Exhibition Guide

May 30–September 29, 2024 In the House of the Trembling Eye: an exhibition staged by Allison Katz

In the House of the Trembling Eye is the culmination of a period of research and collaboration led by artist Allison Katz (b. 1980) in response to the museum’s invitation to curate an exhibition of artworks from personal art collections in Aspen. Prompted by the creative constraints of this premise, Katz takes on and fluidly blends distinctions between the role of artist, curator, writer, researcher, and designer, bringing to life a group exhibition that endeavors to expand our understanding of paintings, and how they may relate to one another. Marking the Aspen Art Museum’s 45th anniversary and the 10th anniversary of its Shigeru Ban-designed building, In the House of the Trembling Eye instigates formal and poetic affinities among over one hundred artworks and objects in varied styles from different epochs, celebrating the inexhaustible capacity of painting to generate new conversations across time. Katz’s works, both new and recent, are presented alongside artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as a series of fresco fragments from Pompeii. The exhibition unfolds across nine thematic sections, from the upper to the lower levels of the Museum, building upon the architectural logic of the domus (“house”) found in the ancient, preserved city of Pompeii. The galleries echo methods of choreographing one’s gaze through spatial features, and provide a reinterpretation of domestic space that reflects upon public and private experiences of art, and the role of the museum. Calling upon a multitude of references—from the aspen tree with its quivering leaves and eyes that appear to emerge from its bark, to Edouard Glissant’s cultural philosophy of tremblement — the exhibition’s title exemplifies Katz’s distinctive approach to citation and word association as well as her fascination with naming. In her works, the artist frequently weaves the verbal and visual into complex yet humorous inquiries that defy conventional hierarchies of origin, meaning, and purpose.

Street, Atrium, and Tablinum Rooms 1–3 The domus was the private residential building of the Roman elite that also functioned as a center for business and political exchange. This commingling of public and private interaction is key to understanding the use of painting, sculpture, and architecture within domestic environments to affirm social status and guide one’s imagination. Some of these principles fuel Allison Katz’s inspiration for this gallery. Organized in three sections—the Street , the Atrium , and the Tablinum (“office”)—the artworks are here placed in osmotic connection with each other and the exhibition architecture, creating a total environment. According to Katz, in the domus , “all is choreographed to make a theater out of the house, and spectators of everyone else.”

Tablinum

15 6

Atrium

Street

1. Street The street: an event or act that leads to another. Unfurling in all directions, the artery of A to Z, the street is the perpetual transit of process and thought made concrete. How we move, and who we meet. Pompeii’s main artery was Via dell’Abbondanza (Street of Abundance), which is one way of qualifying the diverse chaos of street life, hosting every form of commerce and habitation, and a population that was a multitude of ethnicities, languages, and social statuses. Shopfronts framed the “jaws” or “throat” of the domus, the entrance corridor that was made for pedestrians to spy down, giving them a glimpse of an alternative, interior street, a tongue stretching back through every room until it hits the wall of the garden. The person passing along becomes a voyeur, an instant audience member. Their gaze is engaged in a deliberate staging of space, paintings, and objects, even the inhabitants themselves. All is choreographed to make a theater out of the house, and spectators of everyone else. As it was then, so it is now: the street is marked by weather, decay, and grime. The abstraction of Time leaving her traces across every surface, from brick to tree to awning, in fierce competition with human graffiti, the existential registration of existence: “I was here.” Pompeii counts over five thousand such surviving marks, the majority of which are simply name tags. Yet in the ancient world, graffiti was a respected, interactive form of writing. It runs the gamut from political campaign to confession (“Atimetus got me pregnant,” “I screwed the barmaid,” “Cruel Lalagus, why do you not love me?”), wishful thinking (“Health to you, Victoria, and wherever you are may you sneeze sweetly”), and poetic provenance (“Aemilius Celer signed this on his own by the light of the moon”). —AK

1, 2

Fredrik V ærslev

Untitled, 2019 Spray paint and solvent on canvas, 188 × 79 in. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Andrew Kreps Gallery, and Gió Marconi Untitled, 2019 Spray paint and solvent on canvas, 188 × 79 in. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Andrew Kreps Gallery, and Gió Marconi

In this series of works, Værslev places his painted canvases outdoors for long periods of time and subjects them to the harsh Norwegian climate, their colors and surface tarnished and bleached by rain, snow, and sun. This process of collaboration with the environment creates a powerful disjuncture between the artist’s graphic stripes and the unpredictable effect of natural forces beyond human control. Reminiscent of modernist abstraction, the canvases are based on the designs and sizes of outdoor awnings from the artist’s childhood. They sit angled from the wall on hinges, evoking the shaded shop frontages on Pompeii’s Via dell’Abbondanza. —HJ

Allison Katz AKgraph (Abbondanza) , 2024 Oil on linen, 67 × 67 in. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Tanoto Family Collection

As this painting’s title suggests, it depicts a view of Via dell’Abbondanza, Pompeii’s most important thoroughfare. From the surface of the cooled lava flagstones emerges an apparition of the artist’s face, with features created by her initials (MASK, Ms. Allison Sarah Katz). Katz’s figurative and literal use of the mask introduces themes of theatricality and persona, framing and concealing. The spiraling blue tag heralds the street as a site for graffiti—painted expression in its most unchecked form—traces of which still color Pompeii’s ruined walls. —HJ

