The art world’s focus this February will be trained on the Rijksmuseum, which is mounting the first ever major exhibition of American photography in Europe. Incorporating more than 200 works across three centuries, American Photography zooms in on the fascinating history of photography in the US. The show at the Rijksmuseum recounts the story of the medium through almost 200,000 vintage prints, photo albums and books. 

Over the last 10 years, the Museum has assembled an especially impressive collection of American photography. Highlights from the Rijksmuseum’s collection, on view for the first time, are exhibited beside loans from more than 30 collections in the US, Netherlands and other European countries.

Ming Smith, America Seen Through Stars and Stripes, New York City, 1976. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (VA).

The show presents apicture of the country through the lens of US photographers. Mirroring the nation in all its richness and complexity, American Photography zeroes in on such subjects as the American Dream, landscapes and portraiture. It presents how photographers have captured the seismic events that have shaped their country.

A key theme of the exhibition is photography’s development as an art form. It traces its evolution from 19th-century daguerreotypes of frost flowers on a window to the work of such great American photographers as Irving Penn, Sally Mann, Paul Strand, Diane Arbus, Charles Sheeler, Dawoud Bey, Sarah Sense, Robert Frank, Lisette Model, Nan Goldin, Richard Avedon, James Van Der Zee and Andy Warhol.

Left: Anonymous, Family Standing Beside Their Car, c. 1957–1960. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Right: Irene Poon, Virginia, 1965. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Charles Wong. © Irene Poon Photography Archive, Stanford University Libraries.

Images from these iconic artists are on display next to revelatory pictures by unknown and anonymous photographers. 

Another significant strand of American Photography is a demonstration of how photography has progressed to the point where it now pervades every element of our lives. It is ubiquitous in art, news, advertising, family portraits, postcards, record covers and more.

Penn once said: “A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it.”

This captivating exhibition is likely to have just this effect on everyone who visits it.

American Photography
Rijksmuseum
Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam
7th February – 9^th June 2025
More information and tickets, HERE.

Author: James Rampton

Lead image: Amanda López, Homegirls, San Francisco, 2008.  National Museum for American History, Washington DC. © Amanda López (image cropped due to formatting restrictions).

It has been six years since we last had the chance to admire Murakami’s work in London. Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami presents an exceptional opportunity to explore the artist’s interpretation of Japanese historical paintings.

Murakami’s work plays with blending commercial imagery, manga and of traditional art. In fact, he himself has several times bridged the gap between commercial work and art through his collaborations with luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton and Hublot, among others.

Trained in traditional Japanese art, Murakami brings together the flat compositions of classic Japanese painting and anime and manga aesthetics. His technique, coined as “super flat” emphasises the use of flat planes of colour, derived from the two-dimensional imagery from Japanese art that we see in manga and anime. At the same time, Murakami uses this “flatness” to reflect the lack of distinction in Japanese society and the otaku subculture. Otaku is the term used to describe obsessive fandom related to Japanese popular culture (anime, manga, video games…).

While participating in the PS1 International Studio Program in New York City in 1994, Murakami became heavily influenced by the monumental work of Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Koons’s simulationism, down to the practice of using a whole team to help him produce his large canvases. In his effort to show “a Kyoto that is not that beautiful”, Murakami combines elements of high art and mass culture, mirroring the work of Koons. He is also trying to emulate Willem de Kooning’s freedom of expression as Alzheimer’s progresses.

“In the process of preparation for these complex paintings, I try to go in my mind into the emptiness, like Kooning.”

           – Takashi Murakami

The latest of Murakami’s influence is Disney’s show, Shogun. At the opening of this exhibition at the Gagosian gallery in London, the artist admitted being fascinated by this Western chronicle of the 17^th century in Japan (dawn of the Edo period), when the country was immersed in internal conflict.

Murakami felt particularly inspired by seppuku (or hara-kiri), an honourable death conducted by ritualistic suicide in Japan, as the antagonism of dementia, which took his father’s life. Before killing themselves, the samurai would read a poem of their own creation. Murakami sees his epic paintings as his poem, “It got me thinking that if I could make my own poem before I die, maybe my soul will be in peace.” In his canvases, like in Shogun, beauty and death go hand in hand, as a way to process the trauma that is inherent to contemporary otaku subculture.

Detail of Rakuchu ̄-Rakugai-zu Byo ̄bu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023–24), where one can observe Murakami’s singular iconography and characters among the traditional figures and motifs from the original 17th-century artwork.

