Who said the art world goes on vacation all summer? Not us! There are many fantastic shows to see if you are passing through the major hubs in Europe this season, from Berlin to Luxembourg to Vienna.
Here are our picks and why our writers and editors think they are worth a look.
1. Hannah Höch at the Lower Belvedere, Vienna, Austria
Through October 6, 2024
Hannah Höch, English Dancer (1928). Photo: © Christian Vagt; © Bildrecht, Vienna 2024.
One of the most imitated early innovators of Dadaist collage, Hannah Höch showed the world how a pair of scissors could be taken to the everyday ephemera of modern society before it is shrewdly rearranged to satirical effect. This major retrospective brings together 80 photomontages from the 1920s avant-garde through to the 1970s, highlighting how the German artist never lost her appetite for absurdist avant-garde fun. These works are grouped with much lesser-known paintings and prints, and the exhibition also foregrounds the underexplored connection between Höch’s techniques and those used by influential filmmakers she knew like Fernand Léger and László Moholy-Nagy.
—Jo Lawson-Tancred
2. Matthew Barney at the Fondation Cartier, Paris
Through September 8, 2024
Matthew Barney SECONDARY. (2023) © Matthew Barney. Production still: Julieta Cervantes. Courtesy of the artist, Gladstone Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, Regen Projects, and Galerie Max Hetzler
The conceptual artist Matthew Barney has a five-exhibition outing this summer. His 2023 film Secondary launched at his large studio that looks onto the East River in New York last spring, and now it is on a world tour, with stops in four cities.
The work takes up football (American football, that is), a sport Barney once played; as a young child he was haunted by the on-screen injury of Darryl Stingily, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots who was paralyzed after being hit by Oakland Raiders safety Jack Tatum in 1978. Including several performers, Secondary considers the rituals of this highly physical sport and what it says about the human psyche.
Also at Fondation Cartier is Barney’s celebrated work Drawing Restraint, an earlier work that is similarly a performative act of endurance. There are iterations of viewable at several of his galleries: at Max Hetzler in Paris (through July 25, 2024); Gladstone Gallery, New York, (through July 26, 2024); at Sadie Coles in London (through July 27, 2024); Regen Projects in Los Angeles (through August 17, 2024). Each show includes the film along with related works that were inspired from it, including many new ceramics.
—Kate Brown
3. Barbie at the Design Museum, London
Through February 23, 2025
Number 1 Barbie (1959) © Mattel, Inc
The long-awaited “Barbie” exhibition the Design Museum in London is finally here this summer. Announced in October on the heels of the global box office success of Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy named after the world’s most famous doll, the show has been three years in the making, and coincides with the 65th anniversary of the birth of the first Barbie in 1959 created by Ruth Handler.
The colorful exhibition, curated by the Design Museum’s Danielle Thom, charts the doll’s trajectory and the design evolution of Barbie for the past half-century. The show will dive into the transformation of Barbie’s looks to her fashion, architecture, furniture and vehicles, and how the modification of these designs has responded to the changes of social discourse. Expect to see a range of rare key exhibits, including the first edition of the doll released by Mattel, the first Barbie Dreamhouse from 1962, and a special section dedicated to Ken to boost the London museum’s “Kenergy.”
—Vivienne Chow
4. “When We See Us” at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Through October 27
Esiri Erheriene-Essi, The Birthday Party (2021). © Esiri Erheriene-Essi. Courtesy of Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami.
Bringing together more than a century of Black figurative art from Africa and its diaspora, this exhibition is as exuberant as it is sprawling. Originally conceived by Koyo Kouoh and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, the show is a celebration of everyday Black joy and focuses on figuration that decenters violence—a biased lens through which the Black experience is most often viewed in the U.S. and Europe, according to Kouoh. Many of the 156 works included have never been shown in Switzerland, and its depth and scale make it one of the most significant shows dedicated to Black art in Europe to date.
Between its six thematic sections, the exhibition features works by 20th-century greats like the Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu and the American painter Jacob Lawrence, to big-name contemporary artists like Amy Sherald and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. That the show is being shown in Basel—one of the largest European centers for the art trade, thanks to Art Basel—is especially poignant given the recent surge in market demand for figurative works by contemporary Black artists. By putting a wealth of historical artworks from across the globe in conversation with not only each other but also newer works, the show is a refutation of trendiness. Instead, it underscores that Black artists have always been making exceptional work and will continue to do so—whether the white- and Western-centric market is paying attention or not.
—Margaret Carrigan
5. Caspar David Friedrich at Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Through August 4, 2024
Caspar David Friedrich, Willow bushes in low sun, (1830-1835). © Freies Deutsches Hochstift / Frankfurt Goethe Museum, Photo: David Hall
Before it culminates at the Met in 2025, the 250th anniversary exhibitions celebrating Caspar David Friedrich’s birth are on a German tour. On view this summer is “Infinite Landscapes” a dual outing at the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Featuring more than 60 paintings and 50 drawings, the exhibition includes greatest hits The Sea of Ice (1823/24) and Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818-1819). The Friedrich world tour is not a traveling show exactly; every exhibition has a slightly different theme and curation and selection of works. The Berlin shows consider the Alte Nationalgalerie’s role in re-discovery of his art in the early 20th century.
—Kate Brown
6. “Xanti Schawinsky: Play, Life, Illusion,” Mudam Luxembourg, Luxembourg
July 12, 2024 through January 5, 2025
Xanti Schawinsky, Untitled, undated, ca. 1936, black and white photograph. Courtesy of the Xanti Schawinsky Estate
The Basel-born Swiss-American artist Alexander “Xanti” Schawinsky (1904-1979) was regarded as a pioneering Bauhaus artist. He enrolled the Bauhaus painting program in Weimar in 1924, studying with prominent figures from the Bauhaus School, including its founder Walter Gropius and teachers Paul Klee and Wassily Kandisky, while dapping into stage and costume designs, photography, and theater. He was also remembered for promulgating the concept of Spectodrama, which considered performance as images in space, with which the Jewish artist continued to experiment after relocating to the U.S. in 1936 amid the rise of Adolf Hitler.
The legacy of Schawinsky is examined this summer at Mudam Luxembourg (the Contemporary Art Museum of Luxmbourg), which presents the artist’s first retrospective outside Switzerland. The exhibition curated by Raphael Gygax showcases the artist’s rich body of work, with a presentation of more than 100 paintings, photographs, set designs, drawings, and objects in various media that reflect Schawinsky’s multi-disciplinary practice and the artist’s influences on various artistic movements in the 20th century. Many works are shown publicly for the first time.
—Vivienne Chow
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