Bollettino Fall 2025, Issue 5

A CASA CIPRIANI PUBLICATION

FALL 2025

ISSUE 05

ORAL REPRESENTATIONS CANNOT BE RELIED UPON AS CORRECTLY STATING THE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DEVELOPER. These materials are not intended to be an offer to sell, or solicitation to buy a unit in the condominium. Such an offering shall only be made pursuant to the prospectus (offering circular) for the condominium and no statements should be relied upon unless made in the prospectus or in the applicable purchase agreement. In no event shall any solicitation, offer or sale of a unit in the condominium be made in, or to residents of, any state or country in which such activity would be unlawful. Equal Housing Opportunity

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A glimpse of the garden at Locanda Cipriani.

Amid green geometries and suspended silences, the garden frames the Basilica of Torcello in a timeless dialogue between nature and history. (Artist conceptual rendering)

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ISSUE FIVE

A LETTER FROM TORCELLO when we bought the Locanda from my nephew Bonifacio, who had run it for several years since the death of my father in 1980, we had no idea how much time had taken its toll.

Our plans to renovate it were made without fully considering the age of the building, which was bought by my father in 1936 and opened, in its original form, in 1947.

In our family, the Locanda has always been thought of as a dream. There is no way to put into words the magical perfection of the water surrounding the oldest island in the Venetian lagoon and the spiritual feeling of the 5th-century cathedrals, which we believe were built by people who were also somehow imagining the future Locanda. This was my father’s feeling, and I assure you that we feel the same way.

The renovation, which we thought would take one year, will be completed by the end of this year. We have done a very good job, keeping in mind the charm of both the building and the island.

We decided to make the accommodations of the hotel nicer. Your stay will be more pleasant, because we believe that a stay at the Locanda should be unique and more comfortable. We used the long wing, previously dedicated to events, to build additional suites. We now have twelve magnificent suites facing a garden full of flowers and the two churches.

Torcello is the real Venice so we considered another change. The food will remain simple as always, but we will serve mostly traditional Venetian specialties, which are unfortunately becoming harder and harder to find. We will host only a minimum number of private events, and with fewer guests. If you decide to stay, you shouldn’t have to share the space with people who are there for a different purpose.

We shall be in operation just before the spring of 2026. I will be delighted to welcome you to Torcello.

Yours sincerely,

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arrigo cipriani

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Torcello, the solemnity of history in the silence of the “barene”, or salt marshes— and in the background, the island of Burano.

Photo: Riccardo Roiter Rigoni

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IN THIS ISSUE FALL 2025

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ISSUE 05

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein

A lifelong admirer of monsters, del Toro brings Shelley’s creation to life as a story of love, fear, and recognition. His Frankenstein is less about horror than about the fragile line between creator and creature, reminding us that the monster is always a mirror of ourselves.

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The Future, Rendered

Ayoung Kim, recipient of the 2025 LG Guggenheim

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Award, crafts immersive worlds that merge myth, science, and digital technology. Her work collapses boundaries

The Khao Yai Art Forest

between human and machine, past and future, offering a visionary lens on how art can illuminate the ethical and emotional dimensions of our technological age.

In Thailand’s Khao Yai region, a new open-air museum places contemporary art within a living forest. From Louise Bourgeois’s towering spider to Fujiko Nakaya’s drifting fog, the Art Forest invites visitors to experience art at the pace of nature—slow, contemplative, and inseparable from the land.

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Monet’s Last Great Journey

In 1908, Claude Monet reluctantly journeyed to Venice, where the city’s shifting light transformed his art. From palaces dissolving into water to skies mirrored in the lagoon, these luminous canvases became his final great works—an elegiac meditation on beauty, impermanence, and the enduring power of reflection.

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Opening Night on Broadway

Emilio Madrid’s photojournal chronicles the Broadway debut of Good Night, and Good Luck, starring George Clooney. From the red carpet arrivals and backstage anticipation to the Casa Cipriani afterparty where the cast celebrated glowing first reviews, the images capture the glamour, intimacy, and exhilaration of an unforgettable opening night.

E D I TO R I N C H I E F A N G E LO B I A N C H I

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E X E C U T I V E E D I TO R S T E FA N I A G I R O M B E L L I A R T A N D D E S I G N J U S T I N T H O M A S K AY

Vermeer’s Letters

A DV I S O RY H E N R I K J A N G U D M U N D S O N CO N T R I B U TO R E L I Z A B E T H D E E Cover Image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Detail from Venice, the Doge’s Palace, 1881.

Oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.596

Vermeer’s enigmatic interiors come into focus at the Frick through his depictions of women with letters—

Fall 2025 A Casa Cipriani Production Printed in New York City

moments where language becomes lifeline. Like today’s texts and messages, each word is mined for tone and implication, revealing how intimacy and meaning are carried in the smallest turns of phrase.

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Ayoung Kim, Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, 2022.

Color video with sound, 25 min. © Ayoung Kim

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The Future, Rendered AYO U N G K I M ’ S V I S I O N A R Y W O R L D S

there is a certain audacity in imagining the fu-

might reference the ritual geometries of ancient cosmol-

ture—not as a singular, sleek inevitability, but as a messy,

ogies, the aesthetics of Webtoon storytelling, or the lived

layered tangle of histories, emotions, and possibilities.

experience of service workers navigating algorithmic

This is the terrain where Ayoung Kim thrives. The Seoul-

control. She approaches her subjects like both anthro-

born artist, newly announced as the 2025 recipient of

pologist and filmmaker, conducting fieldwork and docu-

the LG Guggenheim Award, works at the shimmering

mentary research before reimagining them as sprawling,

intersection of art and technology, crafting immersive

speculative narratives. In these worlds, the granular and

universes that oscillate between the ancient and the

the cosmic coexist: quantum particles collide with myth;

speculative, the corporeal and the algorithmic.

refugee journeys unfold in parallel with the migration of

The award, now in its third year, is part of the

data across invisible networks.

LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative—a five-

This expansive method allows her to collapse

year program designed to research, honor, and promote

time and geography, to weave together the past’s sym-

artists whose practices engage directly with technologi-

bolic codes with visions of possible futures. The result

cal innovation. For Kim, it is both recognition and reso-

is work that feels not just technologically accomplished,

nance. “Neither a techno-determinist nor a techno-pes-

but emotionally and intellectually alert—a rare balance

simist,” she says, “I have always wanted to comment on

in an era when digital spectacle often overshadows

the impact of technology in our society by using it.”

depth. For Naomi Beckwith, Deputy Director and Chief

Kim’s work resists easy categorization. Trained

Curator at the Guggenheim, this capacity for reflection is

in motion graphics and lens-based media, she moves

central: “By revealing the convergence of machines and

fluidly between virtual reality, live simulation, perfor-

humanity, her visionary work illuminates the most press-

mance, sculpture, and printmaking. Her digital land-

ing challenges of our era.”

scapes—built from live action, motion capture, ani-

In its citation, the award jury described Kim’s

mation software, game engines, and image-generation

work as a “paradigm shift” in the way art can engage with

tools—are fantastical yet grounded in research. They

emerging technologies. By merging traditional cinemat-

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Ayoung Kim, Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse, 2024. Three-channel color video, two-channel sound, lighting installation, random video playback and lighting synchronization control program, sundial sculptures, graphic sheets, and circular screens, 27 min., 21 sec., dimensions vary with installation. © Ayoung Kim

Ayoung Kim, Delivery Dancer’s Arc: 0º Receiver, 2024. Three-channel color video with sound, 30min., 32 sec. © Ayoung Kim

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Ayoung Kim, Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, 2022.

Color video with sound, 25 min. © Ayoung Kim

ic tropes with new image-making techniques, she “rede-

we advance innovations with considerations to human

Kim’s speculative worlds invite viewers into spaces

fines the role of an artist as a connector between social

experiences and emotions.” That human element runs

where those divides can be bridged, at least imagina-

legacies, fostering new dialogues in art and technology.”

through Kim’s work, even at its most digitally intricate.

tively. They encourage a literacy not just in the tools

Kim’s interest lies less in technology as a novelty than

However advanced the tools, her pieces are never sim-

themselves, but in the ways they shape power, identity,

as a mirror—a way of making visible the structures, bi-

ply feats of software—they are invitations to see our-

and belonging.

ases, and aspirations embedded in the tools we create.

selves refracted in unfamiliar light.

As the award jury noted, her work “tran-

Her projects often highlight the ethical and emotional

While her practice is rooted in digital tools,

scends conventional representations, portraying hu-

dimensions of living under algorithmic governance, ask-

Kim’s career has unfolded across some of the world’s

manity as an evolving intersection of physicality and

ing viewers to consider not only how technology shapes

most influential cultural stages. Recent years have seen

data.” In doing so, it opens space for contemplation

their perceptions, but also how it might reconfigure their

her work presented at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo,

and discovery—a rare gift in a time when both art and

relationships to time, place, and each other.

ACMI in Melbourne, M+ in Hong Kong, and the Mu-

technology are often consumed in haste. The LG Gug-

Her visual language can be both intimate and

seum of Modern Art in New York. She has appeared at

genheim Award comes with an unrestricted $100,000

monumental. In one series, digital avatars navigate

biennials from Venice to Sharjah, winning accolades in-

honorarium, but perhaps more importantly, it signals

vast, otherworldly terrains—deserts that ripple like

cluding the Prix Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica Award

institutional recognition of the importance of artists

liquid metal, skies shot through with shifting constel-

and the ACC Future Prize. Her works are housed in

working in this hybrid space. It affirms that the ques-

lations of code. In another, the focus narrows to ges-

major collections—Tate in London, Leeum Museum of

tions Kim raises—about ethics, emotion, and the mul-

tures, conversations, and micro-expressions, revealing

Art in Seoul, National Museum of Art in Osaka—testa-

tiple realities we inhabit—are as central to our cultural

the texture of human life as it intersects with artificial

ment to the global relevance of her vision. A solo exhi-

discourse as they are to our technological future.

systems. The fascination with the “boundary between

bition at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof, offered European

For Kim, the task ahead is to continue prob-

humans and machines” is informed by a curiosity

audiences a new chance to step inside her layered, con-

ing that uncertain terrain. “As technology advances,

about physics and particle science, but also by a sto-

structed realities.

human life inevitably becomes more intricate,” she re-

ryteller’s instinct. She treats technology not as a cold,

If there is a unifying thread in Kim’s practice,

flects. “What artists can do with technology is explore

rational apparatus, but as a stage where emotions and

it is connection: between old and new media, between

the uncertain possibilities it may conceal and deploy

myths play out in new guises.

disparate cultural narratives, between the tactile and

it in the most intuitive way.” Her work suggests that

LG’s Head of Brand, Seol Park, framed it as

the virtual. Her art does not simply document a world

such exploration is not only possible, but necessary—

a shared sensibility: “Ayoung Kim’s work, in which

in flux—it proposes models for how to navigate it. This

that in imagining worlds beyond our own, we might

technology is both a subject matter and a medium,

connective impulse feels particularly urgent in an age

better understand the one we are already shaping, line

resonates with LG’s engagement with technology as

when technological change often deepens divides.

of code by line of code.

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Claude Monet. Palazzo Ducale, 1908.

Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of A. Augustus Healy, 20.634.

(Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

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Monet’s Last Great Journey V E N I C E , D I S S O LV E D I N L I G H T

in october 19 08, Claude Monet—reluctant trav-

2026) will reunite nineteen of those luminous Venetian

eler, master of light, and chronicler of cities—stood on

canvases for the first time in more than a century. More

the edge of the Venetian lagoon, staring at a city he had

than one hundred works—paintings, watercolors, etch-

once dismissed as “too beautiful to be painted.” Encour-

ings, rare books, postcards, and photographs—will trace

aged by his wife, Alice, who believed the journey might

not only Monet’s time in the lagoon but also his lifelong

revive him during a crucial moment in his career, Monet

fascination with water and reflection. It is the largest

had left the familiar gardens of Giverny for this improba-

Monet exhibition New York has seen in fifteen years and,

ble stage of canals, palaces, and shifting light. He arrived

crucially, the first to place his Venice within the broad-

a tourist, wary of clichés, but departed with a suite of

er arc of his career and in conversation with artists who

paintings that would become the last major works shown

found their own truths in the city’s shifting atmosphere:

in his lifetime—his own prismatic Venice.

Canaletto’s theatrical precision, Turner’s dissolving

The Brooklyn Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Monet and Venice (October 11, 2025–February 1,

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storms, Whistler’s tonal restraint, Sargent’s quicksilver watercolors, and Renoir’s luminous street scenes.

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Left: John Singer Sargent.

La Riva, ca. 1903–4. Opaque and translucent watercolor with graphite underdrawing.

Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by Special Subscription, 09.828.

(Photo: Brooklyn Museum) Below: John Singer Sargent.

Santa Maria della Salute, 1904. Translucent and opaque watercolor and graphite, with graphite underdrawing.

Brooklyn Museum, Purchased

by Special Subscription, 09.838.

(Photo: Brooklyn Museum) Right: Claude Monet. Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect, 1903. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Grace Underwood Barton, 68.48.1.

(Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

For Lisa Small, Senior Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition’s organizing principle lies in what Monet called the enveloppe—the unified skin of light, water, and air that merges solid forms into transient impressions. “In his Venice paintings, magnificent churches and mysterious palaces dissolve in the shimmering atmosphere like floating apparitions,” Small says. “They are less depictions than acts of immersion.”