With this motivation in mind, Murakami recreated these historic paintings, populating them with his iconic characters and motifs. From gold-leaf clouds embossed with skulls (a reference to the Toribeno burial ground) and smiling flowers to different versions of Mr D.O.B, some of which are far from its original kawaii (cute) aesthetic. A prime example is Rakuchu ̄-Rakugai-zu Byo ̄bu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023–24), modelled on the 17th-century depiction of Kyoto by Iwasa Matabei’s Rakuchu ̄- Rakugai-zu Byo ̄bu (Scenes in and around Kyoto) (Funaki Version).

Other works in the show, such as Murakami’s paintings of the mythical guardians of Kyoto (the Four Symbols, one per cardinal point), are the result of a complex process that involves the combination of the artist’s own sketches with AI-generated images as well as fragments of his earlier works in a process that parallels the inventiveness of earlier artists in depicting unfamiliar or imaginary creatures.

Black Tortoise and Arhats, 2024 (left) and Flaming Vermillion Bird, 2024 (right) represent the North and South of Kyoto. Both works acrylic on canvas mounted on aluminium frame. © 2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. Photo: Kei Okano. Courtesy Gagosian.

Among the other works in the exhibition is Murakami’s version of a set of Daigo Hanami-zu screens that depicts a cherry blossom viewing event on the grounds of Kyoto’s Daigoji Temple.

To me, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami represents everything that Takashi Murakami stands for in art, condensed into an 18-painting show. Given Murakami’s popularity among international art collectors, it is likely that many of these pieces will end up in private collections, so don’t miss the opportunity to see this unique exhibition at Gagosian Gallery London.

Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami
Gagosian, London
20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD
10th December, 2024 – 8th March, 2025

Opening image: Takashi Murakami, Rakuchu ̄-Rakugai-zu Byo ̄bu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023–24). Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas mounted on wood panel, in 2 parts. © 2023-2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Photo: Kei Okano. Courtesy Gagosian.

Other unmissable exhibitions in London at the moment: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504, and Versailles: Science and Splendour.

Author: Julia Pasarón

This extended festive season, make it your mission to visit the Old Royal Naval College to see Luke Jerram’s astronomical installation, Mars. The latest planet on display follows on from the success of the artist’s other works Gaia and Museum of the Moon and will complete the trilogy of installations at Greenwich.

Mars, our nearest planetary neighbour, has fascinated humans since the earliest times. Visible with the naked eye, it was Babylonian astronomers who named the planet after Nergal, the deity of war and destruction. Our current name follows the Roman version, Mars.

The depiction of Mars in fiction has been stimulated by its red colour and by 19th-century scientific speculations that its surface conditions might support intelligent life. The idea that the red planet was populated by sentient beings gave rise to the term Martians. Author Percival Lowell’s writings put forward the idea of a planet that was a drying, cooling, dying world in which ancient civilisations had constructed irrigation works (Schiaparelli’s “Canali” observations, along with maps of the canal system, further endorsed the concept.)

Mars, © U.S. Aeronautical Chart and Information Center, 1962, illustrating canals on the Martian landscape. There were no close-up pictures of Mars, dismissing the existence of canals, until Mariner 4’s flyby in 1965.

In 1938 in the USA, Orson Welles broadcast in the radio his version of the 19th-century novel The War of the Worlds, causing mass hysteria across the country. In the book, Martians invade Earth escaping their dying planet. Another outstanding fictional account of Mars is Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, in which the first human explorers accidentally destroy a Martian civilisation.

Once the Mariner (1965) and Viking (1976) spacecraft returned images of the planet as a lifeless and canal-less world, science-fiction authors used it as a source of inspiration for works concerning environmental problems on Earth. Cosmos author Carl Sagan summed up humankind’s fascination as: “Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears.”

Mars, the god of war, indicated with the red arrow, looks down, from the central oval in the Painted Hall, on the planet named after him.

Luke Jerram’s Mars is displayed in Sir James Thornhill’s Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval Hospital Greenwich, a place originally intended for naval war heroes. The installation fuses the planet’s imagery, lighting, and a surround-sound composition. Thornhill’s fresco in the ceiling of the Lower Hall depicts Mars as the god of war. Visitors need to look at the northwestern corner of the central oval to find the deity in full armour and helmet, ready for battle.

Playfully, in the southeastern part, Galileo Galilei peers through a telescope at Mars, immortalising his first observations of the red planet in 1610.

