David Smith
Untitled, 1964
Enamel on canvas, 34 × 50 inches (86.4 × 127 cm)
David Smith
Untitled, 1964
Enamel on canvas, 32 ⅞ × 49 ⅞ inches (83.5 × 126.7 cm)
David Smith
Untitled, 1964
Enamel on canvas, 31 ¾ × 49 ⅞ inches (80.6 × 126.7 cm)
Opening Reception: September 14, 2000 6-8pm
These paintings have a radical freshness, breadth, and apparent spontaneity, due in part to the fact that Smith radically cropped them from unstretched canvas...As a group, the paintings convey a dynamic multitude of facial expressions and attitudinal types, ranging from the supine odalisque,...to the intellectual reader,...to the confrontational gladiator. They even seem to include the descriptive allusions to such popular types as the silver-screen vamp...the coy teenage temptress, post-Lolita...the bohemian earth mother, and the modern -day Amazon—a powerful woman on the phone.*
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of David Smith: The Last Nudes. The exhibition is a selection of paintings made in the winter of 1964, during the last months of Smith's life. Painted at his studio in Bolton Landing, upstate New York, they are being shown for the first time.
Beginning in the late twenties, and throughout his life, Smith used the figure as a touchstone from which drawings, paintings and sculpture drew resonant meaning. In the case of the Last Nudes, the starting point was photographs taken by Smith of models in everyday poses: standing in a hallway, reading a book, casually sitting in a chair, their nudity a disjunctive confrontation. As Candida Smith points out, "The mediation of the photographic technique created an abstracted space between artist and model."
The physical potency of the photographs was transformed by Smith through his dynamically gestural painting process into these formally powerful, sexually charged paintings. Due to their shocking anti-puritanical content, as well as the difficulty in integrating them with the heroically "pure" concept of "Abstract Expressionism," the Nudes have been censoriously omitted from most discussion of Smith's work. Ranging from lyrically rendered drawing to explosively gestural abstraction, these paintings exemplify Smith's refusal to allow for a delineation between painting and sculpture or between abstract and figurative work.
In conjunction with the memorial service for Brice Marden held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mirabelle and Melia Marden produced a short film directed by Chiara Clemente to honor the late artist. Featuring interviews, archival photographs, and family videos, this film captures Marden’s vibrant life and enduring cultural impact.
The Summer 2024 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail of Roy Lichtenstein’s Bauhaus Stairway Mural (1989) on the cover.
Join Gagosian for a conversation between director, producer, and writer Sophia Heriveaux and actor, director, and writer Roger Guenveur Smith inside the exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: Made on Market Street, at Gagosian, Beverly Hills. Heriveaux and Guenveur Smith both share a personal connection to Basquiat: Heriveaux is the artist’s niece and Guenveur Smith was one of his friends and collaborators. The pair discuss Basquiat’s work and legacy, as well as his lasting impact on contemporary art and culture.
Art for a Safe and Healthy California is a benefit exhibition and auction jointly presented by Jane Fonda, Gagosian, and Christie’s to support the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California. Here, Fonda speaks with Gagosian Quarterly’s Gillian Jakab about bridging culture and activism, the stakes and goals of the campaign, and the artworks featured in the exhibition.
Sébastien Delot is director of conservation and collections at the Musée national Picasso–Paris and the organizer of the first retrospective to focus on Anselm Kiefer’s use of photography, which was held at Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut (Musée LaM) in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France. He recently sat down with Gagosian director of photography Joshua Chuang to discuss the exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Punctum at Gagosian, New York. Their conversation touched on Kiefer’s exploration of photography’s materials, processes, and expressive potentials, and on the alchemy of his art.
The Olympic and Paralympic Games arrive in Paris on July 26. Ahead of this momentous occasion, Yasmin Meichtry, associate director at the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage, Lausanne, Switzerland, meets with Gagosian senior director Serena Cattaneo Adorno to discuss the Olympic Games’ long engagement with artists and culture, including the Olympic Museum, commissions, and the collaborative two-part exhibition, The Art of the Olympics, being staged this summer at Gagosian, Paris.
Join Brooke Holmes, professor of Classics at Princeton University, and Lissa McClure and Katarina Jerinic, executive director and collections curator, respectively, at the Woodman Family Foundation, as they discuss Francesca Woodman’s preoccupation with classical themes and archetypes, her exploration of the body as sculpture, and her engagement with allegory and metaphor in photography.
David Cronenberg’s film The Shrouds made its debut at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in France. Film writer Miriam Bale reports on the motifs and questions that make up this latest addition to the auteur’s singular body of work.
Ashley Overbeek speaks with three experts in the field of arts in medicine.
Join Vladimir Yavachev, director of operations for the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, as he discusses the genesis of the artist’s work Wrapped 1961 Volkswagen Beetle Saloon (1963–2014), which Gagosian presented at Art Basel Unlimited 2024.
In conjunction with Marks and Whispers, at Gagosian, Rome, Oscar Murillo and Alessandro Rabottini sit down to discuss the artist’s paintings and works on paper in the exhibition, as well as how the show emphasizes the formal, political, and social dimensions of the color red in Murillo’s work of the last decade.
On the occasion of Art Basel 2024, creative agency Villa Nomad joins forces with Ghetto Gastro, the Bronx-born culinary collective by Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker, to stage the interdisciplinary pop-up BRONX BODEGA Basel. The initiative brings together food, art, design, and a series of live events at the Novartis Campus, Basel, during the course of the fair. Here, Jon Gray from Ghetto Gastro and Sarah Quan from Villa Nomad tell the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier about the project.