The Museum’s own Palazzo Ducale—acquired in 1920 in a strikingly early recognition of the value of modern French art—anchors the show. It sits alongside canvases of San Giorgio Maggiore, Palazzo Dario, and other facades rendered not as architectural elevations but as spectrums of light, their contours wavering in re-

Monet’s Venice is largely empty of people. The human

to the same subjects at different hours, capturing how a

flection. Complementing Monet’s dissolving façades are

drama is implied, not enacted, as if the city itself is the

shadow softened, how the stone blushed in the last light,

John Singer Sargent’s Venetian watercolors, including

protagonist.

how the lagoon mirrored the sky until both were indistin-

La Riva (1903–4) and Santa Maria della Salute (1904),

Monet visited Venice only once. The trip was

where the American painter captured the flash of move-

brief—two months—but transformative. The city, already

Alice’s sudden death in 1911 prevented the cou-

ment and glimmer of water with a swiftness that mirrors

wrestling with pollution and overtourism in 1908, offered

Monet’s own fascination with evanescence. Unlike the

him both a challenge and a reprieve. He worked from a

ple’s planned return. In mourning, Monet retreated to his studio, where he completed the Venetian series. When

bustling markets and gondola-filled canals of Canaletto,

small number of vantage points, returning again and again

they were exhibited in Paris in 1912, they were met with

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“To paint Venice is to paint the air and the light; the city itself is only the pretext.” ­—Claude Monet

acclaim. They would be the last new works the artist al-

moorings, distant bells—and melodic fragments that

lowed to be shown before his death.

echo the rhythms of Monet’s brushwork. “I approached

The Brooklyn presentation situates these can-

the paintings as souvenirs,” Luther says, “memories in-

vases among earlier explorations of water—views of

fused with both beauty and melancholy… transforming

Normandy’s coast, the Thames in London, and the gar-

brushstrokes into living sound.”

dens of Giverny, including three water lily paintings on

Visitors will first encounter this soundscape

loan from the Musée Marmottan Monet, the Fine Arts

in the Museum’s fifth-floor rotunda, within an im-

Museums of San Francisco, and a private collection. To-

mersive installation by Brooklyn-based design studio

gether, they form a kind of visual autobiography in re-

Potion, featuring film by Joan Porcel. Here, projected

flections, charting Monet’s search for subjects in which

imagery and music re-create the enveloppe that so

the tangible and intangible coexist.

captivated Monet, preparing the eye and ear for the

A distinctive feature of Monet and Venice is

sequence of galleries that follow. In the final gallery,

its embrace of the multisensory. The Museum’s Com-

Luther’s full symphony plays alongside Monet’s most

poser in Residence, Niles Luther, has created an origi-

iconic Venetian works, creating a dialogue between

nal symphonic score inspired by the paintings. Luther’s

pigment and tone, sight and sound.

composition, blending Italian, French, and American

Historical ephemera deepen the narrative.

traditions, draws on field recordings made in Venice—

Guidebooks, postcards written by Alice to her daugh-

footsteps over stone bridges, the lap of water against

ter, and photographs—some on loan from Alice’s

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Claude Monet. Venice, Palazzo Dario, 1908. Oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.446.

(Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY)

great-grandson, Philippe Piguet—offer glimpses into

The show closes with an unexpected connec-

art to arrest both for a moment. Monet’s Venice may

the couple’s daily life in Venice, even marking their lodg-

tion: archival murals depicting the re-creation of Venice

be empty of gondoliers and passersby, but it is filled

ing on the Grand Canal. These artifacts remind us that

at Coney Island’s Dreamland amusement park. It is a

with the pulse of the city’s reflections—water meeting

the great works were born of ordinary moments: a letter

playful reminder that the idea of Venice—its romance,

stone, sky dissolving into tide. It is a city at once time-

posted, a walk taken, a view noted for its light.

its light, its improbable beauty—has traveled far be-

less and fleeting, held in the precise instant before it

yond the lagoon, finding new expressions and audiences

changes forever.

By juxtaposing Monet’s Venice with works by contemporaries and predecessors, the exhibition

across time and geography.

For Monet, that was the point. His trip to

underscores both his debt to and departure from tra-

Anne Pasternak, the Museum’s Shelby White

Venice, he later reflected, “had the advantage of making

dition. Turner and Whistler found poetry in atmo-

and Leon Levy Director, sees Monet and Venice as an

me see my canvases with a better eye.” He returned to

spheric dissolution, Sargent in the fluid immediacy of

invitation: “Through thoughtful interpretation and

Giverny renewed, his water lilies now carrying some

watercolor, Renoir in the bustle of life. Monet, howev-

design, we invite our audiences to see Venice through

trace of the lagoon’s chromatic shimmer. For the rest

er, distilled Venice into a meditation on endurance and

Monet’s eyes and feel inspired by his vision.”

of us, Monet and Venice offers the rare chance to stand

ephemerality. His façades stand yet seem on the verge

That vision, distilled in canvases painted

where he stood—in front of the palaces and canals as he

of disappearance, their permanence undone by the mu-

more than a century ago, still speaks to the fragility of

saw them—not as fixed monuments, but as living, dis-

table play of light.

beauty, the impermanence of light, and the capacity of

solving apparitions in the light.

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Claude Monet. The Palazzo Contarini, 1908. Oil on canvas.

Hasso Plattner Collection, Inv. MB-Mon-31

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Behind the Wonder AN INTERVIEW WITH MARCO BALICH, C H I E F C R E AT I V E O F F I C E R O F B A L I C H W O N D E R S T U D I O

Dolce&Gabbana Alta Moda Alta Gioielleria Alta Sartoria 2025 Roma

Few figures have shaped the global

bollettino: How do you ap-

language of spectacle quite like Marco

proach traditional events like Festival of

Balich. Over the past three decades,

Santa Rosalia in Palermo, while utiliz-

he has transformed stadiums, city-

ing new technology and innovations in

scapes, and historic sites into stages for

the field?

awe—whether through the grandeur

mb: When we work on cultural or

of Olympic Ceremonies, the poetry of

traditional events, our role begins with

cultural festivals, or the refinement of

deep respect—respect for history, for

luxury fashion shows. His work exists

the community, and for the emotional

at the intersection of storytelling and

legacy that the event represents. Cre-

emotion, where scale meets intimacy

ativity without knowledge risks be-

and tradition converges with innova-

coming superficial.

tion. To Balich, the role of the director is

It’s not about rewriting tra-

not merely to orchestrate events, but to choreograph collective

but also deep empathy: the ability to understand how

dition, but about illuminating it through a contemporary

memory—crafting moments that remain etched in the imag-

people perceive, react, and remember.

lens, allowing it to resonate with today’s audiences while

ination of millions.

In essence, we choreograph emotions. Every el-

honoring its original spirit. Our mission is to create a dia-

ement—music, lighting, movement—is designed to res-

logue between past and present, sacred and spectacular—

bollettino: How much does psychology come into

onate on multiple scales. The true magic happens when

always guided by meaning, never just by effect.

play when considering the designer must keep a massive live

everyone—at home and in the stadium—feels part of

bollettino: Your work blends emotion, aesthetics, and

in-person audience entertained throughout while also bal-

something greater than themselves.

storytelling, are there any films or directors that have influ-

ancing the needs of a television audience with its preference

bollettino: Let’s talk about major luxury and fash-

enced your work?

for small moments and intimate details?

ion events. You’ve created experiences for iconic brands like

mb: Absolutely. Cinema and visual arts have always had

marco balich: At the heart of our creative process

Bvlgari, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Buccellati.

a strong influence on our creative process—we pay close

lies the emotional journey of the audience, whether

What is part of the process of bringing a fashion house’s vision

attention to both.

they’re in a stadium with 80,000 people or watching

to life?

from home. Olympic Ceremonies have always been the

mb: The key ingredients are the ability to interpret a

Fiat 500 in 2007 on the river in Turin, the central scene

most-watched show in the world—transcending social

brand’s identity through the language of entertainment,

was inspired by a French film called Les Amants du Pont-

class, geography, and age—because they ignite a deep

and to move people through beauty and flawless execu-

Neuf. There’s a beautiful sequence with fireworks over

pride in one’s nation, while also evoking a profound

tion.

the river, which we reinterpreted by designing a 700-me-

sense of wonder for humanity and the highest values embodied by sport.

For example, when we staged the launch of the

It’s about crafting a memorable experience that

ter-long fireworks installation along the water.

emotionally engages the audience. Luxury and fashion

I’ve also drawn inspiration from directors like

Simplicity in storytelling and perfection in ev-

are not just about aesthetics or exclusivity—they convey

Wes Anderson—especially his costumes, which are al-

ery detail allow both the live and remote audience to feel

identity through emotion and experience. Today, brands

ways meticulously curated and full of character. That

a powerful sense of collective belonging. Balancing both

don’t just sell products; they direct emotions and em-

kind of visual precision has influenced several of the cer-

dimensions demands not only exceptional design skills,

body values on a global stage.

emonies we’ve created.

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Viva Vivaldi The four Seasons Immersive Concert,2025 Verona. Produced by Balich Wonder Studio and Fondazione Arena di Verona

Photo Copyright ©

by Lawrence Schiller, 1963

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Bulgari Polychroma High Art and High Jewelry 2025 Taormina

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400th Anniversary of Festino di Santa Rosalia 2024 Palermo

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Dolce&Gabbana Alta Moda Sardegna 2024

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Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, ca. 1670-72 Oil on canvas. 28 x 23 13/16 in. (71.1 x 60.5 cm) National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; presented by Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, 1987 (Beit Collection). Image © National Gallery of Ireland

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Vermeer’s Letters DECODING EMOTION ACROSS CENTURIES

vermeer’s paintings have always car-

suggestion of lips moving in silent reading. “Vermeer’s ge-

phone around, analyzing the choice between “hi” and

ried an air of secrecy. His interiors, bathed in light that

nius,” as one scholar notes, “is to suggest that meaning lies

“hey,” debating the significance of a period versus no

seems to pause time, invite us to look—and to wonder

as much in what is withheld as in what is revealed.”

punctuation at all. Every word is mined for tone and

what lies beyond the frame. We never quite know the

What these scenes capture is not the content of

subtext. Vermeer’s women seem to be engaged in the

full story; we only sense that it is there, just out of reach.

the letters themselves—we will never read them—but

same work, eyes scanning for clues, posture revealing a

In the Frick’s recent exhibition of letters depicted in Ver-

the weight they clearly hold for their recipients. Each

mind in motion.

meer’s work, that quiet enigma is refracted into some-

phrase, each turn of language, carries the potential to alter

The Frick’s rooms are hushed, but alive with

thing more tangible: a glimpse into the intimate act of

the course of a day, or a life. In the 17th century, letters

this unspoken drama. Here, intimacy is not performed

reading and writing, and into the inner life of someone

were lifelines, slow-moving vessels of emotion and in-

but inhabited, captured at the moment when the outside

deeply invested in every word and its implications.

formation. To receive one was to enter into an unspoken

world falls away and the only reality is the page in hand.

pact with the sender: to read closely, to interpret faithful-

Across centuries, we recognize the impulse: to lean into

ly, to answer in kind.

language, to find ourselves in it, and to wonder what the

The show gathered several of his most celebrated depictions of women with letters—works where narrative exists not in grand gestures but in the smallest cues: a

It is, in many ways, not so different from the

gaze fixed on a page, a hand resting mid-sentence, the faint

way we treat a direct message today. Friends will pass a

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writer truly meant. In Vermeer’s world, as in ours, the smallest turn of phrase can contain entire worlds.

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Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Mistress and Maid, ca. 1664-67 Oil on canvas. 351/2 x 31 in. (90.2 x 78.7 cm) The Frick Collection, New York Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr.

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Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). The Love Letter, ca. 1669-70 Oil on canvas. 17 5/16 x 15 3/16 in. (44 x 38.5 cm) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

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Draping Modernity

Christian Dior by John Galliano — Stourheadevening coat and dress set.

Paris, spring-summer 1998 haute couture collection. Made from hand-painted, quilted, gold-brocaded silk, antiqued and embossed silver lamé, silk chiffon embroidered with silver metallic threads and rhinestones © Les Arts Décoratifs / Christophe Dellière

F R O M CO R S E TS TO S P E C TA C L E , PA U L P O I R E T ’ S LEGACY LIES NOT JUST IN GOWNS BUT IN I M AG I N I N G FA S H I O N A S C U LT U R A L T H E A T E R .

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FRANCE - CIRCA 1925: Paul Poiret and his tailor, during a fitting, in October 1925. (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images/Roger Viollet via Getty Images)

poiret has always occupied an uneasy position in the history of fashion: a pioneer credited with liberating women from the tyranny of the corset, but also an impresario who staged their bodies within elaborate fantasies of the “Orient.” Hailed in his lifetime as the “King of Fashion,” he expanded couture into a kind of total art, blending dress with fragrance, interiors, and performance, yet his empire collapsed in less than two decades. To look back at his work is therefore to confront paradox. It is not only about the shimmer of silk and the daring of silhouette, but about a moment when modern fashion was being invented—conceptually as much as materially— and the contradictions that would continue to shape the industry. ➺

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Thérèse Bonney (1894-1978). Paul Poiret and model Renée in the salons of his couture house, 1 rond-point des Champs-Elysées. 1927. Gelatino silver bromide print by ARCP, [198.], from the negative. Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.

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L to R: Paul Poiret —Joséphine evening dress Paris, 1907. Silk satin, silk net and metallic braid embroidered in bourdon stitch © Les Arts Décoratifs /Christophe Dellière Paul Poiret —Mosaïque evening dress Paris, circa 1908. Green silk chiffon embroidered with silk thread and pearls, gold braid and mink fur © Les Arts Décoratifs /Christophe Dellière Paul Poiret —Evening dress Paris, 1910. Silk satin, silk chiffon embroidered with glass tubes and silk velvet © Les Arts Décoratifs /Christophe Dellière

The Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris has

sand and Second Night ball in 1911 dressed in a harem

Yet history is never still. The exuberance of

taken up this task with Paul Poiret: Fashion Is a Feast, a

costume, surrounded by tents and lanterns designed to

his silks and theatrically draped fabrics belonged to the

sweeping exhibition on view through January 11, 2026.

evoke Persia. For contemporaries, it was dazzling. For us,

optimism of the pre-war years. After 1918, the world

More than 500 objects—gowns, accessories, drawings,

it is revealing. The moment crystallizes both the progres-

demanded something different. Women sought prac-

perfumes, and decorative pieces—are gathered here to

sive rejection of restriction and the reliance on exoticist

ticality, speed, and autonomy, qualities embodied in

place Poiret within the full cultural and social matrix of

fantasy that would become his hallmark.

Chanel’s austere jersey suits. Poiret, once the symbol of

the early twentieth century. The show resists a nostalgic

Poiret understood himself less as a tailor than

avant-garde, suddenly appeared stranded in a vanished

celebration and instead offers a reframing: an exploration

as a conductor of worlds. He was among the first to grasp

era. His empire went bankrupt in 1929. By the time of his

of how his ideas of spectacle, branding, and atmosphere

that fashion could extend beyond the garment into every

death in 1944, he was largely forgotten—an astonishing

anticipate the immersive strategies of fashion today.

register of life. In 1911 he launched Parfums de Rosine,

descent for a man once seen as fashion’s sovereign.

