Playlist
Edmund de Waal
In the Studio
On the occasion of his Artist Spotlight, Edmund de Waal has created a playlist of music he listens to in his studio. Ranging in genre from contemporary classical to rock, electronic, and African folk, the selection features composers and musicians such as Philip Glass, Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, and Michael Kiwanuka. The twenty-three tracks are synthy, expansive, rhythmically hypnotic, or just generally dreamy—sharing a meditative quality with de Waal’s visual artwork.
#GagosianSpotify
Edmund de Waal’s studio, London, 2014. Artwork © Edmund de Waal. Photo: Hélène Binet
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Honor
Edmund de Waal
Isamu Noguchi Award 2023
Edmund de Waal has been selected to receive the Isamu Noguchi Award for his contribution as both a writer and artist. Established in 2014 and presented annually, the award perpetuates Noguchi’s legacy by acknowledging highly accomplished individuals who share his spirit of innovation, unbounded imagination, and uncompromising commitment to creativity. Honoring those whose work exhibits qualities of artistic excellence, the award also recognizes work that carries significant social consciousness and function. De Waal will receive the award during the annual benefit gala at the Noguchi Museum, New York, in September 2023.
Photo: Tom Jamieson
Reading and Book Signing
Edmund de Waal
Tuesday, December 13, 2022, 7pm
Burlington Arcade, London
Join Gagosian for an evening with Edmund de Waal in celebration of de Waal +, his takeover of the Gagosian Shop in Burlington Arcade. The artist will give a short reading and then sign copies of his books, which will be available to purchase at the event. Composer Simon Fisher Turner, de Waal’s friend and collaborator, will be signing a limited number of copies of A Quiet Corner in Time, the 2020 album that marked the first time de Waal worked closely with a musician.
Edmund de Waal. Photo: Tom Jamieson
Shop Takeover
Edmund de Waal
November 8–December 23, 2022
Gagosian Shop, London
Edmund de Waal is taking over the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade with de Waal +, which brings together recent artworks, treasured objects, and a selection of books curated by the artist.
“I’ve always wanted to take over a bookshop,” de Waal remarks. “I’ve filled it with books, of course. And music and photography, pamphlets recording projects created over the last decade, writing on artists I adore and poetry that sustains me, collaborations with dancers and composers, editions I have made for the British Art Medal Society and for the Victoria & Albert Museum. And I’ve added some pots that I have just made.”
In his interlinked sculptural, writing, and research practices, de Waal studies and utilizes objects as vehicles for human emotion and history. His installations of handmade porcelain vessels, often contained in minimalist structures, investigate themes of diaspora, memory, and materiality.
In addition to working across mediums, de Waal has also collaborated with museums, poets, performers, musicians, and other artists. Offering viewers a glimpse of his varied interests and inspirations, de Waal says, “I hope you come and find a corner to sit and read.”
Edmund de Waal, clogged only with music like the wheels of birds, I, 2022 © Edmund de Waal. Photo: Alzbeta Jaresova
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.