of the park shifts between different states of completeness before exploding entirely. The artist’s semi-transparent hand can be glimpsed on the screen as well, as if it is extending into the landscape itself.
“The work continues my exploration of quantum hybrid creatures, strange entanglements of human, animal, and machine,” said Heaney. “Future quantum computers will be able to control and create new Frankenstein lifeforms on a scale never seen before.” She added that monsters excite her as “external representations of the parts of us we try to repress that could be brought into the light and celebrated.”
İnci Eviner, Materials of Mind Theatre (2024) installed at Frieze Sculpture 2024. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
Another work that exhibits an unusual conceptual approach is Inci Eviner’s Materials of Mind Theatre, a stage-like platform holding 25 stoneware sculptures that resemble fantastical pieces of costume design. It is activated when a performer takes their place on the stage, animating the otherwise static set and ensuring that the composition is always evolving.
Albano Hernandez’s The Shadow is a particularly surprising work that could very easily be missed, or indeed trodden over. It uses water-based grass paint to darken the ground, which in this case has been applied to record the shadow of a sweet gum tree in the park exactly as it appears in mid-morning. The artist said the work serves as “a reminder that, though we as humans commodify natural resources, changing their aesthetics, their names, and even their qualities, we cannot stop time. Maybe today you are able to see the shadow, but it will soon disappear, like you, like me, like everything.”
Meanwhile, over in central London’s Trafalgar Square, the 15th commission for the Fourth Plinth, one of the city’s most important public showcases for contemporary art, has been unveiled before an expectant crowd.
Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is a structure that at first glance appears to repeat the rectangular structure of the plinth. On closer inspection, its surface is made up of plaster casts, echoing the Tzompantili, a wooden rack once used by Mesoamerican civilizations to display the skulls of sacrificial victims.
Teresa Margolles, Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) (2024) is the 15th Fourth Plinth commission in London’s Trafalgar Square. Photo: © James O Jenkins.
Each of the faces recorded by Margolles is that of a trans, non-binary, or gender non-conforming person, adding up to 726 participants in total. The work foregrounds the trans community at a time when their existence is often called into question, and is also a poignant tribute to the artist’s friend and collaborator Karla, a trans woman from Mexico who was murdered in 2015.
“We pay this tribute to her and to all the other people who were killed for reasons of hate,” said Margolles. “But, above all, to those who live on, to the new generations who will defend the power to freely choose to live with dignity.”
Echoing Üstek’s theme of ephemerality in sculpture, the work is expected to erode over time as it is exposed to London’s infamously wintry weather. In an age where many centuries-old monuments have been toppled by protestors, in most cases because they are not felt to represent the values of contemporary society, it appears that the artists and curators behind London Sculpture Week are excited by sculpture that reflects and exists only for the present moment.
Richard Wilson, A Slice of Reality installed at Greenwich Peninsula as part of The Line in London. Photo: Matt Cuzner.
Other events during the week include The Line, a free public art trail that weaves its way through east London from Greenwich Peninsula to East Bank, where three public art commissions include Michael Landy’s Meringue, a celebration of the region’s Cockney rhyming slang both old and new. Along the way, members of the public will spot pieces by artists like Tracey Emin and Yinka Illori.
Finally, art lovers are encouraged to check out the 13th edition of Sculpture in the City, which opened in July and runs through spring 2025. Ten sculptures by artists like Richard Mackness, Ida Ekblad, Julian Opie, and Samuel Ross are installed in and around the City of London.
London Sculpture Week runs from September 21–29 at locations across the city.  More