At the heart of Poiret’s early innovation was a

named for his daughter, creating one of the earliest cou-

The brilliance of this exhibition lies in its ability

simple but radical gesture: to free women from corsetry.

turier perfumes and signaling that scent could function

to move past both the myth of his genius and the nar-

His chemise dresses, tunics, and so-called lampshade

as a brand extension. Soon after, he opened Ateliers de

rative of his failure, suggesting instead that his greatest

gowns allowed for unprecedented fluidity of movement,

Martine, a decorative arts studio where young women

legacy was conceptual. In its layering of garments with

shifting the silhouette from rigid sculpture to kinetic

designed furniture, textiles, and objects aligned with his

sketches, photography, and decorative works, the show

form. Liberation, however, was never presented plain-

aesthetic vision. What he offered was not simply cloth-

positions Poiret as a designer of atmospheres, one who

ly. Poiret staged it as theater. His wife Denise, often his

ing, but a universe—a total environment that anticipated

grasped the power of spectacle and understood fashion’s

muse and mannequin, famously appeared at the Thou-

what the modern fashion house would become.

potential as a cultural system. His insight—that clothing

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Georges Lepape —Les choses de Paul Poiret vues par Georges Lepape. Paris, Paul Poiret, 1911.

Copy no. 176/300. Stencil-colored phototype. © Les Arts Décoratifs

could be inseparable from image, environment, and de-

is always poised between freedom and control, fantasy

sire—feels strikingly contemporary.

and pragmatism, the fleeting and the permanent. Poiret

Walking through the exhibition is to encounter

grasped these tensions, even if he could not always master

the paradox of Poiret made physical. Rooms are staged

them. His downfall was not a failure of imagination but of

in saturated colors, echoing the theater of his soirées, but

adaptation; his genius lay in intuiting how fashion could

visitors are also invited to consider the cultural politics of

operate as a total cultural language.

what they are seeing. The Orientalist motifs that thrilled

In this sense, the exhibition feels less like a reha-

Belle Époque audiences reveal the uneven cultural ex-

bilitation than an echo. To see Poiret today is to recognize

changes through which Western modernity defined it-

how thoroughly his strategies—spectacle as marketing,

self. To admire the lavish embroidery is also to reflect on

lifestyle as brand, immersion as desire—have become

the structures of fantasy and appropriation that under-

part of fashion’s DNA. If his career ended in obscurity,

pinned it. The show is at once immersive and critical, a

his ideas endure, woven into the fabric of contemporary

double stance that mirrors the complexity of its subject.

design and its ceaseless pursuit of image and identity.

What lingers, after this gathering of more than

Fashion Is a Feast restores him not only as a couturier of

five hundred artifacts, is not nostalgia for a gilded age

brilliance, but as a thinker who staged life itself as theater,

but an awareness of fashion’s enduring contradictions. It

and in doing so, glimpsed what fashion could become.

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Fashion pictures Pantomime dancers in Persian style dresses designed by Paul Poiret (French fashion designer, *20.04.1879-28.04.1944+) - 1914 Photographer: Wilhelm Willlinger - Published by: ‘Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung’ 3/1914 Vintage property of ullstein bild (Photo by Wilhelm Willlinger/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

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Opening Night on Broadway E M I L I O M A D R I D ’ S P H O T O D I A R Y O F G O O D N I G H T, A N D G O O D L U C K ’ S D E B U T

On opening night of Good Night, and Good Luck on Broadway, Emilio Madrid’s lens caught the electricity of a moment steeped in both glamour and anticipation. The evening began on the red carpet, where George Clooney—making his Broadway debut—greeted a swell of photographers and well-wishers. Noted guests filtered through, their arrivals a steady rhythm of flashbulbs and warm embraces, the theatre’s entrance transformed into a small constellation of familiar faces.

Madrid’s backstage images pull the viewer past the velvet curtain, into the hum of pre-show preparations: quick conversations in the wings, last-minute adjustments to costumes, a quiet moment of focus before stepping into the light.

The curtain call came with a wave of applause that felt like release.

The night’s arc found its epilogue at Casa Cipriani, where the cast gathered to read the first reviews as they appeared—huddled over phones, grinning at each headline. The afterparty unfolded in that rare blend of relief and celebration, champagne glasses raised to a debut met with warmth and acclaim. Madrid’s photographs capture not only the event but the unguarded moments in between—an unfolding narrative of a production stepping confidently into the public eye.

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All photography courtesy of Emilio Madrid

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Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein T H E V I S I O N A RY D I R EC TO R’ S D R E A M P R OJ EC T CO M E S TO L I F E

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Sofia Galasso as a little girl and David Bradley as the blind man. “I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades me that you are sincere,” the man says in Shelley’s novel.

Ken Woroner/Netflix

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“Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be,” ­—Joseph Campbell

across cultures far and wide, “monsters” emerge from the same impulse: to give form to what is most ungovernable in ourselves. They are the fears we repress, the desires we can’t name, the griefs we are unable to contain. Guillermo del Toro has spent his career working within this amorphous space, using monsters as both mirrors and oracles. They are, for him, never simply grotesques or antagonists, but beings through which the full spectrum of human emotion can be refracted—fear, beauty, and the impossible ache of love.

From the faun’s labyrinthine riddles to the amphibian god of The Shape of Water, del Toro’s creatures embody what he calls “the patron saints of imperfection.”

They are outsiders not because they are unnatural, but because they reveal—too nakedly—truths most would prefer to remain hidden. His films resist the easy binary of monster and victim, instead drawing us toward a more dangerous empathy. The Shape of Water was, in his own words, “a love story disguised as a monster movie,” and that disguise was as much for the audience as for the world within the film. The creature’s difference, rendered in sensual detail, becomes not a barrier to intimacy but its precondition, an opening through which the human characters—and we—are invited to see beauty where we are conditioned to expect revulsion.

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Attendants stand watch with Claire Frankenstein and young Victor in an eerie sequence set on the steps of the ancestral family home.

Ken Woroner/Netflix

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It is this same philosophy that now shapes his

hearing his voice. That tragedy—the refusal to see be-

Del Toro has spoken often about his attraction

long-anticipated Frankenstein, due for release in late

yond appearance—is one del Toro has returned to in

to what he calls “the living other”—beings who resist as-

2025. Del Toro has pursued the project for decades,

countless guises. It runs through the insectoid horrors

similation into human norms and whose very existence

regarding Mary Shelley’s novel not simply as a cor-

of Mimic, the spectral orphans of The Devil’s Backbone,

challenges the boundaries we draw between self and

nerstone of Gothic literature but as one of the most

the crimson-stained halls of Crimson Peak. Again and

other. In Frankenstein, that idea converges with Shel-

profound meditations on creation, alienation, and the

again, his monsters plead, in ways both explicit and un-

ley’s original storm-born vision, written in a moment

responsibility that binds them. The film will not, he in-

spoken: do you see me?

of youthful audacity and intellectual ferment. She could

sists, be horror in the conventional sense. Like much of

In Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi takes on the role

not have known, as she sat through those nights at Villa

his work, it will center on the human core within the

of the creature, a casting choice that suggests del Toro’s

Diodati, that she was conjuring one of literature’s most

fantastical frame—the relationship between creator and

interest in physicality as a narrative tool. Elordi’s height

enduring figures. Yet the themes she set in motion—cre-

creation, and the longing for recognition that passes be-

and presence make the character’s isolation more pro-

ation and abandonment, the hunger for belonging, the

tween them like a current.

nounced—he will stand apart not only in visage but in

terror of the unfamiliar—would prove endlessly adapt-

Shelley’s novel has always been as much about

stature, his body as much a symbol of disconnection as

able, able to slip between eras and sensibilities without

perception as about science. The creature is monstrous

his stitched skin. Opposite him, Oscar Isaac’s Victor

losing their force.

not by virtue of his design, but because no one, not even

Frankenstein embodies a different sort of estrangement:

If Shelley gave the monster life, del Toro seeks

his maker, will claim him. Campbell’s observation hov-

a man alienated from his own act of creation, incapable

to give him soul, to place him within the lineage of crea-

ers here: in another telling, perhaps in another centu-

of reconciling ambition with responsibility. The dynamic

tures who are neither wholly villain nor victim but some-

ry, Frankenstein’s creation could be a hero. But Shelley

between them promises to be as much about silence as

thing messier and more human. He has often argued that

wrote him into a world that recoils from his face before

about speech, about the unsaid and the unacknowledged.

fear is “the most intimate emotion,” because it bypasses

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Above: Writer-director Guillermo del Toro guides Oscar Isaac over a cadaver prop in a behind-the-scenes image from the making of Frankenstein.

Left: In the ruins of some of Dr. Frankenstein’s research, Jacob Elordi’s creature examines a glass plate photo of a war corpse that is strikingly familiar.

Ken Woroner/Netflix

reason and forces us to confront what we most resist. But in his work, fear is rarely an endpoint; it is a threshold, one that opens onto beauty, tenderness, and, in some cases, love. This was true of the mute cleaning woman and her amphibian lover in The Shape of Water, and it seems poised to be true again in Frankenstein, where the question is not simply whether the creature will be feared or destroyed, but whether he can be truly seen.

Monsters endure because they are not fixed; they shift with the gaze, with the age, with the need of the culture imagining them. They are, as Campbell suggested, heroes from another point of view. In this light, del Toro’s Frankenstein is not a resurrection of a familiar tale so much as a continuation of an ancient conversation— one that began long before Shelley’s pen touched paper, and that will, in some form, outlast us all. It is the conversation about what we choose to call monstrous, and whether, in the act of naming, we are revealing less about the creature than about ourselves.

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the room is thick with cigarette smoke and the warm buzz of conversation. Glasses clink, chairs scrape

Manet’s Café, Reassembled

across the floor, and on a small stage in the background, a singer leans into her song. A man in a top hat gazes off to the side, distracted; a dancer sweeps across the floor in a blur of satin and movement. It’s Paris in the late 1870s, and Édouard Manet is watching it all—absorbing the mingled glamour and restlessness of the café-concert.

This was Reichshoffen, the brasserie that inspired one of Manet’s most ambitious depictions of modern life. But the canvas he painted, stretching across the bustle of the room, doesn’t exist anymore—not in one piece. Sometime after completing it, Manet took a knife to his work, slicing the scene into two. What remained

LO N D O N E X H I B I T I O N R E U N I T E S AT T H E C A F É A N D CO R N E R

were At the Café (1878) and Corner of a Café-Concert

O F A C A F É - C O N C E R T, S P L I T B Y T H E A R T I S T ’ S O W N H A N D .

(1878–80)—two self-contained worlds born from the

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Left: Edouard Manet, At the Café, 1878, oil on canvas, 78 x 84 cm, Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur.

Right: Edouard Manet, Corner of a Café Concert, 1878-80, oil on canvas, 97.1 × 77.5 cm, The National Gallery, London.

same moment, their connection severed yet still visible

bustle around him. In the right-hand panel, Corner of

holdings. At the Café proved elusive; Reinhart, a Swiss col-

in the details.

a Café-Concert, he sharpened the energy with a dancer

lector with a taste for the rare, pursued it for thirty years

On May 30, 2025, these estranged halves

mid-step, backed by an orchestra in motion. The overall

before finally acquiring it in 1953.

met again at the National Gallery in London. Cor-

composition dissolved, but each fragment gained its own

ner of a Café-Concert, part of the museum’s collection

focus, its own atmosphere.

Seeing them together now is less about reconstructing Reichshoffen than about sensing the tension be-

since 1924, is hanging beside At the Café, on rare loan

Why he did it is still debated. Perhaps he was

tween them. Stand in front of both and you can trace the

from the Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz”

dissatisfied with the whole; perhaps he saw two stronger

faint echo of a beer glass from one frame to the other, the

in Switzerland. It is their first reunion in Britain, and

works waiting within it. The Paris art market at the time

back of a chair that almost—but not quite—aligns. You’re

their first anywhere since a 2005–06 exhibition in Win-

often favored more intimate pieces over sprawling interi-

aware of both the break and the bond, of the way Manet’s

terthur. For the occasion, they’ve been given custom

ors, and Manet—though avant-garde—was also practi-

gaze could shift from the sweep of a crowd to the tilt of a

frames that reveal the frayed edges of the canvases, the

cal. Whatever the reason, his decision ensured the works

single head.

very scars of their separation.

would live separate lives.

In this fleeting reunion, the two paintings speak

Manet’s split wasn’t an act of destruction

Their journeys after the cut could hardly have

to each other across time and space, much as they must

so much as reinvention. In the left-hand panel, At the

been more different. Corner of a Café-Concert joined the

have in the studio before the knife fell. They remind us that

Café, he added a luminous window and gave space to

National Gallery in the same year as Van Gogh’s Sunflow-

Manet’s modern life was never static—it was cropped, re-

a solitary figure whose inward gaze contrasts with the

ers, quickly becoming a centerpiece of its Impressionist

framed, and in constant motion, just like the city itself.

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INDEPENDENT 20TH CENTURY SPECIAL

Independent 20th Century 2025 T H E N E W YO R K F A I R U N C O V E R I N G M O D E R N A R T ’ S H I D D E N G E M S

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Portrait of the artist at the National Gallery. Courtesy the artist and Hales London and New York. © The Estate of Ken Kiff.

All rights reserved, DACS [2025].

On a mission to redraw the map of modern art, Independent 20th Century returns this fall to Casa Cipriani in Manhattan’s storied Battery Maritime Building. The fair’s fourth edition unites 31 galleries from across the globe in a heady mix of sculpture, self-taught visionaries, and avant-garde voices from Latin America to the Middle East. In this special collaboration, we trace the lives and legacies of five artists stepping into New York’s spotlight—from the experimental abstractions of Balraj Khanna to the controlled chaos of Judy Pfaff’s upstate studio.

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INDEPENDENT 20TH CENTURY SPECIAL

G A L L E R Y: J H A V E R I C O N T E M P O R A R Y

Balraj Khanna: Across the Pond

BY AIMEE DAWSON

Portrait of Balraj Khanna. Courtesy of the Estate of Balraj Khanna, Jhaveri Contemporary, and Independent.

the late balraj khanna (1939-2024) dis-

resentation of Indian artists in Britain. Labeled as “Com-

kites from childhood memories or the leaves of British

tilled his extraordinary life story into a simple title for his

monwealth” artists, Khanna and his friends experienced

trees—and at other times they resemble the kind of cel-

2021 autobiography: Born in India, Made in England. But

a great deal of racism from British society and fought for

lular structures one might observe under a microscope.

this one-liner belies the breadth of six decades of work by

opportunities to exhibit their work.

