Installation view
Artwork, left to right: © 2019 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © 2019 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © 2019 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Installation view
Artwork, left to right: © 2019 Robert Ryman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Mark Grotjahn; © Albert Oehlen
Installation view
Artwork, left to right: © Joe Bradley, © Mary Weatherford
Installation view
Artwork, left to right: © Theaster Gates, © Cy Twombly Foundation, © Joe Bradley
Installation view
Artwork, left to right: © 2019 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Joe Bradley
Jackson Pollock
Moon Vibrations, c. 1953–55
Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite, 43 × 34 inches (109.2 × 86.4 cm)
© 2019 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Helen Frankenthaler
With Blue, 1953
Oil on linen, 35 × 31 inches (88.9 × 78.7 cm)
© 2019 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Willem de Kooning
Untitled, 1948
Oil on masonite, 24 × 48 inches (61 × 121.9 cm)
© 2019 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Brice Marden
Study 2000, 2000
Oil on linen, 24 ¼ × 18 inches (61.6 × 45.7 cm)
© 2019 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Mary Weatherford
Ruby, Ruby, 2019
Flashe and neon on linen, 84 ½ × 58 inches (214.6 × 147.3 cm)
© Mary Weatherford
Joe Bradley
City at Dawn, 2019
Oil on canvas, 60 × 77 ¼ inches (152.4 × 196.2 cm)
© Joe Bradley
Cy Twombly
Untitled, 1957
Oil-based house paint, wax crayon, lead pencil, and pastel on paper, laid down on canvas, 19 1⁄2 × 27 1⁄2 inches (49.5 × 69.9 cm)
© Cy Twombly Foundation
Gagosian is pleased to announce the opening of Continuing Abstraction, a group exhibition to inaugurate the new gallery in Basel. The new space is located at Rheinsprung 1, and opens on the occasion of Art Basel 2019.
The exhibition explores the trajectory of abstraction in the United States and Europe from the immediate postwar period to the present, tracing artists’ diverse approaches to materiality and gesture—from the dripped and poured paint of Abstract Expressionism to the multireferential innovations at the forefront of painting today.
The earliest works included are by Willem de Kooning: January (1947–48) and Untitled (1948). These paintings serve as a fulcrum between the observation-based abstraction set in motion by Cubism and Expressionism and the nonobjectivity that characterized much of postwar American abstraction. In de Kooning’s paintings, biomorphic forms appear as fragments that transform into thick painterly strokes; while in Jackson Pollock’s Moon Vibrations (c. 1953–55), the figure disappears entirely, and the canvas becomes a record of an event—the act of painting itself. In Helen Frankenthaler’s With Blue from the same year, the events unfold more slowly, with areas of semitransparent paint soaked into the canvas over time; and in works by Cy Twombly and Robert Ryman from the late 1950s and early ’60s, gesture teeters between legibility and obfuscation, pattern and chaos. Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Capri 50.85) (2018) takes repetitive gesture to a new extreme, with its arcs of thick paint evoking sedimentary cross sections or horizonless landscapes.
For Mark Rothko and Brice Marden, the materiality of paint and the evocative nature of color are key, pulling the viewer into seemingly immeasurable voids. The meditative power of color in these works is countered by the measured seriality of Donald Judd’s aluminum wall sculptures and by the delicate and imperfect geometries of Agnes Martin’s untitled canvas completed around 1999, wherein carefully rendered graphite lines create horizontal bands of luminous, pale blue space. In Mary Weatherford’s Ruby, Ruby (2019), a red neon light casts an artificial glow across the canvas, combining the industrial coolness of Minimalism with the unique tactility of Flashe paint, applied in thin transparent layers.
From their respective fields, three international cultural figures—artist and designer Ronan Bouroullec, fashion visionary Michèle Lamy, and chef and restaurateur Enrique Olvera—reflect on Donald Judd’s work in furniture, the subject of recent exhibitions in South Korea and Japan.
A conversation between Theaster Gates and Jessica Bell Brown, with an introduction by Sydney Stutterheim.
