At 84, Joan Snyder Is Still Energized by Her Bold Feminist Painting https://ift.tt/JqCsh6d

Joan Snyder’s Body & Soul (1997–98) is one of those paintings that photos don’t quite do justice to. Perhaps it’s to do with how the rectangular canvas is divided into discrete sections, all teeming with texture and exuberant detail, defying you to flatten them into a single image. The top and middle thirds contain a series of painted and collaged rectangles: a block of teal with paint dripping from the base; a piece of leopard-print fabric, the backdrop to a red-lipped open mouth; a white-ish field dotted with pink and green, and so on. Occasional details, such as a sparkly pink scribble, cross from one section to the next.

In the bottom third, meanwhile, are two pictures. On the right is a choppy seascape, and on the left, a woman laying naked on her back, legs spread apart. In lieu of a fig leaf, Snyder has affixed a bunch of plastic grapes to the canvas.

“Body & Soul” is also the title of Snyder’s debut exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac in London—a survey of more than 30 pieces spanning the American artist’s six-decade career, open through February 8, 2025. (The gallery announced European and Asian representation of Snyder, in collaboration with New York gallery Canada, earlier this year.) The painting’s title made a fitting choice, Snyder told me when we sat down for an interview ahead of the opening. The work, with its eclectic mix of abstract and figurative elements, is itself “kind of a little retrospective” of the various phases and preoccupations of her career.

While not as widely known as she should be, Snyder is a highly respected painter: She was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur fellowship in 2007, and has enjoyed museum shows at venues including the Jewish Museum in New York. But her route into art was not the most straightforward. As a child, born to a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey, she was never taken to any museums or galleries. She did a bit of painting as a teenager—“mostly copying magazine covers”—before studying sociology at Douglass College. Then, in her senior year, she signed up for an elective art class. The instructor remarked that her paintings reminded him of German and Russian Expressionists, particularly Alexej von Jawlensky. “It was like speaking for the first time,” Snyder said. “I sensed that I could express my feelings through paintings in a way that I had never done before.”

Although her parents were not happy about her abandoning her plans to become a social worker, Snyder went ahead and rented her first studio, painting in the mornings while working part-time jobs. Despite her lack of training, she managed to convince the art department at Rutgers University to admit her into its graduate program. “I put a bunch of paintings in my car, drove up, knocked on the door, and asked if they would look at my paintings,” she recalled. The earliest work in the Ropac show—a moody, quasi-abstract scene entitled Grandma Cohen’s Funeral Painting (1964)—is from this period. There are also a couple of her early “flock” paintings, made using crushed rayon (with a “flocked” texture) and featuring biomorphic forms that gesture toward the female body.

Snyder’s first major breakthrough came later that decade, though, when she realized she could isolate her colorful, gestural brushstrokes as forms on the canvas. These “stroke” paintings began to attract considerable attention in the early 1970s, with a spate of gallery shows in New York and a laudatory essay by the influential curator Marcia Tucker in Artforum. “It was overwhelming for me,” said Snyder, who—with her then-husband, the photographer Larry Fink—decided to flee the claustrophobic Manhattan scene for a farmhouse in Pennsylvania.

Snyder was also “becoming a little bored,” as she put it, with the stroke paintings. Alongside her own work, she had been involved in a number of feminist projects in the art world: She was the founding curator of the (still ongoing) Women Artists Series of exhibitions at Douglass Library, and a member of the Heresies collective in New York. Now she began to explore women’s experiences in her paintings too, and to develop what she calls the “female sensibility.” For Snyder, this meant embracing emotional and autobiographical content, craft techniques, and maximalist style—all things that flew in the face of the austere Conceptualism then dominating the (mostly male) mainstream.

In the decades since, Snyder’s work has remained rooted in the personal, while drawing on an expansive array of expressive tools. She tends to begin with sketches, which she then translates onto the canvas. Recurring elements include lines of text and embedded three-dimensional objects. In the triptych Love’s Deep Grapes (1984), for instance, a quote from Virgil is etched into a woodblock on the right-hand side and printed on canvas on the left. Other works feature rose petals, clumps of straw, and bits of lace. These are dispersed among painted figures, landscapes, and abstract shapes, often rendered as simplified forms in gestural brushstrokes. The isolated stroke is also a continuing motif, although no longer the sole focus. “The strokes are like the notes in music,” Snyder told me, “while the other imagery I use is like the lyrics.”

The comparison is a helpful one: Music is crucial for Snyder, who always has something playing on a CD while she’s painting in the studio, which she still does every day, from 9 a.m. until 1 or 2 p.m. “I will listen to a piece over and over,” she said. “It helps me move, it energizes me.” The exhibition at Ropac features eight substantially sized paintings, all made since the beginning of this year—including one, Selfie (2024), which she finished after all the others had been shipped to London. Near the center of the canvas is a stick figure whose open-mouthed face is made up of thickly encrusted blobs of pink. You can still smell the paint.

“It’s incredible for me to see all this work together,” said Snyder of the career-spanning show, which is billed as her most comprehensive outside of the U.S. to date. A handful of the historic pieces have been borrowed from private collections—this is Snyder’s first time seeing them for years. Most, however, have come directly from her own stores. “I’ve held onto quite a few of them for dear life,” she said. “But I’m about to be 85 and so I had to talk myself into it. And here they are!”

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British Artist Tirzah Garwood Finally Gets Her Due at Dulwich Picture Gallery https://ift.tt/urg3z0i

The Julie Andrews song “My Favorite Things” comes to mind when viewing the work of Tirzah Garwood. Cats, dogs, bakeries, children, flowers, and insects are all prominent motifs, whether depicted in drawing, engraving, collage, or paint. It is a comfortable world, but one that still includes social commentary and a sense of fun. For just over two decades, Garwood made the ordinary significant in her work: no subject too trivial to be shown in her dreamlike, though realist, pieces.

