On View

Although the sculptor and installation artist Anu Põder has had an outsize influence on the contemporary art scene in her native Estonia, she remains relatively little known beyond its borders. All the while, some of the country’s hottest young talents, including Kris Lemsalu and Edith Karlson—the latter will represent Estonia at this year’s 60th Venice Biennale—have cited her highly experimental work as a major influence on their own practices. Now, a decade after her death in 2013, Põder’s work has finally arrived on the international stage.
Her first survey show outside of Estonia is at Muzeum Susch in Switzerland until June 30; over 40 works spanning from the late 1970s to the 2000s have been brought together by Cecilia Alemani. The star curator behind The Milk of Dreams, the main exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale, discovered the Estonian sculptor during her research. Her concept for the 2022 exhibition “revolved around ideas of metamorphosis and transformation, and how the human body is impacted by the machine and by the introduction of new technologies.”
It is for this reason that Põder’s dolls, mannequins, and busts particularly caught Alemani’s eye. She saw them as “cyborgian constructions that brought together past and future, merging “poor” materials like burlap and wood with very futuristic ones, like pink plastic sheets used for medical purposes and epoxy [resins].” Highly resourceful, Põder was known for making use of materials that were cheap and readily available; these soft materials are particularly effective for the exploration of psychological and corporeal experiences.
Born in 1947, Põder grew up under the Soviet regime, which started after World War II and ended with Estonia’s liberation in 1991. Her highly avant-garde experiments with material went against the grain of the local art scene and she stayed on the fringes of the global contemporary art world. Compared to other artists of her generation, Põder faced unique challenges as a single mother of three and she worked in relative isolation.
“They are sensual, erotic works and at the same time violent,” according to Alemani. “They depict fragmented, amputated female torsos intersected with amorphous appendages. The body becomes a site of experimentation limbs are twisted, postures are never straight, bodies are embracing and interlocking, and hard materials meet crumbling elements.”
“Anu Põder: Space for My Body” is remains on view at Muzeum Susch until June 30, 2024. Check out more works from the show below. 
Installation view of “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder, Lickers (1994) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder, Study for a Self-Portrait (late 1970s) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder, Composition with Hanging Hands and Light Stuffed Figure (both 1992) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder’s Pattern as Sign. Coats (1996) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder’s Pattern as Sign. Fur Coats (1996) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder, Space for My Body (1995) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder, Lectern (2007) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.
Anu Põder’s Rolled-up Figure and Spring ’92 (both 1992) in “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at the Muzeum Susch. Photo: Federico Sette, courtesy of Muzeum Susch Art Stations Foundation.

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Cuteness is not a quality that often gets much air time in the rarified halls of an art museum. Its commercial appeal may have exploded in recent decades, flooding shop shelves and social media feeds with items or images deemed “cute,” but still it’s a descriptor that carries some hard to shake associations. As we continue to re-evaluate the art and entertainment that has been historically dismissed as superficial or unsophisticated, perhaps its time for us to reconsider “cute?”
“CUTE,” a new exhibition at London’s Somerset House places contemporary art by Wong Ping, Ram Han, and Juliana Huxtable side-by-side widely-circulated pop cultural ephemera to tell the story of the rise of “cute,” delving into some of the reasons we find it strangely irresistible.
Hello Kitty installation in the “CUTE” exhibition at Somerset House in London. Photo: David Parry PA for Somerset House.
At times, the show has the air of a Comic Con, with some visitors enthusiastic enough to come dressed up in their own interpretation of “cute.” A section on the ground floor dedicated to the mammoth cultural impact of Hello Kitty, who is celebrating her 50th birthday this year, contains a Hello Kitty Disco where visitors can get down, and an Instagram-ready wall blooming with stuffed toys. Display cases filled with collectibles speak to the Hello Kittification of everyday items. Most will be familiar to anyone who has left the house in the past five decades, but there are also the less obvious—duct tape, flavored water, and Heinz pasta shapes.
“I already have pretty much half of these,” one woman wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt gushed out loud when I visited. “I have the toaster, but not the TV.”