Khanna had his first solo show at the New Vi-

a figure who was not only an artist but also an award-win-

A transformative moment in Khanna’s early ca-

sion Centre in London in 1965, and went on to exhibit

ning writer of both fiction and non-fiction, a curator, and

reer came in 1965 while he was recovering from a motor-

widely in the UK, France, and India. He also ventured

a gallery founder.

cycle accident at his wife Francine’s family home in Metz,

over the pond in the 1970s. Without a gallery in New

“He was a relentlessly active person, whether in

France. The sense of safety and comfort he felt there al-

York, he optimistically brought several canvases rolled

his writing or his painting,” says his daughter Kaushalia,

lowed him to experiment with his style, and he found a

up in his suitcase, including the monumental work Fes-

who has followed in her father’s creative footsteps, work-

deep connection with nature in the nearby forest. From

tival (1970). His hosts in Manhattan helped him secure

ing as an architect and designer before recently complet-

then on, Khanna focused on expressing what he called

an introduction to the Herbert Benevy Gallery, where he

ing a master’s in painting at the Royal College of Art in

“the theatre of the natural world,” a phrase which titled

held two exhibitions in 1971 and 1972.

London. “He had the faith of being ‘the artist’. He would

a recent special display of his work at Tate Britain in

Jhaveri Contemporary’s upcoming presenta-

wake up and know that he had to work—and that work

London. Three of the paintings on view—Autumn For-

tion at Independent 20th Century will bring Khanna’s

would account for his existence on Earth.”

est (1965), Saffron Field (1967), and Out of the Blue (2)

work back to New York for the first time in more than 50

(1987)—were acquired by the museum in 2024.

years. The selection of three later paintings, dating from

Born in the Punjab region of India, Khanna moved to the UK in 1962 intending to study English

Foregrounding color and form, Khanna’s

1986 and 1999, is united by a common theme: ponds.

literature, but instead fell in love with drawing and paint-

unique abstract paintings also drew heavily on his ex-

“His interest in ponds and lakes probably stemmed

ing. In London he found a community of artists, includ-

periences of Indian and British culture. “He merged his

from his passion for the Romantic English poets,” mus-

ing compatriots F.N. Souza (1924-2002) and Avinash

imagination in the two realms [of England and India]

es Kaushalia. “It’s like he wanted to feel close to them in

Chandra (1931-91), and by 1964 he had joined the

to create a third space,” Kaushalia says. Sometimes the

some way.” John Keats lived near Hampstead Heath, with

Indian Painters Collective, which advocated for the rep-

forms in his paintings approach figuration—evoking

its famous ponds, and often wrote of its beauty. Khanna

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Balraj Khanna, Pond on Hampstead Heath 5, 1999, acrylic and sand on canvas, 106 x 106 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Balraj Khanna, Jhaveri Contemporary, and Independent.

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frequented the north London neighborhood, undertak-

lery, conceived as a response to the “racism, inequal-

ing the mosaic decoration of a private swimming pool

ity, and ignorance of other cultures” still pervasive in

there. He also took many trips to the Lake District land-

the UK at the time.

scapes favored by poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Ruskin.

Kaushalia, her mother Francine, and Jhaveri are currently sifting through Khanna’s studio, which

Khanna developed new approaches to materials

holds hundreds of works, including paintings, draw-

from the mid-1980s, moving from oil paint to acrylic. He

ings, and sculptures, along with a rich archive of let-

blew paint through handmade cut-outs overlaid on the

ters, diaries, and other documentation. “He never

canvas, creating diffuse layers of color and “infusing his

threw anything away,” laughs Francine. Days earlier,

own energy—his breath—into the painting,” as Kaushalia

she had stumbled across a rolled-up canvas—a forgot-

puts it. The technique lent itself well to depicting the

ten portrait that Khanna had painted of her in 1963.

movements and reflections of water. Khanna also applied

Jhaveri Contemporary and the Estate are also prepar-

sand to the canvas surface to add depth and texture.

ing to publish a new book surveying Khanna’s oeuvre,

The pond compositions share a more subtle tonality than is typical of the artist’s vibrant color pal-

following a recent study day with art historians and curators at Tate Britain.

ette. “They feel a bit like Impressionist paintings,” says

“Working on the archive, organising the

Amrita Jhaveri, the founder of Jhaveri Contemporary.

works by decade and finding where they were ex-

She describes the 1980s as the period that Khanna

hibited, I can definitely see Khanna’s progression,

found his voice and a new-found prominence. In 1989

evolution, and experimentation—it was relentless!”

he participated in The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists

Kaushalia says. “He never stopped looking at different

in Post-War Britain, the landmark survey exhibition

things all the time. And that’s what makes the work

curated by artist Rasheed Araeen at the Hayward Gal-

always exciting.”

56

Balraj Khanna, Pond on Hampstead Heath, 1986, acrylic and sand on canvas, 114 x 149 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Balraj Khanna, Jhaveri Contemporary, and Independent.

ISSUE FIVE

Balraj Khanna, Pond on Hampstead Heath, 1986, acrylic and sand on canvas, 121 x 121 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Balraj Khanna, Jhaveri Contemporary, and Independent.

Aimee Dawson is a freelance art writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in Apollo, Artnet News, Artsy, V&A Magazine and Cultured, among others, and she was a contributing writer to the book African Artists (Phaidon, 2022). She is a columnist at The Art Newspaper, where she was formerly an editor, and a guest lecturer at SOAS, University of London.

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INDEPENDENT 20TH CENTURY SPECIAL

G A L L E R Y: H A L E S G A L L E R Y

Ken Kiff: After the Old Masters

BY EMMA M. HILL

Ken Kiff, Uphill (National Gallery), 1993, oil and pastel on panel, 45 3/4 x 33 3/4 x 1 5/8 in.

Image courtesy the artist and Hales London and New York © The Estate of Ken Kiff. All rights reserved, DACS 2025.

hales gallery ’s forthcoming solo pre-

of his death, his reputation as “a true painter, ever fresh

strument does when it is played.” His images were always

sentation of Ken Kiff (1935-2001) at Independent 20th

yet firmly rooted in the best traditions” had almost been

led by color, with a personal iconography—often misread

Century is an important opportunity to reassess the work

eclipsed by the conceptualism of the Young British Art-

as confessional—that combined figuration with abstrac-

of one of the most singular artists in late 20th-century

ists. Today, however, many aspects of his work that once

tion, and at times, symbolic elements. Dualities, the di-

Britain. With a focus on paintings and prints related to

seemed alien to the dominant critical taste are finding

vided self, and the tumult of consciousness, were abiding

Kiff ’s residency as Associate Artist at the National Gal-

fresh currency with a younger generation of artists, as

themes, expressed in recurring motifs such as journeys,

lery in London (1991-93), the presentation expands on

well as new audiences.

encounters, caves, and anthropomorphic landscapes—

the spring 2025 exhibition at Hales London, The Nation-

For Kiff, fantasy was a way of thinking about

al Gallery Project. The selection of works, centered on a

reality. He described it as “a flexible realism” that “keeps

Kiff began the two-year residency with a degree

major triptych, reveals the extraordinary range of Kiff ’s

to our fluid yet continuous awareness of reality, painting

of trepidation since it required him to leave his home stu-

painterly imagination. His intense, searching response to

interacting with life, inside and out.” His affirmative visu-

dio and a great many works in progress. He was also hes-

the Old Masters enriched his art for the rest of his life.

al poetics was expressed through multi-layered composi-

itant about being viewed as part of the art establishment,

The residency produced numerous sketches, charcoal

tions that drew on traditions of art from different eras and

feeling that the British tradition was too masculine and

and pastel drawings, monoprints and etchings, and in-

from cultures far beyond the Western canon. His work of-

“at bottom pre-modern, accepting the old illusionism and

spired 50 new paintings, some of which were still in prog-

ten united the spiritual with the earthly, seeking to bring

the old idea of preaching a lesson (even if the idiom seems

ress when he died aged 65 in 2001.

formal and pictorial elements together in rhythmic har-

quite otherwise).” How, then, to respond to the iconog-

mony, and to visualize the maelstrom of thoughts in an

raphy and storytelling of the Old Masters found in the

individual psyche.

National Gallery collection?

Kiff took up residence in a large basement studio at the museum in 1991, the same year he was elected a

and in compositions that borrowed from Cubism.

Royal Academician. At the height of his influence, he was

In a formal sense, Kiff ’s approach aligned more

Few of the works Kiff made as a result of his

regarded by many of his contemporaries as one of Brit-

closely with European Modernism than with prevailing

residency were literal transcriptions of the original paint-

ain’s foremost postwar artists. He was a highly respected

tendencies in British art at the time. He was also fascinat-

ings; he sought instead to find their essence. Unfettered

tutor at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College

ed by the mystical radiance he found in Indian art and by

access to the museum gave him the opportunity to revis-

of Art, and exhibitions in the UK and US throughout the

the delicacy of traditional Chinese scroll painting. He saw

it works he already knew, including Giovanni di Paolo’s

1980s had established his distinctive oeuvre, yet in many

parallels between painting and music, upholding “Bra-

Saint John the Baptist retiring to the Desert (1454), with

ways he remained outside the mainstream. By the time

que’s thought that the canvas comes alive as a musical in-

its vivid sense of journeying, and Rubens’s An Autumn

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ISSUE FIVE

Ken Kiff, White Tree, Large Face, 1990-1996, acrylic on board, 48 7/8 x 27 3/4 x 1 3/4 in.

Image courtesy the artist and Hales London and New York © The Estate of Ken Kiff.

All rights reserved, DACS 2025.

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Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (c. 1636) from which he had previously borrowed the motif of a single tree. Kiff ’s drypoint, After Giovanni di Paolo (1993), reimagines the episodic stages of the 15th-century painting with a more secular figure, and incorporates the naturalistic flowers from the side panels of the frame, which were added later.

Rembrandt, Red Tree and Cloud (1991) illustrates how he sought out specific references that were of significance to him. The image is a refined arrangement of elements: a tree on a hill, a rock protruding from water, a cloud, the fronds of river reeds. Executed in pastel, its green and red palette was a color contrast Kiff found particularly compelling: “the most compact and dynamic of color opposites.”

As the residency progressed he found other kinds of touchstones. His initial responses to Joachim Patinir’s Saint Jerome in a Rocky Landscape (c. 1515) made much of the painting’s shadowy drama in a series of charcoal and pastel drawings. But an encaustic work made later in New York, A/6 (2) Untitled - After Patinir (1996), illustrates how he sublimated these starting points into a composition that, while still echoing Patinir’s cave, steps and hills, is defined by the untouched white space in the painting’s upper-right corner. The pastel Hermit (1992), which floats even freer from any kind of attributable pictorial references, also evidences the kind of “organic, interdependent forming” that Kiff aimed for in all his work.

Giovanni Bellini’s The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (1505-07) gave rise to one of the most compelling works in the Independent presentation. Woman Watching a Murder (1996), initiated at the National Gallery and completed almost three years after Kiff ’s residency, is an extraordinary reimagining of the original composition. In Bellini’s painting a distant fragment of blue sky offers the only respite from the claustrophobic forest scene, in which the woodsmen’s raised axes reiterate the violence of the friar’s murder. In Kiff ’s image, suffused with shades of blue, a monumental blue-green naked woman towers over two small male figures picked out in brown. It is painted on museum board, a substrate that Kiff specifically employed to connect with the masterworks in the collection, and that holds the marks of many revisions.

The National Gallery Triptych (c.1992-97) car-

Ken Kiff, Woman in Moonlight, 1977-1980, oil on board, 36 5/8 x 28 3/4 x 1 5/8 in. Image courtesy the artist and Hales London and New York © The Estate of Ken Kiff.

All rights reserved, DACS 2025.

ries many of Kiff ’s enduring motifs: journeying, the sun, caves, flowers, trees, the old man, the radiant woman. It, too, was reworked extensively after being exhibited in an early, more graphic state. As its tonal range grew more subtle, the void-like depths between the figures and landscape became its major theme. An enigmatic note scribbled by Kiff on the reverse alludes to the Symbolist poet Mallarmé’s 1896 elegy for his close friend Paul Verlaine: “Shallow stream ill-spoken of death.” The triptych contains darkness and brightness, opacity and luminosity, colors mingled and glimpsed through each other: a cohesion of jostling elements that communicates a profound sense of encroaching darkness, yet emanates a sense of radiance and serenity.

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Ken Kiff, Violinist, c. 1974, oil on board, 40 7/8 x 33 1/8 x 1 1/2 in. Image courtesy the artist and Hales London and New York. © The Estate of Ken Kiff. All rights reserved, DACS [2025].

Emma M. Hill is a curator and writer. She founded the Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, London, in 1991 and is currently a guest curator at Turps Gallery, London. She curated the exhibition Ken Kiff: The Sequence at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, Norwich in 2018, which presented 59 works from the artist’s 30-year series of 200 paintings on paper, The Sequence, in chronological order for the first time.

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INDEPENDENT 20TH CENTURY SPECIAL

G A L L E R Y: G A L E R I E L E L O N G

Elda Cerrato: The Sovereign Image

BY CARLA BARBERO

Portrait of Elda Cerrato, 1991, photography by P. Roth.

Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York and Independent.

in art and thought, Elda Cerrato (1930–2023)

practiced his “Fourth Way,” and followed the teachings of

diverse climates, spanning from mountains to subtropical

transcended boundaries with remarkable sovereignty.

his exponents such as P.D. Ouspensky, Maurice Nicoll,

forest. It was there that the artist witnessed UFO sight-

Across more than 60 years of work between Argentina and

and Rodney Collin.

ings and encountered the distinctive ritual practices of

Venezuela, she was linked with some of Latin America’s

From her first trip to Venezuela in 1960—on

the region’s rural communities. These experiences reig-

leading avant-garde collectives, and yet she developed a

the invitation of a local Gurdjieff study group—Cerrato

nited her engagement with esoteric teachings, from the I

multidisciplinary practice that stood apart from the dom-

forged close ties with the Caracas avant-garde, notably

Ching to the cult New Age writer Carlos Castaneda, and

inant trends. Integrating science, politics, and spirituality,

the collective El Techo de la Ballena (The Roof of the

she devoted this period to creating her Ser Beta (Beta Be-

it could be described as an entire knowledge system of its

Whale), which advanced a politicized strand of Latin

ing) series. These paintings and drawings articulated her

own.