Allison Katz AKgraph (Eruption) , 2023 Oil on linen, 74⅞ × 51 in. Collection of the artist

Shifting variations of Katz’s own moniker are threaded throughout her AKgraph paintings. Here, her name and facial features appear as a slogan (“All Is On”) over a vista of Vesuvius erupting, the volcanic ash cloud obscuring the azure sky. A second self-portrait, appropriated from an earlier work, occupies the center of the artist’s forehead, bridging an understanding of eruption as a geological process and a metaphor for creative acts. —HJ

Allison Katz AKgraph (Aureus) , 2021–24 Oil on canvas, 67 × 67 in. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

In her ongoing AKgraph paintings, Katz creates a likeness of her face using her own name, playfully submitting herself to self-reflection, mimicry, and abstraction. In this example, her signature forms the eyes and mouth, critically examining its role as a surrogate for individual authority and a marker of authenticity. Beneath the face, a Celtic copy of a Roman aureus (a gold coin regularly issued under Julius Caesar)— in which the copyist has misread the head of the emperor as a highly stylized horse—is visible, suggesting the mutation that accompanies the transmission of culture and ideas. —HJ

2. Atrium The atrium, or main courtyard, was the locus of the domus, the center of the house’s social and political life. It was dominated by an opening in the roof, the compluvium, and mirrored by a sunken basin in the floor below, the impluvium. While this design served to bring in light and air to an otherwise dingy and gloomy interior, and to catch and funnel rainwater for household tasks, I see the beauty of the twinned portals as an invitation to contemplate Eternity and Reflection, two of painting’s central preoccupations. The skylight presented an ever-changing framed “picture” of the atmosphere. When filled with water, the impluvium refracted this spectrum of hours, weather, colors. Taken together, any resident or visitor must have been lulled by the tranquility, the chance to get lost in the timeless passage out of the here and now. These are the escape hatches that give flight to the imagination, and reinforce my vision of painting as an experience bounded by a frame that paradoxically hinges on entrances and exits. The frescoes of Pompeii enact a game of depth and illusion with the technology of looking, finding ways to “break through” the flatness of the walls they are painted upon, via the obsessive re-creation of thresholds: frames, doors, windows, skylights, balconies, platforms, stages, empty space, and shifts in scale. All of these devices have the aim of interrogating the limits of painting by inviting the viewer to go beyond them. Painting has been self-reflexive from the start, inquiring into its own potentiality and dangers, by pointing to the act of looking, which is to say, back to painting. This is not navel- gazing, even though Narcissus has been called the first painter (when he unwittingly fell in love with his own reflection on the surface of the water)—it’s a drive born of a desire to question, test, and push the medium. What is the surface of the pool made of exactly? Where is it? How is the self not an illusion, divided, and divided again, into multitudes? How inexhaustible is eternity? There is no content that does not refer back to its construction, or to the body that theatrically beholds it. The open sky and the rolling water together speak the story of painting; the wall and the canvas listen, and repeat the telling … —AK

Paul Thek Untitled (Burning Book Triptych) , c. 1975 Acrylic on newspaper, three parts, each 22¾ × 33 in. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Gift of Susan and Larry Marx

Known for his use of perishable materials, Paul Thek’s work addresses themes of ephemerality, transience, and decay. These are mirrored in this triptych that traces the progressive destruction of a book, engulfed in flames as it floats out to sea, with glimpses of printed newspaper words peeking through the paint. The infinite blue of the water is all-consuming, blurring the boundaries between ocean, sky, and abyss. —HJ

Jim Hodges Toward Great Becoming (turquoise/purple) , 2014 Mirror on panel in two parts; left panel: 72 × 39⅞ in.; right panel: 62¾ × 37⅞ in. Courtesy the artist Collection of John & Amy Phelan

Hodges first began working with mirrors in 1996 when he shattered a piece of reflective glass to create a cracked surface. Here, individual mirrored tiles are affixed to the support creating a tessellated surface—akin to the shape of the Pompeian fragment in this room—that reflects light in myriad ways. Hodges’s corner placement causes variations in color as the two separate shades meet at the center. —HJ

Fresco fragment Painted plaster Boscoreale (suburb of Pompeii), Contrada Pisanelli Pompeii Archaeological Park, Inv. N. 40688 11¼ × 11⅜ in.; thickness 1⅛ in. 45–79 CE (Fourth Style) © MIC – Parco Archeologico di Pompei

On a blue background, the upper left part of a female head, probably Venus, is preserved, holding her son, little Eros, sitting on her left shoulder. The child, naked, keeps himself firm by holding his mother’s right hand. The subject is quite common in the repertoire of Pompeian painting. The use of the a macchia (“by stain”) technique for the rendering of the bodies allows the fragment to be attributed to a Fourth Style decorative scheme. —AC

Jim Hodges Untitled, 1991 Silver chain, 20 × 20 in. Collection of Christy Ferer

Echoing his nearby mirror, this untitled work draws on the spiderweb motif Hodges has used since the late 1980s. It is fabricated from silver chain, reinforcing the web’s notorious tensile strength. Viewed alongside the adjacent Pompeian fragment, the web suggests the spider’s maternal drive to make a home. By evoking the indiscriminatory threat of the sticky fibers— which can entrap unassuming victims, prey or not—it can also be seen as a response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic that shook Hodges’s community. —HJ