Louis Wain, Ginger Cat (1931). Photo ourtesy of Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Elsewhere we are reminded that, while it may seem like cuteness entered the cultural conversation around the same time that cat photos could be uploaded online, humans have long had a soft spot for bug-eyed, furry pets. A charming series of photographs by Harry Pointer, in which cats appear to have tea parties or ride tricycles, were a huge hit back in the 1880s. Edwardians of the early 1900s couldn’t get enough of the adorably mischievous cats imagined by illustrator Louis Wain.
In Japan, meanwhile, enthusiasm for “kawaii” was slowly building thanks to the work of artists like Yumeji Takehisa, Junichi Nakahara, and Katsuji Matsumoto. The style was adopted by many young people as a means to subvert traditional societal expectations. In the 1980s, this craze went global and the show demonstrates kawaii’s influence on Western pop culture most effectively through the medium of music videos ranging from Jun Togawa’s Suki Suki Daisuki (1985) to Björk’s Possibly Maybe (1995).
Katsudi Matsumoto, ‘Kawaii Kurumi-chan’ transfer stickers from 1943. Photo courtesy to Yayoi Museum.
Upstairs, we are exposed to “cute”‘s sharper edges. One display reminds the visitor that what seems “cute” might be a performance of vulnerability, but to what end? Figurines whose droopy eyes brim with tears are shown next to tour posters promoting the rapper Yung Lean’s Sad Boy music collective.
Elsewhere, cuteness is shown to be a convenient facade beneath which darker realities may lurk. Archival objects include cheerfully anthropomorphized oil droplets being used to advertise the oil and gas corporation Esso and happy emojis adorning a bag of pills. In American artist Mike Kelley’s Aah… Youth! (1990) photo series, a child’s cuddly toys look sorrowful and even vaguely sinister despite their permanently stitched-on smiles.
Sugar coated pill display in the “CUTE” exhibition at Somerset House in London. Photo: David Parry PA for Somerset House.
Cuteness is an aesthetic that amplifies, and Somerset House’s galleries have been transformed into a fantasy world full of friendly creatures. Many of the cultural reference points were originally targeted towards children but, much like last summer’s Barbie movie, are now re-presented for the pleasure of adults. Sets of Sylvanian Families and Neopets may promise nostalgic comfort, but there is no real attempt to unpack why so many grown ups in 2024 feel tempted to self-infantalize. Will that be the secret to this show’s success?
“CUTE” is on at Somerset House in London through April 14, 2024. 

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You know it when you see it. An uncannily symmetrical vista with a vintage phone booth or a stylized old building awash with pastel color. These are the images known as “accidentally Wes Anderson” for how closely they seem to align with the American director’s distinctive aesthetic.
Best known for films like The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Wes Anderson has long enjoyed creating imagined worlds with a uniform visual appeal and touch of eccentricity that sets them apart from our own, bleaker reality. The look is popular enough that an Instagram dedicated to sharing the rare moments when this look occurs unplanned has amassed 1.9 million followers. Satisfying to look at, these chance spots filled an entire New York Times bestselling book in 2020.
The latest product in the franchise is an exhibition in London, which opened in December. It promises “an adventurous journey around the world through photography,” allowing the visitor to travel to over 200 places scattered across the globe that contain something of Anderson’s magnetic mix of grandeur and whimsy.
Organized across seven themed rooms, the exhibition lets us in on the backstory of these unusual locations, proving that sometimes truth is just as strange as fiction. The journey starts with a trip back in time to a pre-technological London when communication centered around the local post office. Other quintessential Anderson motifs to be explored include seascapes, detailed architectural facades, mysterious doors and retro modes of transport.
The exhibition is organized by Fever, an entertainment company known for hosting a series of immersive art exhibitions including the blockbuster “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience,” which first opened in 2018.
“Accidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition” is showing at 81-85 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 until February 17, 2024. Check out more images from the show below. 
Ascensor aa Bica in Lisbon. Photo: Jack Spicer Adams.
Barbican laundrette. Photo: @coinop_london.
Installation view of “Acidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition” in London. Photo: Dan Ross.
Casino Mont Blanc. Photo: Ramon Portellii.
Eastern Columbia Building. Photo: Elizabeth Daniels.
Installation view of “Acidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition” in London. Photo: Dan Ross.