See by yourself here:

Measuring seven metres in diameter, and internally lit, the artwork is a composition of detailed NASA imagery of the Martian surface so that the scale is about one million times smaller than the actual planet. Mars features a soundtrack by BAFTA-winning composer Dan Jones, including clips from NASA missions to Mars, totally immersing visitors in the experience. Maybe you can look for Schiaparelli’s “canali” yourself!

Over its lifetime, Mars will be presented in different ways both indoors and outdoors, so altering the experience and interpretation of the artwork. Alongside this awe-inspiring installation is an exciting programme of wellbeing events including yoga and sound baths under the red planet. Please see the website for details.

Mars at the Old Royal Naval College
Old Royal Naval College, King William Walk, Greenwich, SE10 9NN.
23rd November 2024 – 20th January 2025
More information and tickets, HERE.

www.ornc.org/whats-on/mars/

Author: Andrew Hildreth
Photos of Sir James Thornhill’s Painted Hall © Andrew Hildreth

Other unmissable exhibitions in London: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504; Versailles: Science and Splendour.

A thirst for scientific knowledge is probably not the first thing that comes to anyone’s mind when they think of Versailles, but the exhibition Versailles: Science and Splendour at the Science Museum in London proves how interested the French monarchy of the 17th and 18th centuries was in this topic.

The French kings realised that technology and scientific leadership were allies of power and prestige. From Louis XIV’s creation of the Academy of Sciences in 1666 to Louis XVI’s ordering of La Pérouse’s expedition to the Pacific in 1785, Versailles: Science and Splendour explores the scientific spirit of these monarchs and their courts.  

Particular attention is given to the role of women in science, such as the pioneering midwife Madame du Coudray and Emilie du Châtelet, the eminent physicist and mathematician who translated Isaac Newton’s Principia.

From the left: Eclipsarium © Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Planetarium © Bibliothèque Nationale de France; and Atlas carrying a celestial globe © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN.

The exhibition at the Science Museum is divided into three main topics. The first, Harnessing Science, focuses on the exploration of time and space. It is here that visitors can also discover the monumental gardens of Versailles in a new light. Louis XIV built spectacular fountains and water features, which required significant hydraulic engineering and mathematic expertise.

The second is Understanding Nature. Often spurred by the luxurious and demanding taste of the kings, botanists and engineers would work together to grow exotic fruits and zoologists would look after probably the most pampered menagerie in the world, which at the time of Louis XV included a rhinoceros.

More importantly, though, the support of these kings was crucial to the development of medical advances. For example, Louis XVI got himself and his whole family vaccinated against smallpox and Louis XV supported the training of midwives across France to reduce infant mortality and grow a populous and strong kingdom.

From the left: Jean-Dominique Cassini’s Map of the Moon, engraved by Jean Patigny after Jean-Dominique Cassini, 1679 © Observatoire de Paris; and view of the Marly Machine which supplied Versailles’ fountains with water from the Seine, by Pierre-Denis Martin, 1722-23 © Château de Versailles, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Jean-Marc Manaï.

The final topic, Embracing Knowledge, shows how royal families were educated in physics, mathematics and chemistry. Their example was followed by the aristocracy and even the bourgeoisie, always aspiring to rub shoulders with their “betters”. 

Versailles: Science and Splendour also reflects the court’s taste for spectacle. The palace provided an influential platform for scientific figures to present their work, as well as for the kings to display their power through extraordinary demonstrations, such as the flight of Etienne Montgolfier’s hot-air balloon at Versailles in 1783.

Versailles: Science and Splendour
The Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD
12th December 2024 – 21st April 2025
Further information and tickets, HERE.

Author: Lavinia Dickson-Robinson

Opening image: Ascent of a Montgolfier balloon with a sheep, cock and a duck. © Science Museum Group. The image cropped from the original due to formatting limitations.

The past 50 years have seen the incorporation of new disciplines, new technologies and new platforms of expression by artists from all fields. The Living End exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago focuses on painting, examining the questions presented by these innovations, countering the recycled discourse that “painting is dead”.

Cutting across geographies, histories and contexts, The Living End explores the different methods artists have used to challenge or intervene in the practice of painting and the role of painters over the past 50 years. The suggestion is that painting is a living art, in a constant state of renewal and rebirth.

