Hauser & Wirth’s new exhibition Et In Arcadia Ego takes the work of late American master Leon Golub (1922-2004) as a starting point to consider artists’ approaches to issues of conflict and uncertainty. Conceived by Rashid Johnson, this exhibition consists of a solo presentation of Golub’s paintings from the early 1950s to the late 1990s on the fifth floor of the gallery’s 22nd Street building, and a complementary group presentation of works in different mediums by international artists, including both Golub and Johnson himself, that spans the post-war period to the present day on the gallery’s second floor.
Taken together, the works on the second floor invite expanded insights into the psychic and sociopolitical approaches Golub took in depicting uses and abuses of power. Among the artists Johnson chose for this presentation are Philip Guston (1913-1980), David Hammons, Wifredo Lam (1902-1982), Sharon Lockhart, Robert Longo, Teresa Margolles, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Taryn Simon. The exhibition also includes text excerpts from such writers as Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1934-2014), Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and Percival Everett––prose that provides another entry point to the complexities of human nature expressed throughout the show.
The title, Et In Arcadia Ego, is taken from Golub’s 1997 painting “Time’s Up,” in which the archaic Latin phrase is inscribed over an upturned skull. Referencing a classical masterwork by Italian Baroque artist Guercino (1591-1666), the words ‘et in arcadia ego’ are typically translated to mean ‘I too am in Paradise,’ with the ‘I’ referring to death.
Golub, who first studied art history at the University of Chicago before serving as a cartographer of aerial reconnaissance maps in World War II, lived with his wife, artist Nancy Spero, in Italy from 1956-57. There they found lasting inspiration in Etruscan and Roman art, which Golub believed ‘represented cosmopolitan urban culture under stress’ in its focus on themes of authority and violence.
True to Golub’s practice of collecting and archiving ephemera––slogans, graffiti, tattoos, news photographs and other publicly available imagery––from which to cull for his own compositions, the Latin phrase also suggests associations beyond classical sources. In a sketch he made of a hangman, Golub drafted the phrase ‘A Judiciary Error’––a possible reference to the deviant warmongering Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s book Blood Meridian (1985), a character who first appears in the novel sitting on a rock in the middle of the desert with ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ inscribed on his gun.
Leon Golub‘s Et In Arcadia Ego was conceived by Rashid Johnson and developed in consultation with Hauser & Wirth Curatorial Senior Director Kate Fowle. The exhibition includes major works on loan from The Broad and the Meyer Collections, as well as new works created for Et In Arcadia Ego by Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Robert Longo.
Will you be stopping by Hauser & Wirth’s new Leon Golub exhibition?