Japanese railway. Photo: Accidentally Wes Anderson.
Kaeson Station, Pyongyang Metro. Photo: Dave Kulesza.
Installation view of “Acidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition” in London. Photo: Dan Ross.
Tokyo Taxi. Photo: Accidentally Wes Anderson.
Washington State Ferries. Photo: Cole Whitworth.

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This blockbuster show has finally arrived to London several years later than planned. It was first pushed back by the pandemic but, after the #BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020, its curators scrambled to ensure that Philip Guston’s unsettling hooded caricatures of the Ku Klux Klan were handled with due sensitivity.
Driving around town in groups with blank expressions and comically large cigars, these characters are rendered both ridiculous and, crucially, commonplace; just normal people taking part in everyday activities. The images are unambiguously critical of racism in the U.S., so the decision to postpone the show was dogged by controversy. One of its curators, Mark Godfrey, labelled the move “patronizing” on Instagram and was swiftly suspended from Tate Modern before taking voluntary redundancy in 2021.
Now that the show is finally installed, our attention can shift back onto the art itself. What really stands out across some 100 works, is the considerable breadth of Guston’s practice. Born in 1913, the artist spent his 20s and 30s responding to European influences and borrowed from the Old Masters and then-contemporary Surrealists with equal gusto. By the early 1950s, he was swept up in New York’s passion for Abstract Expressionism. These impressive canvases establish his pink-infused palette, but they are most notable for how they allowed Guston—always a figurative painter at heart—to entirely reinvent his style from scratch, starting with simple, monochromatic line drawings.
Only in the final suite of galleries do the painterly cartoons, replete with repeated motifs such as cigars, shoes, ladders, beds, and hands, finally emerge. Though they would push him into relative obscurity, these strangely unique canvases grew in size and ambition and are filled with clues about Guston’s own experiences and outlook. Born to Jewish parents who fled persecution in present-day Ukraine, Guston changed his name from Goldstein in 1935, amid rising antisemitism, and by the latter decades of his life was overcome with fears about latent evil in society. By humanizing its perpetrators, he hoped to turn the lens back on the establishment, everyday people, and himself.
“Philip Guston” is at Tate Modern, London until February 25, 2024. Check out more images from the exhibition below.
Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
Philip Guston, Bombardment (1937). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.
Philip Guston, Passage (1957-58). Photo: Will Michels, © MFAH.
Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.
Philip Guston, Couple in Bed (1977). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.
Installation view of Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern in 2023. Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
Philip Guston, The Line (1978). Photo: © The Estate of Philip Guston.

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In 1970, 24-year-old Pacita Abad left her home in the Philippines, fleeing political persecution after leading a student protest against the Marcos regime. She was planning to study law in Spain. Instead, she wound up in San Francisco, an intended one-day visit with an aunt changing the course of her life.
In the years that followed, Abad became a talented artist. She developed a vibrant and luminous style that was entirely her own. Her signature trapunto paintings were richly colorful and embellished quilted canvases inspired by textile traditions from around the world. Until her premature death from lung cancer in 2004, Abad worked prolifically, creating some 5,000 works over a 32-year period.
Now, roughly 40 of those pieces, which engage with issues of race, immigration, and feminism, are finally getting their moment in the sun. Abad’s long-overdue first career retrospective, organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
“The exuberance of her work is one of the first things that people notice. They see the colors, the patterns, and how wild so much of the work is. It’s the exact opposite of Minimalism,” Nancy Lim, SFMOMA’s associate curator of painting and sculpture, said in a video interview. “The material and visual seductions of her work are undeniable.”
Pacita Abad, If My Friends Could See Me Now (1991). Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Peggy Guggenheim. Photo by Don Ross, courtesy of the artist’s estate.
The exhibition, which will travel to MoMA PS1 in New York and Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario next year, is poised to be a well-deserved breakthrough moment for Abad. Despite an extensive exhibition history, the artist remains a fairly obscure figure in 20th century art history. (Her auction record, set in June 2022, is just ₱9,344,000, or $176,063, according to the Artnet Price Database.)
Personally, I had seen a handful of the artist’s work at art fairs, courtesy of New York’s Tina Kim Gallery, but still found the show to be a revelation when I encountered it at the Walker over the summer.
