Performance
Sounding Serra
Music in Conversation with Reverse Curve
Saturday, December 14, 2019, 8pm
Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York
Join Gagosian for a concert featuring new music inspired by Richard Serra’s Reverse Curve (2005/19) and other works that engage with questions of weight, timbre, volume, and form. Some of the compositions will test the acoustical properties of the sculpture within the room, while others will produce sound masses in the shadow of the sculpture, creating dialogues between sound and space. The range of musical strategies will illustrate a historical path from the 1970s through the present day. Musicians Lea Bertucci, Miguel Frasconi, Joan La Barbara, Chris McIntyre, Chris Nappi, and Danny Tunick are all major players in the world of experimental music and collaborate in addition to their solo projects. As well as their own compositions they will perform a 1973 piece by Michael Byron. The event has reached capacity.
Richard Serra, Reverse Curve, 2005/19 © 2019 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Cristiano Mascaro
Events
Book Launch
Picasso and Maya
Father and Daughter
November 29–December 19, 2019
Gagosian, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris
Gagosian and Diana Widmaier-Picasso are presenting a small exhibition to celebrate the publication of Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter. This comprehensive reference publication explores the figure of Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Pablo Picasso’s beloved eldest daughter, throughout Picasso’s work and chronicles the loving relationship between the artist and his daughter. On view will be a painting by Picasso, photographs of work by Picasso taken by Roe Ethridge, and a selection of the original archival materials featured in the book.
Download the full press release in English (pdf) or French (pdf)
Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter (New York: Gagosian, 2019)
Book Signing
Jonas Wood
Thursday, December 12, 2019, 6–8pm
Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles
www.moca.org
Jonas Wood will be signing copies of his new self-titled monograph, published by Phaidon. This monograph—the first on the artist’s work—brings together his most significant paintings and drawings and reveals the vast array of his sources. The book includes contributions by curators Helen Molesworth and Ian Alteveer, as well as a conversation between Wood and Mark Grotjahn. The event is free and open to the public.
Jonas Wood (New York: Phaidon, 2019)
In Conversation
Theaster Gates, Grace Wales Bonner, and Michael Ralph
Thursday, December 12, 2019, 4:30–6:30pm
Museum of Liverpool, England
www.tate.org.uk
On the occasion of Theaster Gates: Amalgam, opening on December 13 at Tate Liverpool, England, the artist will speak with fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner and Michael Ralph, associate professor and director of Africana studies at New York University. The trio will discuss how Gates’s art transforms places and aims to improve the lives of the people who live there. The artist will also share his thoughts about his ongoing artistic endeavors on questions of land ownership, displacement, and interracial relationships. The event has reached capacity.
Theaster Gates with his work So Bitter, This Curse of Darkness (2019) in the exhibition Theaster Gates: Amalgam at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2019. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: © Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Tour
Urs Fischer
Leo
Wednesday, December 11, 2019, 6:30pm
Gagosian, Paris
Journalist and curator Judith Benhamou-Huet will lead a tour of the exhibition Urs Fischer: Leo at Gagosian, Paris. In Fischer’s work, the processes of material creation and destruction are often explored through the use of impermanent materials. Fischer’s candle sculptures, which he began to make in the early 2000s, exemplify this relationship. The artist’s newest candle portrait, Leo (George & Irmelin) (2019), depicts Leonardo DiCaprio with his parents, George DiCaprio and Irmelin Indenbirken. As with all of Fischer’s candle sculptures, Leo (George & Irmelin) will melt slowly over the course of the exhibition, its original composition transmuted into a form dictated by the wayward laws of physics. To attend the free event, RSVP to paristours@gagosian.com. Space is limited.
Installation view, Urs Fischer: Leo, Gagosian, Paris, October 14–December 20, 2019. Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
In Conversation
John Currin
Brett Littman
Tuesday, December 10, 2019, 6:30–7:30pm
New York Studio School
nyss.org
John Currin will be in conversation with Brett Littman, director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York. The pair will discuss Currin’s practice as well as his exhibition, Life as a Man, on view at Dallas Contemporary through December 22. The event is free and open to the public.
John Currin, Untitled, 1995 © John Currin
Artist Talk
Reflections on Artistic License
Richard Prince
Tuesday, December 17, 2019, 6:30pm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
www.guggenheim.org
In this series of conversations, the six artist-curators of Artistic License, currently on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York through January 12, are invited to reflect on their interpretations of the museum’s collection and the themes that informed their curatorial selections. Richard Prince’s presentation investigates the uncannily coherent formal qualities of the museum’s international holdings of abstract painting and sculpture from the 1940s and ’50s, and ultimately questions how taste is formed. To attend the event, purchase tickets at www.guggenheim.org.