Peter Halley Bronze Prison , 2000 Acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, pearlescent acrylic, and Roll-a-Tex on canvas, 46¾ × 38½ in. Jan and Ronnie Greenberg Collection Courtesy the artist Since the 1980s, Halley has painted flat geometric forms to explore his own three-dimensional surroundings. He employs a pictorial system of shapes that resemble cells, circuit boards, or other enclosed areas. His canvases are at once conceptual and cerebral, using the signifiers of technology to portray social spaces. Here, Halley fits two separate canvases together, wherein the lower piece appears almost like a horizon line. The upper section incorporates a textured metallic element, from which he portrays a barred-window prison overlooking the world. —SK

Jeffrey Gibson Pleasure Principle , 2017 Acrylic and graphite on rawhide over wood panel inset into wood frame, 21 × 27 × 1¾ in. Ernesto Poma Family Collection Gibson’s work draws upon his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage and incorporates references spanning from club culture and queer theory to literature and art history. This painting—whose title references Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality—has a geometric design, evocative of a Roman mosaic or light reflecting off water in a shallow pool. Gibson’s use of rawhide (untanned animal skin) as a painting support creates an unexpected juxtaposition between geometry and nature. —HJ

René Dani ëls Untitled, 1982 Oil on canvas, 35⅝ × 51⅛ in. Courtesy the artist, Modern Art, London, and the Ren é Dani ëls Foundation, Eindhoven Collection of Charlie Pohlad

Ambiguity plays an important role in what Daniëls described as his attempt to create a form of “visual poetry” in painting. In this work, two almost- mirrored male figures sit back-to-back with eyes closed. A ghostly hand emerges from the smoke ring that frames the composition, holding an object to each gentleman’s nose that evokes a blade for shaving their stubbled chins or a delectable cigar. —HJ

Herbert Bayer Mauerbild (gelb) , 1936 Oil on canvas, 24 × 31½ in. Jan and Ronnie Greenberg Collection

An influential student and teacher at the Bauhaus, artistic polymath Herbert Bayer worked across painting, sculpture, photography, typography, and design. Following his immigration to the United States, he arrived in Aspen in 1946 and lived there for almost thirty years. Arguably his most important legacy is the campus of the Aspen Institute, conceived as a Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art. In this painting, Bayer uses detailed shadowing and trompe l’oeil to create perspective and depth. —HJ

Marc Camille Chaimowicz Learning/Talking, November , 1989–90 Oil and charcoal on canvas and board, 43⅜ × 47⅝ in. Marilyn and Larry Fields Collection

Chaimowicz is interested in challenging historical categories of fine and decorative arts, and blurring the boundaries between public and private space. This diptych combines pattern design, graceful bodily curves, and the artist’s characteristic palette of pastel shades. Positioned as if in conversation, the two panels seem to mirror each other while also remaining different. The title of the work suggests an act of speech and the transformative potential of exchange. —HJ

Kerry James Marshall Untitled, 1996 Acrylic on wood, acrylic on flag, wood dowels, and two binder clips, three parts, 27 × 19 × 16¼ in. overall Collection of Nancy Magoon In this work, Marshall deconstructs the traditional boundaries of the medium of painting itself. An empty frame bears traces of blended color swatches like a palette and is displayed on the wall, while a painted portrait of a man—affixed to a wooden dowel with two clips—protrudes from it like a flag; a separate entity that cannot be contained. In so doing, the artist at once dissects and reunites the very tools of painting, continuing his interrogation of the Western art historical canon. —HJ and SK

Mike Kelley Double Horizontal Chaste Form (Unfolded) of the Land O’Lakes Girl Illustrated with the Image of the Land O’Lakes , 1996 Acrylic on wood panel, 44 × 118 in. Craig Robins Collection, Miami The unusual shape of this canvas—which reflects back upon itself like a Rorschach inkblot—is reminiscent of a shield or bodily organ. It is covered by a latticed design that both conceals and fragments the view of sky and landscape beyond. Kelley was fascinated by the cultural complexity of the former Land O’Lakes butter logo—which depicted a Native American girl kneeling in a landscape—and the lewd associations projected upon it. Here, he omits the figure from her surroundings in a seeming act of chastity. —HJ

Luchita Hurtado Untitled, c. 1970s Oil on canvas, 18 × 26 in.; 19¼ × 27¼ in. framed Courtesy the Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser & Wirth

Part of the artist’s Sky Skins series, this work is inspired by the landscape of Taos, New Mexico, where the artist spent her summers during the 1960s and ’70s. Reminiscent of a stretched animal hide, it functions as a frame- within-a-frame through the repetition of the mountain range motif on all sides. Hurtado is particularly adept at referencing the presence of the body from unconventional perspectives. Here, the allover orientation of the composition—viewable from any angle—suggests the vista of someone lying down and looking upward. —HJ

Roni Horn Water Teller, No. 2 , 2011/2014 Digital-to-negative print on Fujiflex, two parts, each 29½ × 19½ in. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Collection of John & Amy Phelan These two paired photographs depict the German photographer Juergen Teller. He has been double-exposed, making it appear as though his body is submerged in water and his face reflected in its surface. While each portrait appears identical, there are very subtle differences between them. Horn often uses doubling or pairing as a compositional device, and has an ongoing interest in water, exploring its form, materiality, and reflectivity in different ways. —HJ