Each room was painted a different vibrant color, in keeping with the way the artist and her second husband, Jack Garrity (who now manages her estate), decorated their homes around the world. Starting with a year-long trip across Asia in 1973, the two spent time in some 60 countries thanks to his career as a World Bank economist.
Pacita Abad, European Mask (1990). Collection of the Tate Modern, London, purchased with funds provided by the Asia Pacific Acquisitions Committee 2019. Photo by At Maculangan/Pioneer Studios, courtesy of the artist’s Estate and Tate Modern.
The works, many of them monumental, invite close examination with their profusion of different materials. Despite little formal art training, Abad effortlessly mixed oil and acrylic paints with a wide variety of adornments, from plastic buttons, beads, and rhinestones to cowrie shells, fringe, and mirrors, working on padded canvas.
“Pacita immersed herself in artisan communities wherever she was traveling, studying material culture wherever she went,” Lim said. “It was through textiles that she learned about abstraction, about color, about patterning, about all of these things that she ended up incorporating into her aesthetic sensibility.”
Her influences included Burmese and Indian embroidery, Indonesian batik, Nigerian tie-dye, and Korean ink brush painting, as well as indigenous mask traditions from across the globe.
Portrait of Pacita Abad at work in her Manila studio in 1984. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate.
But her itineracy also prevented her from establishing roots in any one community, which helps in part to explain her relative obscurity. (And that’s to say nothing of the racism and sexism Abad faced in dismissals of her work as ethnic, feminine, or decorative—all too common for a woman embracing traditions of craft.)
“She was kind of everywhere and nowhere at once,” Lim said. But when exhibition curator Victoria Sung, now the senior curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, first approached SFMOMA about the traveling show, the museum jumped at the chance to put Abad in the spotlight.
“Pacita’s creative origins are in San Francisco. Her family has often described San Francisco as her spiritual and artistic home, because this is where she first got the idea to become an artist,” Lim said.
It was a brief first marriage to local artist George Kleiman that introduced Abad to the city’s artistic milieu. And the city’s activist movements, such as the Black Power Movement, expanded Abad’s political awareness. (Her parents were both politicians, and their many children were actively involved in their campaigns.)
Pacita Abad, My fear of night diving (1985). Collection of the Lopez Museum and Library, Manila, Philippines. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate and Lopez Museum and Library.
Abad’s later work would respond to such world events as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the Haitian refugee crisis, and Mexican migrants’ detention at the U.S. border. Other pieces appear less obviously tied to politics, like her “Underwater Wilderness” series featuring gorgeous aquatic scenes of coral reefs, which contains references to Spain’s colonization of the Philippines. This range complicated the reception of Abad’s work.
“People would not understand why some works would seem very political, and then suddenly she appeared to be making a left turn to create other bodies of work that are apolitical,” Lim said. “Pacita was a slightly mysterious and confusing figure for a lot of people.”
Nearly 20 years after her death, however, the artist’s appeal is now instantly apparent in Abad’s must-see retrospective. As she put it herself, when asked in 1991 to summarize her contribution to American art, “Color! I have given it color!”
See more from the show below.
“Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
“Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
“Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
“Pacita Abad” at SFMOMA. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA.
“Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
“Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
“Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
“Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
“Pacita Abad” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo by Eric Mueller, courtesy of the Walker Art Center.
Pacita Abad, (1998). Collection of the collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2022. Photo by Max McClure, courtesy of the artist’s estate and Spike Island, Bristol.
Pacita Abad, 100 Years of Freedom: Batanesto Jolo (1998). Photo by Chunkyo In, courtesy of the artist’s estate.
Pacita Abad, Marcos and His Cronies (1985–95). Collection of the Singapore Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate and the Singapore Art Museum.
Pacita Abad, Flight to Freedom (1980). Collection of the National Gallery Singapore. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate and the National Gallery Singapore.
Pacita Abad, Spring Is Coming (2001). Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate.
Pacita Abad, Anilao at its Best (1986). Photo by At Maculangan/Pioneer Studios, courtesy of the artist’s estate and MCAD Manila.