American Surrealism. This journey catalyzed the first

vision of life, its forms and energies, deploying eroticism

Galerie Lelong’s solo presentation at Indepen-

major phase of her artistic trajectory, when she mixed

as a language to navigate reality. Through the recurring

dent 20th Century offers a concentrated reading of Cer-

with key figures like the poet and painter Juan Calzadilla

use of circles and ovals, Cerrato alluded symbolically to

rato’s visual universe, ranging from her early experiments

and the art critic Marta Traba. Cerrato embraced a tech-

fertility, proposing an iconography that was as sensory as

with Informalist abstraction and cosmological works of

nical and imaginative freedom that enabled her to merge

it was speculative.

the 1960s through the later depictions of maps, crowds,

the experimentation of her early years with Surrealist au-

From that moment, Cerrato’s paintings began

and political demonstrations of the 1970s.

tomatism and the biological forms that had intrigued her

projecting more precise images of the invisible energetic

since her university studies in biochemistry.

forces that—according to the theories she studied—gave

Born in 1930 in Asti, Italy, Cerrato was forced into exile with her parents due to the rise of Fascism—

Untitled (1963), a painting first exhibited at the

rise to the world and continue to sustain it. Her series

first to São Paulo, and later to Buenos Aires. During her

Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, belongs to the series

Epopeya del Ser Beta (The Epic of the Beta Being) offers an

artistic training in the1950s, she engaged with geometric

Formas en origen (Forms in Origin), in which one perceives

evolutionary narrative in which repeating forms and col-

abstraction, Pythagorean proportions, and Gestalt theory.

both automatist drift and a persistent interest in recording

ors trace the patterns, movements, and transformations

The Greek-Armenian mystic and philosopher George I.

invisible structures: cellular formations and biomorphic

of the titular being.

Gurdjieff was another formative influence, infusing her

shapes evoking microscopic enlargements. This Informal-

Works such as Homenaje a los sistemas de co-

aesthetic inquiries with a vital spiritual dimension. With

ist phase in Cerrato’s art can be viewed as a substrate of

municación. El resultado de una comunicación (Homage to

her partner, the composer Luis Zubillaga, Cerrato found-

images on which she would build her later work.

Communication Systems. An Outcome of Communication,

ed the first study group of Gurdjieff’s work in Argentina.

On her return to Argentina in 1964, Cerrato and

1966) and Mineralización y Revitalización de Una a Otra

Until the end of her life, she debated, disseminated, and

her husband settled in Tucumán—a northern province of

Dimensión (Mineralization and Revitalization from One

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Elda Cerrato, Sin título (Serie Formas en Origen), 1963, oil on canvas, 35 x 28 in. © The Estate of Elda Cerrato.

Courtesy of Galerie Lelong and Independent.

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Elda Cerrato, El sueño de la casita propia III, 1976, acrylic on canvas, 15 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in. © The Estate of Elda Cerrato. Courtesy of Galerie Lelong and Independent.

Dimension to Another, 1968) have an avant-garde grammar

ritory of the Americas. This perspective permeates many

Coatlicue, suggesting a connection to ancestral memories

that synthesizes a spiritual critique of Latin America’s esca-

of the 1970s paintings, drawings, and heliographs in

rooted in Mesoamerican tradition.

lating political violence. While the regional art scene was

which Cerrato depicted crowds and maps. Merging the

Cerrato deepened her investigation into ideas

dominated by Concrete movements with an internation-

urgent graphic language of revolutionary movements

of time, not as a linear progression but as an intercon-

alist spirit, Cerrato forged an individual kind of abstrac-

with avant-garde art, this body of work marked a con-

nected continuum—influenced by her esoteric experi-

tion: soft, spiritual, and localized. This series, moreover,

ceptual turn, confronting politics, semiotics, and spiri-

ences as well as by quantum physics and scholars such as

evokes 1960s cybernetics and communication theory,

tual visions.

the Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa. The con-

interweaving interior and exterior, spiritual and political.

As the violence intensified, Cerrato went into

cept of the past as an active force lying not behind, but

This duality—the tension between esoteric thought and

exile once again—back to Caracas—together with her

ahead, was marginal at the time, but can now be aligned

socio-historical awareness—is a fundamental key to Elda

husband, who had been removed from his position as

with contemporary thinkers such as the Brazilian an-

Cerrato’s work across her six-decade trajectory.

artistic director of the Teatro Colón at the onset of Ar-

thropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Cerrato’s pre-

Following the 1966 military coup in Argentina,

gentina’s 1976 dictatorship. It was during this new period

science was remarkable in this regard.

Cerrato and her family moved back to Buenos Aires. The

abroad that she developed a deeper awareness of her Lat-

Rituals, ancestral myths, and personal memo-

artist recounted how this return to the city—and the rup-

in American concerns, critically reassessing the Eurocen-

ries guided her final works, which extended beyond the

ture of the idyllic period in Tucumán—forced the Beta

tric lens through which she had been trained.

2000s. The last series can be viewed as exercises in reca-

Being to “engage with reality.” Driven by the nation’s in-

During the 1980s and 1990s, her paintings grew

pitulation—dream-like scenes in which the artist united

tensifying political turmoil, works like Untitled (1972)

increasingly complex. Her color palette shifted, and the

fragments of her past works with intimate familial events

depict the Beta Being summoned to our planet amidst

sense of scale expanded. The images center on the fragil-

without hierarchy.

historical urgency. From this point onward, Cerrato began

ity of democratic institutions in the aftermath of a dicta-

Elda Cerrato’s work takes on a singular relevance

incorporating more overtly political imagery reflecting con-

torship: masses of faces represent the victims of enforced

when we consider that, even today, there is debate over

temporary events.

“disappearance”—human rights abuses committed in

whether Latin America has managed to forge a true artistic

Geometric forms light up like screens display-

multiple Latin American countries under military rule.

canon—one that stands apart from the legacy of colonialism

ing popular uprisings, scenes of labor exploitation, and

Works presented in the 1989 exhibition El ojo y la fisura

and the many ways it continues to manifest in contemporary

sprawling industrial vistas. The vantage point in these

(The Eye and the Fissure) introduced Aztec iconography

forms of domination. Her sovereign images offer up a rev-

paintings is striking: an aerial gaze hovers over the ter-

and mythological symbols related to the earth goddess

olutionary vision in response to a convulsive present.

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Elda Cerrato, Mineralización y Revitalización de Una a Otra Dimensión (Serie Entes Extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta), 1968, oil on canvas, 14 x 18 ⅛ in. © The Estate of Elda Cerrato. Courtesy of Galerie Lelong and Independent.

Carla Barbero is a curator and researcher based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is currently Curator at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. From 2017 to 2022, she was Head of the Curatorial Department at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, where she led the first retrospectives of Elda Cerrato, Ad Minoliti, Alberto Goldenstein, and Max Gómez Canle, alongside curatorial projects with Adriana Bustos, Mónica Millán, and Claudia del Río. In 2025, she curated the first institutional exhibitions of Lucrecia Lionti and Laura Códega at MALBA and Recoleta, respectively. She is the author of several publications on Argentine art and teaches curatorial studies at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.

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INDEPENDENT 20TH CENTURY SPECIAL

G A L L E R Y: N A H M A D C O N T E M P O R A R Y A N D S K A R S T E D T

Georges Rouault: Holy Fools and the Theater of Society

BY JENNIFER JOHNSON

Georges Rouault in his studio, 1953. Photo by Yvonne Chevalier. Fondation Georges Rouault. ©️ 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

ranging across the work of Georges Rou-

“and I began to paint with a kind of frenzy.” Some of this

a dramatic melancholy, Rouault’s interwar and postwar

ault (1871–1958) and the major themes that preoccu-

can be seen in Fille (Femme aux cheveux roux) from 1908,

work approached the clown as a portrait with an air of

pied him, the select group of works presented by Nah-

in which the figure of a prostitute dominates the canvas.

faded grandeur. He used framing devices indebted to

mad Contemporary and Skarstedt at Independent 20th

The orange and blue washes, set against black gouache

Byzantine iconography around the clowns, as well as in

Century showcase the depth of craftsmanship and phil-

lines, emphasize the fleshiness of the body and create a

works such as Théodora (c.1949) and in multiple images

osophical thought that characterize the artist’s peculiar

haunting image of a figure on the edges of society.

of the face of Jesus Christ. Often, as in Pierrot (c.1937-

As with the Fauves, the language of the critics

38) or Clown anglais (c.1937), these are fused with the

Born in 1871, during the siege of Paris, Rouault

who reviewed Rouault’s early paintings of prostitutes

suggestion of curtains, a motif derived from both grand

was originally apprenticed to stained glass makers be-

and clowns was filled with images of anger or madness—

portraiture and the stage.

fore training at the École des Beaux-Arts under the great

these works were repeatedly accused of being too vio-

Theater—and, by extension, the artificial

Symbolist painter, Gustave Moreau. His contemporaries

lently dark. By the time of the First World War, Rouault

nature of appearances—is deeply important to un-

at the academy included Henri Matisse, alongside whom

was also making prints, including the series Miserere, a

derstanding the spiritual and moral dimensions of

Rouault participated in the notorious Salon d’Automne

meditation on suffering. A strong sense of form and lin-

Rouault’s work. He often directed his criticism at the

exhibition of 1905. Art critic Louis Vauxcelles disparaged

ear style began to replace the wildness of earlier works.

corrupt values of modern society, for instance in the

the color-saturated painting of Matisse, André Derain, and

The placement of shapes next to each other, layered with

damning depiction of two judges, Juges (1937). Along-

Maurice de Vlaminck as that of “wild beasts” (les fauves).

brushmarks, recalled both his printmaking and the influ-

side this, a number of works questioned the opposition

Rouault’s work, hanging two rooms away, shared many

ence of stained glass.

between the powerful and the down-and-outs. Théodo-

form of modernism.

of the qualities of so-called Fauvism. The surfaces had a

Rouault’s later subjects were calmer, too—

ra depicts the wife of the Roman emperor Justinian,

scrawled and frenetic appearance, and the subject matter

even still. He had long explored the allegorical poten-

a woman who began as an actress and prostitute, and

was almost submerged by the mass of painted marks.

tial of clowns and the circus, with a particular interest

rose to empress. Drawing heavily on the Byzantine

Rouault linked this period of work to the death

in Dostoyevsky’s idea of the “holy fool.” Pablo Picasso’s

mosaics at Ravenna, Rouault’s representation aligns

of Moreau, who had become a mentor and father figure

“rose period” (1904-06) works were similarly preoccu-

her with his multiple paintings of performers who

to him. “A kind of outburst occurred,” Rouault wrote,

pied with these themes. But where Picasso foregrounded

blur the boundaries between life and theater.

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Georges Rouault, Théodora, c. 1949, oil on cardboard, laid on panel, 22 3/4 x 18 1/8 in. ©️2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

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Georges Rouault, Le fugitif (The fugitive), 1945-46, oil on paper, laid on canvas, 14 3/4 x 19 1/4 in. ©️2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

Louisette (1946) performs the same maneuver.

Rouault’s late landscapes and ensemble scenes such

various states of progress, paint tubes, and brushes.

The name means “warrior” and the image replicates the

as Cirque de l’étoile filante (1938), Paysage biblique

Photographs show him dressed in a surgeon’s white

composition of a traditional portrait of an aristocratic

(c.1940-48), and Le fugitif (1945-46). Within frag-

gown and hat, a gift from his physician son. Rouault

woman. But there is a darker side: “louisette” was the

mented interiors or exteriors, the figures are held by

later painted various clowns in similar attire, and there

first name given to the guillotine in the early days of the

the fierce lines of Rouault’s design. The luminescent ar-

is a strong sense of the artist casting himself as the in-

French Revolution.

rangements of hills, trees, and the sun in these late com-

nocent circus figure, or the fool.

In Satan (1929-39), the devoutly Catholic Rou-

positions also relate to the tarot, whose imagery recurs

Rouault’s work encompasses the serious so-

ault echoes his imagery of Christ with strong black lines,

across Rouault’s work during this period, marking his

cial and political concerns of the early 20th century,

a limited palette, and a framing structure that evokes the

interest in the ancient mystical beliefs of Hermeticism

as well as the experimentation and avant-gardism of

imprint of Jesus’s face on the Turin Shroud. To give this

as well as his own Catholicism. Le Fugitif alludes to the

modernist painting. Questioning perception at every

particular work the title of “Satan” calls everything about

Fugitive card in some traditional tarot decks, the equiv-

level and positioning himself, like the clown, as an

this vision into question. Could it be Christ’s vision we

alent to the Fool. Rouault’s use of the tarot reflects a

outsider looking into society, Rouault also questions

are witnessing? Saint Veronica, whose legendary veil also

widespread interest in the early to mid-20th century in

painting itself—challenging the medium to take on

bore the image of Christ, was another recurring theme in

the interconnections between different philosophies of

the deepest and most difficult of subjects.

Rouault’s oeuvre. His thick layers of paint offer a material

religion and in mystical, rather than scientific, systems.

counterpoint to the translucent veil of Veronica or the

From the early 1900s onwards, Rouault often

Turin Shroud, as if this higher vision might be accessed

worked at a table instead of an easel, eschewing the

through the act of painting itself.

traditions of fine art for the methods of the artisan.

There is something of the stage set about

The table in his studio was littered with canvases in

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Georges Rouault, Bouquet, 1939, oil and ink on paper, laid on canvas, 24 3/8 x 19 3/8 in. ©️2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

Dr Jennifer Johnson is the author of Georges Rouault and Material Imagining (Bloomsbury, 2020). She is currently the Paul Mellon Fellow in British Art at the British School at Rome and is working on her next book about women artists and postwar abstraction.