Ahead of Persephone, an exhibition of new paintings by Mary Weatherford inside Hong Kong’s historic Pedder Building, the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier met with Weatherford and the architect Mark Lee to talk about their collaboration. Here, they discuss how custom architectural interventions—from mirrored columns to strategic light play—transform the gallery, evoking Persephone’s mythic journey through the underworld and back into the light of spring.
Avis Berman’s biography of Roy Lichtenstein, Becoming Roy Lichtenstein: The Path to Pop, will be published this fall by Abbeville Press, aligning with a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in October. For the Quarterly she has adapted part of her text to focus on the artist’s formative experiences in New York in the 1920s and ’30s.
In this video, musical ensemble Sō Percussion performs Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood” inside the exhibition Richard Serra: Running Arcs (For John Cage), 1992, at Gagosian, New York.
Albert Oehlen in conversation with Max Dax.
Karen Wong charts the journey of Alexander Calder’s Quatre lances (1964) from its intended site at the Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, to the Centennial Hall in Monaco, and now to its permanent home in a new single-artwork museum designed by Renzo Piano at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. Wong examines the sculpture’s interaction with architecture and environment as part of a larger story of the artist’s relationship with architects.
Celebrating the collector Laurent Asscher’s new art space in Venice, William Middleton underscores the richness of Asscher’s relationships with artists.
On the occasion of Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, curated by Cecilia Alemani and comprising paintings from 1944 through 1986 and two sculptures, the Quarterly revisits a conversation between Albert Oehlen and John Corbett from 2013. The pair reflect on de Kooning’s late work and its lasting influence on them.
The Spring 2025 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cy Twombly’s Paesaggio (1986) on the cover.
Jenny Saville reflects on Cy Twombly’s poetic engagement with the world, with time and tension, and with growth in this excerpt from her Marion Barthelme Lecture, presented at the Menil Collection, Houston, in 2024.
Writer and curator Olivia Anani met Theaster Gates in his exhibition Black Mystic at Gagosian, Le Bourget, to discuss the importance of translation and relocation, the ever-expanding horizons of his practice, and his use of tar.
Michael Ovitz, cofounder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), looks back to 1989, the year he and the architect I. M. Pei commissioned Roy Lichtenstein to create the Bauhaus Stairway Mural for the then new CAA Building in Los Angeles. Through the experience of working with Lichtenstein, Ovitz formed a meaningful friendship with the artist.
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.
In this video, Flavin Judd, the artist’s son and artistic director of Judd Foundation, discusses a historic large-scale work by his father from 1970, ahead of its presentation at Art Basel Unlimited 2024.
Alice Godwin and Alison McDonald explore the history of Roy Lichtenstein’s mural of 1989, contextualizing the work among the artist’s other mural projects and reaching back to its inspiration: the Bauhaus Stairway painting of 1932 by the German artist Oskar Schlemmer.
John Elderfield and Lauren Mahony of Gagosian speak with the National Gallery of Art’s Harry Cooper about the new and expanded version of Elderfield’s 1989 monograph on Helen Frankenthaler that Gagosian, in collaboration with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, will publish this summer. The conversation traces Elderfield’s long interest in Frankenthaler’s work—from his time as a young curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to the present—and reveals some of the new perspectives and discoveries awaiting readers.
The Summer 2024 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail of Roy Lichtenstein’s Bauhaus Stairway Mural (1989) on the cover.
Richard Armstrong, director emeritus of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, joins the Quarterly’s Alison McDonald to discuss his election to the board of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, as well as the changing priorities and strategies of museums, foundations, and curators. He reflects on his various roles within museums and recounts his first meeting with Frankenthaler.
In tandem with the 60th Biennale di Venezia, the city’s Gallerie dell’Accademia is featuring the exhibition Willem de Kooning and Italy, an in-depth examination of the artist’s time in Italy and of the influence of that experience on his work. On September 20 of last year, the curators of the exhibition, the American Gary Garrels and the Italian Mario Codognato, engaged in a lengthy conversation about the exhibition for a press conference at the museum. An edited transcript of that conversation is published below for the first time.