Eva Hesse Untitled, 1964 Oil and canvas collage on canvas, 81½ × 62 in. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Collection of Susan and Larry Marx

Best known as a pioneering sculptor of latex, fiberglass, and plastic, Hesse also worked on canvas. This painting combines abstract shapes and swirling organic tendrils with details that might also suggest fragments of machinery. Much of Hesse’s work is characterized by a dark and subtle humor: here the viewer is subject to the gaze of an all-seeing eternal eye at the top of the canvas. —HJ

Robert Gober Untitled, 2020 Graphite on found drawing, pastel and graphite on vellum, 6⅞ × 6⅝ in. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery Private collection On top of a found academic-style drawing of the underside of a foot— which has been deliberately inverted so that it sits upside down—Gober has drawn a small window that frames a glimpse of unattainable blue sky beyond. Suggesting themes of enclosure and entrapment, the work also alludes to the Renaissance understanding of painting as a window onto the world. —HJ

Allison Katz Eternity , 2023

Oil on canvas, 86⅝ × 78¾ in. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth The George Economou Collection

In this painting, two men installing a skylight look down into a room below, their forms starkly outlined against a bright, cloudless sky. Katz appropriated the image from one of her father’s Fine Homebuilding magazines from the 1980s, seeing in it an articulation of her own painterly preoccupations with framing, orientation, and the gaze. This skylight mirrors the pictorial limits of the painting itself, which function both as a boundary and a portal to what lies beyond: a frame that offers a fixed view of infinite change. —HJ

Narcissus Painted plaster Pompeii VII 15, 2 (House of the Sailor) Pompeii Archaeological Park, Inv. N. 20877 21½ × 24⅜ in.; thickness 1⅝ in. 45–79 CE (Fourth Style) © MIC – Parco Archeologico di Pompei

The legend of Narcissus, the young, handsome hunter, son of Cephisus, a river deity, and the nymph Liriope, was certainly well known in Pompeii. It is among the favorite subjects of the Fourth Style: there are almost fifty representations in which the myth is portrayed in Ovid’s version, and in which Narcissus is depicted in the act of gazing into water, enraptured by the reflection of his own image. The picture presented here, even if incomplete, retains all the elements of the story. Narcissus is a young man of such beauty that he makes everyone fall in love with him, but, incapable of loving in return, he pushes away those who approach him, lastly, the nymph Echo. Rejected and heartbroken, Echo wanders desperately through the woods, mourning her unrequited love until only her voice remains. Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, listening to her cries, decides to punish the cruel Narcissus. The boy, in the woods, sees his image reflected in a deep pool of water for the first time and falls madly in love without realizing that he is staring at himself. When he realizes that he is looking at his own image, and not that of another who can reciprocate his love, he lets himself die. —AC

Rodolfo Abularach Untitled, c. 1970s

Oil on canvas, 14 × 14 in. Private collection, Santa Barbara

It was in 1966, as Abularach once explained, while experimenting with lithography at the Tamarind Institute in Los Angeles, that “suddenly the eye came out.” From then onward, it remained a recurring motif in his work. This painting presents the organ in a disquieting state. Demonstrating the influence of Surrealism—and echoing the title of the exhibition, In the House of the Trembling Eye —it may act as a portal to a different mode of consciousness or an unknown interior world. —HJ

Amy Sillman I , 2008 Oil on canvas, 84½ × 93 in. Courtesy the artist Collection of Susan and Larry Marx

The body is an important subject in Sillman’s work, albeit an often invisible one. I is part of a series initiated with portraits of couples the artist drew first from life and then from memory. Using these as a starting point—and preserving the sitter’s initial as the title—Sillman applied and scraped away hundreds of layers of paint in an almost archaeological pursuit of transparency, lightness, and atmosphere. The abstract shapes across the canvas frame fields of vivid blue, evocative of sky as much as water. —HJ

Ed Ruscha Clock without Hands , 2011 Acrylic on canvas, 32 × 20 in. Private collection

Many of Ruscha’s works take the everyday and commonplace as their subject. Visual puns—characteristic of his dry, irreverent wit as an artist— are also an important strategy. Here, as the title of the painting suggests, an ordinary household object has been rendered comically defunct. No longer able to designate time—which is simultaneously frozen and lengthened into eternity—the clock’s hands are piled at the bottom of the canvas. —HJ

Elizabeth Murray Unlock , 1994 Oil on canvas, 96 × 55 × 4½ in. Collection of Richard Edwards and Kevin Ramnaraine

In her brightly colored and irregularly shaped canvases, Murray draws upon diverse influences from Walt Disney to graffiti. The swirling tendrils in this painting demonstrate her particular interest in the biomorphic forms of Joan Miró. At the center of the shaped canvas, a keyhole represents the mouth of the figure, humorously transfixed in consternation or surprise. Seen as a portal, this composition is suggestive of a doorframe, proposing access to another realm. —HJ

Nancy Lupo Untitled, 2023 Mixed media, dimensions variable Courtesy the artist and Antenna Space

Nancy Lupo’s work often explores the latent quality of objects, spaces, and materials. In Untitled, Lupo brings together fragments and cannibalized elements from several works that explore the ubiquitous form of the Burger King crown and examples of the king cake crown used in Advent rituals. The face of the controversial spiritual leader Teal Swan appears on some of the elements as well as the artist’s own self-portrait rendered in pencil, alongside souvenir crowns from the inauguration of King Charles III. The blue cardboard box that once contained a pair of Prada boots here becomes the container for all of the elements, including small images of a giant phantom jellyfish and two of Lupo’s Teller sculptures that here she imagines as “the front and back covers of an epic story.” —SK