“Pacita Abad” was on view at the Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis, Minneapolis, April 15–September 3, 2023; and is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, California, October 21, 2023–January 28, 2024. It will travel to MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Queens, New York, April 4–September 2, 2024; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 12, 2024–January 19, 2025.
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The Scandinavian artistic duo Elmgreen & Dragset are back with another playfully conceptual sculptural installation, this time converting Prague’s Kunsthalle into a public library with a few surprise twists.
The celebration of books pays tribute to the Czech capital’s illustrious literary past, while also drawing attention to the contemporary communal structures that allow us to access these works but are too often threatened by funding cuts and digitization. Always subverting the viewer’s expectations, the surreal installation contains everyday facilities that don’t quite work, like one disintegrating staircase that leads to an unknowable room marked “Filozofie” (Philosophy).
Within this uncannily familiar yet dysfunctional setting, the pair have revived a long-running, international performance series known as the “Diaries.” Taking place every Wednesday and weekend throughout the show’s run, Prague Diaries (2023) sees five young men sit at a long table and fill their journals with private musings as museum visitors mill around, free to satisfy their curiosity by sneaking a peek over the diarist’s shoulder.
“We approached this exhibition by asking ourselves: ‘What happens to libraries and the printed matter within them if digital technologies were to make them obsolete?’,” said Elmgreen & Dragset in a statement. “In the process, we have investigated how artists historically have reimagined and reworked the idea of what a book can be.”
To do this, the pair selected works from the Kunsthalle’s collection to feature throughout the installation, whether tucked into a book shelf, stuck to the wall, or nestled among the stacks. These include Giorgio de Chirico’s Forbidden Toys (1916), a painting that abstracts books into anonymous geometrical shapes, and other historical works by artists like Kurt Schwitters and Endre Nemes. Contemporary sculptural pieces that explore the formal qualities of the physical tome in an increasingly online era are provided by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, Spanish performance artist Dora Garcia and the collective Slavs and Tartars.
The Kunsthalle Praha is a new art space in Prague and Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” runs through April 22, 2024. Check out more images of the exhibition below.
Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
Giorgo de Chirico, Les jouets défendus (Forbidden Toys (1916). Photo courtesy of Kunsthalle Praha.
Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, The Guardian (2023) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
Elmgreen & Dragset, Prague Diareis (2023), a performance as part of “READ” at Kunsthalle Prague. Photo: © Jan Malý.
Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, Fruit of Knowledge (2011) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
Slavs and Tatars, Kitab Kebab (Lviv and Wrocław) (2021). Photo: Alicja Kielan, courtesy of Slavs and Tatars.
Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset, Other Lovers (2018) in “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
Endre Nemes, Melancholy (1941). Photo courtesy of Kunsthalle Praha.
Installation view of Elmgreen & Dragset’s “READ” exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha. Photo: Vojtěch Veškrna.
Elmgreen & Dragset, Fruit of Knowledge (2011). Photo by: Elmar Vestner, courtesy The Aegidius Collection.
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Earlier this month saw the opening of “Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection” at Connecticut’s Bruce Museum. The exhibition shows rarely displayed works by the world-renowned artist, giving a unique insight into his early career starting from his student days at London’s Royal College of Art during the early 1960s.
The Bruce Museum’s tagline is “Where art meets science,” and its CEO and exclusive director Robert Wolterstorff sees Hockney’s practice as a fitting combination of the two: “Hockney is endlessly fascinated with how we see the world and represents it through marks on paper or canvas. That act of seeing, interpreting and creating is at the heart of both art and science.”
The exhibition, curated by Margarita Karasoulas, features 16 works loaned from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection. The couple built up a large collection of Hockney’s works in their Connecticut home over the course of several decades. Edith J. Simpson said “we never believed it was ours to keep forever, so it gives me great joy to share this special collection with the Bruce Museum and the greater community.”
A key work in the exhibition is A Grand Procession of Dignitaries in the Semi-Egyptian Style (1961) made when Hockney was 24. The painting was inspired by Constantine P. Cavafy’s 1898 poem Waiting for the Barbarians. Cavafy was one of the first modern authors to write openly about homosexuality, and his work was impactful for Hockney who was living as a gay man before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain in 1967. The artwork won Hockney the gold medal at the 1962 “Young Contemporaries” exhibition at London’s Royal Society of British Artists Galleries.
