2024 is shaping up to be an exciting year for art lovers, with a host of captivating exhibitions offering a unique insight into the world of creativity. From emerging artists to renowned masters, these exhibitions promise to stimulate our senses and inspire our imaginations. In this article, we explore some of the not-to-be-missed art exhibitions in 2024.
Vanhaerents Art Collection, ‘Au bout de mes rêves’, until 14 January
The Vanhaerents Art Collection is a unique compilation of contemporary art, carefully assembled by Walter Vanhaerents and his children, Els and Joost. The origins of the collection date back to the 1970s, when Walter began to put together his first pieces of art. By concentrating on work that was considered particularly daring and radical at the time, he laid the foundations for a collection that is now recognised as one of the most eminent in the world.
The collection features a range of established and emerging artists, including American figures exploring the legacy of Andy Warhol, such as Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Matt Mullican, James Lee Byars and Allan McCollum. It also includes European artists such as Gilbert & George, Christian Boltanski, Franz West and Thomas Ruff, as well as renowned Belgian artists such as Kris Martin, Wim Delvoye and Francis Alÿs.
The Vanhaerents Art Collection is constantly being enriched, with particular emphasis on the young avant-garde art scene.
The Vanhaerents Art Collection is one of the largest private collections of contemporary art in Belgium, and you will have the chance to admire it at the Tripostal in Lille until 14 January 2024.
Alioune Diagne ‘Seede’ at Templon from 6 January to 24 February
For his first exhibition at the Galerie Templon in Paris, painter Alioune Diagne, who has been chosen to represent his country in the Senegalese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024, presents a series of eight paintings exploring the theme of clandestine sea crossings.
Alioune Diagne uses a technique that he has developed and perfected over time, in which small modules that he calls ‘unconscious signs’ come together to form a coherent figurative mass. He uses a complex process based on these signs, reminiscent of forgotten calligraphy, to create dynamic tableaux depicting daily life in Senegal and the everyday experiences of the African diaspora around the world.
Entitled ‘Seede’, meaning ‘the witness’ in Wolof, the series was inspired by several weeks Diagne spent along the Senegalese coast. His paintings reflect the stories of local fishermen who, equipped simply with a pirogue and a net for their work, face the growth of foreign industrialisation in the fishing industry.
The deep blue hue and the handful of fishing nets covering the walls and floor of the Parisian space give the exhibition an immersive, even dramatic atmosphere. ‘These are subjects I want to give a voice to,’ says the artist. ‘Emigration remains a painful reality today. Up until now, many people only envisaged a successful life in Europe or the United States. I want to show the younger generations that it is possible to build a future in Africa.’
Next April, Alioune Diagne will have the honour of representing his country in the Senegalese Pavilion at the 60th Venice International Art Biennale. Represented by Galerie Templon since 2022, ‘Seede’ is his second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from 6 January to 24 February.
Alioune Diagne, « Seede » 6 janvier – 24 février 2024 Galerie Templon
Mark Rothko at the Fondation Louis Vuitton until 2 April 2024
The Fondation Louis Vuitton has marked the start of 2024 by presenting the first retrospective in France dedicated to the artist Mark Rothko (1903-1970) since 1999. The exhibition brings together around 115 works from major institutional collections, such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Tate in London and the Phillips Collection in Washington, as well as from international private collections, including that of the artist's family.
Spread across all the Foundation's spaces in a chronological sequence, the exhibition retraces Rothko's entire career, from his early figurative works to the abstraction that characterises his current work. From 1946 onwards, Rothko made a decisive shift towards abstraction, inaugurating the Multiformes phase, in which suspended masses of colour tended to balance each other. Over time, their number diminished, and the spatial organisation of his painting evolved towards his so-called ‘classical’ works of the 1950s, characterised by rectangular shapes superimposed in a binary or ternary rhythm, with varied tones such as yellow, red, ochre, orange, blue and white.
Although Rothko favoured darker tones and muted contrasts from the late 1950s onwards, he never completely abandoned his palette of bright colours, as can be seen in several paintings from 1967 and his very last unfinished red painting in his studio. Even the Black and Grey series of 1969-1970 cannot be reduced to a simplistic interpretation associating black and grey with depression and suicide.
These works are exhibited in the highest room of Frank Gehry's building, alongside the great figures of Alberto Giacometti, creating an environment close to the vision that Rothko had imagined in response to a UNESCO commission that never came to fruition.
Rothko's constant questioning, his desire for a wordless dialogue with the viewer and his refusal to be categorised as a ‘colourist’ allow this exhibition to offer a new reading of his work, revealing its true plurality.
Don't miss this magnificent retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton until 2 April 2024!
Shamanic Visions. Arts of Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac until 26 May
The exhibition explores the contemporary challenges posed by the interaction between hallucinatory images and iconographic productions, focusing on the case of ayahuasca.
While ayahuasca, also known as the ‘liana of the dead’ in Quechua, has been attracting interest in the West for only fifty years, since it was popularised by the Beat Generation, this hallucinogenic beverage has occupied a central position in the social life of many indigenous societies in the Western Amazon for much longer.