From the experiments with computer-assisted graphics in the mid-1960s to the prevalence of screens and artists mining online digital and social media culture today, the show considers the impact of various representational technologies and production methods, such as the use of video and still cameras; computers, the internet and screens; automation; and the performing body. Comprising paintings, performances, videos and installations, The Living End explores the ways artists working across media have challenged the mythologies of painting, ultimately changing our understanding of what art constitutes.

Left: Cheryl Donegan, Whoa Whoa Studio (for Courbet), 2000. Video (colour, sound); 3m 21s. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York. Right: Avery Singer, The Studio Visit, 2012. Acrylic on canvas. Private collection. © Avery Singer. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Roman März.

The curators – Jamillah James and Jack Schneider – have emphasised the critical reading of the painting, its tropes, its prominence in the Western canon, and its historical associations with privilege. As technology increases access to the means of production, the model of the painter as a singular “genius” is being decentralised, opening abstract and representational painting to new perspectives.

Particularly interesting is the study of the cyclical relationship between still photography and painting, as well as how video has allowed artists working in performance the possibility of critiquing the trajectory and status of painting. Lastly, The Living End exhibition looks at the automation of painting, where the artist’s hand is largely absent, complicating the role of the artist as producer and the market’s enduring interest in painting as a commodity.

Author: Lavinia Dickson-Robinson

The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
9th November 2024 – 23th March 2025
More information and tickets HERE.

Opening image: Tala Madani, Solitaire (still), 2023. Single-channel color animation; 5 minutes, 58 seconds. Courtesy the artist; 303 Gallery, New York; and Pilar Corrias, London.

The Duke of Richmond and Gordon has announced a new creative endeavour to the rich palette of the Goodwood Estate: The Goodwood Art Foundation, which will open in May 2025.

Covering 11,000 acres of ravishing West Sussex countryside, the Goodwood Estate is already world-famous for hosting some of the biggest and most prestigious events in the British social calendar: Festival of Speed, Qatar Goodwood Festival, Goodwood Revival and Goodwoof. 

The Foundation will exhibit works by internationally renowned artists. The canvas will be the gorgeous natural landscape of the Goodwood Estate.

The not-for-profit Goodwood Art Foundation will concentrate on the three pillars of Art, Environment, and Education. It will curate exceptional experiences and nurture creativity and life-long learning for people of all ages through a deep connection with art, education, and nature.

Left: Canaletto, Whitehall and the Privy Garden from Richmond House. Right: Stubbs, Racehorses Exercising. Both, Goodwood Estate.

The Duke of Richmond and Gordon say the initiative ties in with Goodwood’s centuries-long relationship with art. “Over the last three hundred years, the Dukes of Richmond at Goodwood have collected masterpieces by Canaletto, Reynolds, Romney, Stubbs and Van Dyck. The creation of the Goodwood Art Foundation signals the next chapter in this long and pioneering history of engagement with art.” 

The Foundation will present a headline exhibition by an illustrious artist every season. It will open with a show focused on Dame Rachel Whiteread, one of the most highly regarded sculptors of her time and the first female artist to win the Turner Prize. 

“I am thrilled to be launching this great new venture, which will form a vital part of Goodwood’s 21st century legacy.”

– The Duke of Richmond and Gordon

The exhibition will feature not only her compelling sculptures, set against the backdrop of the splendid Goodwood countryside but also her photography, a rarely seen but very impressive string to her bow, in the restored Pavilion Gallery.

Whiteread says, “I am delighted to be the first artist profiled in the inaugural exhibition within the beautifully refurbished Pavilion Gallery and landscape of the new Goodwood Art Foundation.

“The ethos of providing audiences with the opportunity to experience contemporary art integrated into a carefully designed natural environment is something I particularly respond to. It has been an honour to work with the curatorial and exhibition team from the outset, alongside the journey of discovery within the landscape.” 

Left: Rachel Whiteread, Detached 2, 2012 (Photo: Mike Bruce). Right: Portrait of Dame Rachel Whiteread (courtesy of the artist and Gagosian).

That’s not all. A major landscape development programme at the Foundation, generously backed by the Stephen A. Schwarzman Foundation, is also scheduled. It is being overseen by the award-winning horticulturalist and landscape architect Dan Pearson.

The entire project is an enormously exciting and inspirational artistic enterprise.

How would we sum up the prospect of the Goodwood Art Foundation, then? Glorious.

Author: James Rampton

Opening image: Goodwood House. Photo by James Fennell.
Photo of The Duke of Richmond and Gordon by Uli Weber.