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INDEPENDENT 20TH CENTURY SPECIAL

G A L L E R Y: C R I S T I N T I E R N E Y G A L L E R Y

In the Studio with Judy Pfaff

BY JULIE BAUMGARDNER

Judy Pfaff in the studio, c. 1991. Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery.

speeding teslas and slow-moving tractors alike

rather than birthright or pedigree. She studied with the

1980s and ’90s, such as La Calle, La Calle Vieja (1990),

cut across the busy country road that leads to Judy Pfaff ’s

abstract painter Al Held at Yale, exhibited at Artists Space

mixed-media street signs, and collages on paper reflects

sprawling studio compound in Tivoli, New York. Tucked

and the Whitney Biennial in the 1970s, and spent nights

Pfaff ’s vital contribution to Post-Minimalist abstraction.

away from the traffic is a cluster of eight buildings—

hobnobbing at Max’s Kansas City, Magoo’s, and Barna-

“If the Minimalists revealed space in all its static gran-

barns, garages, and a converted house—that the artist ac-

bus Rex. She quickly became a fixture of the downtown

deur and the Post-Minimalists messed with it beyond

quired in 2004 and has tailored to fit her world. Pfaff has

New York scene, represented by Holly Solomon and

belief, she has more than carried on,” art critic Roberta

gradually moved full-time into the site, which now con-

befriending fellow artists like McArthur Binion, Nancy

Smith once wrote.

tains spaces devoted to sculpture, drawing, printmaking,

Graves, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and Elizabeth Murray.

Tierney’s fair presentation—a prelude to a solo

and storage for her immense inventory of materials. Her

Friendships are the fabric of the arts, and they

exhibition of new and recent works at the gallery in Tri-

beloved “stuff ” is scattered everywhere.

have been a throughline in Pfaff ’s life. “It’s true I have a

beca this October—is a reminder of just how prolifically

Pfaff ’s studio counts two assistants, rising to

lot of friends,” she says with a laugh. “We were unstuck

Pfaff has circulated through the commercial and institu-

four when installing, along with her dog, Micky, and cats,

in the world,” she once remarked to Binion, describing

tional art worlds. Since 1975, she has hardly gone a year

Harry and Lizzie, who roam freely amidst the wall hang-

the wild, generative ’70s when they worked, taught, and

without a solo or group show, racking up more than 500

ings, drafting tables, and filing cabinets. Though Pfaff

partied together—a generation whose players continue

exhibitions to date in the United States and internation-

relies on her team for help with heavy lifting, framing,

to shape contemporary tastes half a century later.

ally, along with a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant,

and technical troubleshooting, she prefers to “wait until

Yet despite Pfaff ’s revered reputation amongst

and an American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow-

everyone leaves” and work alone, she says. “The idea of

her peers, her expansive, relentless output hasn’t charted

ship. A longtime professor at Bard College, she served

having someone make your stuff for you… What fun is

a clear linear path to success in the art world. This fall

as co-chair of the Studio Arts department and has men-

that?”

marks a moment to recenter her in the conversation,

tored generations of artists from her Hudson Valley base.

Much like the rural road outside—part rapid

with her latest gallerist Cristin Tierney soon to present

Does she go to the studio every day, even when

bypass, part meandering lane—Pfaff ’s career has been

an exhibition of historic works at Independent 20th

there’s no exhibition on the calendar? Of course. Then

both electric and steady, rooted in determined instinct

Century. The selection of large-scale sculptures from the

again, there’s rarely been a time she wasn’t preparing for a

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Judy Pfaff, Todo El Mundo, 1989. Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery and Independent.

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Judy Pfaff, Es Possible, 1989. Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery and Independent.

specific event—even if, as she admits, some were “shows

composed with care but infused with the chaos of life.

her grandmother, she moved to Detroit at 12 to reunite

I hated” (she’s not telling which ones).

The critics don’t quite know what to make of them. One

with her mother, married an Air Force officer at 16, left

And yet, there remains a lingering question in

Artforum reviewer credited her as “the ultimate chair-

him at 20 to attend art school, and was a New York dar-

the story of Judy Pfaff: why isn’t she more of a household

woman for a prom decorations committee,” while David

ling by 27.

name? As Smith wrote in 2003, “you would think that

Frankel wrote of her work leaving him “a little unsatis-

As much as Pfaff ’s work is an extension of her,

Judy Pfaff would get more respect.”

fied.” Informed opinions of Pfaff ’s art have been scarcer

identity has never been the core of her practice. “I like

The artist describes her work as “rangy” and

in the past decade, coinciding with the broader decline

making stuff,” she says simply. “So, let me do that.” She

“open-ended”—not qualities that make it easy to mar-

of longform criticism. Instead, attention has turned to-

remembers that Held once asked her, “What are you

ket. “Most galleries really don’t want you to make things

ward the artist herself. (Why did Al Held greet her at

making?” and she replied: “It’s somewhere I would want

that are not sellable,” she says. Space and form are her

Yale with the line, “So, you’re the new dumb blonde?”

to be. I’ve never been there. But I dream about these

primary concerns. Many works are site-specific, created

Her ready comeback—“Who are you, the janitor?”—

places. They’re all kind of fantasies in that way—imag-

in direct response to the places where they were being

launched a lifelong artistic friendship.)

ined landscapes, not real. Nothing biographical.”

shown; they do not fit neatly into series or thematic

Pfaff is often asked to explain whether the exu-

Pfaff even refrains from teaching her students

cycles. Instead, they bear what she calls her “handwrit-

berant disorder of her work is autobiographical. “Every

in the language of the academy. “Just say it straight,” she

ing”—a signature style that’s immediately recognizable

artist I know who is not only good, but very popular,

demands. Some artists like to talk the talk, but she is an

but constantly evolving. “It’s all very noodly,” she says

has this narrative, this big story about who they are,”

irrepressible maker of objects and ideas. Her work spins

with a wink. “That’s an academic term.”

she says. “I don’t care about that stuff. It’s not only not

stories without needing to resolve itself into neat, mar-

Pfaff ’s installations whirl with tangled lines,

interesting—I don’t even remember it.” And yet, her

ketable narratives. It’s deeply human, in all of its potency

found objects, wires, plastic, resin, wood, and debris—

backstory is striking: born in London and raised by

and mystery—all of its mess.

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Judy Pfaff, El Patio, 1988. Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery and Independent.

Julie Baumgardner is an arts and culture writer, editor and journalist who has spent nearly 15 years covering all aspects of the art world and market. Her work has been featured in Bloomberg, Cultured, Financial Times, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Follow her @juliewithab

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Photography: Filippo Thiella Model: Martina Arduino - Inspired by Venus Victrix (1805-1808), Antonio Canova - Galleria Borghese, Roma

Concept and Artistic Direction: Marco Pelle Photography: Filippo Thiella Principal Dancers of Teatro alla Scala di Milano: Martina Arduino, Marco Agostino Models: Laura Zonta, Simone Dato Dresses: Venus Victrix – Dress by ALESSANDRO VIGILANTE The Lovers and La Pietà – Dress by CHRISTIAN BOARO Marco Pelle – Jacket by CHRISTIAN BOARO The Lovers – Mask by Agglomerati

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A Living Gallery M A R CO P E L L E A N D L A S C A L A DA N C E R S B R E AT H E L I F E I N TO T H E S T I L L N E S S O F A RT H I S TO RY

for marco pelle, choreography has never be-

For Pelle, who has long balanced a life between

longed solely to the stage. It is a language that can slip

the rigor of ballet and the fluidity of contemporary

into unexpected spaces—onto film, into fashion, across

dance, Statuesque is a continuation of his fascination with

the textures of opera—and now, into the frozen stillness

translation. Just as music can be scored anew, or a play

of art history. For Bollettino, Pelle conceived a custom

reinterpreted across centuries, so too can paintings and

shoot unlike any he has undertaken before: a living gal-

sculptures be re-voiced through movement. “It is about

lery where dancers from Milan’s Teatro alla Scala step

intimacy with the past,” he reflects. “These masterpieces

inside the frames of painting and sculpture, translating

belong to all of us, yet they are also locked away—behind

canonical works into movement and flesh.

glass, on pedestals, removed from touch. Dance reclaims

Titled Statuesque, the project brings togeth-

them for the body. It restores their pulse.”

er principal dancers in recreations of masterpieces that

The photographs by Thiella capture this deli-

stretch from the Renaissance to modernism: Michel-

cate paradox: the uncanny familiarity of a pose we know,

angelo’s Pietà, Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit,

the startling vitality of seeing it lived. In one frame, the

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, Magritte’s The Lovers,

tension of Sargent’s Madame X is not simply in the turn

and Antonio Canova’s Venus Victrix. Captured through

still life ripening into human fragility. Sargent’s scandal-

of a head, but in the trembling breath of the model hold-

the lens of photographer Filippo Thiella, these tableaux

ous Madame X, whose pose once outraged Paris, regains

ing it. In another, the tender gravity of the Pietà is no lon-

oscillate between reverence and reinvention—at once

its unsettling allure, this time conveyed through the

ger stone but skin pressed against skin.

homage to the originals and evidence of how bodies,

physical precision of a ballerina whose body is trained to

If museums are repositories of permanence,

unbound from marble or canvas, can reanimate history.

balance elegance with tension. Magritte’s The Lovers, two

Pelle’s Statuesque imagines a gallery that is fleeting, fragile,

“I wanted to explore the link between statuary

figures locked in a kiss but veiled in cloth, becomes less

and alive. The collaboration with La Scala’s principals un-

beauty and statuary stillness,” Pelle explains. “A sculpture

about surrealist enigma than about trust, intimacy, and

derscores the project’s gravitas: dancers of this caliber are

is fixed forever in time, a painting bound to its frame. But

the vulnerability of bodies leaning into one another. And

accustomed to carrying the weight of tradition, yet here

dance resists permanence. It exists only in the moment, van-

in Canova’s Venus Victrix, the classical ideal is refracted

they serve as conduits for something both ancient and

ishing as soon as it is lived. Bringing the two together is al-

through the lines of a dancer whose grace carries both

immediate. “Art history gives us form, but dance gives us

most an act of paradox. That’s how statuesque came about. ”

antiquity and modern virtuosity.

life,” Pelle says. “Together, they remind us that beauty is

The choice of works was deliberate. Michel-

In each recreation, Pelle resists the temptation

angelo’s Pietà—a mother cradling her son in sublime

to mimic. Instead, he invites his dancers to interpret—

In Statuesque, the canon is neither untouchable

grief—becomes an exploration of weight and surrender

to find the psychological weight beneath each pose, to

nor inert. It is a living conversation, one in which Mi-

when embodied by dancers, their muscles straining to

breathe into what might otherwise appear frozen. “We

chelangelo, Caravaggio, Sargent, Magritte, and Canova

hold the impossible poise of marble. Caravaggio’s youth-

are not copying art, we are giving it a new breath of life”

are not simply admired, but embodied—remade in the

ful boy, lush with fruit and sensuality, acquires new ur-

he notes. “We are asking: what does this figure feel?

gesture of a dancer’s hand, in the arc of a body straining

gency when translated into breath and movement, the

What lies in the gesture that history could not record?”

toward timelessness.

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not static. It changes, it breathes, it moves with us.”

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Photography: Filippo Thiella Model: Marco Agostino - Inspired by Les Amants (1928), René Magritte - MoMA, New York The Lovers – Mask by Agglomerati

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Photography: Filippo Thiella Model: Laura Zonta Inspired by Madame X (1884), John Singer Sargent Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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Photography: Filippo Thiella Models: Martina Arduino and Marco Agostino Inspired by Pietà (1497-1499), Michelangelo - Basilica di San Pietro, Città del Vaticano

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Pietà (1497-1499), Michelangelo Basilica di San Pietro, Città del Vaticano

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Luchita Hurtado, Untitled, 1971. Oil on canvas, 50 × 34 7/8 in. (127 × 88.6 cm). ©The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Courtesy The Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser &Wirth. Photograph by Jeff McLane

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Mel Casas, Humanscape #56 (San Antonio Circus), 1969. Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96in.

(182.9 × 243.8 cm). Mel Casas Family Trust. © The Mel Casas Family Trust. Photograph by Ansen Seale

Sixties Surreal M Y S T I C I S M , S P E C TA C L E , A N D E S T R A N G E M E N T R E S H A P E D A M E R I C A N A R T IN A TURBULENT DECADE

When John Ashbery remarked that “we all grew

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s ex-

come a theater of spectacle, with audiences both com-

up Surreal without even being aware of it,” he might as

hibition Sixties Surreal brings together more than a

plicit and enthralled. The sense that reality was staged,

well have been describing the United States between

hundred works from this tumultuous period, revealing

that violence and desire played out for public consump-

1958 and 1972. It was a period when the familiar sud-

how Surrealist tendencies shaped American art in ways

tion, echoed across the culture. Christina Ramberg, Jim

denly felt estranged. Television screens brought the Viet-

often overlooked. Rather than tidy movements like Pop,

Nutt, and other artists mined domestic settings for this

nam War into suburban living rooms alongside reruns

Minimalism, or Conceptualism, the show highlights a

same sense of disquiet, where patterned wallpaper or a

of “Leave It to Beaver” and late-night horror films. The

broader sensibility: an embrace of estrangement, fantasy,

coiffed hairstyle became signs of deeper psychological

space race unfolded in dazzling moonlit triumph while

ritual, and dream logic as methods for confronting the

disturbance.

civil rights protesters were beaten in the streets. A decade

chaos of the time.

If Brown’s painting speaks of theater, Wallace

that promised rational progress also pulsed with irratio-

One of the most memorable canvases in the ex-

Berman’s Hermetic Image (1961) conjures another regis-

nal fears, ecstatic visions, and moments of violent rup-

hibition is Roger Brown’s Movie House (1968), in which

ter of the surreal: the mystical diagram. The work is filled

ture. To many artists, the most honest response was to

a nude body flails across a stage-like proscenium while

with esoteric words and symbols that recall alchemical

lean into the strange, not as a borrowed European style

silhouetted figures watch from shadowed balconies. The

manuscripts. At a moment when mainstream religion

but as a language of survival for a country that already

composition recalls vaudeville, yet its tone is uneasy,

seemed increasingly hollow, Berman and others turned

felt fractured.

even menacing. Brown suggests that life itself had be-

toward occult practices, non-Western cosmologies, and

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ritual as alternative sources of meaning. This spiritual searching was not simply a retreat from politics but a way to challenge the dominance of Western rationalism, which many linked to colonialism, militarism, and technological domination. Mysticism, in this context, became a form of resistance, a tool for imagining new ways of living and believing.

Elsewhere, the body itself became a site of surreal exploration. Robert Crumb’s Head #1 (1967), with its skull wired to cameras and speakers, renders consciousness as a tangle of machinery and paranoia. The drawing is grotesque and funny at once, a reflection of how media and technology colonized the imagination.