3. Tablinum In the domus, the tablinum was the office space, the original “work from home.” It was in this office that the distinctive and complex rituals of the ancient Roman “patronage” relationship took place. It was a hierarchical system, but obligations between the patron and his client were mutual. The domus served as the backdrop against which the “paterfamilias” (male head of the household) enacted his public persona. To this end, the tablinum was literally raised off the ground like a stage. Framed by the “jaws” of the entrance, and illuminated by the light pouring in from the atrium, the patriarch was clearly visible from the street as he received his clients, commanding this vantage point as the figure of ultimate authority. A curtain or screen could be drawn, when he needed to be alone with his labors. This room, with attractive mosaic floors, frescoes, racks of family archives, and chests of records and documents, created a picture of rank, legacy, and accumulation. In other words, the tablinum functioned as a theater of patriarchy and power. Yet, as much as it was designed for this purpose, the same components draw attention to the artifice of the setup, with its scripted roles and masks of domination. A system bound by personal relations could also be fragile and severely tested. At any moment, in politics, gladiatorial matches, or within the family, the wheel of fortune could spin dramatically. Pompeii was also notorious as a town that flipped the script; there are several documented examples of ex-slaves who accumulated huge wealth and commissioned massive building works with extravagantly painted rooms, inversions of the social order that came with a particular taste for decadence. Is it a stretch to wonder if the present-day painting studio mirrors some aspects of the tablinum, as a place of public performance and private grafting? The mask can be tragic or comic. Interpersonal relations are everything. The front presented to the world might be in great contrast to the work of development behind the scenes, and the role of chance can never be underestimated. —AK

Bharti Kher Father , 2016 Wax, wood, and plaster of paris, 58¼ × 27½ × 37 in. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Kher is fascinated by plaster as an ancient casting material that penetrates the pores of the skin to imprint the essence of its model. To this life-size cast of her father, she applied liquid wax, which hardened to form a solid coating. Placed within the tablinum, there is a haunting vulnerability to this solo figure, pierced through the heart, which complicates the traditional power structure associated with this particular area of the domus. —HJ

2, 3

Susannah Phillips

Night Studio , 2019 Oil on canvas, 14½ × 9 in.; 15 × 9½ in. framed Courtesy the artist and Bookstein Projects, New York

Storeroom , 2021 Oil on canvas, 19 × 26 in.; 19½ × 26½ in. framed Courtesy the artist and Bookstein Projects, New York

These two paintings reward prolonged looking. From what initially appear to be stacks of abstract shapes, details of the artist’s studio (which formerly belonged to her father) and storeroom slowly emerge: doorways, cupboards, easels, and racks of paintings. Phillips has long been attracted to the studio as an image; both as a space of production and as a living archive, full of paintings in various stages of completion. For Katz, these paintings also recall the racks of the storage units in Pompeii where the fragments in this exhibition usually reside. —HJ

Triclinium, Peristyle, and Cubicula

Rooms 4–6

Katz has often described painting as a conversation, a mode of transmission implying exchange and influence. Triads of artworks, including Pompeian frescoes, are placed in direct dialogue in her interpretation of the Triclinium , a space within the domus that was dedicated to conversing and socializing. Framed within a wall painting by the artist—an optical trick of depth and perspective— these works merge into new images altogether. Reality and illusion further overlap in the composition of the Peristyle , or garden, leading the viewer into the peculiar environment of the Cubicula : tight, impersonal spaces primarily used for sleeping. Seclusion and darkness are transformed into visual motifs for this gallery to stage intimate encounters with works of art that dip into the subconscious.

Triclinium

4. Triclinium In the ancient world the meaning behind numbers was deeply significant, and the number three was considered perfect, manifesting harmony, wisdom, and understanding. The triclinium, as the formal dining room was called, embodied this belief. Triclinium literally means “three couches,” a reference to the dining ritual, which involved participants reclining while eating, three to a couch, on three separate couches. Harmony and wisdom sound quiet, and surely some evenings were relaxed, but this was where the party happened, and it could get wild. In a room painted black with elaborate decorations, friends, enemies, or associates gathered to indulge in food and drink, talk and gossip, politics and persuasion. There was live music, dance performance, and delicacies like sweet fried mice, peacock tongues, and artistic presentations of meats stuffed inside other meats—a good metaphor for debating. Extending this triclinium of relations, what sort of discourse would paintings have between themselves, across time, motif, and material? Whispering transmissions, mixed signals, and oral traditions; communicating about architecture, the making and breaking of columns, and what sort of meaning resides on the surface; or drunkenly gossiping about hormones, attachment styles, fantasies, and the constraints of coupling (the ancients have proven that three is more fun). A plurality of painting on the wall, seen together temporarily, creates for a moment a new wall painting. This has some kinship to the “Four Styles” of ancient painting, porous classifications developed by historians as the excavations at Pompeii proceeded. Minimalism, abstraction, figuration, and fantasy each staked their claim in a nonlinear development of taste and tolerance for visual overload. It was commonplace to have several styles coexist within one house, much like it is in homes today. —AK

Isa Genzken Weltempfänger (World Receiver), 2015 Concrete and metal, 9⅞ × 14½ × 3⅝ in.; antennae: approx. 28⅜ in. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Collection of Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian

In 1982, Genzken exhibited her only stand-alone readymade sculpture, a functional radio receiver entitled Weltempfänger (World Receiver). By the end of the decade, she began casting Weltempfängers of different sizes in concrete. Devoid of any functional purpose, the receiver itself takes on a symbolic role of relic or ruin. The concrete evokes the widespread reconstruction of a derelict postwar Germany, while the antennae suggest the potential of art to both receive and transmit signals and meaning. —HJ

Allison Katz Crosstalk , 2024 Oil and acrylic on linen, 62½ × 56⅝ in. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

One of Katz’s recurring motifs is the open mouth—borrowed from a 1943 woodcut by André Derain—in which the viewer looks outward from behind the teeth. Here, it frames a composition generated by chance when proofs of two existing works were accidentally overlaid as part of a catalogue printing process in 2021. This conflation of images—indebted to the machine’s eye rather than the painter’s hand—creates a new frequency of exchange and static. The mouth appears to blurt out the road like speech and the rooster and chicken are uncannily placed as eyes upon the face. —HJ

Fresco fragment with miniature scene Painted plaster Pompeii, origin unspecified Pompeii Archaeological Park, Inv. N. 20615 13⅜ × 19¼ in.; thickness 1⅜ in.

1st century CE (Third Style) © MIC – Parco Archeologico di Pompei

A yellow and green rectangular volume held by a three-quarter cylindrical support stands out against a white background. On the visible side runs a reddish band, while at the center, on a purple background, is a scene that is difficult to interpret. There are three individuals dressed in white and represented in miniature. The first figure, from the right, is a man sitting on a sella curulis (a chair reserved for the highest state officials); in front of him a second figure, perhaps female, pays him homage by bowing and extend - ing an arm toward him; while a third figure’s gesture is not identifiable. Their volume is rendered through the use of one color (two at most): white is applied with light and broad brushstrokes a macchia to grant density to the bodies. This particular technique is often found in miniaturist paintings of the Third Style and is characterized by the use of large fields of color to express bodily volumes outlined in a red-brown color. —AC

Mary Obering The Chinese Place , 1975

Acrylic on canvas, 82 × 72 in. Courtesy the artist and Bortolami, New York Collection of Javier and Monica Mora

In the 1970s, in an exploration of the three-dimensional possibilities of paint, Obering tacked overlapping strips of painted canvas to the top of a mono- chromatic base. This resulted in a framed arrangement of squares and rect- angles, with subtly visible joins between them. Painted here in black, white, and a deep Pompeii red—echoing the adjacent fragment—these shapes evoke the illusion of receding space through a window, perhaps that of the large, shuttered apertures in the artist’s SoHo loft studio. —HJ

Small painting with Hippolytus and Phaedra Painted plaster Pompeii, origin unspecified Pompeii Archaeological Park, Inv. N. 20620 21½ × 24⅜ in.; thickness 1⅝ in.

According to the mythical tale presented here—written by Euripides, taken up by Seneca, and widely depicted in Pompeian painting—Phaedra, wife of Theseus, falls madly in love with her stepson Hippolytus who is a chaste follower of Artemis and does not reciprocate her passion. Phaedra thus kills herself, leaving a note accusing Hippolytus of rape. Refusing Hippolytus’s proclamation of innocence, Theseus asks Poseidon to kill him. In the pinax (painting) presented here, we find ourselves faced with a type of narration defined as “continuous,” typical of the late Third Style, in which, inside architecturally well-defined spaces, progressive events that occur in consecutive action are presented simultaneously. Phaedra, in the left corner of the scene, with a handmaid behind her, has just revealed her love for her stepson; Hippolytus, in the foreground, about to leave for the hunt accompanied by a squire, is blocked from listening to the revelation of Phaedra’s feelings, which will have devastating consequences for them both. We are faced with a subject that lent itself well to lively discussions during banquets. —AC

Charline von Heyl My Little Doppelgänger Poltergeist Soul , 2013

Acrylic on linen, 62 × 60 in. Courtesy the artist and Petzel, New York Collection of Rita and Jeffrey Adler

With an eclectic and idiosyncratic approach to painting, von Heyl defiantly embraces a vast range of paradoxical modes. She frequently uses pattern to structure her canvases, and removes pigment with wiping and scratching as she applies it. Here—in a painting whose title conjures the uncanny—seemingly gestural brushstrokes are meticulously painted to appear spontaneous, and each overlapping layer conceals the order in which it has been applied. The tubular forms suggest columns breaking in half, like the toppling of an ancient monument. —HJ

Panel with bust of Maenad and Satyr Painted plaster Pompeii VI 2, 22 (House of the Dancers) Pompeii Archaeological Park, Inv. N. 17713 18⅛ × 17⅜ in.; thickness 1¾ in. 45–79 CE (Fourth Style) © MIC – Parco Archeologico di Pompei

On a green background, delimited by red bands edged in yellow, a couple belonging to the Dionysian court is depicted half-bust and in an embrace: a young maenad and an old satyr. The maenad’s head is crowned with vines and berries—which defines her status as a follower of Dionysus— and her hair is loose on her shoulders. She holds the old Silenus close to her and offers him a silver kantharos from which she seems to invite him to drink. The satyr, his head crowned with a shoot of ivy, rests his face on the maenad’s right cheek, looking at her mischievously, emphasizing her youth and the smoothness of her skin in contrast with his own, which is old and wizened. —AC

