Summer 2024 Issue

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire:
Luca Guadagnino

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 second installment of 2024, we are honored to present the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino.

Black and white image of Luca Guadagnino leaning against the wall

Luca Guadagnino. Photo: Giulio Ghirardi

Luca Guadagnino. Photo: Giulio Ghirardi

HUOWhat is your unrealized project?

LGThe one that makes me sigh the most, and that I will fight to accomplish, is always the one I’m working on currently: Will it get made? And also a kitchen garden.

Hans Ulrich ObristThe future is . . . ?

Luca GuadagninoNow. And it’s bleak.

HUOHow would you like to die?

LGIn a flash.

HUOWhat is your favorite color?

LGImperial yellow.

HUOAre there any quotes you live by?

LG“I am old and I cannot sleep,” by Alice Goodman, for the libretto of John Adams’s Nixon in China (1987).

HUOWhat is your plan for the coming years?

LGRetire and harvest.

Question added by Joy WilliamsIn what guise does your worst nightmare appear?

LGPast loved ones.

Black-and-white portrait of Luca Guadagnino

Luca Guadagnino was born in Palermo, Italy, on August 10, 1971, to a Sicilian father and an Algerian mother. He is a director, producer, screenwriter, architect, and designer. An Academy Award nominee in 2018 and winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice Film Festival in 2022, he lives in Milan. Photo: Giulio Ghirardi

Black-and-white portrait of Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine, London. He was previously the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show, World Soup (The Kitchen Show), in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Photo: Tyler Mitchell

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Alex Israel: Upside Down

Alex Israel: Upside Down

Ahead of Alex Israel’s exhibition of four new Fin sculptures at Gagosian, London, the artist spoke with Susan Casey, author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean (2010), about the ocean, surfing, and Los Angeles.

Derrick Adams: View Master

Derrick Adams: View Master

On April 16, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, opened the first midcareer survey of Derrick Adams’s multidisciplinary practice. Covering over twenty years of work, the exhibition, titled View Master, brings together the artist’s painting, sculpture, collage, performance, and video, as well as a vibrant new commission created for the museum’s façade. Ahead of the opening, Adams met with Tessa Bachi Haas, cocurator of the survey, to discuss his formative experiences with television, the impact of his work in arts education on his practice, and the importance of taking a more complex, more joyful, and more expansive approach to Black American life and culture.

A Tremendous Generosity: Jeff Koons on Marcel Duchamp

A Tremendous Generosity: Jeff Koons on Marcel Duchamp

Jeff Koons tells Alison McDonald about his appreciation for the pioneering artist and thinker Marcel Duchamp.

On Walter De Maria: Donna De Salvo and Lucy Raven

On Walter De Maria: Donna De Salvo and Lucy Raven

The Singular Experience at Gagosian’s Le Bourget gallery is the largest exhibition of Walter De Maria’s work in France in several decades. Organized by Donna De Salvo, senior adjunct curator at Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition marks the first time De Maria’s final sculpture, Truck Trilogy (2011–17), is being shown outside of the United States. Here, De Salvo speaks with artist Lucy Raven about her evolving kinship with De Maria and more.

Ed Ruscha and Erling Kagge: Silence, Slowness, Exploration

Ed Ruscha and Erling Kagge: Silence, Slowness, Exploration

Ed Ruscha sits down with the author and explorer Erling Kagge to discuss existence.

Ulla Johnson: About the Heart

Ulla Johnson: About the Heart

Following the debut of her Fall/Winter 2026 collection at Dia Chelsea, New York, Ulla Johnson met with Sarah Godfrey to discuss her recent collaborations with the Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner foundations, her upbringing in and dedication to New York City, and her nonhierarchical approach to collecting.

Peter Hujar & Paul Thek

The Art of Biography
Peter Hujar & Paul Thek

Andrew Durbin’s dual biography, The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, tracks the convergences and divergences in the lives of the two artists, from their first meeting in Coral Cables, Florida, in 1956 through their generative romantic and creative partnership in New York, Italy, Fire Island, and beyond. Ahead of the release, Durbin met with the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier to speak about the development of the project, the sublime noncompliance of these two artists, and the motifs of love, death, and rebirth that weave through the telling of their story.

Engaging with the Past: An Interview with Jenny Saville

Engaging with the Past: An Interview with Jenny Saville

On March 28, a major exhibition of Jenny Saville’s work opened at Ca’ Pesaro–Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna in Venice, bringing together nearly thirty paintings from the 1990s to the present. The exhibition is curated by Elisabetta Barisoni, head of the museums division at Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro, Museo Fortuny, and head of MUVE in Mestre. Saville’s monumental canvases are set in dialogue with the great Venetian artists of the past, creating a unique encounter between contemporary painting and the city’s artistic heritage. Here, the artist speaks with Stefania Ventra, professor with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, about her early trips to Venice, the radicality of Titian’s painting, and depicting emotional truth.

Fashion and Art: Daniel Roseberry

Fashion and Art: Daniel Roseberry

Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of Schiaparelli, met with the Quarterly’s Derek C. Blasberg at the maison’s historic headquarters at 21 place Vendôme, Paris, following the Schiaparelli Fall/Winter 2026–27 ready-to-wear show. Since taking the helm in 2019, Roseberry has been credited with advancing the heritage of the house through unpredictable sculptural designs that carry Elsa Schiaparelli’s Surrealist spirit into a new century. The pair discuss the much-anticipated exhibition Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, now on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, as well as Roseberry’s early exposures to art, his continued dedication to drawing, and the enduring legacy of Elsa Schiaparelli’s daring vision.

Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince

Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince

Helter Skelter—an exhibition at Fondazione Prada’s Venetian venue, Ca’ Corner della Regina—marks the first creative dialogue between two visionaries of American art, Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince. The show explores the grit, grift, violence, and ingenuity of American culture through more than fifty works, including photography, video, and large-scale installations that interrogate themes of race, gender, media, and politics. In the interview below, Nancy Spector, the exhibition’s curator, speaks about the shared motifs—from apocalyptic sunsets to a fascination with “monstrosity”—that led her to pair these artists for the first time.

Theaster Gates: Dave, All My Relations

Theaster Gates: Dave, All My Relations

A conversation between Theaster Gates and Jessica Bell Brown, with an introduction by Sydney Stutterheim.

An Eye on the Market: Trading Beauty

An Eye on the Market: Trading Beauty

Valentina Castellani speaks with the Quarterly’s Alison McDonald about her new book, Trading Beauty: Art Market Histories from the Altar to the Gallery. The illustrated survey traces the evolution of the Western art market from the medieval era to the present day.