Crumb, known for his underground comix, captured the counterculture’s ambivalence: drugs and new media promised expanded perception but also induced anxiety and loss of control.

The sense of the body as unstable appeared across many practices. Eva Hesse used latex, rope, and resin to create sagging, visceral forms that seemed halfway between organ and object. Bruce Nauman’s early performances tested the body’s endurance in repetitive, absurd tasks. Louise Bourgeois, through her sculptures and drawings, cast the body as a theater of memory and desire. Together, these works reveal how the 1960s body was never secure, but porous, vulnerable, erotic, and increasingly entangled with machines.

For women artists, Surrealism offered possibilities to rewrite the language of desire. Luchita Hurtado’s Untitled (1971) depicts her own torso from above, transforming it into both landscape and cosmic field. The body becomes infinite, not fetishized but expansive, a site of transcendence and power. Similarly, textile-based works and garments embroidered with symbolic faces collapsed distinctions between art, clothing, and ritual.

These interventions were more than aesthetic experiments. They amounted to proto-feminist challenges to a male-dominated art world that often dismissed women’s work as decorative or erotic. By reimagining the body and domestic space, these artists claimed Surrealism as a tool of agency and critique.

Surrealism also flourished in the carnivalesque and the chaotic. Mel Casas’s Humanscape 56 (San Antonio Circus ’69) (1969) explodes with neon hues, beauty queens, animals, and a tiger’s gaping jaw. It feels both exuberant and ominous, a carnival that doubles as a nightmare. Casas draws attention to how spectacle in late-1960s America—from pageants to television variety shows—was inseparable from social crisis. The circus becomes a metaphor for a society that masked racial violence, political unrest, and the trauma of war with dazzling displays of entertainment.

This tension between glamour and catastrophe runs throughout the show. Artists borrowed from advertising, pageantry, and media spectacle not to celebrate them but to expose their absurd contradictions. A crown, a protest sign, and a violent image could coexist in the same frame, revealing the surreal theater of American life.

“Sixties Surreal reveals how artists across the country embraced and reinvented surreal tendencies to challenge conventions and mirror the strangeness of a time marked by radical political, social, and cultural change.”

— Scott Rothkopf, Alice Pratt Brown Director Whitney Museum of American Art 82

Wally Hedrick, HERMETIC IMAGE, 1961. Oil on canvas, 84 × 60 in. (213.36 × 152.4 cm).

Collection of Mills College Art Museum, Northeastern University. © Wally Hedrick.

Photograph by MCAM

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Jae Jarrell, Ebony Family, ca. 1968.

Velvet dress with velvet collage, 38 1/2 x 38 x 1/2 in. (97.8 x 96.5 x 1.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of R.M. Atwater, Anna Wolfrom Dove, Alice Fiebiger, Joseph Fiebiger, Belle Campbell Harriss, and Emma L. Hyde, by exchange, Designated Purchase Fund, Mary Smith Dorward Fund, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, and Carll H. de Silver Fund. © Jae Jarrell

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Left: Robert Crumb, Head #1, 1967. Ink on paper, 10 × 7 in.

(25.4 × 17.8 cm). Collection of Rubén Blades, New York, NY. © Robert Crumb, 1967. Courtesy the artist, Paul Morris, and David Zwirner and Heritage Auctions/HA.com Right: Roger Brown, Untitled (Movie house with nude female), 1968. Oil on canvas, 24 3/4 × 24 5/8 × 1 3/4 in. (62.9 × 62.5 × 4.4 cm).

Courtesy the Roger Brown Study Collection of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. ©Estate of Roger Brown

What makes Sixties Surreal compelling is that it does not treat these works as marginal oddities. In-

becomes less a fixed style than a mode of perception, a

front us with the impossibility of taking reality at face

willingness to acknowledge the world’s instability.

value. They remind us that what appears ordinary can

stead, it positions them as central to understanding the

Walking through the exhibition today, the res-

decade. The prevailing narratives of art history often

onance with our own moment is difficult to ignore. The

elevate Pop’s ironic detachment or Minimalism’s stark

mixture of rage and desire, mysticism and media satura-

In that sense, Sixties Surreal is not just a his-

geometries. While those movements shaped the peri-

tion, spectacle and catastrophe feels eerily familiar. We

torical survey. It is a mirror. It shows us how artists of

od, they do not account for the mystical, hallucinatory,

may no longer watch Vietnam on television, but we scroll

the 1960s navigated a world that seemed overwhelm-

or carnivalesque experiments that were equally vital

through endless wars on our phones. Consumer specta-

ing, incoherent, and absurd, and how their embrace of

in cities like Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and San

cle has only intensified. Spiritual searching, once through

the surreal became a way to endure. Their works de-

Francisco. By foregrounding these works, the Whitney

astrology and psychedelics, now resurfaces in wellness

stabilize, provoke, and console, reminding us that the

reframes Surrealism not as a fading European import

culture and algorithmic self-help. The same sense of es-

uncanny is not a distant aesthetic but a lived condition.

but as an American vernacular. It was a way of process-

trangement, of living in a reality that feels both too real and

Like the suspended body in Brown’s Movie

ing televised war, consumerist fantasy, systemic racism,

unreal at once, persists.

and shifting sexual norms.

turn uncanny, and that chaos can demand new forms of vision.

House, we too are caught mid-leap, participants in a

The art of the 1960s suggests that estrange-

theater we did not entirely script. The lesson of these

Curator Scott Rothkopf has noted that the goal

ment can be illuminating. By rendering the world

artists is not that the surreal belongs to dreams, but that

is to show how artists “embraced and reinvented surre-

strange, artists revealed its contradictions more sharply.

it arises most urgently when reality itself becomes un-

al tendencies to challenge conventions and mirror the

Brown’s nude body tumbling across a stage, Berman’s

recognizable. To navigate such moments requires both

strangeness of a time marked by radical political, social,

mystical inscriptions, Crumb’s wired skull, Hurtado’s

radical vision and surreal courage, qualities as essential

and cultural change.” Seen from this angle, Surrealism

cosmic torso, Casas’s carnival excess—all of them con-

now as they were then.

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The Khao Yai Art Forest CONTEMPORARY ART AND THE THAI LANDSCAPE ENTWINE I N A M U S E U M S H A P E D B Y N AT U R E

in the rolling hills of Thailand’s Khao Yai region, three hours northeast of Bangkok, something unusual has taken root. Between rice paddies, forested slopes, and vineyards, an open-air museum has quietly emerged—one that seeks to dissolve the boundaries between art, landscape, and the human spirit. The Khao Yai Art Forest, inaugurated in early 2025, is less a museum in the conventional sense than a living, breathing experiment. Its 161 acres are neither park nor gallery, but a place where works of contemporary art appear like apparitions, half-discovered along winding paths, in clearings, and on the mist-laden edge of forest. ➺

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Louise Bourgeois’s Maman (1999) installed at Khao Yai Art Forest, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, 2024. © The Easton Foundation/ VAGA at ARS, NY. Photo by Krittawat Atthsis and Puttisin Choojesroom

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Richard Long, Madrid Circle, 1988, 1160 x 1160 cm, Stones, Khao Yai Art Forest, Courtesy Khao Yai Art. Photo by Krittawat Atthsis and Puttisin Choojesroom

“Art here isn’t meant to tower over the land,”

not spectacle, but reverie. One wanders into each work

“It was about creating a space where people

says Stefano Rabolli Pansera, the Italian curator and di-

almost by accident, as though stumbling across a dream

could breathe with art,” she explained at the opening.

rector who left Hauser & Wirth to shepherd this improb-

that had been waiting in the trees.

“The forest heals. Art heals. Together, perhaps, they can

able project. “It’s meant to be in dialogue with it.” His

The idea of planting an art institution in

invite us to live more deeply.” Her choice of Rabolli Pan-

phrasing echoes the philosophy that guided the forest’s

Khao Yai might have seemed improbable just a decade

sera as director was telling. Known for his sensitivity to

founder, philanthropist Marisa Chearavanont, whose vi-

ago. Known primarily for its UNESCO-listed nation-

site and for curating projects that resist the usual com-

sion was to create a sanctuary where the contemplative

al park—the first in Thailand, founded in 1962—the

mercial pressures, he was willing to think slowly. “You

power of art could be amplified by the rhythms of nature.

area was already a favored weekend escape for Bang-

cannot bulldoze a forest into an art park,” he said. “You

This ethos is felt everywhere. Louise Bour-

kok residents, who came for wineries, cool mountain

must let the land itself shape the encounters.”

geois’s Maman—the giant spider, simultaneously tender

air, and European-style resorts. To imagine it as a cru-

This approach required patience. Fields were

and terrifying—sits not on a marble plinth but nestled

cible for contemporary art required both audacity and

restored, paths allowed to meander rather than cut di-

into the earth, its long legs anchoring into soil and stone.

conviction. Chearavanont, heir to one of Thailand’s

rect lines, and artworks chosen less for celebrity than for

Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog Forest exhales a shifting cloud that

most prominent business families, possessed both. Her

resonance. Even the bar—K-BAR, a sculptural folly by

rolls across a grove, its moisture pulled directly from

philanthropic interest had long been tied to education,

Elmgreen & Dragset, open to only six guests and only

the atmosphere. Richard Long’s Madrid Circle—a ring

health, and culture, but she saw in Khao Yai the possibil-

one Saturday each month—was conceived not as an at-

of stones, elemental and austere—feels less installed

ity of something unique: a rural counterpart to the bus-

traction but as a gesture: a reminder that art can be as

than discovered. Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

tling new Bangkok Kunsthalle, which opened in 2024.

fleeting and convivial as a shared drink.

contributes her Two Planets series, which stages en-

If the Kunsthalle embodied Thailand’s cultural ambi-

The most extraordinary work at Khao Yai may

counters between villagers and Western masterpieces,

tions in an urban context, the Art Forest would embody

not be the monumental spider or the conceptual bar, but

here reframed within a Thai forest clearing. The effect is

something subtler, almost spiritual.

Nakaya’s Fog Forest. Since the 1970s, Nakaya has used

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artificial fog to explore the immaterial and the imperma-

against questions of place, belonging, and environment.

forests, the resonance is palpable. From the beginning,

nent. Here, in Thailand, her mist curls through the trees,

To walk the Khao Yai Art Forest is to be re-

the Art Forest has also been imagined as a site of pro-

erasing edges, softening light, and dampening sound un-

minded how much the pace of art viewing matters. In

duction, not only display. Residencies were established

til visitors find themselves disoriented, absorbed into a

a city museum, we glance at works in passing, twenty

to invite artists to live and work within the forest, allow-

shifting atmosphere. For Nakaya, the work was also eco-

seconds per painting if we are lucky. Here, time slows.

ing the land to shape their practice. The first resident was

logical: the fog’s moisture is harvested directly from the

The paths are long. The forest invites detours. Visitors

Yutaka Sone, the Japanese artist known for his delicate

air, returning to the land what the sky has given.

pause not just before art, but between art, listening to

stone carvings of landscapes and cities. He spent weeks

In a sense, this ethos extends to the whole for-

the drone of cicadas, the rush of water, the distant bark

tracing the contours of the land, sketching the way rice

est. Rather than impose monumental gestures, the cura-

of a deer. The institution itself encourages this slowness.

paddies folded into slopes. The second was Shala Mon-

torial strategy has been to amplify the elemental. Richard

Tickets are limited, spread across the day. There are no

roque, the Saint Lucian–born artist and cultural figure

Long’s Madrid Circle is a case in point: a circle of stones

flashy gift shops or crowded cafés. Even K-BAR, that

based in New York. Her presence underscored the in-

laid upon the earth, recalling ancient rituals as much as

elusive Elmgreen & Dragset folly, emphasizes intimacy:

stitution’s desire for dialogue between global and local,

contemporary land art. Its power lies not in invention

six people, one drink, once a month. “It is not about effi-

between the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, between dif-

but in recognition. One feels the primal rhythm of circle,

ciency,” Rabolli Pansera insists. “It is about experience. A

ferent ways of seeing nature as both resource and muse.

stone, ground—the things that endure. Araya Rasdjarm-

single afternoon here may change how you carry yourself

“The forest insists on humility,” Monroque reflected.

rearnsook’s contribution, by contrast, turns on cultural

for weeks.”

“You cannot pretend your art is larger than it. You have

encounter. Her Two Planets series stages dialogues be-

The idea recalls older traditions of pilgrim-

tween rural Thai villagers and canonical works of West-

age gardens and landscape temples, where movement

The Art Forest is not only a local experiment

ern art. Displayed here in the forest, those dialogues take

through space was itself a form of meditation. In Thai-

but part of a broader reconfiguration of Thailand’s cul-

on a new charge: questions of cultural translation echo

land, where Buddhist monasteries have long been set in

tural landscape. The Bangkok Kunsthalle had already

89

to find a way to listen.”

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Francesco Arena, GOD, 2024, 260 x 220 x 620 cm, Stones, Khao Yai Art Forest, Courtesy Khao Yai Art. Photo by Krittawat Atthsis and Puttisin Choojesroom

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Ubatsat, Pilgrimage to Eternity, 2024, Dimensions Variable, Sitespecific Sculpture, Khao Yai Art Forest, Courtesy Khao Yai Art. Photo by Krittawat Atthsis and Puttisin Choojesroom

marked a decisive step toward positioning the Thai capi-

Bourgeois’s spider may feel both wonder and unease.

The Art Forest is still young. Its collection will

tal as a regional art hub, offering a space for major exhibi-

One who lingers in Nakaya’s fog may emerge dampened

grow. Residencies will evolve. Visitorship will test the

tions and international collaborations. The Khao Yai Art

but oddly renewed. Couples pause on benches, children

balance between intimacy and accessibility. There are

Forest extends that ambition beyond the city, suggesting

wander ahead, and conversations slow to a murmur. The

risks, of course: that development pressures will erode

that culture need not be urban to be contemporary. This

admission fee—500 baht, around fifteen dollars—feels

the forest’s integrity, that success will tempt commercial-

dual strategy—city and countryside, Kunsthalle and for-

modest compared to the immensity of the experience.

ization. Yet for now, there is a sense of fragile promise.

est—signals something new. As Rabolli Pansera puts it:

For those who stay longer, there are evening programs

Chearavanont remains clear-eyed. “This is not a project

“Art in Thailand is no longer only about exporting artists

that combine art with dining, where meals are staged

for a season,” she says. “It is for generations. A forest

to international biennales. It is about building institu-

against the backdrop of forest, and the line between aes-

grows slowly. So must an art forest.” Her metaphor is

tions here, in Thai soil, with Thai rhythms, for Thai audi-

thetic and culinary experience blurs.

apt. Like a sapling, the Khao Yai Art Forest needs care,

ences and visitors alike.”