However, apart from a memorial exhibition the year after her death in 1952, there has been no exhibition commemorating this British artist. To the art world, for many years, she was more famous for being the wife of the landscape painter Eric Ravilious.

Now, more than 70 years later, the retrospective “Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious” at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, on view through May 26, 2025, shines a light on this once-obscure artist. Curated by James Russell—who was responsible for the major Eric Ravilious watercolor exhibition nearly 10 years ago in the exact same institution—this exhibition seeks to reintroduce Garwood as an artist in her own right. The show consists of artworks primarily from private collections, many of which are being shown to the public for the first time.

“She was so obscure as an artist that institutions were unwilling to take the risk. Thanks to the film about Ravilious as a war artist—alongside the publication of her autobiography in 2012—it’s put her in the spotlight,” said Russell, in an interview with Artsy.

Tirzah Garwood’s early years

Born in Gillingham, Kent, in 1908, Garwood was named Eileen Lucy, but was immediately given a nickname when a relative asked after “Tertia”—Latin for “the third child”—and her two elder siblings altered this to the biblical “Tirzah.” The artist’s parents encouraged her practice, and at 17 years old, she started attending evening classes at Eastbourne School of Art before going full time in 1926. Under the tutelage of her future husband Eric Ravilious, who passed on his enthusiasm for wood engravings, Garwood quickly took to the medium. One of the first works on view at the entrance of the show is an engraving, The Four Seasons (1929), her first to be accepted by the Society of Wood Engravers for exhibition.

Unlike Ravilious, who focused on rural themes, Garwood cast her eye to a subject closer to home: family and domestic interiors. These four black-and-white engravings are witty and lively with an energy that exceeds their small size. One portrays two women getting a house ready for spring, shaking feathers out of a pillow; a family at the beach; another family group playing cards as the weather cools for autumn; and a woman slowly getting out of bed in winter, sleepily trying to place her foot in her slipper.

Tirzah Garwood’s career in London

By 1928, Garwood was becoming known for her distinctive style. She moved to London to study at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and to find illustration work. In her autobiography, she noted that her parents “thought Mr Ravilious was perverting a nice girl who used to draw fairies and flowers into a stranger who rounded on them and did drawings that were only too clearly caricatures of themselves.”

Engravings produced during this time emphasize Garwood’s sense of the surreal. On view in the show next to The Four Seasons, the artist depicts herself distorted in Hall of Mirrors (1928), smiling broadly at her oversized reflection, the contrasting patterns defining textures and surfaces. “She could have depicted herself as a figure of beauty, but instead she decides to show herself yawning, or distorted in a hall of mirrors,” said Russell. “She had a real sense of fun, which you can see throughout the show.”

Garwood’s work also, perhaps, betrays her unease in her new move to the big city. In Kensington High Street (1929), Garwood depicts her stout, respectable aunt stepping into the road, while the artist herself lurks behind. Her face is blocked by her aunt’s body, but is identifiable by the case she is carrying, which bears the initials “TG.” Around these two figures, the city bustles and slender mannequins model the latest fashions in the background, a contrast to Garwood’s provincial garb.

Tirzah Garwood’s marbled papers

In 1930, Garwood married Ravilious. They moved first to a flat close to the Thames, and then to a home in rural Essex, which they shared with fellow artists Caroline and Edward Bawden. This was a challenging time for Garwood, artistically speaking, as their home had a constant stream of visitors, and it was often left to the women to do the domestic work. While she produced fewer wood engravings, she discovered a new passion: marbled paper.

The previous year, Edward Bawden had tried marbling paper, which involved dropping thinned oil paint in a pattern onto a large tray of water with a thickening agent. He’d lay a piece of paper over the pattern and then leave to dry. Caroline and Garwood, both intrigued, tried their hand at this art form. By the end of the summer of 1934, they had their own business. Garwood developed her own distinctive approach, layering delicate repeat patterns that were unlike anything being made in Britain, let alone Europe.

With the 1930s bringing a resurgence of Arts and Crafts interiors, there was a stream of orders for these papers, providing valuable income to the household. Some came from private clients, including Muriel Rose, co-owner of the Little Gallery in Chelsea and one of the era’s arbiters of taste, as well as design shops.

Eventually, Garwood and Ravilious moved into their own house in Castle Hedingham, a town in northern Essex. With the outbreak of World War II, demand for the marbled papers soon dried up and more hardships were in store for Garwood. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 1941, and her husband died the following year while he was on active service as a war artist in Iceland.

Tirzah Garwood’s life as a painter

In 1944, Garwood found a new creative surge and took up oil painting for the first time, writing to her friend Peggy Angus that she “believe it may be my cup of tea. I always hankered after it because of being able to get things really dark.”

In the Dulwich Picture Gallery show, the third room marks the beginning of Garwood’s life after her husband. Here, it’s clear that Garwood’s innate playfulness found new life in her paintings, as she explored a naïve style similar to Henri Rousseau. Her first painting, The Cock (1944), in the style of the Victorian artist G. N. Whitehead, shows a cockerel standing large and proud in the foreground with the countryside receding behind him. In Etna (1944), Garwood depicts an East Sussex landscape. It is painted from a low perspective, at eye-level with the chickens, so that the crops are looming over them. The train depicted is a likeness of a tin toy train that belonged to her children, adding a surreal and playful element to the work. In 1946, Garwood married BBC radio producer Henry Swanzy and experimented with collage, presenting cut-and-pasted structures in box frames that added a sense of theater to her artworks.