Traditionally consumed in a shamanic context, mainly for therapeutic or divinatory purposes, this ‘psychedelic’ substance is also closely linked to artistic creation. The ‘visions’ or hallucinations it provokes are often considered a major source of inspiration by indigenous artists in the Peruvian Amazon.
The exhibition offers an overview of the various contemporary forms of representation of these ayahuasca-induced ‘visionary images’. From the sophisticated, geometric iconographic language of the Shipibos-Konibos to the literary (William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg) and audiovisual (Jan Kounen) creations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it offers an authentic immersion in the art influenced by this substance until 26 May 2024 at the Musée du Quai-Branly in Paris!
Zao Wou-Ki, ‘Les Allées d'un Autre Monde’ in Deauville from 2 March to 26 May
The Musée des Franciscaines is privileged to present an exceptional monographic exhibition devoted to the visionary works of the artist Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013).
Of Chinese origin and now French by adoption, this artist charted a unique artistic course, navigating between Chinese tradition and Western modernity, before finally forging a new path, free and liberated.
This exhibition explores Zao Wou-Ki's artistic freedom through the diversity of plastic and intellectual expressions he explored throughout his life. The exhibition reveals a variety of media, including paintings, watercolours, inks, prints, tapestries, porcelain, steles, poetry books and an imposing mural, over sixteen metres long, commissioned by the French government for the L'Herminier secondary school in La Seyne-sur-Mer, designed by the architect Roger Taillibert. These works are brought together for the first time in an exhibition that celebrates the practice and thinking of a total artist, whose existential approach was entirely dedicated to the representation of realities beyond those of the visible world.
At the heart of the exhibition, the majestic triptych ‘Hommage à Claude Monet’ (1991) offers a captivating insight into Zao Wou-Ki's artistic development, symbolising the fusion of the culture of his native country, the teachings he received, the age-old traditions of European painting, the boldness of American painting, and the new paths he took, notably the transcending of reality through abstraction.
Zao WOU-KI, cat. 5, Hommage à Claude Monet, Triptyque, 1991, Collection particulière, © ADAGP, Paris, 2024
This exhibition, produced in close collaboration with the Zao Wou-Ki Foundation, the Mobilier national, the Département du Var and private collectors, and endorsed by the Normandie Impressionniste 2024 Festival, is curated by Gilles Chazal, General Curator of Heritage and Honorary Director of the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.
The Franciscaines invite you to plunge into the fascinating world of Zao Wou-Ki, an artistic experience that transcends cultural and temporal boundaries, from 2 March to 26 May 2024.
Angelica Kauffmann at the Royal Academy, London, from 1 March to 30 June
Angelica Kauffman was one of the most celebrated artists of the 18th century. In this major exhibition, the Royal Academy traces her journey from childhood prodigy to one of the most sought-after painters in Europe.
Renowned for her celebrity portraits and groundbreaking history paintings, Angelica Kauffman helped shape the direction of European art. She painted some of the most influential figures of her time - queens, countesses, actors and socialites - and reinvented the genre of the history painting by focusing primarily on female protagonists from classical history and mythology.
This exhibition covers Kauffman's life and work: his rise to fame in London, his role as a founding member of the Royal Academy and his subsequent career in Rome, where his studio became a centre of the city's cultural life.
In this incredible exhibition you will discover paintings and preparatory drawings by Kauffman, including some of his best self-portraits, his famous ceiling paintings for the Royal Academy at Somerset House, as well as history paintings of subjects such as Circe and Cleopatra, and explore the remarkable life of the artist whom one of her contemporaries described as ‘the most cultured woman in Europe’.
These works can be seen from 1 March to 30 June at the Royal Academy in London.
Angelica Kauffman RA (1741 - 1807), 1778-80, Painting, Oil on canvas, 1260 mm x 1485 mm x 25 mm, Royal Academy of Arts
‘Transparences - Le pouvoir des matières’ at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum from 9 February to 25 August
This exhibition explores the art of transparency, a characteristic dear to Yves Saint Laurent, highlighting the way in which the couturier used materials such as chiffon, lace and tulle to revolutionise fashion. In doing so, he allowed women to express their sensuality while preserving their mystery and independence, focusing particularly on the behaviour of fabrics.
From 9 February to 25 August 2024, visitors will have the opportunity to discover the second part of ‘Transparences’, a couture story that began the previous summer at the Cité de la Dentelle et de la Mode in Calais.
Yves Saint Laurent's quote, ‘I've known about transparencies for a long time. The important thing with them is to keep the mystery... I think I've done as much as I can for the emancipation of women’, perfectly sums up his unique approach to fashion. This exhibition explores the power of materials to plunge us into the complexity of her work, analysing her deep connection with the body and the redefinition of nudity.
A true celebration of fashion and self-confidence, not to be missed from 9 February to 25 August 2024 at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent.