What is radical about Khao Yai Art Forest is

patience, and time. Already, though, it has sent out roots

The implications are significant. For decades,

not simply its location or scale, but its refusal of certain

into the soil of Thai culture, roots that may one day sus-

contemporary art in Southeast Asia has struggled against

familiar logics. It is not a theme park. It is not a luxu-

tain a canopy large enough to shelter not just art, but a

the gravitational pull of global centers—New York, Lon-

ry development in disguise. It resists the temptation to

new way of being with it.

don, Berlin. The Art Forest proposes another model: to

be Instagram bait, even as its works inevitably circulate

As dusk falls in Khao Yai, the forest changes char-

create a world-class institution rooted in local ecology and

online. Instead, it offers a quieter form of resistance:

acter. The air cools further, cicadas yield to frogs, and the

community, capable of drawing visitors not through block-

against speed, against commodification, against dis-

fog thickens. Visitors drift toward the exit, carrying with

buster names alone but through the depth of its experience.

traction. In this sense, it aligns with global currents in

them not just images but impressions—of spider legs

For those who make the three-hour drive from

contemporary art that seek refuge in slowness, locality,

against sky, of mist dissolving light, of stones in a circle

Bangkok, the arrival feels like a transition into another

and the elemental. One might compare it to Glenstone

older than memory. What remains is not a checklist of

tempo. Past roadside fruit stalls and undulating farm-

in Maryland, Inhotim in Brazil, or Naoshima in Japan,

works but a mood, a rhythm, a way of breathing. The Khao

land, the road climbs into the foothills of the national

but Khao Yai is distinctly its own: Southeast Asian, Bud-

Yai Art Forest reminds us that art is not only a matter of

park. The air cools, the horizon opens. At the Art Forest,

dhist-inflected, rural yet international. As critic Jason

walls and spotlights, but of atmosphere, place, and time.

visitors step onto paths where art waits not at the center

Farago once wrote of another project: “The point is not

Here, in the folds of the Thai countryside, art has found a

but at the margins: at the turn of a corner, across a field,

to see everything, but to let the things you do see change

forest—and perhaps, in return, the forest has found a new

behind a screen of bamboo. A visitor who stumbles upon

you.” That could serve as the motto here.

language for itself.

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Basilica di San Vitale, courtesy of Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna

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RAVENNA: An Insider’s Guide F E D E R I CO M A R C H E T T I , R AV E N N A N AT I V E A N D C R E A T O R O F Y O O X N E T- A - P O R T E R G R O U P, R E V E A L S T H E C I T Y ’ S H I D D E N L A Y E R S W H E R E M O S A I C S , H I S T O R Y A N D D A I LY L I F E CONVERGE.

Photography by David Needleman

Ravenna is a city that quiet-

I saw Karl Lagerfeld stretched

ly holds centuries within its

out on the floor of the basili-

streets; a place where the se-

ca of San Vitale looking with

rene Adriatic meets the weight

meticulous care at the mo-

of history, where vibrant con-

saics that would inspire his

temporary life moves among

Chanel Paris-Byzance collec-

ancient wonders. Famous for

tion, I became deeply aware of

its dazzling mosaics, it offers more than mere beauty: Raven-

how amazing and invaluable they could be for a creative”,

na is a crossroads, a layered tapestry of cultures, artistry, and

writes Marchetti in his book, The Geek of Chic: An Ameri-

intrigue. Once the last capital of the Western Roman Empire,

can Dream Italian Style.

Ravenna carries a profound historical significance that continues to resonate.

The air in Ravenna carries whispers of ancient stories—of empires and poets, artists and conquerors.

To truly appreciate Ravenna, one benefits from the

Walking its quiet streets, you sense its rich past in every

perspective of someone intimately familiar with its charac-

step, a pulse of history that never quite fades. The mosaics

ter. Federico Marchetti, a native of Ravenna, Chair of King

here, brilliantly vivid, glow with a timeless radiance. Craft-

Charles III’s SMI Fashion Task Force, and author of the up-

ed meticulously from fragments of marble, shells, glass,

coming autobiographical book, The Geek of Chic: An Amer-

and mother-of-pearl, each piece tells its story, revealing

ican Dream Italian Style, offers unique insights into this city’s

intricate puzzles that have captivated anyone who passes

extraordinary legacy.

through for centuries.

Begin your journey at the Basilica di San Vi-

“ravenna is a place by the sea, a junction, a

tale, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where the mosa-

town of great beauty. Ravenna holds some of the most ex-

ics, once admired by emperors and fashion icons alike,

traordinary mosaics in the history of art…in 2009, when

blaze brilliantly. Not far from there stands the Mausole-

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MAR – Museo d’Arte della Citta’ di Ravenna, Archivio Fotografico Comune di Ravenna

um of Galla Placidia, its modest exterior giving way to

linare rises impressively amid serene landscapes, its mo-

a breathtaking celestial ceiling—deep blue and flecked

saics reflecting an endless dialogue between earth and

with golden stars, eternally mesmerizing.

sky, past and present.

Nearby is the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare Nuo-

Yet Ravenna’s magic extends beyond its famed

vo, where scenes of biblical grandeur stretch along its

monuments. The nearby Rubicon River, more modest

walls, each mosaic alive with vivid expression. And then

stream than mighty waterway, evokes a profound mo-

there’s Dante’s Tomb, a quiet monument to literature’s

ment in history when Julius Caesar decisively marched

immortal poet, whose spirit lingers profoundly within

toward destiny, giving rise to the expression “crossing the

Ravenna’s cultural heart.

Rubicon”—a lasting metaphor for irreversible choices

Indeed, the nearby woods of Classe, the an-

and daring journeys into the unknown.

cient port of Ravenna, provided deep inspiration for

Evenings in Ravenna are meant for quiet dis-

Dante Alighieri himself, who famously wrote, “Midway

covery. Trattorias and cafés along Via Mentana serve au-

upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a for-

thentic Romagnolo dishes in a cozy atmosphere, where

est dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

the warmth of regional cuisine complements the charm

These landscapes, both mysterious and compelling, echo

of local hospitality.

through the poet’s enduring works.

The mosaics of Ravenna are a metaphor for the

Further into the city, the bustling Piazza del Po-

city itself—a beautiful assembly of different fragments,

polo embodies Ravenna’s living charm—cafés buzzing

never uniform yet harmonious. Federico Marchetti re-

with conversation, locals moving unhurriedly beneath

flects this eloquently in his latest book, “The Geek of

historic facades. Here, you experience the seamless

Chic”: “The Ravenna mosaics are like puzzles. Their

blend of ancient and modern, where tradition meets the

wonderful workmanship is carried out by fragmenta-

gentle rhythm of daily life.

tion and reassembly of the material from which they are

Outside the historic center, nature and history converge once more. At Classe, the Basilica di Sant’Apol-

Pineta di Classe, Archivio Fotografico Citta’ di Ravenna

made—tiny squares that together create beauty admired by everyone.”

94

“A forest dense, alive with green, so pure and tempered by eternal spring, that never was there mortal who had seen so fair a sight.”

—Purgatorio, Canto XXVIII, lines 2–5

ISSUE FIVE

Glimpse of the Basilica of San Vitale (UNESCO World Heritage List, 1996), Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna. Detail. Italy, 6th century.

(Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Mausoleo di Galla Placidia, courtesy of Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna

95

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Garden in Bloom TIFFANY’S LEGENDARY DESIGNER JEAN SCHLUMBERGER AND BUNNY MELLON’S GARDENS CONVERGE IN A SHARED VISION OF ORGANIC BEAUTY

Jean Schlumberger and Rachel “Bunny” Mellon on a private plane c. 1960 Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

in the rolling countryside of Virginia, Oak

wings—to create dynamic forms that seem to flutter and

Spring estate endures as a rare confluence of art, nature,

perch upon the wearer,” Verdeille has explained. The new

and intimacy. It was here that Jean Schlumberger—Tif-

interpretations, featuring stones such as tanzanite and

fany & Co.’s legendary designer—found an unexpected

turquoise, extend Schlumberger’s legacy of translating

kinship with Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon, the self-

nature’s fleeting gestures into enduring art.

taught garden visionary whose imagination shaped land-

Walking through Oak Spring today, one sens-

scapes as iconic as the White House Rose Garden. Their

tuary has since become a locus for scholarship, creativ-

es how perfectly these two worlds entwine. The path-

bond was not only one of friendship but of shared sen-

ity, and ecological reverence—a place where Mellon’s

ways, hedges, and orchards, maintained with fidelity to

sibility: a reverence for the organic and the irregular, for

passion is preserved for future generations of artists and

Mellon’s vision, carry the same spirit of asymmetry and

beauty that resists symmetry. “I try to make everything

thinkers.

movement that animates Schlumberger’s designs. Both

look as if it were growing, uneven, at random, organic,

Schlumberger’s jewelry, much admired and col-

speak to a philosophy of beauty rooted not in control but

in motion,” Schlumberger once reflected. Mellon’s gar-

lected by Mellon herself, seems to find its natural echo

in attunement—an acceptance of nature’s unpredictabil-

dens, with their studied elegance and quiet asymmetry,

within Oak Spring. His celebrated Bird on a Rock design,

ity, transformed into art.

seemed to breathe the same philosophy.

as whimsical as it is monumental, embodies the paradox

In its quiet majesty, Oak Spring continues to

Oak Spring was Mellon’s great canvas. Beyond

at the heart of both their work: delicacy and strength,

nurture the contemplative gaze that once bound Mel-

its pastures and stone walls lay the private laboratory of

motion and stillness. Recently reimagined under the

lon and Schlumberger in creative dialogue. The gardens

her vision, a place where she cultivated not only gardens

guidance of Nathalie Verdeille, Tiffany’s Chief Artistic

and the jewels, though belonging to different mediums,

but also a vast collection of books, manuscripts, and bo-

Officer, the motif continues to shimmer with new vitali-

form a shared testament: that true elegance resides in

tanical art. This devotion would later give rise to the Oak

ty. “For the high jewelry Bird on a Rock designs, we stud-

nature’s irregularities, in forms that grow and evolve

Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF), established in 1993

ied birds as Jean Schlumberger did—carefully observ-

without pattern, and in the friendships that allow such

to safeguard her legacy. What began as a personal sanc-

ing their stances, their feathers, the structures of their

visions to flourish.

96

ISSUE FIVE

The Basket House at Oak Spring. Photo by Adrian Martin. Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

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Bunny Mellon’s Main Residence Living Room at Oak Spring. Photo by Adrian Martin. Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

98

ISSUE FIVE

Bird on a Rock by Tiffany brooch in platinum and 18k yellow gold with a turquoise of approximately 24 carats, turquoise accents, diamonds and rubies. Photo by Fujio Emura. Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

99

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The Poppy Room at Oak Spring. Photo by Adrian Martin. Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

100

ISSUE FIVE

Bird on a Rock by Tiffany pendant in 18k yellow gold and platinum with a turquoise drop of approximately 16 carats, turquoise accents, diamonds and rubies.

Photo by Fujio Emura.

Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

101

ARTIST’S CONCEPTUAL RENDERING

MODERN EUROPEAN ELEGANCE FINDS ITS HOME IN WEST PALM BEACH Located in the city’s most exciting new neighborhood, this timelessly chic residential tower will offer the ultimate South Florida lifestyle. Beaches and boating, Italian-style dining, and social spaces are just steps from home.

Residential interiors and amenity spaces reflect the global culture and oceanside energy that gives West Palm Beach its unique character and soul.

Rich, natural materials, open, light-filled layouts, ocean-inspired elements and masterful craftsmanship touch every detail of design.

ARTIST’S CONCEPTUAL RENDERING

COME HOME TO MR. C Residences starting from $1.6M

Mr. C Sales Gallery 401 S. Olive Avenue West Palm Beach, FL 33401

MrCResidencesWPB.com info@mrcresidenceswpb.com 561.952.6001

Exclusive Sales by Douglas Elliman Development Marketing THE COMPLETE OFFERING TERMS ARE IN A CPS-12 APPLICATION AVAILABLE FROM THE OFFEROR. CP24-0036. WARNING: THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF REAL ESTATE HAS NOT INSPECTED, EXAMINED, OR QUALIFIED THIS OFFERING. This project is being developed by Lakeview Hospitality Investments, LLC, a Delaware limited partnership (“Developer”), which has a limited right to use the trademarked names and logos of Mr. C, Terra, Sympatico Real Estate and which uses the Mr. C marks under a license from Mr. C, which has not confirmed the accuracy of any of the statements or representations made about the project by the Developer. Any and all statements, disclosures and/or representations shall be deemed made by Developer you agree to look solely to Developer with respect to any and all matters relating to the marketing and/or development of the Condominium and with respect to the sales of units in the Condominium. Oral representations cannot be relied upon as correctly stating the representations of the developer. For correct representations, make reference to the documents required by section 718.503, Florida statutes, to be furnished by a developer to a buyer or lessee. These materials are not intended to be an offer to sell, or solicitation to buy a unit in the condominium. Such an offering shall only be made pursuant to the prospectus (offering circular) for the condominium and no statements should be relied upon unless made in the prospectus or in the applicable purchase agreement. In no event shall any solicitation, offer or sale of a unit in the condominium be made in, or to residents of, any state or country in which such activity would be unlawful. All images and designs depicted herein are artist’s conceptual renderings, which are based upon preliminary development plans, and are subject to change without notice in the manner provided in the offering documents. All such materials are not to scale and are shown solely for illustrative purposes. Renderings depict proposed views, which are not identical from each residence. No guarantees or representations whatsoever are made that existing or future views of the project and surrounding areas depicted by artist’s conceptual renderings or otherwise described herein, will be provided or, if provided, will be as depicted or described herein. Any view from a residence or from other portions of the property may in the future be limited or eliminated by future development or forces of nature and the developer in no manner guarantees the continuing existence of any view. Furnishings are only included if and to the extent provided in your purchase agreement. The project graphics, renderings and text provided herein are copyrighted works owned by the Developer. All rights reserved