An American in Paris: Works from a Private Collection, Le Bourget, January 28–July 19, 2014

Installation Views

Installation view. Photo: Zarko Vijatovic — Installation view
Photo: Zarko Vijatovic

Thumbnail - Installation view. Photo: Zarko Vijatovic

Works Exhibited

Jeff Koonx, Balloon Swan (Red), 2004–11. Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, 138 × 119 × 94 inches (350.5 × 302.3 × 238.8 cm), 1 of 5 unique versions © Jeff Koons — Jeff Koonx
*Balloon Swan (Red)*, 2004–11
Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, 138 × 119 × 94 inches (350.5 × 302.3 × 238.8 cm), 1 of 5 unique versions
© Jeff Koons

About

Gagosian Paris is pleased to present An American in Paris: Works from a Private Collection.

From Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can (Black Bean) [Ferus Type] (1962) to Jeff Koons’s Hole III (of 2008), the exhibition presents a panorama of the avant-garde of the past half century. This selection from a bold and discerning American collection highlights pivotal, often large-scale works from six contemporary artists who have persistently engaged unexpected subject matter through uncommon media. Richard Prince’s The Housewife and the Grocer (1988)—pink text on a matte gold background—is an archetypal work from his deadpan Joke series; the crusted surface of a black canvas by Damien Hirst is, upon closer scrutiny, revealed to consist of thousands of dead flies. Cy Twombly’s early graphite-on-canvas scrawl, Untitled (Lexington, Virginia) (1959), holds impulsive expression and formal restraint in perfect balance, while large-scale canvases from the late Bacchus series course with visceral red loops and drips. Warhol’s Mona Lisa Four Times (1978) points to the endless reproducibility of masterpieces, and a painting of over ten meters transforms a readymade camouflage pattern into Pop-abstraction. The exhibition also provides varied approaches to shared subject matter; for example, Twombly’s immense Rose painting provides a gestural counterpart to Warhol’s flat, affectless Flowers.

Some recent sculptures convey the technical, material, and philosophical diversity at play in three-dimensional form. Forgotten Love (2007), Hirst’s massive reimagining of a medicine cabinet, displays a multitude of jewel-like pills meticulously fabricated from resin, an imposing reminder of the increasing reliance on supplements. Urs Fischer’s reflections on mortality take the form of a giant candle—a lifelike figure made entirely of a wax mixture, fitted with wicks and lit. Expanding on his enduring fascination with childhood experiences and childlike consciousness, Koons’s Balloon Swan (Red) (2006) reconceives a child’s party favor as a mesmerizing monumental form. With its impressive scale, fluid lines, and immaculate, mirrorlike surface, the stainless-steel sculpture achieves a perfect tension between representation and abstraction. A sampling of seven artists’ outsize innovations in painting and sculpture since the Pop era, the works on view have been brought together by a patron’s preference for fierce originality.

Artists

Downloads

Contact

From the Quarterly

Urs Fischer: Wave

In this video, Urs Fischer elaborates on the creative process behind his public installation Wave, at Place Vendôme, Paris.

In Conversation
Christopher Makos and Jessica Beck

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.

Andy Warhol: Silver Screen

In this video, Jessica Beck, director at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, sits down to discuss the three early paintings by Andy Warhol from 1963 featured in the exhibition Andy Warhol: Silver Screen, at Gagosian in Paris.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

Truth Revealed: Damien Hirst and James Fox on Ashley Bickerton

In conversation with James Fox, Damien Hirst reflects on the artwork of his longtime friend.

Urs Fischer: Denominator

Urs Fischer sits down with his friend the author and artist Eric Sanders to address the perfect viewer, the effects of marketing, and the limits of human understanding.

Cy Twombly: Imperfect Paradise

Eleonora Di Erasmo, cocurator of Un/veiled: Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations, a program of concerts, video screenings, and works by Cy Twombly at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome, reflects on the resonances and networks of inspiration between the artist and music. The program was the result of an extensive three-year study, done at the behest of Nicola Del Roscio in the Rome and Gaeta offices of the Cy Twombly Foundation, intended to collect, document, and preserve compositions by musicians around the world who have been inspired by Twombly’s work, or to establish an artistic dialogue with them.

Cy Twombly: Making Past Present

In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced their plan for a survey of Cy Twombly’s artwork alongside selections from their permanent ancient Greek and Roman collection. The survey was postponed due to the lockdowns necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, but was revived in 2022 with a presentation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from August 2 through October 30. In 2023, the exhibition will arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The curator for the exhibition, Christine Kondoleon, and Kate Nesin, author of Cy Twombly’s Things (2014) and advisor for the show, speak with Gagosian director Mark Francis about the origin of the exhibition and the aesthetic and poetic resonances that give the show its title: Making Past Present.

Urs Fischer: Lovers

The exhibition Urs Fischer: Lovers at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, brings together works from international public and private collections as well as from the artist’s own archive, alongside new pieces made especially for the exhibition. To mark this momentous twenty-year survey, the artist sits down with the exhibition’s curator, Francesco Bonami, to discuss the installation.

Picture Books: Percival Everett and Brandon Taylor

The second installment of Picture Books, an imprint organized by Emma Cline and Gagosian, presents author Percival Everett’s novella Grand Canyon, Inc. alongside Untitled (Original Cowboy), a photograph by Richard Prince. In celebration of the publication, Everett met with author Brandon Taylor to discuss the novella, the role of history in the writing process, and the similarity in methodologies for science and literature.

Awol Erizku and Urs Fischer: To Make That Next Move

On the eve of Awol Erizku’s exhibition in New York, he and Urs Fischer discuss what it means to be an image maker, the beauty of blurring genres, the fetishization of authorship, and their shared love for Los Angeles.

Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor

Thierry Greub tracks the literary references in Cy Twombly’s epic painting of 1994.

Bourse de Commerce

William Middleton traces the development of the new institution, examining the collaboration between the collector François Pinault and the architect Tadao Ando in revitalizing the historic space. Middleton also speaks with artists Tatiana Trouvé and Albert Oehlen about Pinault’s passion as a collector, and with the Bouroullec brothers, who created design features for the interiors and exteriors of the museum.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2021

The Fall 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Damien Hirst’s Reclining Woman (2011) on its cover.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021

The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.

Twombly and the Poets

Anne Boyer, the inaugural winner of the Cy Twombly Award in Poetry, composes a poem in response to Twombly’s Aristaeus Mourning the Loss of His Bees (1973) and introduces a portfolio of the painter’s works accompanied by the poems that inspired them.

Augurs of Spring

As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Gerhard Richter’s Helen (1963) on its cover.

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Allen Midgette

Raymond Foye speaks with the actor who impersonated Andy Warhol during the great Warhol lecture hoax in the late 1960s. The two also discuss Midgette’s earlier film career in Italy and the difficulty of performing in a Warhol film.

Related Exhibitions

Theaster Gates
Black Mystic

April 13–June 29, 2024

Le Bourget