Hockney’s portfolio is vast and his inspiration has been taken from a multitude of places and styles. French Shop (1971) demonstrates the artist’s Pop Art inspirations, and Japanese House and Tree (1978) shows the influence of Fauvist Henri Matisse.
Some of Hockney’s best-beloved paintings include water: his painting A Bigger Splash (1967) is perhaps his best-known painting and its title was used for the 1973 biographical documentary about the artist’s life and breakup with he artist and author Peter Schlesinger. “Hockney/Origins” includes two pieces from Hockney’s “Paper Pools” series – Diving Board with Shadow (Paper Pool 15) (1978) and Swimming Underwater (Paper Pool 16) (1978), made before Hockney made his move from London to California. The works were inspired by his visits to the artist Kenneth Tyler’s New York swimming pool and they mark the beginning of a new medium in Hockney’s practice -paper pulp. 
The exhibition also includes portraits of friends and colleagues of Hockney’s, including Celia in Red and White Dress (1972) of his muse the textile designer Celia Birtwell. The pair first met in Los Angeles in 1964, and Birtwell sat for him several times over the course of 60 years. She was most famously depicted in Hockney’s 1970-1 painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, alongside her husband the fashion designer Ossie Clark. 
The Bruce Museum was originally the private home of the Reverand Dr Francis L. Hawks. It was deeded the to the Town of Greenwich by its next owner, the textile merchant Robert Moffat Bruce, in 1908 and its first exhibition was put on in 1912. Its collection now spans more than 30,000 objects and a new exhibition space was opened in April.
‘Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection’ is on view at the Bruce Museum. Check out more works from the show below.
David Hockney, Swimmer Underwater (Paper Pool 16) (1978). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
David Hockney, A Grand Procession of Dignitaries in the Semi-Egyptian Style (1961). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
David Hockney, Japanese House and Tree (1978). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
David Hockney, Celia in Red and White Dress (1972). © David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd.
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The buildings, billboards, and logos of Ed Ruscha’s 20th-century paintings don’t look like those that populate the world today. His were the product of a sparser, still-developing American West, before roads and cities were choked with cars and people and seemingly every facade was covered in the promotional copy of an overcrowded corporate landscape. Just imagine, for instance, a gas station with displays advertising… gas. Not energy drinks and e-cigarettes and Kit Kats and scratch-offs; just gas. 
That’s exactly what’s depicted in Ruscha’s 1964 painting, Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half. It may seem quaint, but there’s something about this scene—and the artist’s subtle, perspective-shifting inclusion of a dime-store magazine floating in the upper right corner—that resonates in today’s ad-saturated America. In this painting, Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott recently wrote, “we get a perfect juxtaposition of two ideas: power and majesty occupying most of the space, then fiction and lies besmirching or staining it in the far upper-right-hand corner.” 
Ed Ruscha. Photo: Sten Rosenlund. Courtesy of MoMA.
Fittingly, Standard Station is the image that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has chosen to feature in the promotional materials for its major “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” show, organized in close collaboration with the now 86-year-old artist. With more than 200 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and books, it is the most comprehensive retrospective of his work ever staged.  
The magnitude of the moment has not been lost on critics, many of whom have reached for the kind of superlatives not often seen in reviews these days. “To call it the show of the season is something of an understatement,” wrote Jason Farago of the New York Times.  
Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.
Even the critics who identified weaknesses in the MoMA presentation—some found sections of it, particularly those filled with Ruscha’s later work, inconsistent—were undeterred in their awe of Ruscha and his broader achievements. “If ‘Now Then’ strikes the same notes a few too many times for so inventive an artist,” wrote Linda Yablonsky for the Art Newspaper, “ultimately there is very little in it not to like. Anyone can connect to a picture with no fixed meaning; like the dual-action exhibition title, every Ruscha is a two-way street.” 
Indeed, just about everyone seems to agree: the retrospective is a fitting swan song for a generationally important artist and it should not be missed. See more images from the show below. 

Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.
“ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” is on view now through January 13, 2024 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

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