Mike Kelley Nature and Culture , 1987 Chest of drawers and wood wall panel with decoupage, knobs, mirror, and plywood, 83¼ × 27⅞ × 16¾ in. overall Collection of Liz and Eric Lefkofsky The bottom half of this work is decoupaged with found images of eyes and lips. These subtly eroticized body parts and the fetishistic nature of the fabrication process—reminiscent of a teenager pasting cutout magazine bodies on a wall—suggests lust and desire. In stark contrast, the wall-mounted panel depicts scenes of social and political conflict: a representation, perhaps, of the repression of natural instincts in the name of “civilization.” Viewed as a whole, the work functions as a manifestation of selfhood: a depiction of the jarring and contrasting sides at play in every character. —HJ

Alice Neel Olivia and Joe , 1983 Oil on canvas, 32 × 45⅞ in. Private collection

Neel portrayed a remarkable range of sitters in her work, from the anonymous stranger to the celebrity. Friends and family are frequent subjects: here, her granddaughter Olivia sits on the lap of her young lover. The trust between artist and sitters is evident in the ease of their pose and expression. The painting functions as a window onto an intimate, private world, representative of Neel’s ability to capture the multidimensional psyche of an individual. —HJ

5. Peristyle As much as the front part of the house centered on the atrium, the back centered on the peristyle: a small garden (the hortus), often surrounded by a columned passage, which later formed the model of the medieval cloister. A masquerade of private bliss inside the frenetic city, a garden, like a painting, is literally defined by its boundaries. It is a framed picture of what it excludes, namely, the chaos and unbounded realities of nature. It reworks what it denies, shutting out the surrounding landscape, the rest of the world. In English, the word garden grew from the Old Saxon gyrdan , meaning to enclose, and closely relates to the modern yard and guard . In Pompeii, this poetics of denial and watchfulness became a decorative motif. The garden was enclosed by walls on which images of itself were painted. Perhaps to extend the illusion in a small space, or perhaps to play a game, since what could be more enchanting than the real in conversation with its representation? Especially when the “real” is already a re-presenting, a re- composing of the wild. Frescoes depicting plants, trees, flowers, trellis walls, songbirds, masks, exotic animals, hunting or chase scenes, and even paintings, hung impossibly between posts, and strewn with garlands: all playing out a game of cat and mouse between original and copy. The composition, and the compost. Sculptures of Dionysus were a favorite garden ornament in Pompeii. His association with vegetation, growth, and the promise of life after death alluded to the garden as a place of enchantment, an earthly paradise. —AK

Joan Mitchell Girolata Triptych , 1963 Oil on canvas, 76⅞ × 127⅝ in. Private collection Courtesy the estate of Joan Mitchell

One of the artist’s first three-panel paintings, this work is inspired by the small village of Girolata on the island of Corsica, a remote enclave that Mitchell returned to a number of times as an antidote to her life in Paris. The artist’s color palette and gestural brushstrokes suggest the gentle movement of the trees and flowering plants that perch upon the coastline’s craggy outcrops. —HJ

Marc Camille Chaimowicz Vase (green) Wallpaper, 2005 Courtesy the artist

To undermine hierarchies of fine and decorative arts, Chaimowicz creates immersive installations in which he pairs his paintings and photography with designs for everyday objects, furnishings, and wallpapers. This example is patterned with a vase-like motif that recalls columns, shields, and ancient pottery fragments. As a device for staging and contemplating flora plucked from nature, the vase has a unique relation to the garden. Here, Katz has installed Joan Mitchell’s triptych directly on top of Chaimowicz’s wallpaper, incorporating multiple shades of green to evoke the abundance of the garden. —HJ

Fragment of fresco with Tholos and statue of Athena Painted plaster Pompeii, origin unspecified Pompeii Archaeological Park, Inv. N. 41669 25⅜ × 20 ½ in.; thickness 1⅝ in. 45–79 CE (Fourth Style) © MIC – Parco Archeologico di Pompei

A green circular structure (tholos) is preserved on a white background, inside which stands a golden yellow statue of Athena Promachos ( promachos : who fights on the front line), suggesting that it was made of bronze. Athena, who, in the Greco-Roman pantheon, is the divinity of war, is depicted according to the iconography designed by the Greek sculptor Phidias for the statue of the goddess that was placed on the Acropolis of Athens. She wears a sleeveless chiton, to make it easier for her to use the spear and shield with which she is armed, and a crested helmet covers her head. She is preparing to lead the heroes into battle. The decorative scheme used here—with architectural elements (the tholos) that accommodate figurative elements (the statue)—is typical of the decorative motifs of the Fourth Style. —AC