Tirzah Garwood’s life after Eric Ravilious

Though the Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition is entitled “Beyond Ravilious,” certain Ravilious works are on view alongside Garwood’s to show how entwined their lives were, as well as to give context to her work. Ravilious’s watercolor The Greenhouse: Cyclamen and Tomatoes (1935) depicts a neighbor’s greenhouse interior, shown to him by the head gardener. Garwood was to later revisit this part of her life but, by contrast, she was inspired by the head gardener’s tales of his travels to South America. Her painting Orchid Hunters in Brazil (1950) depicts this gardener as he explores the lush rainforests of Brazil. Delicate pink flowers contrast with the dense foliage while a snake slithers in the foreground, adding a threatening element to this almost claustrophobic painting.

“Beyond Ravilious” closes with what the artist called her “happiest year”: the time she spent at a nursing home before her eventual death from breast cancer. Garwood was intensely creative, and 20 of the oil paintings she produced during this period are on view. Dreamlike and intimate, they recall Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo. This influence is particularly evident in the painting Spanish Lady (1950), which shows a ceramic figurine of a woman, the ghostly likeness of the artist glowing softly underneath a starry sky. These motifs that became synonymous with her work—flowers, animals, a neat exterior—give a sense with this piece that her art had only scratched the surface of her full potential.

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Colombian collage artist María Berrío will be represented by Hauser & Wirth. https://ift.tt/dtDMoyI

Hauser & Wirth has announced its representation of Brooklyn-based artist María Berrío, known for her large-scale collage paintings. The gallery will mount a solo show of her work in 2025 and will feature one of her pieces at Art Basel Miami Beach this December. Berrío will be co-represented by her London-based gallery, Victoria Miro, which is currently staging her solo exhibition, “The End of Ritual,” until January 18, 2025.

Born in Bogotá in 1982, Berrío moved to New York at 18 to attend Parsons School of Design, later earning her MFA from the New York School of Visual Arts. Her work is deeply rooted in her Colombian heritage, drawing on her childhood memories and the natural surroundings of her family’s farm outside Bogotá.

At the New York School of Visual Arts, a friend suggested that Berrío try to work with artisanal Japanese paper and collage. From there, Berrío developed an intricate technique of working with delicate layers of washi papers and watercolors on linen. She meticulously places the cut or torn pieces of paper before adding more intricate details in watercolor, graphite, and ink.

Berrío’s complex figurative scenes portray a range of subjects, from frenetic crowds to introspective portraits. Her collages are often inspired by fantasy or folklore. One work at her solo exhibition at Victoria Miro, The Spectators (2024), features a crowd standing behind a figure in a bright red coat wearing a cat face mask. Her subjects, primarily women or children, are frequently portrayed in uncanny, strange, or exciting situations. Oftentimes, these works address political and social struggles, such as deportation detention centers in the U.S. or instability in her home country.

“María is a confident innovator dedicated to both technical inventiveness and new interpretations of the deep, psychologically rich reservoir where folklore, mythology, and history mingle,” said Marc Payot, President of Hauser & Wirth. “María’s ideas and formal prowess align her wonderfully with numerous artists across our program, from Jack Whitten and Mark Bradford to Angel Otero and Firelei Báez.”

Berrío has been the subject of solo shows at prestigious institutions, including ICA Boston in 2023 and the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida in 2021. Her work is featured in collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

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“Bad Fruit” sculptor Kathleen Ryan to be represented by Gagosian. https://ift.tt/tygnwYM

Gagosian has announced its representation of Kathleen Ryan, an American sculptor celebrated for her monumental Dutch vanitas-inspired sculptures. Her debut exhibition with the gallery is slated for 2026.

Born in Santa Monica in 1984, Ryan creates work rooted in the cultural and natural landscapes of the West Coast, incorporating elements from Los Angeles muscle car culture to the region’s lush landscapes. She completed her BA at Pitzer College in 2006 and received her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2014. At UCLA, she studied under Charles Ray and Catherine Opie. Just three years later, Ryan presented her first solo museum exhibition at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Ryan’s sculptures—often massive and adorned with glittering gemstones—are reinterpretations of the fruit depicted by Dutch Masters. These fruits are depicted mid-rot, intended as a commentary against American consumerism and gluttony. This approach is at the heart of her ongoing series, “Bad Fruit,” which she started in 2018. The parts of the sculpture that resemble mold are made from dark-colored gemstones such as black tourmaline, amazonite, and serpentine, among others.

One standout example is Bad Melon (2020), which resembles moldering pieces of watermelon made from glass beads and gemstones, such as quartz and rhodonite, among other materials. The rind is made from a disposed Airstream trailer. Like many of her sculptures, Bad Melon combines precious objects with salvaged materials, emphasizing contradictions between decay and decadence.

Now based in Jersey City, New Jersey, Ryan has presented solo exhibitions with François Ghebaly in Los Angeles, Karma in New York, and Josh Lilley in London. Her work is featured in several prestigious collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Currently, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco is hosting “Spotlight: Kathleen Ryan,” focusing on her 2023 sculpture Screwdriver, which repurposes a car trunk from a 1968 AMC Javelin. The discarded metal is transformed into a molding orange slice, complete with a cherry skewered with a patio umbrella.

From May 5th to August 11th 2024, the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, mounted Ryan’s first-ever museum survey, featuring around 30 works spanning the last decade. The show will travel to the Kistefos Museum in Jevnaker, Norway, in 2025.

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7 Must-See Shows during Art Basel Miami Beach 2024 https://ift.tt/WU0BcGV

Miami Art Week caps off the yearly art fair calendar with its sunlit shores, legendary parties, and a deluge of internationally recognized art fairs, each prepared to show what’s now and next in contemporary art. Since Art Basel arrived in Miami in 2002, the event has evolved into the centerpiece of a massive ecosystem of art fairs, including Untitled Art, Design Miami, NADA, and Art Miami. Brimming with events from start to finish, Miami Art Week is expected to host more than 1,200 galleries.

It’s not just the visiting galleries that make a big splash—Miami’s network of galleries and museums also host a packed schedule of high-profile shows, from institutions like ICA Miami to local stalwarts like Nina Johnson. When you find a moment to step away from Art Basel Miami Beach in the Miami Beach Convention Center or Untitled’s shoreline tent, make sure to explore some of the local shows. Here are seven must-see exhibitions happening during Miami Art Week 2024.

Slawn, “Slawn in Miami”

Saatchi Yates, 70 NE 40th St.

Through Dec. 10

If Slawn’s debut solo exhibition at Saatchi Yates in London was any indication, the Lagos-born artist’s gallery show in Miami will be one to watch. Born Olaolu Slawn in 2000, the artist has a magnetic bravado that draws crowds. Case in point: After the artist’s posts on Instagram, hundreds flocked to the London gallery inquiring if they carried “Slawn works,” prompting Saatchi Yates (who had never heard of him) to seek him out. Now, Saatchi Yates is showcasing a new collection of paintings by the rule-breaking artist during Miami Art Week in the Design District.

In this upcoming exhibition, Slawn produced 10 new large-scale paintings. He is influenced by his Yoruba heritage and contemporary youth culture, resulting in graffiti-like pieces that feature playful yet pointed commentary on racial stereotypes. Notable among his new work is Mr Green Man (2024), where an anthropomorphic cactus is depicted as one of Slawn’s frowning caricatures. Speaking to Artsy in September, he commented on this signature motif: “I say this in the most honest way, that is all I know how to draw.”

During Miami Art Week, Slawn’s work will also be included at the Rubell Museum’s presentation of its recent acquisitions.

Calida Rawles, “Away with the Tides”

Pérez Art Museum Miami

Through Feb. 2, 2025

Los Angeles–based painter Calida Rawles is known for her hyperrealistic paintings that capture Black individuals in bodies of water. Drawing from her personal connection to swimming—a source of comfort since she learned how to swim at age seven—Rawles uses these aquatic scenes to explore themes of racial identity and healing.

In her exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, “Away with the Tides,” Rawles explores Black life in the historic Overtown community in Miami, which has been deeply affected by gentrification and systemic racism. Her canvases, based on photographs taken there, depict Black residents engaging with significant water sites. These include historic public swimming pools designated for Black swimmers and Virginia Key Beach, which was the only beach accessible to Black visitors during segregation.

“People see water and they may think of leisure, relaxation, pools. But a lot of African Americans, when they see water, it’s a fear, and it’s a memory of a lot of history where we didn’t have access to it,” Rawles told the Miami Times. “Or we can even go deeper, in that the connection of all African Americans, per se, starts with the Middle Passage.”

An MFA graduate from NYU, Rawles is represented by Lehmann Maupin, which showcased her first major solo exhibition in New York in 2023.

Lucy Bull, “The Garden of Forking Paths”

ICA Miami

Dec. 3, 2024–Mar. 30, 2025

Living and working in Los Angeles, Lucy Bull often dedicates up to 12 hours at a stretch to her painting sessions. Using a technique similar to Max Ernst’s frottage, she meticulously builds up layers of oil paint on her canvases. Over time, these coats accumulate, allowing Bull to then etch into them, revealing the complex underpaintings. This intense process saturates her abstract forms with pulsating colors—teals crash into oranges and hot pinks swirl in eddies.

Now 34, Bull is presenting her first institutional solo exhibition in the U.S., “The Garden of Forking Paths,” at ICA Miami. The show features 16 of her paintings created between 2019 and 2024, including recent large-scale horizontal works that span over 10 feet across. In addition to her paintings, Bull will present the next stairwell commission at ICA Miami, which will be on view through September 2025.

A BFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bull mounted her third solo exhibition with her representing gallery, David Kordansky Gallery, in May. Her work is featured in collections such as the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., among others.

Andrea Chung, “Between Too Late and Too Early”

MOCA North Miami

Through Apr. 6, 2025

A series of hanging bottles made from sugar are slowly deteriorating in one of MOCA North Miami’s gallery spaces. These fragile vessels, part of American artist Andrea Chung’s installation The Wailing Room (2024), naturally contract and deform over time. As they fall apart, each bottle will reveal a handwritten note of apology to lost children. The work recalls the harrowing choices of enslaved mothers forced to commit infanticide to spare their children from slavery.

This installation is the central part of Chung’s solo exhibition “Between Too Late and Too Early,” which features over 50 mixed-media works and video pieces that explore the legacies of colonialism in the Caribbean. Inspired by her Chinese and Caribbean heritage, Chung is known for her subversive use of materials tied to colonial histories, creating works that address themes of love, loss, and resistance.

“77 Women Pulling at The Threads of Social Discourse and Guests: We Got The Power”

The Contemporary Art Modern Project

Through Dec. 20

Perhaps You'll Bloom Again, 2024
Caitlin McCormack
The Contemporary Art Modern Project

The sixth edition of The Contemporary Art Modern Project’s “Women Pulling at The Threads of Social Discourse” brings together fiber works by 81 artists, all responding to the Ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata and Spike Lee’s 2015 film Chi-Raq, which reworks the same story in modern-day Chicago.

The central narrative of both Lysistrata and Chi-Raq involves women withholding sex from men as a strategy for gaining political power. It’s a theme that has been much talked-about in recent weeks, with growing U.S. discussion of the South Korean feminist movement called 4B, which proposes a similar no-contact strategy.

In this context, the show is intended as a “frieze” of collective action, where fiber art is used as a technique for both resistance and storytelling. For instance, Caitlin McCormack’s embroidery Perhaps You’ll Bloom Again (2024) takes its title from a line from Lysistrata where women mock the men’s growing frustration. Crafted from hand-crocheted cotton string, glue, velvet, antique fabric, and synthetic fringe, the piece mirrors the sharp political and comedic tone of the original. Elsewhere, Shelly McCoy’s The Thong of Peace (2024) reimagines the thong as a non-wearable garment, made from galvanized barbed wire. Together, the 81 participating artists use fabric art as a way to address politics, environmental crises, sexual autonomy, and violence.

Josué Sánchez, “Guardians of the Sacred Land”

Nina Johnson

Dec. 2, 2024–Jan. 11, 2025

Tree of Life / ÁRBOL DE LA VIDA, 2024
Josué Sánchez
Nina Johnson

Peruvian artist Josué Sánchez’s first solo show in Lima faced harsh criticism from professors at his alma mater: the now-defunct School of Fine Arts in Lima. In an interview with the BBC, he recalled they “found my flat painting and the bright colors of my pictures unbearable.” Yet, that same night, his approach was validated by Bolivian sculptor Marina Núñez del Prado, who encouraged him to embrace his colorful aesthetic. Heeding her advice, Sánchez continued to develop his vibrant style. His lush, boldly colored figurative paintings are now featured in his first solo exhibition in the United States, “Guardians of the Sacred Land” at Nina Johnson.

Sánchez uses saturated, expressive colors to depict tales of Andean folklore, with a magical realist style that characterizes his pieces. A standout of his upcoming exhibition is ÁRBOL DE LA VIDA (2014), a bright red canvas spanning 5 feet by 9 feet. It depicts a fantastical tree emerging from a fish-filled ocean, its dense, swirling branches ornamented by birds in a kaleidoscopic palette.

Rachel Feinstein, “The Miami Years”

The Bass

Through Aug. 17, 2025

Rachel Feinstein first studied art as a child under the guidance of her grandmother in her hometown, Miami. Now a New York–based artist, Feinstein returns home for her first major exhibition in the Florida city: “The Miami Years” at The Bass. Known for her inventive approach to sculpture over her three-decade-long career—incorporating painting, video, performance, and installation—Feinstein often interrogates ideas of intimacy, vulnerability, and abjection. In particular, her uncanny, sculptural works examine human behavior and female identity.

The centerpiece of Feinstein’s exhibition at The Bass is Panorama of Miami (2024), a sprawling 30-foot-long installation of painted mirrored wall panels inspired by 18th-century panoramic wallpapers. Miami, for Feinstein, is a complex landscape where beauty coexists with decay. She captures a vista filled with the city’s landmarks: the Hotel Breakwater on South Beach’s Ocean Drive, the Atlantis Condominium (famous from the opening credits of Miami Vice), and the Serpentarium (a now-defunct reptile petting zoo). The unpopulated buildings, rendered in somber grays, starkly contrast with the vivid oranges of the natural landscape, creating a vision of how the city has changed since Feinstein was a child.

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$5.8 million Yoshitomo Nara painting leads Phillips Hong Kong’s modern and contemporary sale. https://ift.tt/knjQBRf

Yoshitomo Nara’s Baby Blue (1999) sold for HK$45 Million (US$5.8 Million) at Phillips’s modern and contemporary art evening sale in Hong Kong on November 25th. The painting was the top lot of the sale, which totaled HK$171.14 million (US$21.99 million). (All prices include fees.)

The Nara painting features the artist’s signature “Nara girl,” a cherub-faced figure with large, expressive eyes, against a pastel green backdrop. This work was originally presented at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York during the artist’s first solo show in the city in 1999. Praised by New York Times critic Roberta Smith at the time, the work dates to a period when Nara created some of his most sought-after pieces. Notably, his current auction record, Knife Behind Back (2000), painted around this time, sold for $25 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2019.

Meanwhile, a new auction record was set for rising artist Li Hei Di—who was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2023–24 —when Orange Swim (2021) sold for HK$1.2 million (US$155,035), more than four times its pre-sale estimate. The Chinese artist’s previous auction record was just days before at Phillips in New York.

Li’s two record-breaking sales come shortly after Pace Gallery announced its co-representation of the 27-year-old artist with Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in September. Earlier this month, the artist made their auction debut at Cuppar Auction House in Beijing, where a work sold for CNY 667,000 ($92,341).

Another emerging artist to watch at Phillips, Korean painter Moka Lee—who is featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2025—made a noteworthy auction debut with I’m Not Like Me (2020). The painting sold for HK$1.65 million (US$211,328), quadrupling its presale estimate of HK$400,000–HK$600,000 (US$51,300–US$76,900).

Following Nara’s Baby Blue, the top lots of the night were:

• Sanyu’s Reclining Nude, with Raised Knee II (ca. 1950–60s) sold for HK$42.8 million (US$5.49 million).
• Nicolas Party’s Mountains (2023) sold for HK$13.76 million (US$1.76 million).
• Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 202 x 143 cm, 25 septembre 1967 (1967) sold for HK$11.09 million (US$1.42 million).
• Nara’s Fountain of Life (2001/2014) sold for HK$10.13 million (US$1.3 million).
• Liu Ye’s Mondrian, Hello (2002) sold for HK$7.36 million (US$946,531).

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Timothy Taylor will now work with The Paul and Suzanne Jenkins Foundation. https://ift.tt/TbcyWqK

Timothy Taylor has announced that it will begin working with the Paul and Suzanne Jenkins Foundation to promote and manage the legacy of American Abstract Expressionist painter Paul Jenkins, in collaboration with Ronchini Gallery. The gallery will show a painting by Jenkins in its booth at Art Basel Miami Beach this December.

The gallery will also organize a solo exhibition of Jenkins’s work from the 1950s–70s in its New York space in 2025. “I am particularly excited for new audiences to discover how his poetic and spiritual work fits within the history of mid-century American painting, and I very much look forward to developing exhibitions with the Foundation,” said gallery founder Timothy Taylor.

Born in 1923 in Kansas City, Jenkins served in the U.S. Naval Air Corps during World War II. Covered by the G.I. Bill, he attended the Art Students League in New York, where he worked under painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi. In 1953, Jenkins departed the United States to travel across Europe. He lived in Spain and Italy before settling in Paris.

During the late 1950s and ’60s, Jenkins shifted from oil to acrylic paint, developing a technique of pouring pigments directly onto flat, primed canvases on his studio floor. His work is often compared to fellow Abstract Expressionist legend Jackson Pollock, who Jenkins was friends with.

In 1954, Jenkins presented his first solo exhibition at Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris. Two years later, he had his first show in New York at the tastemaking Martha Jackson Gallery. Around this time, he began to preface the titles of his work with the term “Phenomena,” at times calling himself an “abstract phenomenist.” Jenkins once described his artistic contribution as capturing “something that is there but cannot be seen except through the experience of painting.”

From the 1960s to the ’80s, Jenkins was the subject of several major retrospectives at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. His work is featured in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Tate, the Centre Pompidou, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

In 2012, Jenkins died in New York at 88 after a brief illness. In recent years, his solo shows have been staged by AM Arte Moderna, Ronchini Gallery, and Heather James Fine Art, among others.

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Inside New Director Bridget Finn’s Vision for Art Basel Miami Beach https://ift.tt/8cTnPtO

It’s the largest art fair in the western hemisphere, its parties are the stuff of legend, and it pretty much guarantees its guests some December sun: There are more than a few reasons why Art Basel Miami Beach is a much-cherished event for the international art world set.

First started in 2002, the fair now occupies a prime position in a week stuffed with art world activity (more than 10 fairs now take place during the week). The 2024 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, which features some 283 exhibitors, will also be the first under the directorship of Bridget Finn.

When she got the job, Finn was already a familiar face to many in the U.S. gallery circuit. Her career thus far includes stints at tastemaking names Anton Kern Gallery and Mitchell Innes & Nash, and in 2017 she co-founded the much-beloved Reyes | Finn in Detroit with business partner Terese Reyes.

It’s this experience in small and mid-size commercial galleries that makes Finn’s appointment such a savvy one for the mega-fair, bringing an understanding of the unique needs and nuances that apply to different segments of the art industry. Artsy spoke to Finn about her background in the art world, how to welcome new collectors into an event that can be intimidating, and what visitors to Miami Beach can expect from this year’s event.

Can you talk about your decision to leave the gallery world and join Art Basel?

It was not like, “Okay, I’m exiting the gallery landscape.” Many of us spent a lot of time post-COVID thinking through our ambitions and strengths. Personally, I felt that I would be perhaps most useful in a capacity of this nature. Also at this point, I’ve been a professional in this industry for such a long time that you kind of transition into these new experiences. And you take everything with you along the way: people you’ve worked with, the connections made. It becomes a beautiful, evolving narrative.

To be able to run Art Basel in Miami Beach with that set of experiences is super gratifying. It’s also extremely helpful in terms of shaping the direction of the show around the needs of the galleries.

How has it been going since you joined Art Basel last summer?

It has been fast-paced, it’s been great. Of course, the program for 2023 was set by the time I joined, so I was there in more of a learning capacity and supporting the team. We work on a year-long cycle, but if you’re attempting to put something in place that is new, if you are changing something significant, it needs to be considered well before the show so that you can make those decisions in a collaborative way. There are a lot of moving pieces to this, as you can imagine.

What are some of the main ways that your background has informed your role here?

Having worked across different gallery programs and understanding the differing challenges across different scales, geographies, and moments in terms of artists’ careers…those nuances mean that you need to appease a broad cross-section of needs within one show.

We’ve rolled out a smaller booth option for galleries who are interested. You don’t have to be new to apply for that size, anyone can apply. So you’ll see galleries who will have that smaller booth size that are from Europe, or maybe have a more emerging program that allows them to have an equitable decision in terms of price point as they think about their own needs and scaling their business.

In addition to that, Art Basel Miami Beach is the largest art fair in North America, which is the most robust market in the world. To that, we also want to offer galleries who want maximal space to bring a significant amount of inventory, to be able to show the depth of their program in their booth.

Were there particular challenges you had in mind when you took the role that you wanted to address when it came to small galleries at art fairs?

It’s thinking about user experience. What can we do to deliver the best show possible to our clients? We took great care in the smaller booth size with the sliding scale.

Also, we are tailoring Nova and Positions—our two most emerging sections—to think about the greater connectivity of those sectors within the show floor. This year, you’ll see a change where Meridians, which is our large-scale monumental sculpture sector, sits like a crown jewel on the show floor. It will act as a great connector between Nova and Positions and the main Galleries sector. It’ll all be very fluid and connected, and the UBS lounge will also now be sited behind Positions, so that will also inherently bring a high-net-worth clientele to that section of the show.

Something I think about a lot, especially in terms of this being our show in the Americas, is entry points for new buyers, and how to make them feel comfortable…feeling like they can be a part of this. Because we all know the art world can be intimidating.

What are you doing for 2024 that you hope will attract these new collectors?

We have multiple levels of engagement at the show. The Conversations program is really about getting people more information on topics that are critical in the art world right now. So if you are new to collecting and you are interested, I highly suggest looking at all of the programs we offer.

We have the Art Basel shop. They have really interesting activities that will happen in the public lounge throughout the week. We really think Miami is unique in that way: Miami Beach lights up as this cultural connection place that brings together fashion, tech, and music. Within that, there is really something for everyone to engage with.

How would you describe your vision for the fair more broadly?

The fact that the show is placed in Miami Beach was very intentional from its inception 22 years ago: It really is the nexus between North, South, and Central America. The show, year on year, is reflective of that. We have 19 galleries coming from Brazil this year. It’s our third-largest VIP demographic, and we are always working to encourage that.

In terms of my future goals for the show, I’m continuing to look at structures of support that we can bring to both emerging collectors and to our galleries. Finding ways for everyone to find their place and succeed within the hustle and bustle of the show is incredibly important. The way I have chosen to approach that this year is to look at what can be refined, and how we can improve on the beautiful machine that Art Basel Miami Beach is.

Are there any highlights you would like to point out to Artsy readers who are attending the fair?

I would say Yasmil Raymond curating Meridians is going to be incredible. She has a history of working with monumental sculpture, and she’s bringing a unique vantage point. We’ll have 17 works in the sector that have beautiful touchpoints to the Venice Biennale. It’s an incredibly international group of artists and galleries that are participating in that sector, which is also quite exciting.

There’s such a broad scale of projects coming to [the curated section] Kabinett that are very thoughtful and I’m extremely excited.

Meredith Rosen Gallery has now moved into the Galleries sector and will be hosting a performance with Charlemagne Palestine in its booth on Thursday [December 5th], at 6:30 p.m. It will be a beautiful piano piece…I think that will be incredibly special.

Miami Beach is such a huge event, with so much going on. Do you have any survival tips for visitors with packed itineraries?

Plan in advance. Try to get a handle on what your goals are for the trip before you arrive in Miami. I always think if you lay it out, you’ll know what you can tackle. Also, I would say plan to come back to Art Basel Miami Beach on multiple days. It is not possible to do it in one day…we have 286 galleries, so it will be worth coming back to see more than once.

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Frieze LA announces 2025 exhibitors, continuing its focus on local galleries. https://ift.tt/96uxL0h

Frieze Los Angeles will return to the Santa Monica Airport from February 20–23, 2025, continuing its focus on the local gallery scene as a defining feature of the fair. This sixth edition will host 101 galleries from over 20 countries; 45 of those participants have gallery spaces in Los Angeles. This lineup is similar to the 2024 edition, where 43 of the 95 exhibitors were based in the city.

“Frieze Los Angeles 2025 will serve as a key platform in the city’s dynamic cultural landscape, celebrating creativity, innovation, and community,” said Christine Messineo, director of Americas at Frieze.

“This year, at Santa Monica Airport, we will bring together a stellar roster of galleries and artists that reflect the vibrancy and diversity of Los Angeles and beyond.”

The main galleries section features the major mega-galleries Gagosian, Pace Gallery, David Zwirner, and Hauser & Wirth—all of which operate spaces in the city. Los Angeles stalwarts figure prominently, too, including Blum, David Kordansky Gallery, and Roberts Projects, among others.

Los Angeles galleries make up two-thirds of the Focus section, which features 12 solo presentations from emerging galleries. Curated by Essence Harden for the second year in a row, the section features eight L.A. galleries, including Nonaka Hill, Make Room, and OCHI. Focus will also feature newcomers from out-of-town, like the nomadic gallery Superposition and Minneapolis-based Dreamsong.

This edition of Frieze Los Angeles will take place against a backdrop of changes within the city’s gallery community. The past few years have seen various L.A. galleries open and close: NINO MIER GALLERY abruptly closed its three Los Angeles spaces amid allegations of nonpayments to artists; the esteemed New York–based Harper’s gallery, which expanded during the pandemic, shuttered its L.A. location in September; and Gavlak, which was based in Downtown for a decade, closed its doors in L.A. recently, shifting its focus to its base in Palm Beach, Florida.

On the other hand, several galleries opened spaces in Los Angeles earlier this year. Perrotin launched its new gallery in the historic Del Mar Theater between Mid-City and Mid-Wilshire in February, shortly after Rele inaugurated its spot in Melrose Hill. In recent years, Melrose Hill has become one of the most popular gallery neighborhoods in the city. In May 2023, David Zwirner and James Fuentes both opened outposts. Earlier this year, Cape Town–founded Southern Guild, which will debut at Frieze Los Angeles 2025, opened a gallery space in Melrose Hill.

Additionally, a new wave of women-run galleries, including Sea View and Emma Fernberger, are helping shape the local arts scene.

In 2025, Frieze L.A. will also welcome 14 newcomers, including Timothy Taylor, Southern Guild, Mariane Ibrahim, and moniquemeloche.

For the complete list of Frieze Los Angeles 2025 galleries, follow this link.

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How Are Artwork Appraisals, Valuations, and Estimates Different? https://ift.tt/trIxWPV

The art world can seem among the most jargon-dependent sectors to the newbie. Chatters across the fair aisles and gallery dinners might sound like a foreign language to most outsiders, while for the industry players, throwing in an expression like “blue-chip” in a sentence is a part of the everyday affair.

Nowhere is this jargon more common than at auction. Nail-biter bids in which genteel sitters heatedly raise their paddles inside ornate auction rooms are among the market’s most common visual codes, partially owing to many films and TV shows. While the ritual of bidding and eventually acquiring an artwork is often misrepresented in the media, the real process of walking into an auction house with a work in hand or mind can also be a mystery.

Some common misconceptions about the industry stem from conflicting understandings of an estimate, an appraisal, and a valuation. These three terms, all related, are among the trickiest. Often conflated, and very often confused with one another, the nuances between these ubiquitous terms can play a big role in why many collectors feel intimidated. “While these terms are often colloquially used interchangeably, they do represent different functions,” said Meagan Kelly Horsman, managing director at Christie’s in the Middle East.

Here, we break down the differences between the three terms and the intricacies of consigning and acquiring with an auction house.

What is an artwork appraisal?

Curator Irene Kuhnel Inspects the Painted Canvas, 1995
Bruce Adams
Resource Art

Simply put, an appraisal is a professional assessment of an artwork’s value that results in a formal document . These take into account a number of factors including the work’s history, rarity, significance, and so on.

Angelo Madrigale, senior specialist in fine art at auction house Doyle’s, underlines that appraisals can be undertaken for several reasons. He lists examples including auctions, insurance, or donations.

“There are different approaches for different needs, such as date of death in case of an estate appraisal, which are necessitated by the Internal Revenue Service,” he said. “When a client approaches with an appraisal request, I make sure to explain the steps and make sure what they will obtain on the final document so they avoid unnecessary steps.”

Given the common usage of the word “appraisal” as an umbrella term, it is not unusual for a client to be unaware of the process of a comprehensive evaluation. In most cases, they simply seek a rough estimate for a work they have recently inherited or decided to consign (entrust their items for sale) years after acquiring.

Reputable auction houses have extensive knowledge of time periods and context, giving them the ability to offer appraisals on a plethora of materials. Recent sales at Doyle’s, for example, have ranged from a bronze Jim Dine sculpture to MAD magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee’s ephemera, each necessitating different evaluation standards. “In appraising contemporary art, you will rarely hear opposing opinions because of the easier access to data,” he said. “Unlike a classical painting with potential attributions and manners, a Warhol is either a Warhol or not.”

The New York–based advisory EAB Fine Art Services’s founder and principal Erica Barrish notes that an appraiser “must stand behind their methodology and be able to back up with documentation on comparable artworks.” She added: “There should be an explanation for why a work costs, say, $2 million, and break down the factors such as scarcity, quality, condition, and history.”

A common misunderstanding, according to Horsman, is the confusion between market appraisals for auction and one for insurance, which tend to be higher than the former. “They are designed to cover the full cost of an artwork’s replacement, including taxes, shipping, and premium to fund a replacement on the market,” she noted.

Many appraisals at auction houses require a contract to be signed to be clear on its purpose. “If there is an obviously missing or conflicting element, we stop the process and tell the client the work may not be made by who they believe is the artist,” said Mari-Claudia Jiménez, chairman and president of Americas and head of global business development at Sotheby’s.

The bumpy road of appraising or giving an estimate on contemporary art often yields unexpected steps to solve. Among the offerings of Phillips’s fall 2024 contemporary art sales, for example, is a version of Jeff Koons’s Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series) (1985). The work features two floating basketballs balanced inside a glass vitrine, which demanded the search for the best conserver to acquire the liquid solution. “We eventually found a place in Chelsea known for their formula,” explains Rachel Atkinson Marrin, director of professional and advisor services at Phillips, who adds that “such maintenance issues and future costs affect the valuation of a work that is different than a painting on your wall.”

Madrigale considers the popular media depictions in TV shows as both a blessing and a curse for the appraisal field. While these programs have taught the average viewer to pay attention to the potential value of their heirlooms, these productions can also seed unrealistic expectations from the process. “Clients expect a similar speed and ease during an appraisal, but they forget that a broadcast is heavily edited for time and drama,” he added.

What is an artwork valuation?

Valuations are very similar to appraisals. Sotheby’s, for example, has a Valuations Department instead of a more common Appraisal Department. Atkinson notes that her British colleagues more commonly use the word “valuation,” while in the American market, “appraisal” is the popular term.

It’s for that reason that auction houses will sometimes use the two terms interchangeably. “Let me clarify that appraisal and valuation are the same thing,” said Sotheby’s Jiménez. “We call our appraisal department the valuation department, where we provide appraisals of objects.”

Where valuations can differ is in their purpose and formality. While an appraisal is a formal process that results in a certificate or judgment and can be legally binding, valuations are more akin to approximations, which can be based on opinions from multiple sources and are not legally binding.

Atkinson underlines that, while terms and conditions of valuations can differ, the opposite is true for appraisals, which are bound as formal judgments. The role of the appraiser has had to evolve significantly in recent times. “The profile of a contemporary art appraiser has been changing for the last decade—they need to be more and more willing to scour the earth for the relevant marketplace comparable figures and explain these to their client,” she said.

What is an artwork estimate?

An estimate is a figure provided by an auction house, which predicts the value of an artwork. The figure is normally presented as a range, for example, $1.1 million–$1.3 million. Appraisals are used to calculate auction estimates, but that’s not the whole story.

Estimates can often be seen as a “sales strategy to get buyers excited or encouraged,” noted Barrish. She commonly finds herself explaining to her clients the reasons behind the difference between an auction estimate and retail replacement value, which determines the fair value of replacing an artwork that is lost, stolen, or damaged in an accident.

“For a young, new artist that may have an auction estimated for around $10,000–$15,000, the work may have a retail replacement value around $100,000,” she said. “The higher valuation is often based on the retail price and thus the valuation is to ensure coverage in the event of an accident, such as fire.”

The “psychology” behind determining an estimate, however, differs according to Madrigale, who added: “We have to think about the end user perceiving the object’s value and the number that they would feel comfortable bidding on.”

After her auction house’s two decades in the region, Horsman noted that estimates can still provoke confusion among newer collectors. “It can be daunting for new clients,” she explained. “Many of my conversations revolve around explaining the psyche of auction valuation compared to primary market [works being sold for the first time] pricing, especially with those new to selling.”

Bonus tip: The importance of the appraiser

No matter the purpose of seeking an appraisal, collectors must find a reputable party to deal with.

Thomas reminds the reality of operating in a self-regulated industry in which tapping a notable appraiser or a reputable firm might be trickier than expected. “There are those who call themselves appraisers but they are not,” she said, asserting that the number one rule is to find an appraiser who is a member of the American Society of Appraisers, Appraisers Association of America, or International Society of Appraisers. “They must have gone through the prerequisite coursework and exams,” she added. Atkins noted that the five terms that Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) set about ethics, scope, record-keeping, competency, and judgment are now “widely accepted.”

Horsman thinks the market growth in the past two decades has led to the evolution of the role of the appraiser, prompting “more investment into specialists to ensure the best possible knowledge is in-house.” She adds that technology plays a role in the transformation of the appraiser’s role and methods: “The tech innovations have altered the day-to-day aspects of the role of the appraiser, with more data-led support and sharing of knowledge.”

Whether consigning for auction or understanding a work’s value for insurance purposes, the most important factor is to ensure that the judgment is a sound one.

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