Just in time for the sweeping, Getty-organized PST Art initiative taking place this fall in Los Angeles, mega-gallery Hauser and Wirth is unveiling its own love letter to the city of angels with a show at its West Hollywood space inspired by a film classic and the passion of a top local collector.
It’s none other than the beloved 1991 film L.A. Story, written by and starring Steve Martin, which delves into the city’s familiar tropes and hallmarks: cerulean swimming pools and epic sunsets juxtaposed with the perils of earthquakes, endless traffic on sprawling freeways, and, of course, no shortage of pretentious, self-involved characters. And don’t forget the cutthroat competition for reservations at trendy if unimaginably condescending restaurants.
That scenario was the backdrop for the central character, Harris K. Telemacher, the so-called “Wacky Weatherman” who simultaneously searches for the meaning of life (or at least a deeper one) and pursues true love in a city that’s allegedly and notoriously devoid of culture.
Florian Maier-Aichen, Untitled (2023). © Florian Maier-Aichen. Courtesy of the artist and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York Photo: Justin Craun.
“I had the idea in my head for about a year,” said Mike Davis, senior director of the gallery, in an interview. “It would pop up in conversation with artists. It’s one of these cultural touchstones that would come up at dinner parties like, ‘Oh that scene in L.A. Story where there’s an earthquakes and no one blinks.’”
Installation view, “‘L.A. Story,” at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood.Image courtesy the artists and Hauser & WirthPhoto: Paul Salveson
Davis and Ingrid Schaffner, senior curatorial director, co-organized the show “in dialogue” with Martin, as per the gallery. The cross-generational lineup of artists includes Mark Bradford, Vija Celmins, Eric Fischl, David Hockney, Luchita Hurtado, Friedrich Kunath,  Florian Maier-Aichen, Hilary Pecis, Calida Rawles, Jennifer Rocklin, and Ed Ruscha.
Though Martin was unable to co-curate because of a busy schedule (Only Murders In the Building, anyone?), he has been “phenomenal the whole way,” said Davis.
Kevin Appel, Screen (ocean) (2011). © Kevin Appel. Image courtesy the artist and Hauser and Wirth. Photo: Brian Forrest.
“One of the reasons that we really wanted to get his point of view is because in the film he’s talking about L.A. as being culturally vacuous, but he’s an incredibly astute and sophisticated collector. He educates himself and is a repository of knowledge,” said Davis.
“He has been collecting since [the days when] it was not the art hub that it is today,” Davis added. “We wanted to get his opinion firsthand about how it has shifted.”
Davis started working in L.A. galleries around 2009. “It was right around the pivot point at which L.A. collectors started buying work by L.A. artists from L.A. galleries,” he said. “Prior to that, and Steve confirmed this, the L.A. collectors used to go to New York to buy L.A. artists from New York galleries. It was like they almost needed the New York stamp of approval. L.A. aspired to be this art hub but it wasn’t there yet. It started to become that, and has continued to where we’re at today.”
Friedrich Kunath, Storms Never Last (study) (2023). © Friedrich Kunath. Image courtesy Friedrich Kunath and Studio FK, Inc. Photo: Dawn Blackman.
The conversations among the three have clearly been fruitful. When Martin mentioned that he still had the original bound script with his annotations, said Schaffner, “We’re like ‘Oh, we want that!’” The script will be on view, opened to a particular page. “That’s how we’re going to bring in the moment in the film where Martin, as Harris Telemacher, is holding forth in front of an abstract red color field painting at LACMA and talking about a puppy and a woman’s blouse and it’s all these things that you can’t see in the picture.”
Appearing nearby will be Allen Ruppersberg’s self-published Greetings From LA (1972), which bills itself as a novel but is mostly blank pages.
It’s threads like this that Davis and Schaffner hope to use to counter the notion that L.A. has been devoid of culture throughout its history. “It’s like, ‘Hello, isn’t cinema and movie-making culture?” asks Schaffner. “In the ’60s and ’70s you had all these artists who were happily living adjacent to Hollywood and cinema and making works that are often quite cinematic in their own ways.”
Luchita Hurtado, Untitled (circa 1990). © The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Courtesy the Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser and Wirth. Photo: Keith Lubow.
The film opens with a giant hot dog floating across the sky above sunbathers and loungers at a party.  The exhibition opens with a related theme via paintings that feature quintessentially Californian backyard swimming pools by Hockney, Fischl and Rawles. (That hot dog, the historic prop for the famous Tail O’ the Pup hot dog stand, now located on Santa Monica Boulevard, will be the site of the post-opening reception.)
“We begin with pools,” said Davis. “It’s actually very exciting to see the Hockney in conversation with Calida Rawles. And then we move to highways, freeways, and landscape with the Ruscha and the Bradford, and then we come into the cultural space. Those great scenes in the movie that take place at LACMA, that’s where abstraction comes in.”
A piece by Hurtado, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 99, is part of a series centered on the Santa Monica airport. It’s meant to evoke one of the final scenes of the movie, where extreme inclement weather fortuitously grounds the plane on which Telemacher’s love interest is set to leave the country.
One of the “secret delights” that emerged during research for the show, said Schaffner, was when Martin revealed that the scene was inspired by a traditional Irish ballad in which a man wills the wind to rebuff the ship on which the love of his life has just departed.
While Martin has loaned three works to the show, it will also include a commissioned work from Richard Prince based on a Martin Instagram post showing an iconic scene in which Telemacher gazes up at a talking roadside sign that throughout the film offers him guidance on his love life.
Over the course of many conversations with Martin, as well as in doing their own due diligence, Davis says he and Schaffner also found that some figures who are known as New York artists who actually had their formative time in L.A. “Richard Prince made a number of his first ‘joke’ paintings one block from the gallery, in what was the old Regen Projects space,” said Davis.
Schaffner noted a late 1990s headline from art critic Christopher Knight at a time when he wrote that L.A. had not written its history yet and compared it with cities that had done so, such as Berlin. Said Schaffner: “We are coming on this moment of Pacific Standard Time. Well, L.A. has been writing its history. There is this whole new L.A. story, and that’s also one of the many narratives of our exhibition.”
“L.A. Story” opens at Hauser and Wirth in West Hollywood on September 12 and runs through January 4, 2025. More

An ‘Unprecedented’ Survey Spotlights Middle Eastern Filmmaking in Venice More

Anish Kapoor’s Massive Sculptures Take Over the U.K.’s Largest Cathedral More

Judy Chicago’s Feminist Revelations Alight in London’s Serpentine More