Yves Saint Laurent © Estate Jeanloup Sieff
"En jeu ! Les artistes et le sport" at the Marmottan Monet Museum from April 4 to September 1
On the occasion of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the first to be held in the capital in a century, the Marmottan Monet Museum will present the exhibition titled "In Play! Artists and Sport (1870-1930)" from April 4 to September 1, 2024. This exhibition will trace the visual history of sport between 1870 and 1930 through more than one hundred significant works from public and private collections in Europe, the United States, and Japan (including the National Sports Museum of Nice, the Musée d’Orsay, the Centre Pompidou, the Fabre Museum of Montpellier, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, among others).
From Impressionism to Cubism, this event will show how sport, sports, and athletes were elevated to the status of modern and avant-garde subjects. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, as Pierre de Coubertin was inventing a contemporary version of the ancient Olympic Games, sport was undergoing a series of transformations fully grasped by the artists of the time. Initially of aristocratic and English origin in the 19th century, sport gradually spread across the European continent and to the United States, becoming more democratic between spectacle and practice, and eventually, at the beginning of the following century, a mass leisure activity.
The exhibition will focus on understanding the ethical issues and aesthetic modes of the gaze directed at sports. It will explore the metaphorical meanings of the heroic figure of the artist as an athlete, characterized by determination, endurance, and a form of resistance. Among the featured artists will be Monet, Degas, Caillebotte, Toulouse-Lautrec, Eakins, Richer, Maillol, Rodin, Bellows, Lhote, Delaunay, Metzinger, and Gromaire. The exhibition sits at the intersection of elite practices such as horse riding, sailing, and fencing, as well as archaic activities like wrestling, boxing, and ball games.
Experience this fabulous sports exhibition from April 4 to September 1, 2024, at the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris.
André Lhote, Partie de rugby ou les Footballers, vers 1937, © Saint - Quentin, musée Antoine Lecuyer
Women in art in London from 16 May to 13 October
Tracing the 400-year journey of women on their way to becoming professional artists, from the time of the Tudors to the First World War, artists such as Mary Beale, Angelica Kauffman, Elizabeth Butler and Laura Knight opened up new artistic avenues for future generations of women.
Determined to succeed and refusing to be pigeonholed, they boldly painted subjects that were generally reserved for male artists: historical works, battle scenes and nudes.
The exhibition highlights how these artists campaigned for equal access to artistic training and membership of academies, breaking down barriers and overcoming many obstacles to redefine what it meant to be a woman in the art world.
On view at Tate Britain in London from 16 May to 13 October 2024.
Pierre Huyghe in Venice from 17 March to 24 November
Venice's Punta della Dogana is inviting artist Pierre Huyghe to design an original exhibition bringing together a vast array of works, some of them from the famous Pinault Collection.
For Pierre Huyghe, the exhibition is a ritual that marks the encounter with a sensitive environment, where new possibilities of interdependence are created between the events and elements that unfold there. His works, conceived as speculative fictions, are often presented as a continuity between several forms of intelligence that learn, change and evolve in the course of the exhibition.
At the Punta della Dogana, he stages his largest exhibition to date, transforming the venue into a dynamic environment, a transitory state in which time, space and everything that enters, visible or invisible, are integral to the constitution of the works.
The exhibition becomes a place where subjectivities are formed, whether bodiless or embodied; they circulate and manifest themselves unpredictably through the works, acting as sensitive relays. An unknown language is invented, with no definite end or recipient, inhabiting voices, gestures and images, and generating new real or fictional situations.
By challenging our perception of reality and proposing the construction of other possibilities, Pierre Huyghe invites us to be strangers to ourselves.
The exhibition is organised in partnership with the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, which will present an exhibition by Pierre Huyghe in February 2025.
Not to be missed from 17 March to 24 November 2024 at La Punta della Dogana in Venice.
The final list of artists, which the curator hopes will include equal numbers of men and women, will be announced next February, and the biennial will open in Venice from 20 April to 24 November 2024.
The 60th Venice Biennale from 20 April to 24 November
The Venice Biennale, a world-renowned contemporary art event, welcomes talented artists from all horizons every year. Considered to be the most prestigious art event in Europe and the world, it gives the invited countries the opportunity to showcase their artistic culture and contemporary creators.
The 60th International Art Exhibition will take place from Saturday 20 April to Sunday 24 November 2024, under the curatorial direction of Adriano Pedrosa, and will have as its theme ‘Foreigners Everywhere’, borrowed from a series of neon works by Claire Fontaine (a collective of artists born in Paris and based in Palermo), expressing themselves in every language.
Appointed in December 2022, the Brazilian curator said he was ‘honoured and humbled by this prestigious appointment, especially as the first Latin American to direct the International Art Exhibition, and indeed the first based in the southern hemisphere’.
Foreigners Everywhere’ has a double meaning: “There are foreigners wherever you go, and everyone is always, deep down, a foreigner”. For this reason, the Venice Biennale 2024 will focus on artists who are ‘immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, exiled, refugees, particularly those who have migrated between the South and the North’.
The final list of artists, which the curator hopes will include equal numbers of men and women, will be announced next February, and the Biennale will open in Venice from 20 April to 24 November 2024.
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