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Extended through June 27, 2020

Duino Elegies

March 5–June 27, 2020
980 Madison Avenue, New York

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Installation video

Installation view Artwork, left to right: Medardo Rosso; Paul Cezanne; Auguste Rodin, © Cy Twombly Foundation; © 2020 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: Medardo Rosso; Paul Cezanne; Auguste Rodin, © Cy Twombly Foundation; © 2020 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Anselm Kiefer; Medardo Rosso. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Anselm Kiefer; Medardo Rosso. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: Medardo Rosso; Paul Cezanne. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: Medardo Rosso; Paul Cezanne. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: Medardo Rosso, Paul Cezanne, Auguste Rodin, © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: Medardo Rosso, Paul Cezanne, Auguste Rodin, © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Cy Twombly Foundation; © 2020 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Cy Twombly Foundation; © 2020 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left and right: © Cy Twombly Foundation, middle: © Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti Paris + ADAGP), Paris 2020. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left and right: © Cy Twombly Foundation, middle: © Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti Paris + ADAGP), Paris 2020. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © 2020 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © 2020 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © 2020 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti Paris + ADAGP), Paris 2020; © 2020 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © 2020 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti Paris + ADAGP), Paris 2020; © 2020 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Cy Twombly, Duino, 1967 Oil-based house paint and wax crayon on canvas, 70 × 58 inches (177.8 × 147.3 cm)© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Cy Twombly, Duino, 1967

Oil-based house paint and wax crayon on canvas, 70 × 58 inches (177.8 × 147.3 cm)
© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Edmund de Waal, elegie, 2020 Kaolin, graphite, gold, oil stick, oak, and ash, in 2 parts, overall: 33 ⅛ × 46 ⅞ × 1 ¾ inches (84 × 119 × 4.5 cm)© Edmund de Waal. Photo: Mike Bruce

Edmund de Waal, elegie, 2020

Kaolin, graphite, gold, oil stick, oak, and ash, in 2 parts, overall: 33 ⅛ × 46 ⅞ × 1 ¾ inches (84 × 119 × 4.5 cm)
© Edmund de Waal. Photo: Mike Bruce

Medardo Rosso, Bambino Ebreo, c. 1920–25 Wax on plaster, 9 ⅜ × 7 ⅛ × 5 ¾ inches (23.7 × 17.9 × 14.4 cm)Photo: Rabatti & Domingie

Medardo Rosso, Bambino Ebreo, c. 1920–25

Wax on plaster, 9 ⅜ × 7 ⅛ × 5 ¾ inches (23.7 × 17.9 × 14.4 cm)
Photo: Rabatti & Domingie

About

For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. 

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Gagosian is pleased to present Duino Elegies, a group exhibition that traces the resonance of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry through artworks spanning the past 150 years.

In 1912, Rilke was invited to stay at Duino Castle—a fortress just north of Trieste, Italy—by the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis. There, while standing atop a cliff overlooking the Adriatic Sea, he claimed to hear the following line: “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?” Rilke eventually used these words to open the Duino Elegies, a 1923 collection of ten intensely religious metaphysical poems. Concerned with the interplay of suffering and beauty in human existence, the Elegies also project a hopeful vision of a more peaceful world.

Two decades earlier, Rilke had moved to Paris to write a monograph on Auguste Rodin, initiating a complex but lasting friendship between the two men. Rilke venerated the sculptor’s ability to translate poetic sentiments into figuration, as exemplified by Rodin’s large bronze La Muse tragique (1896). Originally conceived seven years prior for the Monument to Victor Hugo—in which the muse, perched above the French literary giant, whispers inspiration to him—La Muse tragique is presented here as a single figure, evoking a heightened pathos befitting its subject’s symbolic identity.

Read more

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1928. Photo: Lou Andreas-Salomé

Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies

Bobbie Sheng explores the symbiotic relationship between the poet and visual artists of his time and tracks the enduring influence of his poetry on artists working today.

Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes

to light, and then return—: A Night of Poetry with Edmund de Waal, Elisa Gonzalez, Terrance Hayes, and Sally Mann

Gagosian presented an evening of poetry inside to light, and then return—, an exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann, inspired by each other’s practices, at Gagosian, New York. In this video—taking the artists’ shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis as a point of departure—poets Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes read a selection of their recent works that resonate with the themes of elegy and historical reckoning in the show. The evening was moderated by Jonathan Galassi, chairman and executive editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

A graphite crayon on paper self portrait of Balthus from 1943

Between Shadow and Light

Scholar and researcher Yves Guignard, who is working on Balthus’s archives for a revision of the Balthus catalogue raisonné, examines the artist’s engagement with drawing, arguing for a more concerted attention to these works than scholarship has paid them.

Jerome Rothenberg in a chair

In Conversation
Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein

Gagosian and Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center hosted a conversation between poets Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein inside Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Rothenberg and Bernstein explored some of the themes that occupy Kiefer—Jewish mysticism, the poetry of Paul Celan, and the formulation of a global poetics in response to the Holocaust—in a discussion and readings of their poetry.

Axel Salto looking at the sculpture The Core of Power in the kiln, 1956

Axel Salto: Playing with Fire

On the occasion of the forthcoming exhibition Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, Edmund de Waal composed a series of reflections on the Danish ceramicist Axel Salto and his own practice.

Five white objects lined up on a white shelf

to light, and then return—Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann

This fall, artists and friends Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann will exhibit new works together in New York. Inspired by their shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis, the works included will form a dialogue between their respective practices. Here they meet to speak about the origins and developments of the project.