Haunted Realism

Ahead of her exhibition over the summer at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Jenny Saville met with the novelist Douglas Stuart to discuss Glasgow, the beauty and blemishes of bodies, and their respective creative processes.

At the center of Andreas Gursky’s new exhibition in Paris at Gagosian’s rue de Castiglione gallery is Paris, Montparnasse II (2025), a reengagement with his celebrated photograph from 1993 of the architect Jean Dubuisson’s iconic building in the capital city. In the new work, Gursky reexamines the subject, tracing the changes time has inscribed on the architecture and its occupants. Here, in conversation with the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier and shown alongside behind-the-scenes images from the artwork’s making, the artist addresses his motivations and interests in this long-term project.

From her Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna to her casting of George Orwell’s World War II office at the BBC, Rachel Whiteread has long engaged with the emotional and historical complexities of addressing deeply troubling moments in human history through art. This month, Whiteread will debut a new work for the inaugural exhibition at the Goodwood Art Foundation in Sussex, England.

Swiss Institute, New York, is staging an exhibition that places the paintings of Louise Bonnet and the sculptures and videos of Elizabeth King in dialogue. Ahead of the exhibition’s opening this May, Stefanie Hessler—the show’s curator and the Institute’s director—met with the two artists to discuss animacy, gesture, and the liminal space between life and lifelikeness.

Jenny Saville reflects on Cy Twombly’s poetic engagement with the world, with time and tension, and with growth in this excerpt from her Marion Barthelme Lecture, presented at the Menil Collection, Houston, in 2024.

Jeff Wall explains the stories and literary allusions behind two of his photographs that will appear in an exhibition at Gagosian, New York, in November.

This year marks the centennial of André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto.” In its honor, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, in close collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, staged the exhibition IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism, which will be traveling to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany, and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, before closing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. To mark the occasion and the exhibition, artists Glenn Brown and Alexandria Smith met to discuss the influence of the movement on their own practices.

Charlie Fox takes a whirlwind trip through the Jim Shaw universe, traveling along the letters of the alphabet.

The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, has staged a comprehensive Jeff Wall exhibition including more than fifty works spanning five decades. Here, Barry Schwabsky reflects on the enduring power of and mystery in Wall’s photography.

Lee Miller and Tanja Ramm’s friendship took them from New York to Paris and back, in front of and behind many cameras, and into the Surrealist avant-garde. Here, Gagosian director Richard Calvocoressi speaks with Ramm’s daughter, art historian Margit Rowell, about discovering her mother’s early life, her memories of Miller, and the collaborative work of photographers and models.