Georges Mathieu, Untitled, 1959, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Announcements
Honor
Tatiana Trouvé
2019 Rosa Schapire Kunstpreis
Tatiana Trouvé will receive the 2019 Rosa Schapire Kunstpreis in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday, December 6, for her contribution to the arts. Administered by the Freunde der Hamburger Kunsthalle, the prize is named after Rosa Schapire (1874–1954), the Polish-born art historian who lived in Hamburg and England and was one of the first supporters of Die Brücke. Trouvé was selected by Alexia Fabre, chief curator at Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France, who was chosen to bestow the award for 2019.
Photo: Claire Dorn
Podcast
Recording Artists
Radical Women
This new podcast, produced by the Getty, explores the lives and work of six women artists spanning multiple generations. Hosted by curator Helen Molesworth, the podcast draws on rare audio interviews from the 1960s and ’70s from the archives of the Getty Research Institute and includes an episode on Helen Frankenthaler and another on Eva Hesse, including commentary by Mary Weatherford.
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York, on extended loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC © 2019 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Video
Sterling Ruby and Sam Orlofsky
Frieze London 2019 Online Viewing Room
Sterling Ruby sits down in his studio with Gagosian director Sam Orlofsky to discuss the Online Viewing Room collaboration on the occasion of Frieze London 2019, as well as his influences and the history of his work. Highlighting Ruby’s multidisciplinary approach to art making, this online event features seven artworks from pivotal moments in his trajectory, alongside a range of art historical influences that have shaped his practice over time.
To subscribe for updates about Online Viewing Room presentations, visit gagosianviewingroom.com.
Still of Sterling Ruby in conversation with Sam Orlofsky
Honor
Georg Baselitz
Académie des Beaux-Arts Foreign Associate Member
Georg Baselitz has been elected a foreign associate member of the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts, one of five institutions comprising the Institut de France. Baselitz joins ten other foreign members, taking the seat previously held by the late Polish film director Andrzej Wajda.
Dedicated to the fine arts, the Académie des Beaux-Arts encourages artistic creation and ensures the defense of France’s cultural heritage by awarding prizes to both emerging and recognized artists, organizing competitions, funding artist residencies, and granting aid to artistic projects, events, and associations. As an advisory body to the French public authorities, it is organized around the notion of multidisciplinarity, bringing together members within eight different artistic sections, foreign associate members, and corresponding members.
Georg Baselitz, Ammersee, Germany, 2018. Photo: Martin Müller
Honor
Rudolf Stingel
Rudolf Stingel will be honored at the 2019 Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art Benefit and Auction on Sunday, November 10, in New York, for his contribution to the arts. The event helps the Swiss Institute to fund forward-thinking and experimental art making through innovative exhibitions, education, and programs. Stingel has also donated a work to the auction.
Rudolf Stingel in front of his painting Untitled (2010) at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2019. Artwork © Rudolf Stingel. Photo: Matthias Willi
Video
Nancy Rubins
Installation at Ruby City
Watch as Nancy Rubins’s 5,000 lbs. of Sonny’s Airplane Parts, Linda’s Place, and 550 lbs. of Tire-Wire (1997) gets installed at Ruby City, a contemporary art center in San Antonio, Texas, opening October 13, 2019. Designed by Adjaye Associates in collaboration with Alamo Architects, Ruby City will provide a space for the city’s thriving creative community to experience works by both local and internationally acclaimed artists.
Nancy Rubins’s 5,000 lbs. of Sonny’s Airplane Parts, Linda’s Place, and 550 lbs. of Tire-Wire (1997) being installed at Ruby City in San Antonio, Texas, 2019
Museum Exhibitions
Opening Today
Walter De Maria in
By repetition, you start noticing details in the landscape
December 13, 2019–January 19, 2020
Le Commun–Bâtiment d’art contemporain, Geneva
mmmmm.ch
This exhibition, organized by MMMMM, explores the numerous interconnections between visual arts, minimalist composition, and 1960s experiments in the San Francisco Bay Area by looking at the intersections among nature, technology, and community. Work by Walter De Maria is included.
Walter De Maria, Instrument for La Monte Young, 1965–66 © Estate of Walter De Maria
Opening Today
Theaster Gates
Amalgam
December 13, 2019–May 3, 2020
Tate Liverpool, England
www.tate.org.uk
In Amalgam Theaster Gates explores social histories of migration and interracial relations by focusing on a specific episode in the American narrative—a situation of black subjugation and the imperial domination and racial mixing that resulted from it. The artist’s interest in this phenomenon has given rise to new sculptural, architectural, filmic, and musical perspectives in his oeuvre as he critically examines the history of land ownership and race relations in the northeastern United States. This show has traveled from the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Installation view, Theaster Gates: Amalgam, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, February 20–May 12, 2019. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Chris Strong
Opening this Week
Gregory Crewdson in
Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs
December 17, 2019–March 8, 2020
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
www.getty.edu
Commemorating the thirty-fifth anniversary of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of photographs, this exhibition reveals the breadth and depth of the Getty’s acquisitions through an array of its hidden treasures, none of which have been exhibited at the museum before. Spanning the history of the medium from its early years to the present day, Unseen highlights visual associations between photographs from different times and places to encourage fresh discoveries and underscore a sense of continuity and change within the history of the medium. Work by Gregory Crewdson is included.
Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 2006 © Gregory Crewdson
Closing this Week
Tetsuya Ishida
Self-Portrait of Other
Through December 14, 2019
Wrightwood659, Chicago
wrightwood659.org
In a span of just ten years, Tetsuya Ishida (1973–2005) produced a formidable body of work centered on human isolation and alienation in a world dominated by uncontrollable forces. The exhibition features works that evoke the uncertainty and desolation of a Japanese society drastically altered by the technological advances and successive crises that have affected economies and politics all over the world. This exhibition originated at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid as Autorretrato de otro.
Tetsuya Ishida, Awakening, 1998 © Estate of Tetsuya Ishida
Closing this Week
Luogo e segni
Through December 15, 2019
Punta della Dogana, Venice
www.palazzograssi.it
Luogo e segni, which translates to Place and Signs, takes its title from a painting by Carol Rama that is included in the exhibition. The show brings together more than one hundred works by thirty artists that establish a particular relationship with their respective urban, social, political, historical, and intellectual settings. Work by Rudolf Stingel and Tatiana Trouvé is included.
Tatiana Trouvé, The Guardian, 2018, Pinault Collection © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn
Closing this Week
Shape of Light
Defining Photographs from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Through December 15, 2019
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, New York
fllac.vassar.edu
Shape of Light presents a survey of Vassar’s collection of close to 4,500 photographs. The exhibition features numerous innovations in the history of photography including various types of photographic practices from daguerreotypes and gelatin silver prints to large-scale Polaroids and digital color prints as well as a wide range of styles and geographic focuses. Work by Sally Mann, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol is included.
Closing this Week
Shared Space
A New Era, Photographs from the Bank of America Collection
Through December 15, 2019
Art Museum, University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, Connecticut
www.usj.edu
This exhibition explores a changing social landscape captured in photography and video created over the span of nearly twenty-five years. Eighteen artists from nine countries explore how the physical spaces in which we interact—from city streets to rural landscapes—have evolved alongside our access to a virtual “global village.” Work by Gregory Crewdson and Andreas Gursky is included.
Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 1998–2002 © Gregory Crewdson
Just Opened
William Forsythe in
Water
Through April 26, 2020
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
www.qagoma.qld.gov.au
Water invites visitors to explore the vital element, which sustains all forms of life on earth. From immersive experiences to smaller-scale treasures, the exhibition highlights the importance of water and aims to spark conversations about the environmental and social challenges we face today. Work by William Forsythe is included.
William Forsythe, The Fact of Matter, 2009 © William Forsythe. Photo: Liza Voll
On View
John Currin
My Life as a Man
Through December 22, 2019
Dallas Contemporary
www.dallascontemporary.org
Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, My Life as a Man focuses exclusively on John Currin’s depictions of his own gender, examining provocative depictions of a range of masculine identities over the course of his career. Beginning with works made in 1990, the exhibition aims to critically analyze Currin’s male gaze when it is trained on the identity politics of manhood. The show also features more than fifty works on paper and sketchbook drawings of male figures that have never been publicly exhibited.
John Currin, Fishermen, 2002 © John Currin
On View
Anselm Kiefer à La Tourette
Through December 22, 2019
Couvent de La Tourette, Éveux, France
www.couventdelatourette.fr
In 1966 Anselm Kiefer spent a few weeks at La Tourette, the monastery designed by Le Corbusier, where he was inspired by the materiality of the architecture. This exhibition aims to place Kiefer’s work in dialogue with this special place and includes installations, paintings, sculptures, and vitrines with the artist’s books.
Installation view, Anselm Kiefer à La Tourette, Couvent de La Tourette, Éveux, France, September 24–December 22, 2019. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Jean-Philipe Simard
On View
Helen Frankenthaler in
Color Fields: 1960s Bennington Modernism
Through December 30, 2019
Bennington Museum, Vermont
benningtonmuseum.org
During the 1960s, Bennington College served as a rural epicenter for a group of artists who were pushing the possibilities of abstraction in pared-down, color-based works that have come to be known collectively as Color Field painting. This exhibition looks at this critical moment when these artists led the way in American art, and expands our understanding of the variety of formal, material, and conceptual approaches that artists took to painting and related color-based sculpture. Work by Helen Frankenthaler is included.
On View
Sally Mann in
Forever Young: Representations of Childhood and Adolescence
Through December 31, 2019
Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island
newportartmuseum.org
Forever Young examines portrayals of childhood and youth from the eighteenth century to the present. The exhibition aims to explore the representation of children and childhood as symbolizing innocence, transition, growth, awakening, mortality, youth, education, and freedom or abandon. Work by Sally Mann is included.
Sally Mann, Tara and Tree Shadow, 1983–85 © Sally Mann