Installation
Simon Hantaï
Accrochage
April 5–May 28, 2022
Gagosian, rue de Ponthieu, Paris
Gagosian, Paris, is pleased to present a selection of paintings by Simon Hantaï (1922–2008). In anticipation of his forthcoming retrospective at Fondation Louis Vuitton, curated by Anne Baldassari and opening on May 18, 2022, these works will be installed on the ground floor of the gallery at 4 rue de Ponthieu.
The grouping, which is dominated by bold, vibrant colors evocative of spring blossoms, features several paintings made by Hantaï using variations on his iconic pliage (folding) technique. By crumpling and knotting the canvas before painting it uniformly and then spreading it out to reveal a pattern of alternations between pigment and ground, Hantaï arrived at a process that synthesized Surrealist automatism and the allover gestures of Abstract Expressionism. Here, several paintings from the Tabulas series (1972–76 and 1980–82), including large gridded compositions in yellow, blue, pink, and green, find him regulating the abstract shapes generated by the pliage process through a repeating pattern of folds and the use of single tints that also reflect his study of Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Theory of Colors (1810).
Gagosian announced the exclusive representation of Hantaï’s estate in 2019. LES NOIRS DU BLANC, LES BLANCS DU NOIR, the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery, featured black-and-white paintings and prints made between 1969 and 1997 and opened at Gagosian, Le Bourget, that October. This January, in the centenary year of the artist’s birth, the gallery presented a second solo exhibition, Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc, on both floors of the gallery at 980 Madison Avenue, New York. This exhibition was accompanied by a multipart publication, housed in a special box that contains a booklet with an essay and chronology by Anne Baldassari, individual cards devoted to each artwork, and a folded poster. Hantaï is also the subject of an essay by Baldassari in the Spring 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly.
#SimonHantai
Installation view, Simon Hantaï: Accrochage, Gagosian, rue de Ponthieu, Paris, April 5–May 28, 2022. Artwork © Archives Simon Hantaï/ADAGP, Paris
Related News
New Representation
Estate of Simon Hantaï
Gagosian is pleased to announce the representation of the Estate of Simon Hantaï. Born in Bia, Hungary, in 1922, Hantaï is best known for originating the technique of pliage (folding), in which a canvas is crumpled and knotted, uniformly painted over, and then spread out to reveal a matrix of abstract alternations between pigment and ground. Hantaï moved to Paris in 1948 and began creating pliage paintings in 1960, conceiving of the process as a marriage between Surrealist automatism and the allover gestures of Abstract Expressionism. The technique dominated the work he made during the rest of his career, re-emerging in diverse forms. To inaugurate Hantaï’s representation, LES NOIRS DU BLANC, LES BLANCS DU NOIR, an exhibition of black-and-white paintings and prints dating between 1969 and 1997, will be presented at Gagosian, Le Bourget.
Simon Hantaï in his studio, Meun, France, 1967. Artwork © Archives Simon Hantaï/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Édouard Boubat
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2024
March 27–30, 2024
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is participating in Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 with a selection of works by international contemporary artists. The works on view, which embrace a dizzying variety of subjects and approaches, see the participating artists identify fresh ways to disrupt established histories of abstraction and figuration, and instill sculptural and painterly representations of the natural world with complex cultural significance.
Sarah Sze, Turning and Turning, 2024 © Sarah Sze. Photo: Maris Hutchinson
Art Fair
Art Basel 2023
June 13–18, 2022, Hall 2, booth B15
Messe Basel
artbasel.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Art Basel 2023 with modern and contemporary works by gallery artists, as well as special entries in the Unlimited and Parcours sections of the fair.
Gagosian’s presentation in the main section of Art Basel represents the breadth and diversity of the gallery’s programming through work by artists including John Currin, Andreas Gursky, Simon Hantaï, Tetsuya Ishida, Jia Aili, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Rick Lowe, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Sarah Sze, Mary Weatherford, Anna Weyant, Rachel Whiteread, Stanley Whitney, and Jordan Wolfson, among others. Also featured are iconic works by Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol.
Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel 2023. Artwork, left to right: © John Currin; © Rudolf Stingel; © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © 2023 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Jonas Wood; © Anna Weyant; © Jenny Saville; © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
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.