Grace Weaver: Hotel Paintings
“The poetry of tiny moments” and “small increments that make up modern life” are central tenets of Grace Weaver’s work. The Brooklyn-based artist is best known for her colourful cubist-inspired paintings, which draw from writers including Beckett and Dostoevsky, and attempt to find meaning in the “ordinary” and “banal”. In one, someone takes out the trash. In another, a woman performs reps at the gym.
Weaver’s most recent work – part of a new exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler in Paris – is a collection of collages depicting women walking in Morocco, where the series was created. “All the ephemera of grocery stores, beauty shops, stationery stores, pharmacies – the most boring detritus of daily life – found their way in,” says Weaver. Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris, from 13 January to 17 February 2024 Inès Cross
Lee Miller: Dressed
Clothing from model, muse and photojournalist Lee Miller’s wardrobe is seen alongside her photography in an exhibition curated by Martin Pel. The items on display, many of which have never been seen in public, reflect the key moments in Miller’s extraordinary life: time spent in 1930s Paris and New York, adventures in Egypt with members of Surrealist group Art & Liberty and her career-defining period serving as a correspondent for British Vogue during the second world war. Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, until 18 February IC
Seth Becker: A Boy’s Head
In his 1963 poem “A Boy’s Head”, Czech poet Miroslav Holub sifts through the imaginary contents of a child’s mind, from spaceships and bumblebees to “a project for doing away with piano lessons”. The work has been endlessly inspiring for New York artist Seth Becker, whose solo exhibition of the same name opens in February in New York. A librarian by day, Becker tries “to preserve boyhood and innocence” in his small oil paintings, which are often collaged with wallpaper. “I grew up in a home covered in wallpaper,” he says, “so it’s comforting.” Venus Over Manhattan, New York, from 1 February to 9 March Marion Willingham
Elliott Erwitt
A retrospective in Lyon celebrates “the great painter of street scenes” Elliott Erwitt, the French-American photographer who died last year. His business, he said, was “the human condition,” distilling moments of humour, irony and emotion from the bustle of city life.
Erwitt’s personal black and white pictures, which hang here separately from his commissioned work in colour, are organised into eight themes, showcasing an ever-present curiosity – mainly in dogs, museums and “the man-woman thing”. La Sucrière, Lyon, until 17 March IC
Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn
A rare collection of vintage prints from the personal archive from one of the earliest “supermodels”, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, muse to giants like Richard Avedon and Louise Dahl-Wolfe, goes on show at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
Fonssagrives-Penn, who trained as a dancer, famously said in an interview with Time magazine that “it is always the dress, it is never, never the girl. I’m just a good clothes hanger.” Some of these images beg to differ. A famous Erwin Blumenfeld photograph in the exhibition features her hanging from the Eiffel Tower wrapped in an ermine cape. Whilst you’re there, pop into see Exteriors, the neighbouring show curated by HTSI contributor Lou Stoppard, which celebrates the close relationship between photography and the writing of the recent Nobel Prize laureate Annie Ernaux. Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, 28 February to 26 May IC
Gerhard Richter: Engadin
In the winter of 1989, Gerhard Richter visited Sils Maria in Switzerland’s Engadin Valley. The German artist became enchanted by the 100km stretch of river and the region’s snowy peaks, and the area has since inspired more than 70 of his paintings and photographs. “He also painted over photographs, creating works in which photographic depiction and painterly abstraction meet,” says Dieter Schwarz, who has curated a major survey of these landscapes, the first since Hans Ulrich Obrist’s seminal show in 1992.
Set across three locations in the valley – Hauser & Wirth St Moritz, Nietzsche-Haus and Segantini Museum – the exhibition invites visitors to reconsider an area both enhanced and distorted by Richter’s brush. Hauser & Wirth St Moritz, Nietzsche-Haus and Segantini Museum, until 13 April MW
Bar Stories on Camera
Magnum Photos collaborates with Milan’s Galleria Campari to document scenes from café culture around the world, from the lively bars on the Left Bank in Paris and those dotting Capri, to classic American diners and celebrity haunts (see: Marilyn Monroe at the Waldorf Astoria). Filtered through the lens of photographers including Eve Arnold and Martin Parr, the selection captures a heady mix of characters, rituals and friendships in bloom. Galleria Campari, Milan, until 30 April IC
Emilie Gossiaux: Other-Worlding
When Manhattan-based artist Emilie Gossiaux creates a drawing, she places her paper over a thin layer of rubber so that her pencil creates deep grooves in the page. This allows her to draw using her sense of touch, a technique she developed after losing her vision in 2010. In her new exhibition at the Queens Museum, Other-Worlding, Gossiaux imagines a space where her experience is not marginalised but central and celebrated. Works include a 15ft model of her cane, drawings, and human-sized sculptures of her guide dog, London. “As a blind person, the white cane is a symbol of freedom,” says Gossiaux. “I think of her as more than just a mobility aid. She is my partner, and we are each other’s protectors.” Queens Museum, New York, until 7 April MW
Grace Wales Bonner: Spirit Movers
For the 16th instalment of MoMA’s Artist’s Choice series, fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner has curated an exhibition of approximately 50 artworks exploring sound, movement, performance and style from across the African diaspora, including a black and white hero print of Hall Johnson conducting his choir.
An accompanying publication, Dream in the Rhythm, is rich with archival imagery from Lee Friedlander’s portraits of jazz musician Miles Davis to street scenes in 1970s South Africa captured by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe. Museum of Modern Art, New York, until 7 April IC
Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman: Portraits to Dream In
A comprehensive display of over 160 vintage photographic prints weaves together the work of Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman. The two worked over a century apart and in different countries (19th-century Britain for Cameron, late-20th-century America for Woodman), but shared a distinctive interest in portraiture. Woodman’s flair for photographing herself in motion, or half-obscured from view, compliments Cameron’s theatrical dreamscapes. National Portrait Gallery, London, 21 March to 16 June IC