6. Cubiculum As much as the front part of the house centered on the atrium, the cubiculum puts the “womb” back into “room.” Small, stuffy, and sparsely furnished with a single sleeping couch, cubicula in Pompeian houses had one tiny square opening high up one wall for the most minimal amount of light to enter. To call them bedrooms is a misnomer, since they were not just for sleeping, and they were not entirely private. Of all the rooms in the domus, their mixed use seems most fraught and counterintuitive to the contemporary imagination. Cubicula were not assigned to one inhabitant but shared among family members, and used for a variety of activities. They lined the walls of the atrium and the peristyle, the most public spaces in the house. They could be stunningly decorated, or minimally color blocked. Closed by doors, curtains, or screens, they offered the only source of privacy in a communal structure, but, as was true throughout the rest of the domus, whenever space was fragmented and claimed, the cost of such privacy was darkness. Despite a variety of uses, the cubiculum was primarily used for sleeping: a place to close your eyes. Dreaming was of great importance to the ancient psyche. It was said to be the way the gods communicated with mortals, appearing variously as enigma, prophecy, nightmare, or apparition. The cubiculum set up the dark and simple tomb-like terms to meet one’s makers for a few hours every night, to confront one’s deepest buried fears, hopes, and fantasies. Or to crash in a cool hole at the hottest time of the day. Or to experience that other “little death,” the oblivion of a sexual encounter. In between these periods of escape from public life, however, the same sleeping couch doubled as a lounger, and other activities prevailed by the light of a burning wick: dressing and grooming, writing, recovery from illness, hosting close friends, the management of confidential business, even murders or suicides (if we are to believe the plots in ancient literature). —AK

Medallion with hunting scene Painted plaster Pompeii, origin unspecified Pompeii Archaeological Park, Inv. N. 20619 15 × 14⅞ in.; thickness 1⅝ in. 1st century CE © MIC – Parco Archeologico di Pompei

The fragment, originating from a wall painted with a yellow background, contains a medallion defined by a double frame: the red inner frame is thicker; the outer frame is white and thin. Against a naturalistic background, in a hilly setting, a wild animal (perhaps a cheetah) chases a fawn. The motif of medallions (with single characters, couples, or hunting scenes with and without human figures) is typical of Third and Fourth Style painting. —AC

Julio Alpuy The Earth III , 1965 Incised and painted wood, 35 × 38¾ in. Ernesto Poma Family Collection

In 1962, frustrated by the repetition of his previous paintings, Alpuy turned to wood as a medium. This offered him “a new, more concrete spatial element,” as he recalled, in line with the pictographic, constructivist style of the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García, by whom he had been taught. The carefully carved and painted surface here demonstrates the particular influence of pre-Columbian art from the Andean region. The downward-glancing eye imitates the circular forms that proliferate across the surface. —HJ

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Damien Hirst The Shield of Achilles , 2010 Gold and silver, 44⅞ × 44⅜ × 2¾ in. Collection of Nancy Magoon

This work is a reimagining of the mythological shield used by the Greek hero Achilles in his fight against Hector at the end of the Trojan War, as described at length in Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad . Cast in gold and silver, its fragmented form—intended as an ironic fakery of the eroded appearance of ancient armor—depicts intricately detailed scenes of battle and agriculture. For Katz, this work recalls how the ancient Greeks fabricated shields using the wood of the aspen tree, believed to have magical properties that would protect the soldier in battle. —HJ

Jana Euler Close Rotation (Left) , 2019 Oil on linen, 78¾ × 78¾ in. Courtesy the artist; Artists Space, New York; Cabinet, London; dépendance, Brussels; Galerie Neu, Berlin; and Greene Naftali, New York Craig Robins Collection, Miami

In this claustrophobic painting, the nearly nude male figure is contorted awkwardly to fit within the square parameters of the frame; bounded, as it were, by the limits of painting. Euler’s hyperrealistic style—in which wrinkles, hairs, and muscles are rendered in fine detail—magnifies the sense of scrutiny and exposure. The figure’s eyes are closed, mirroring a body closed in upon itself; coiled, perhaps, in a state of womb-like regression, deep slumber, or anxious withdrawal. —HJ

Marlene Dumas Cracking the Whip , 2000 Oil on canvas, 90½ × 23⅝ in. H. Gael Neeson Collection

Dumas chooses to paint from photographs—demonstrating her interest in reworking mediated images—and draws upon her vast archive of source material, which incorporates art historical references, mass media clippings, and personal Polaroids. Based on a pornographic pinup, this painting explores mannerisms of desire and the sexualization of the female body. The figure’s column-like proportions are emphasised by the elongated canvas. With buttocks exposed and her face concealed, her body becomes a screen for the projection of fantasies. —HJ

Janine Antoni to long , 2015

Polyurethane resin, 67 × 26 × 21 in. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York Collection of John & Amy Phelan

Antoni is known for a practice in which she uses her body as both a tool and a source of meaning. In this work, she fuses a partial cast of her own face with a rib cage, a pillow, and a pedestal, whose dramatically elongated form mirrors that of a Roman column. Part of a body of sculptures inspired by Milagros—objects offered as part of religious or devotional rituals in Latin cultures—this ethereal form suggests the quiet intimacy of an unknown dreamscape. —HJ

Maurizio Cattelan A Donkey between Two Doctors , 2004 Taxidermy structure, 63 × 31½ × 69 in. H. Gael Neeson Collection

The word easel (meaning a wooden frame) was borrowed from the Dutch word for donkey, ezel , around the turn of the seventeenth century, when the animal’s historical role as a burden carrier was connected with the notion of a painting being loaded onto a stand. In 1994, Cattelan presented a live donkey in a now-infamous installation at Daniel Newburg Gallery, New York. The comical seated posture of this taxidermy example encapsulates his satirical approach to artmaking, while also highlighting the way animals can become allegories of human behavior in art and literature. The title evokes the philosophical paradox of Buridan’s ass and the absurdity of death wrought by indecision. —HJ

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