Video
Jeff Wall
An Impossible Photograph
Art21 interviews Jeff Wall in his studio about notions of artifice and truth in photography. He describes what drew him to the subject of his 2014 photograph Changing room, discussing the impossibility of the viewpoint depicted.
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Artist Spotlight
Jeff Wall
November 18–24, 2020
From his pioneering use of backlit color transparencies in the 1970s to his intricately staged scenes of enigmatic incidents from daily life, literature, and film, Jeff Wall has expanded the definition of the photograph, both as object and as illusion. His pictures range from classical reportage and the direct contemplation of natural forms to elaborate constructions and montages, usually produced at a large scale traditionally identified with painting.
Photo: Andrew Querner
Online Reading
Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall is available for online reading from November 18 through November 24, 2020, as part of Artist Spotlight: Jeff Wall. From his pioneering use in the 1970s of backlit color transparencies to his intricately constructed scenes of enigmatic incidents from daily life, literature, and film, Jeff Wall has expanded the definition of the photograph, both as object and illusion. Published on the occasion of his 2019 exhibition at Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York, the catalogue includes an illuminating new essay by Russell Ferguson, along with full-page reproductions of the nine works in the exhibition, all of which were made over the last ten years, and several of which have never previously been exhibited or published. The two cover options illustrate alternate panels from a diptych, Pair of interiors (2018).
Jeff Wall (New York: Gagosian, 2019)
Tour
Jeff Wall
Thursday, June 27, 2019, 6:30pm
Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York
Artist James Welling and film director and writer Jane Weinstock will lead an exhibition tour of Jeff Wall, currently on view at Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York. Welling and Weinstock will offer their unique perspectives on various photographs, with time for questions at the end. The pair recently wrote an essay for the exhibition catalogue accompanying Jeff Wall’s show currently on view at the George Economou Collection, Athens. The event has reached capacity. To join the wait list, contact nytours@gagosian.com.
Jeff Wall, Summer Afternoons, 2013 © Jeff Wall
Francesca Woodman
Ahead of the first exhibition of Francesca Woodman’s photographs at Gagosian, director Putri Tan speaks with historian and curator Corey Keller about new insights into the artist’s work. The two unravel themes of the body, space, architecture, and ambiguity.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2024
The Spring 2024 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available with a fresh cover design featuring Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Lead Plate with Hole (1984).
Simon Hantaï: Azzurro
Join curator Anne Baldassari as she discusses the exhibition Simon Hantaï:Azzurro, Gagosian, Rome, and the significance of blue in the artist’s practice. The show forms part of a triptych with Gagosian’s two previous Hantaï exhibitions, LES NOIRS DU BLANC, LES BLANCS DU NOIR at Le Bourget in 2019–20, and Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc in New York, in 2022.
Sofia Coppola: Archive
MACK recently published Sofia Coppola: Archive 1999–2023, the first publication to chronicle Coppola’s entire body of work in cinema. Comprised of the filmmaker’s personal photographs, developmental materials, drafted and annotated scripts, collages, and unseen behind-the-scenes photography from all of her films, the monograph offers readers an intimate look into the process behind these films.
Prosperity’s Long Song #1: At Lights-Out Hour
We present the first installment of a four-part short story by Arinze Ifeakandu. Set at the Marian Boys’ Boarding School in Nigeria, “Prosperity’s Long Song” explores the country’s political upheavals through the lens of ancient mythologies and the mystical power of poetry.
Mount Fuji in Satyajit Ray’s Woodblock Art, Part II
In the first installment of this two-part feature, published in our Winter 2023 edition, novelist and critic Amit Chaudhuri traced the global impacts of woodblock printing. Here, in the second installment, he focuses on the films of Satyajit Ray, demonstrating the enduring influence of the woodblock print on the formal composition of these works.
Adaptability
Adam Dalva looks at recent films born from short stories by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and asks, What makes a great adaptation? He considers how the beloved surrealist’s prose particularly lends itself to cinematic interpretation.
Vladimir Kagan’s First Collection: An Interview with Chris Eitel
Chris Eitel, Vladimir Kagan’s protégé and the current director of design and production at Vladimir Kagan Design Group, invited the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier to the brand’s studio in New Jersey, where the two discussed the forthcoming release of the First Collection. The series, now available through holly hunt, reintroduces the first chair and table that Kagan ever designed—part of Eitel’s efforts to honor the furniture avant-gardist’s legacy while carrying the company into the future.
Game Changer: Alexey Brodovitch
Gerry Badger reflects on the persistent influence of the graphic designer and photographer Alexey Brodovitch, the subject of an upcoming exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.
Goetheanum: Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Art
Author and artist Ross Simonini reports on a recent trip to the world center of the anthroposophical movement, the Goetheanum in Switzerland, exploring the influence of the movement’s founder and building’s designer Rudolf Steiner on twentieth-century artists.
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Frida Escobedo
In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents select from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the first installment of 2024, we are honored to present the architect Frida Escobedo.
Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900–1955
Dance scholars Mark Franko and Ninotchka Bennahum join the Quarterly’s Gillian Jakab in a conversation about the exhibition Border Crossings at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Cocurated by Bennahum and Bruce Robertson, the show reexamines twentieth-century modern dance in the context of war, exile, and injustice. An accompanying catalogue, coedited by Bennahum and Rena Heinrich and published earlier this year, bridges the New York presentation with its West Coast counterpart at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara.