Los Angeles County Museum of Art reveals new David Geffen Galleries, designed by Peter Zumthor. https://ift.tt/kljaAtb

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has unveiled its new David Geffen Galleries, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The long-awaited building replaces four previous museum structures and spans Wilshire Boulevard with a single elevated, glass-and-concrete venue. Major construction concluded in late 2024, and LACMA plans to fully open the building to the public in April 2026. However, the galleries are now accessible to the public during special opening hours.

Photographs by Dutch artist Iwan Baan, released alongside the announcement, provide the first interior views of the nearly 110,000-square-foot exhibition level. They show the massive new building complex alongside sculptures by Tony Smith and Michael Heizer. Some of the museum areas will begin opening this summer. These include Ray’s and Stark Bar (a restaurant on the museum premises) and a new LACMA Store, among other outdoor spaces.

LACMA inaugurated the building during a public preview accompanied by a performance led by composer Kamasi Washington. He led an orchestra of more than 100 musicians throughout the empty galleries with a rendition of his song Harmony of Difference. The performance was the first of three planned “sonic previews,” intended to bring audiences to the empty building.

The Geffen Galleries were made possible by a $150 million gift from American film producer David Geffen, with additional support from American businesswoman Elaine Wynn, who the building’s north wing will be named after. The County of Los Angeles also invested $125 million into the project. The south wing has not yet been named.

“We’re excited that visitors from both near and far can begin to experience the impact of this amazing building this year, as we ramp up toward the 2026 grand opening celebration,” said Michael Goven, LACMA’s CEO in a statement. “Harnessing the power of art to console, we also hope to be a part of the spiritual healing of Los Angeles as it recovers from the recent unprecedented fires.”

The newly designed museum will also present plenty of public art. For example, an outdoor plaza will host a major new commission by Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball titled Feathered Changes. Outdoor artworks by British sculptor Thomas Houseago, American artist Liz Glynn, Mexican sculptor Pedro Reyes, Japanese artist Shio Kusaka, and others will be installed throughout the 3.5-acre public campus in the coming months.

Another notable acquisition for the museum’s reopening is Jeff Koons’s 37-foot-tall sculpture Split-Rocker. The gigantic topiary work, covered in over 50,000 live plants, will be permanently installed on the grounds. Donated by museum patrons Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the work is in the shape of a children’s toy, with one side depicting a dinosaur and the other a rocking horse head.

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10 Indian Modernist Artists from the 20th Century You Should Know https://ift.tt/OSMKq3e

Haut de Cagnes, 1951
Sayed Haider Raza
Asia Society

In a grandiose mansion in the Indian city of Kolkata in 1922, European and Indian modernism first met. There, 250 art works hung on the walls. Watercolors by Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee sat next to Cubist works from Gaganendranath Tagore and figurative works from Sunayani Devi, displaying the parallel trajectories of the movement. The Indian artists were, in their broader context, rebels who had rejected the academic art styles that were pushed by British colonial art schools across the country. Modernism, in India, was tied up with dismantling colonialism. As legendary Indian art critic Geeta Kapur noted in her 2020 book of essays, When Was Modernism, “the modern, occurring in tandem with anti-colonial struggles, is deeply politicized and carries with it the potential for resistance.”

When India became autonomous and partitioned in 1947, modernism in the country entered another phase, linked to the Progressive Artists’ Group (P.A.G.), which was founded in Bombay on the very day of independence. The group’s members took different formal approaches from each other, yet they were tied together by a search for authentic Indian expression that valued indigenous craft and made use of the country’s diverse iconographic repertoire.

Woman and four horses, 1976
M.F. Husain
Museum of Art & Photography

The striking aesthetic choices and principles of these groups resonated with others, such as Gulammohammed Sheikh and Jagdish Swaminathan, who engaged with a modernist spirit.

These are 10 Indian modernist artists from the 20th century you need to know.

M.F. Husain

B. 1915, Pandharpur, India. D. 2011, London

Arguably the most famed of India’s modernists, M.F. Husain was a founding member of Bombay collective P.A.G. The short-lived collective sought to communicate India’s new political reality by merging historic Indian influences with Euro-American avant-garde techniques. At this time, Husain was new to exhibiting his work, having spent his early career creating vast cinema billboards for Bombay’s burgeoning film industry and painting on the side.

His early paintings, like Untitled (Gram Yatra) (1954), that recently sold for a record-breaking $13.75 million, are full of the energetic thrill of these advertisements. At nearly 14 feet long, the painting, split into 13 vignettes showing scenes of daily rural life, uses Cubist techniques and a Klee-esque color palette—often bold and contrasting—to capture the spirit of his country. This style and approach to subject matter, combining a range of Indian symbology and cultural references, would become his visual language. As Husain said in one of his last interviews with The Guardian, “I’ve wanted to celebrate this composite culture.”

S.H. Raza

B. 1922, Mandla, India. D. 2016, New Delhi

Satpura, Serigraph on Paper, 2008
Sayed Haider Raza
Gallery Kolkata

S.H. Raza, a co-founder of the P.A.G, embraced several gestural and abstract styles throughout his career, which began in Bombay (now known as Mumbai). While living in the city, he experimented with finding a new direction to represent Indian art, using watercolors to depict the urban sprawl with expressionistic strokes. After his relocation to Paris in the 1950s for a scholarship at École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts, his practice shifted as he absorbed artistic influences from artists including Van Gogh and Cézanne.

Raza spent most of his life in France, where he won the high profile Prix de la Critique from the French Government and found inspiration in European and American art movements. Yet India was integral to his painting, even if its influence wasn’t always obvious. His images were influenced by his childhood living in the remote forested area of Madhya Pradesh as well as the cosmological traditions of India more generally. This is particularly clear in his signature spiritual abstract geometric paintings, which he developed in the 1980s.

Raza’s shapes were chosen as a reference to aspects of Indian cosmology, particularly Tantrism. In this exploration of spiritualism, he is most known for the use of the circle, a form which is related to the bindu symbol, considered in Hindu thought as the point of all creation. Rasa noted in a 1985 artist statement that the motif “is charged with latent forces aspiring for fulfilment.”

F.N. Souza

B. 1924, Saligao, India. D. 2002, Mumbai .

Untitled (Lovers), 1989
Francis Newton Souza
Grosvenor Gallery

Rebellious and outspoken, F.N. Souza was the leading voice of the P.A.G. who forged, as he told the Times of India in 1989, “modern Indian art with a blast.” He left India for Europe in the 1950s, where he had a profound meeting with Picasso, and settled in New York in the late ’60s. There, Souza cultivated a frenetic and agitated painting style that was part Expressionist and Cubist while drawing on Indian temple sculpture and carvings.

He is known for Birth (1955), an iconic painting showing a heavily pregnant woman overseen by a priest in regalia, demonstrating his ability to imaginatively fuse artistic traditions. The religious figure who seems to touch the reclining nude is considered to be a self-portrait. The image sums up the religious and erotic themes that Souza was preoccupied with and led to him being chosen to represent Great Britain for the Guggenheim International Award in 1958. Souza’s brash explorations of Christian narratives, a response to his upbringing in Portuguese Goa and his schooling by Jesuit priests, are today considered some of his most significant artworks.

Amrita Sher-Gil

B. 1913, Budapest. D. 1941, Lahore, Pakistan

Best known for her vivid and sympathetic portrayals of Indian rural life, Amrita Sher-Gil established a bold, modern style over her brief lifetime. Growing up across continents in an aristocratic family, Sher-Gil spent time in her birth country, Hungary, as well as Italy, Paris, and India. Her formal education began at the École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts when she was just 16, where she was exposed to a range of artistic influences. This is visible in her paintings, where Indian miniature and cave painting traditions meet with the approaches of Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Amedeo Modigliani. In her work she captured the honest and complex details of herself, her sitters, and Indian society.

In the mid 1930s, Sher-Gil returned to India from Paris and began to see her creativity entwined with the country’s distinctive culture, purportedly writing to her father that, “Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, and many others, India belongs only to me.” Typically, her paintings foreground women, such as Group of Three Girls (1935), which delicately addresses the challenges and gender inequalities experienced by her subjects. Her art works were influential in their time and Sher-Gil remains one of India’s most innovative and in demand modern artists.

Jamini Roy

B. 1887, Beliatore, India. D. 1972, Kolkata

Untitled, National Art Treasure -Non Exportable
Jamini Roy
Kumar Gallery

Jamini Roy is regarded as one of the early pioneers of Indian modernism who achieved international renown. The simplified, firm lines and unique style he developed in the 1920s drew on indigenous art forms and techniques, largely as a rebuttal to the European academic styles taught at Kolkata’s Government College of Art.

Having spent his early years undertaking Orientalist-style portrait commissions in oil, Roy later searched for a visual language that was more expressly Indian. To do so, he turned to materials including tempera, wood, and natural pigment, and took inspiration from sources like traditional Kalighat paintings, which were vivid mythological works. His subject matter was exhaustive, including Hindu and Christian icons, dancers, musicians, mythological legends, and animals, and his output was prolific. Roy adopted a craft-guild model for the production of his works, using family members as assistants to rework single subjects, like the mother and child, into several affordable versions.

Tyeb Mehta

B. 1925, Kapadvanj, India. D. 2009, Mumbai

Untitled (Lovers), 1974
Tyeb Mehta
Queens Museum

Mahisasura, 1997
Tyeb Mehta
Asia Society

Tyeb Mehta, a young associate of the P.A.G., developed a sparse style incorporating simplified forms and a striking use of bold block colors. He was profoundly affected by India’s political recalibration and violent partition in 1947, in particular the ensuing riots and deaths as millions were disenfranchised almost overnight. Encouraged by S.H. Raza, Mehta travelled to London and Paris in the mid 1950s, and found inspiration in Francis Bacon’s paintings, seeing in them a way to translate his anguish.

Untitled (Falling Figure) (1965), is characteristic of the way Mehta evoked the pain and alienation felt by families torn apart by the new partition’s borders and signaled universal suffering. Mehta’s paintings often portray the coarseness of life and the human capacity for the oppression of others. Throughout his career, he also frequently depicted the iconic Indian goddess and bull forms. A considerate painter who would often destroy many canvases to reach a single painting, Mehta’s limited oeuvre has fetched impressive prices. In 2005, Mahisasura (1997) sold for $1.58 million making it, at the time, the most expensive painting by a living Indian artist.

V.S. Gaitonde

B. 1924, Nagpur, India. D. 2001, New Delhi.

Painting No. 6, 1962
Vasudeo S. Gaitonde
Guggenheim Museum

One of India’s most influential abstract artists, V.S. Gaitonde created atmospheric, textural images which he called “non-objective.” Studying at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay at the time of the P.A.G., Gaitonde was influenced by a range of visual references including Basohli miniature paintings and Klee’s expressionist works.

Following a year living in New York in 1964 thanks to a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Gaitonde embraced and experimented with the non-representational ideas associated with Abstract Expressionism. Since the late ’50s, he had been gradually removing any figurative traces in his paintings. This full foray into abstraction is shown in one of his seminal works Painting, 4 (1962). In this work, fields of color suggest a horizon line marked by loose, hieroglyphic shapes and calligraphy-style strokes. His work continued to evolve as he began to practice Zen Buddhism and became interested in Chinese calligraphy. Throughout his work, Gaitonde sought a pure form of expression. He undertook this quest with devotion, isolating himself and intensely focusing on balancing color, light, and forms. As he said in an interview for ART India in 1998, towards the end of his life, “‘I’m still learning about painting, because I believe that process is constant.”

Nasreen Mohamedi

B. 1937, Karachi, Pakistan. 1990, Kihim, India

Untitled, ca. 1975
Nasreen Mohamedi
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

From gestural abstraction to monochrome Minimalism, Nasreen Mohamedi’s unparalleled vision stands alone among Indian modernists. She studied in Europe at Central Saint Martins and at a Parisian print studio. But when she returned to India and settled in Baroda in the early 1970s, she began refining her abstract style. There, she made friends with artists including V.S. Gaitonde and M.F. Husain, and her artworks evolved as she combined her wide-ranging interests: Constructivism, post-war art, poetry, classical and modern Indian music, and Islamic architecture and calligraphic forms.

Her early oil paintings, collages, and drawings suggesting plant life were abandoned as Mohamedi grappled with the grid format. Later, her work developed into the detailed linear and geometric graphite and ink designs she is best known for. Committed to achieving, as she said, “the maximum of the minimum,” her surprisingly dynamic works like Untitled (1975) conjure layered landscapes.

Abanindranath Tagore

B. 1871, Kolkata. D. 1951, Kolkata.

Untitled, Unknown
Abanindranath Tagore
The Eye Within

Abanindranath Tagore, an early revivalist at the turn of the 20th century, contributed to the reimagining of Indian modern art. Based in Kolkata, Tagore was part of an intellectual milieu that would fuel the beginnings of India’s independence movement. Tagore looked to the past and present in his delicately rendered figurative artworks, bringing together Sanskrit sources, Mughal and Rajput painting, and Buddhist imagery along with Japanese, Persian, and realist aesthetics to craft an “Indian” approach to art.

Breaking from colonial visual culture, Bharat Mata (1905), painted at the time of the British Raj’s partition of the Indian region of Bengal, personifies India as a Hindu deity with glowing halo. The painting became synonymous with the country’s intense struggle for independence although Tagore would later distance himself from nationalism. An influential teacher whose students included Nandalal Bose and Meera Mukherjee, Tagore is credited with championing an enduring appreciation for Indian heritage.

Arpita Singh

B. 1937, Baranagar, India. Lives and works in New Delhi.

In Arpita Singh’s most celebrated paintings, seemingly weightless figures float in disjointed environments. Having grown up as India was partitioned and witnessing communal violence, Singh is part of a second generation of modernist artists, including Madhvi Parekh, Nilima Sheikh, and Nalini Malani, who embraced figuration. Although her paintings and drawings often make reference to historical events and gender politics, they are at once personal and mysterious. The artist recently said, in an exhibition catalogue conversation with Serpentine curator Tamsin Hong, “In my work, the symbols don’t have a permanent image or meaning. The meaning of a form changes according to time.”

Her work combines many different inspirations, from expressionism, to Bengal folk painting, to Marc Chagall, to traditional Indian textiles. For example, Devi Pistol Wali (1990), on view in her current show at the Serpentine in London, features an Indian goddess-like figure standing atop a man and brandishing a gun at another, while fruits and numbers float through the space.

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Contemporary Artists Are Spellbound by the History of Sex Magic https://ift.tt/LGoThfM

In Ithell Colquhoun’s “Diagrams of Love,” (ca. 1939–42), nude couples are entangled in intimate poses and drenched in sublime colors. In this series of paintings and drawings, she depicts the human body surrounded by radiant energy fields, inspired by alchemical traditions, kabbalah, and tantric imagery. “Diagrams of Love” sums up the British Surrealist artist’s vision of “sex magic,” a source of inspiration throughout her work.

The term “sex magic” emerged in the early 20th century and was used by artists and theorists to describe sexual connection as a source of magical or spiritual energy. In today’s art world, which continues to be fascinated by the occult, sex magic is having a moment. Colquhoun, who is one of the most well-known artists associated with sex magic, is the subject of a major new show “Between Worlds” at the Tate Britain, through October 19. At the same time, contemporary artists are taking new inspiration from the intersection of magical themes and sexual liberation.

What is sex magic?

“For some, sex magic is about using sexual practices to charge a magical outcome or manifest a particular result,” said Amy Hale, author of Sex Magic: Ithell Colquhoun's Diagrams of Love, the 2024 book published to coincide with the new Tate exhibition. “For others, it is about communion with the divine through spiritual and intimate physical connection with another person. It’s a set of practices intended to promote spiritual elevation.” Hale noted that Colquhoun’s entire oeuvre demonstrates a belief that “erotic energies can be found in natural forms such as caves, wells, trees, and stones.” The artist’s 1942 painting Tree Anatomy, for example, features vast sweeps of brown and amber paint around a central crevice, which represents both a hollow trunk and, in typical Surrealist symbolism, a vulva.

Sex magic was highly controversial in the early 20th century. “The idea that you might use sexual practices for anything other than procreation is always going to be a challenge for some,” said Hale. “Some of the earliest iterations of sex magic and esoteric sexuality included the importance of ensuring women’s sexual pleasure and satisfaction, which was quite revolutionary at the time.”

Colquhoun’s contemporaries

Numerous creative women were practicing sex magic at the same time as Colquhoun, including some who faced imprisonment for their beliefs. Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton was known in tabloid papers through the 1940s and ’50s as “the witch of Kings Cross.” She was arrested multiple times and had her work burned, though she continued to perform spells that, she claimed, allowed her to access a higher state of consciousness. She also enjoyed polyamorous sexual relationships through tantric rituals. Her paintings featured raucous entanglements of nude bodies and hybrid creatures, conveying a sexual, spiritual force that rejected the strict Christian culture of her upbringing.

In Norton’s undated painting Bacchanal, a young woman with shocking red hair, an ancient crone, and a skeleton dance among a dense group of ghostly pale naked bodies who grab one another’s flesh. They are watched over by a giant demon, referencing Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and ecstasy.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in other radical artists from this period. Marjorie Cameron, an American artist, poet, and occultist who died in 1995, had the first extensive survey of her work in 2014. She felt isolated by her upbringing in a small town, claiming she was captivated by women who were “considered antisocial for some reason or another.” Cameron followed Thelema, a spiritual movement set up by the famous occultist Aleister Crowley, which had a strong influence on her art. She also practiced sex magic. In 1957, her exhibition at Los Angeles’s Feris Gallery was raided by police and closed on obscenity charges. The show included Peyote Vision (1955), an enthrallingly erotic image full of jagged lines inspired by author Aldous Huxley’s spidery illustrations and Cameron’s own sexually charged experience taking the plant-derived drug peyote.

As open expressions of sexuality became more commonplace in the 1960s, more artists began to evoke the divine, magical potential of the female body. For example, Swedish artist Monica Sjöo’s provocative 1968 painting, God Giving Birth, was banned from public view in the 1970s following pressure from Christian groups. The radiant canvas—shown at Sjöo’s 2023 exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm—depicts a nude woman, her face split down the middle by a dark shadow, with a baby’s head emerging from her genitals. The piece conveys an ecstatic female creativity that should be celebrated as natural and divine, yet is so often shamed and suppressed.

Transformation in Green and Red, 2015
Loie Hollowell
Gary Nader

Contemporary artists exploring sex magic

Contemporary artists continue to explore the transcendent impact of sex and creativity through the female form. American artist Loie Hollowell’s paintings, for instance, make suggestive references to genitalia and breasts. She has noted the influence of spiritual and mystical traditions, in particular, neo-tantric painting and esoteric pioneers like Hilma af Klint. Hollowell’s pieces bridge the physical experiences of the body such as abortion, birth, and breastfeeding, while also tapping into an intense feminine energy. Pressure in yellow-blue and mars violet (2022), for instance, comprises two simple round forms that meet in the middle, intersecting a vertical painted crease that is suggestive—though not explicitly—of genitalia. “I wanted people to get sucked into the color before they realized what they were actually looking at,” the artist has said of her previous works.

Some of these artists trace their interest in sex magic back to Colquhoun. “I’ve always been really interested in women like Ithell who were completely devoted to their practice,” said Australian artist Emily Hunt, who recently curated a group exhibition, “Dreamlandia,” at London gallery Sim Smith exploring the divine and feminine side of Surrealism. Colquhoun’s 1970 work Oread is included. “That level of devotion and mixture of artist and magician is such a transgressive position,” said Hunt. For Hunt, sex magic is intimately connected to the revelatory experience of creating art, communing with a force greater than oneself. “People are so deeply frightened of the term ‘sex magic,’ thinking it’s just about BDSM and dark, occult things. But at the heart of magic systems are these ecstatic states, which I think also have a lot to do with making art.”

Hunt’s sculptures, embellished in gold luster and fired in kaleidoscopic glazes, portray different famous couples known for magic. Her small-scale clay sculpture Bliss Temple #3 (2025) shows late occultists Kenneth and Steffi Grant entangled in bed, a large hand hovering over them, referencing the god of love, Eros. Hunt is particularly interested in lesser-known subcultural figures from history. Another work, Bliss Temple #2 (2025), is modelled on early 20th-century artist and occultist Moinia Mathers (sister of philosopher Henri Bergson) with her husband Samuel.

While these couples are shown engaged in an erotic and magical pairing, Hunt is especially drawn to Colquhoun’s divine union with her artistic practice rather than another person. For “Dreamlandia,” Hunt selected contemporary artists such as Renate Bertlmann, Kemi Onabulé and Nooka Shepherd. These women artists show a similar devotion to their practice, exploring the “revolutionary potential of surrealism in the hands of divine feminine power,” Hunt noted. “We live in a cynical, disenchanted society. Sex magic is provocative, but it’s about deep joy and trust.”

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Antony Gormley’s “Angel of the North” featured in “28 Years Later.” https://ift.tt/Xed6Bhb

Few sculptures have loomed as large in British culture as Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North (1998). The steel sculpture of an angelic figure, located in Gateshead, England, stands 66 feet tall with a 177-foot wingspan. Visible from the A1 motorway, it is seen by an estimated 33 million people every year. Now, it casts its shadow over the dystopian landscape of 28 Years Later, the third installment of director Danny Boyle’s zombie series, which premiered on June 20th.

In the film, Angel of the North is seen in a state of overgrowth and corrosion, evoking the desolation that follows a viral outbreak in the U.K. Its appearance reinforces the film’s exploration of religious disillusionment and political unrest, aligning with a wider critique of conservative ideology in Britain. Across Boyle’s series, he depicts a state of collapse that has increasingly mirrored real-world anxieties about British isolationism—particularly in the wake of Brexit.

When first installed, Angel of the North was framed by Gormley as a tribute to coal miners who once worked beneath its site. “Men worked beneath the surface in the dark,” he said. “Now, in the light, there is a celebration of this industry.” Yet Gormley has also acknowledged the work as a response to Margaret Thatcher’s industrial policies, which he felt signaled the end of the country’s manufacturing legacy. In a 2019 interview with The New York Times, he said the sculpture challenged the idea that the Industrial Revolution’s impact was finished. Despite his intentions, the work faced early backlash, with some local critics calling it an eyesore and others—citing the work’s winged form—making inflammatory comparisons to Nazi-era aircraft.

The Angel of the North is part of Gormley’s larger “Case for an Angel” series, which includes several works exploring the tension between human vulnerability and industrial strength. These sculptures typically feature elongated, winged human forms that reflect Gormley’s interest in the body as a site of spiritual and emotional resonance.

Gormley is currently the subject of a solo show at Dallas’s Nasher Sculpture Center, titled “Survey.” The show, on view through January 4, 2026, is the artist’s first major museum show in the United States.

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Overlooked Minimalist Ralph Iwamoto Is Back in the Frame of New York Abstraction https://ift.tt/2fxkZFd

Before Sol Lewitt became a household name, he was a guard at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). So was Ralph Iwamoto. In the late 1950s, the museum’s staff included a cluster of artists who would go on to become stars: Lewitt, Dan Flavin, Robert Mangold, and Robert Ryman. Iwamoto was right there with them, sharing ideas and steadily building a visual language of his own. And yet, while their names were canonized, his slipped from public view.

That has started to change. In recent years, Iwamoto’s story has begun to reach wider audiences. Now, a new exhibition at Hollis Taggart, “Octagonal Permutations,” spotlights two decades of work, particularly his focus on the octagon—a geometric form the artist returned to obsessively in his later life, taking inspiration from the layout of Manhattan. It follows “Wild Growth,” the gallery’s 2023 presentation of Iwamoto’s surrealistic paintings from the 1950s. Together, the two shows represent the most sustained curatorial effort to date to bring Iwamoto from the margins of American abstraction to firmly within its frame.

Great Dawn, 1973
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

As attention returns to Iwamoto’s work, what surprises many—especially those encountering him for the first time—is how sharply it contrasts with the man himself. “He was a very nice guy, really casual about his work and things in general,” said curator Jeffrey Wechsler, who first brought Iwamoto’s work to the gallery’s attention. “Which was amazing, because his art didn’t look like it came from the same person. He was so relaxed and laughing, and his work was so precise.”

Iwamoto’s paintings reflect this acute attention to detail—precise, composed, and often rigorously structured—but never cold. Even at his most methodical, Iwamoto retained a sense of play with color and form.

Ralph Iwamoto’s early life

Born in Honolulu in 1927 to Japanese Buddhist parents, Iwamoto was a teenager when he witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team—the all–Japanese American unit that became the most decorated in World War II—before moving to New York in 1948. He was thrown into the center of New York’s avant-garde, studying under Vaclav Vytlacil and Byron Browne.

By 1955, Iwamoto was already being featured in prominent group exhibitions, including his first show at Rugina Gallery, alongside Alfred Leslie and Louise Nevelson. His inclusion in a 1958 group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art marked his formal entry into the New York art scene.

A surrealistic foundation

Rain Forest Images, 1955
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

Lowly Splendor, 1955
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

Iwamoto’s first work depicted surreal ecosystems. Tropical vegetation transformed into animal anatomy; sea creatures morphed into blossoms; roots and ribs became interchangeable. These works, grounded in his Hawaiian upbringing and a Japanese decorative sensibility, reflect what Wechsler called “a natural surrealism coming out of his imagination and his background.”

One striking example is Rain Forest Images( (1955), a painting that stages a surreal masquerade of vegetal and animal hybrids with vivid blue, acid orange, and pale lavender. In these floating forms—lush, saturated, and strange—Iwamoto was already pointing toward the dualities that would later define his practice: structure and looseness, logic and improvisation, emotion and distance. “You can see this throughout most of his work—even the very rigid, geometric ones,” Wechsler said.

Transition to Minimalism

By the 1960s, Iwamoto had transitioned to a more streamlined visual language, characterized by geometric abstraction, often on handmade, shaped canvases. Associated with the Minimalists at MoMA and in New York’s art scene, his work veered away from the biomorphic forms into rigid geometries. Iwamoto turned to the city grid, and these latticed forms appear in much of his first purely abstract work.

“Being fascinated with the city of New York, and marveling at the towering architecture, Iwamoto found his own way of distilling the tall skyscrapers and office buildings into geometric abstract grids, symbolic of the city itself,” said New York gallerist Hollis Taggart.

100 Views #75, 1978
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

Still, unlike many of his Minimalist peers, he never fully abandoned the emotional nuance of his early work in favor of strictly formal work.

“Iwamoto was not a pure minimalist,” Weschler explained. “[He] was never like that. He was always more complex internally.” Even his most reduced compositions carried a quiet tension. The mood shifts with palette, with spacing, with slight variations in form. “He saw these possibilities of making something more complex,” Wechsler said. “Even just black, white, and blue—it’s gorgeous.”

Obsessing over the octagon

Red Blue Move (4 Octagons), 1970
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

Abingdon Square, 1973
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

The vast majority of Iwamoto’s paintings from the 1970s onward revolve around a single geometric form: the octagon. Over the next two decades, he worked on a series to explore the octagon through systematic groupings: “QuarOctagons” featured four shapes per canvas, “Octagon Concepts” used eight, and “Factors” expanded to 16. Each iteration allowed Iwamoto to test new arrangements and chromatic contrasts, revealing how slight shifts in form and color generated entirely different visual harmonies.

“He spent every day working these formulas out…almost scientific in the way he approached it,” said Taggart. An early example is Red Blue Move (4 Octagons) (1970), on view in New York, which features a red field punctuated at the corners by blue and ivory octagonal edges. It’s a bold example of Iwamoto’s early use of color.

Capriccio (Quaroctagons - Opus 8), 1983
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

Dominoes Opus 27, 1987
Ralph Iwamoto
Hollis Taggart

Throughout the ’70s, Iwamoto titled paintings after New York City squares—Foley, Herald, and Abingdon, the latter of which was next to the Westbeth artist residency in Chelsea, where he lived. Iwamoto was increasingly influenced by the grid-like architecture and infrastructure of Manhattan, once crediting the “razzle dazzle of Times Square” as an inspiration.

These compositions became increasingly complex over time. In the plotted grid of Dominoes Opus 27 (1987), each tile holds a different octagonal variation—stacked, spliced, staggered.

“The designs were very carefully created, and the craftsmanship was apparent,” said his sister, Bernice Iwamoto Buxbaum, who credits their upbringing as an inspiration. “Our father was a carpenter who specialized in high-end cabinetry…In looking at Ralph’s artwork and his craftsmanship in building and creating his own canvases, I can see some of the precision.”

While many of his peers rose to prominence, Iwamoto continued to work quietly and rigorously outside the center of the commercial art world. “I see Ralph as an underappreciated genius,” said Buxbaum. “I’m not sure whether it was a timing situation or a lack of self-promotion, but many of his friends and contemporaries experienced greater success within their lifetime. For Ralph, that opportunity has passed, but I would love to see today’s art lovers take another look.”

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Ai Weiwei to create new artwork about war Ukraine. https://ift.tt/oReSYWJ

Ai Weiwei announced that he will produce an artwork about war and peace in Kyiv, specifically addressing the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The project, titled Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White, will be showcased at the city’s Pavilion of Culture, the Soviet-era exhibition hall known also as Pavilion 13. The installation will open on September 14th and be open to the public until November 30th.

“In this era, being invited to hold an exhibition in Kyiv, the capital of a country at war, I hope to express certain ideas and reflections through my work,” Ai said in a statement. “My artworks are not merely an aesthetic expression but also a reflection of my position as an individual navigating immense political shifts, international hegemonies, and conflicts. This exhibition provides a platform to articulate these concerns. At its core, this exhibition is a dialogue about war and peace, rationality and irrationality.”

Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White will feature similar spherical forms to Ai’s “Divina Proportione” series, created between 2004 and 2012. This series was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s mathematical illustrations, first depicted in a book of the same name. In the new artwork, the three spheres will be made of metal, covered in camouflage fabric, and painted over with a thin layer of white paint.

“Of course, whenever you cover something, there’s still something underneath,” Ai said. “So I give extra meaning to how we’re dealing with reality and which layer of reality we’re dealing with. And is reality just what we are seeing or what we understand?”

Ai is recognized for his consistent and outspoken activism against the Chinese government and global conflicts, including the Syrian Civil War in 2016. One of his most notable political artworks is Remembering (2008), which held the Chinese government accountable for negligence that led to mass death during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, his continued political dissent led to his arrest and subsequent 81-day detention.

The Seattle Art Museum is currently mounting a retrospective, “Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei,” which will be on view through September 7th. Other recent museum exhibitions, at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Leon in Spain and Ordrupgaard in Denmark, closed on May 18th and January 19th, respectively.

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7 Defining Wolfgang Tillmans Artworks in His Major Paris Show https://ift.tt/Ulvy08r

The Centre Pompidou is about to close its doors for a five year renovation. But, before this long pause, the Parisian museum has a final blockbuster show for visitors to enjoy. This summer an entire level of its public information library will be taken over by Wolfgang Tillmans. Titled “Nothing could have prepared us–Everything could have prepared us,” the expansive exhibition sees Tillmans transform the 6,000-square-meter space into a massive installation informed by the building’s iconic architecture. In this show, Tillmans places his work in the library’s open layout, which follows the architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’s idea of a museum without walls or borders.

To prepare for the exhibition, Tillmans spent a year studying the library’s architecture and even creating a scale model in his Berlin studio. The works span his 40-year career, but this is not a retrospective—there’s no strict chronological order or attempt to show all of his well-known pieces.

Photographs are presented dotted across the open-plan layout: Some are traditionally framed, others casually taped or pinned to the temporary walls. For the artist, the way he displays the images—how they’re arranged on the wall, their size, the materials used, and their relationship to each other—is just as important as the image itself.

A key figure in contemporary photography, Tillmans became known in the 1990s for his innovative visual language and his active engagement in social and political issues. Notably, he was the first photographer, as well as the first non-British person to win the Turner Prize, and he is also known for his activism, especially around LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, and fighting misinformation. Ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum, Tillmans launched a pro-EU campaign in the U.K., where he was then based. He created posters and visuals to encourage young people to vote and to highlight the risks of leaving the European Union.

Here, Artsy highlights seven key photographs in the show that trace Tillmans’s evolving relationship to photography.

Suzanne & Lutz, white dress, army skirt, 1993

Emerging as a defining voice in photography during the 1990s, Tillmans became known for his intimate documentation of youth culture and queer life. Rather than working with professional models, he turned his lens toward his close circle of friends. He created an atmosphere where his subjects’ inhibitions could dissolve, yet their self-awareness remained intact. These early portraits often blur the line between direction and spontaneity—they’re composed but not overly staged, raw but not exploitative.

Suzanne & Lutz is typical of Tillmans’s portraiture during this time. The contrast between the two subjects’ outfits hints at gender play and rebellion, but nothing feels forced. Although Suzanne’s arms are crossed, the pose is relaxed in its peculiarity, creating an unguarded atmosphere. As with much of his early work, the photo is less about telling a story and more about holding a space open—inviting reflection rather than offering a fixed narrative.

The Cock (kiss), 2002

Showing two men kissing, The Cock (kiss) is a photograph with a long history. Taken at The Cock, a gay night at the London club The Ghetto, the photo is raw, sweaty, and unfiltered. The artist captures the essence of human connection: sexuality pulses with intimacy—spontaneous, urgent, and charged with desire.

Since it was taken over 20 years ago, the artwork has become a symbol of love, pride, and resistance within the LGBTQIA+ community. During an exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2006, the photograph was scratched with a key, a hateful act that only made the piece more meaningful.

The image entered the public consciousness again following the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were killed. According to his father, the gunman had been enraged by the sight of two men kissing. After the shooting, a sea of images of men kissing was shared online, creating a collective, defiant cry against hatred. Among them, Tillmans’s The Cock (kiss) re-emerged with particular force: a symbol of queer love and visibility.

It’s only love give it away, 2005

Tillmans began his “Freischwimmer” series in 2003, and it remains an ongoing body of work. The photographs are the result of an experimental darkroom process. Tillmans uses a flashlight as a controlled light source to expose photosensitive paper directly, without a camera or negative. Developed like color prints, these images reveal abstract forms and rippling colors that seem to flow across the surface.

From a technical perspective, these are photographs—yet they do not depict any concrete subject. The series of non-representational photographs invites viewers to think differently about what it means to experience photography. Rather than identifying objects, these photos are more expressive of abstract forms and impressions.

The title, “Freischwimmer” (“free swimmer”), references the German swimming certification earned by school students. It alludes to the freedom and movement created by the alchemical process of light and chemistry.

The State We Are In, A, 2015

Taken from the end of a pier in Porto, Portugal, using a high-resolution, full-format 35-mm digital camera, this work shows a wide, open view of the Atlantic Ocean, where different time zones and countries meet.

This work is part of Tillmans’ broader project “Neue Welt” (New World), which Tillmans began in 2009. Here, he set out to record what was around him and to create a more empathetic understanding of the world. Using a high-resolution digital camera—instead of the film format he previously favored—Tillmans captured images in an extreme depth of detail. These are images that are aesthetically compelling and reflective of the excess of information that defines today’s life.

In The State We’re In, A, Tillmans captures the restless energy of a rough sea, using nature’s turbulence as a metaphor for the chaos of our era. It captures the ocean as a natural wonder and a place where global borders and time zones come together, making it symbolically significant. The piece acts as a bridge between two facets of the artist’s practice. Here, he combines his lyrical, abstract sensibility with his keen eye for images in the tangible world. Through this tension, he reflects the intensity of social upheaval, political turmoil, and deep ideological divides.

Lüneburg (self), 2020

Tillmans’s still lifes focus on fleeting fragments of everyday life—incidental moments that feel almost accidental at first glance. Yet, beneath the casual surface of these images, lies a precise attention to color, framing, and form. These photos aren’t the result of staging, but of a keen awareness of the visual rhythms embedded in the ordinary.

Lüneburg (self), which was taken during the pandemic, portrays a smartphone leaning against a water bottle. Its screen reflects a now-familiar form of connection: the artist’s own face on a video call, small and pixelated behind a giant camera lens in the top-left corner. In this understated scene, Tillmans emphasizes the layered nature of digital photography. Over the years, the physical connection between camera, body, and viewer has become increasingly significant in his work, bringing attention to how we not only look, but feel through visual narratives.

Paper drop (Star), 2006

Tillmans has long been fascinated by paper, not just as a surface for printing, but as a subject in its own right. “Everything I do is on paper. I started to look at the paper itself,” the German artist said during a talk he gave at French university Beaux-Arts de Paris before his exhibition opened. This shift in attention sits at the heart of his “Paper Drop” series, which he began in 2001.

In these photographs, sheets of paper curl under their own weight, caught in moments of suspension. At first glance, they might appear digitally rendered or sculptural, but their intrigue lies in their simplicity: a study in gravity, light, and form. Shadows pool in the folds, soft gradients sweep across the sheet. The paper plays the role of both object and image.

These works aren’t quite illusions, as they don’t try to trick the viewer into seeing something they are not. Instead, reflecting Tillmans’s ongoing interest in perception and materiality, Paper Drop (Star) offers a visual paradox—is it a figurative work or abstract?

Frank, in the shower, 2015

The reach of Wolfgang Tillmans’s photography extends far beyond the art world. In 2015, he photographed the musician Frank Ocean shortly after the musician publicly spoke about his sexuality. This portrait would become the cover of Blonde, Ocean’s 2016 album and an iconic cultural marker of the period.

In the photo, Ocean stands beneath the shower, his face partially obscured by his hand, dyed green hair damp, water tracing his bare skin. The intimacy feels unfiltered, yet the viewer is deliberately held at a distance.

Vulnerability, desire, ambiguity—qualities central to Tillmans’s visual language—quietly reverberate through the frame. The artist has caught Ocean at a moment between exposure and retreat, at once deeply personal and universally resonant.

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