A New Subjectivity 1979/2024 looks back at the momentous exhibition Nouvelle Subjectivité (A New Subjectivity) organized by the essayist and art historian Jean Clair in Brussels at the Palais des Beaux Arts in 1979. The exhibition at the Parrish pays tribute to the original exhibition by presenting a selection of works from several of the artists included in the original exhibition—Robert Guinan, David Hockney, Raymond Mason, Philippe Roman, and Sam Szafran as well as R.B. Kitaj from the Parrish’s collection—and works by artists whose work has continued the figurative traditions celebrated in Nouvelle Subjectivité, some also drawn from the collection of the Parrish, such as Rackstraw Downes, Jane Freilicher, and Howard Kanovitz, and artists working today not in the collection, such as Martí Cormand, Jordan Casteel, Peter Doig, Jenna Gribbon, and Arcmanoro Niles.

Nouvelle Subjectivité preceded A New Spirit in Painting, the legendary 1981 exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, by two years. Like the 1981 exhibition, Nouvelle Subjectivité was an early tribute to new currents of figurative and expressionist painting in the mid- to late-seventies as a retort to the prevailing minimalist and conceptual trends in the art of the sixties and seventies. Both exhibitions made a case for painting returning to the “subjectivist passion” of painters like Pierre Bonnard or Balthus, long considered outdated. Unlike A New Spirit in Painting, which focused on the figurative traditions of the School of London and the resurgence of neo-expressionist painting in Germany, Nouvelle Subjectivité, in particular, paid tribute to artists in the tradition of the Balthus (one of his paintings will be included in the Parrish’s exhibition) whose paintings of disquieting narrative scenes were out of step with the prevalent art movements of his time but had a profound influence on French figurative painting that came to prominence after World War II, such as the figurative and poetic-iconic approach of Sam Szafran whose paintings and drawings of interior spaces challenge the viewer’s gaze with their distorting and deconstructing perspectives, or Philippe Roman’s equally disquieting landscapes evocative of the Engadin region, where he spent summers with the writer Pierre Jean Jouve and his wife, the psychoanalyst Blanche Reverchon.

This “subjectivist passion” Jean Clair spoke of is very much apparent in an increasing number of artists working today, such as Jordan Casteel, Peter Doig, Jenna Gribbon, and Arcmanoro Niles, all included in the exhibition.

As Jean Clair wrote in the publication that accompanied the exhibition:

“Nothing unites [these artists] other than a common refusal to consider the artistic field as a battlefield, with its watchwords, its theorists, and its strategists, its avant-gardes and its front lines…For them, to use the language of war, it is more a question of for joining the rearguard and of consolidating and renewing the broken links with a certain tradition, which was also, perhaps, a certain joy for painting.”

A New Subjectivity 1979/2024 is curated by Klaus Ottmann, Robert Lehman Curator, with additional support from Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.

Immersing viewers in the world of hip-hop through contemporary art and fashion, The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century brings together contemporary artists, musicians, designers and stylists to tell the story of the art form and its global impact on visual culture.

Organized on the occasion of Hip Hop’s fiftieth anniversary and featuring contemporary art by some of today’s most important and celebrated artists, including Derrick Adams, John Edmonds, Deana Lawson and Hank Willis Thomas, this dynamic and wide-ranging exhibition highlights the art form’s ongoing conceptual and material innovation. Placing fashion, consumer marketing, music, videos and objects in dialogue with paintings, sculpture, poetry, photography and multi-media installations, the exhibition considers activism and racial identity, notions of bling and swagger, as well as gender, sexuality and feminism. 

The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century is co-curated by Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director; Gamynne Guillotte, the BMA’s Chief Education Officer; Hannah Klemm, SLAM’s Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art; and Andréa Purnell, SLAM’s Audience Development Manager. The AGO presentation will be organized by Julie Crooks, Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, AGO.

The title of the exhibition, The Time Is Always Now, references an essay on desegregation by American writer James Baldwin (1924–1987). Organized around three themes—double consciousness, the persistence of history, and our aliveness—the exhibition showcases works by artists including Michael Armitage, Jordan Casteel, Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Amy Sherald.

This collective assertion and interest in figuration and representation, examining both the presence and absence of the Black figure in art history, transcends geographical boundaries. Through their work these artists invite a shift in the dominant art historical perspective from “looking at” the Black figure to “seeing through” the eyes of Black artists and the figures they depict.

“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is a groundbreaking exhibition that marks the first major showcase of the Dean Collection, owned by renowned musicians and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys.

Organized by the Brooklyn Museum, “Giants” highlights nearly 100 significant works by Black diasporic artists, including Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, Amy Sherald, and more. The exhibition reflects the Deans’ passion for supporting established and emerging artists while fostering important dialogues about art, culture, and identity.

“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Thaddaeus Ropac London presents three new paintings by Jordan Casteel, on view in the Ely Room. Born in Denver and now based in New York, Casteel is known for her magnetic, larger-than-life compositions that combine empathetic storytelling with bold, luminescent colour. The presentation follows the recent announcement of Casteel’s representation by Thaddaeus Ropac in February this year, as well as the artist’s inclusion in the major group exhibition The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, which travelled from the National Portrait Gallery, London, to The Box in Plymouth, Philadelphia Museum of Art and North Carolina Museum of Art (2024–25). The presentation at Thaddaeus Ropac London will coincide with London Gallery Weekend, 6–8 June 2025, during which the artist will participate in an ‘In Conversation’ event at the gallery. 

The works on view capture Jordan Casteel’s ever-deepening kinship with the communities and environments she inhabits. Since establishing a home in the Hudson Valley alongside her base in Harlem in 2021, Casteel has found new opportunities to weave the textures of these natural surroundings with her closely felt observations, while continuing to explore themes of rootedness and belonging. Elizabeth and Roman II (2025) is an exceptional example of the portraiture that first launched the artist to acclaim. A mother stands in a garden with a young child propped against her hip; his weight is supported by her sinuously rendered hands as he turns to join his mother in meeting the artist’s gaze. Details of the composition signal the changing season as winter transitions into spring: pink budding flowers peek through shaded areas of moss, emerging from a warm pastel-pink ground. Casteel often begins her paintings with an expansive field of electric colour: ‘the gesture of covering the canvas in a colour is setting the stage for the rest of the painting,’ she says. ‘It becomes an aura, an essence of the work.’ 

I knew when I asked to paint Elizabeth and Roman, in some ways they were my own mirroring of desire. The paintings become surrogates for my own thinking or desires, or a sense of longing or curiosity. — Jordan Casteel

On view alongside Casteel’s portraiture is a painting from the artist’s celebrated Subway Series: an ongoing body of work begun in 2015 in which train carriages become the perfect backdrops for looking. In Subway Bouquet (2025), an overflowing floral arrangement takes the place of a figure, positioned centrally on an orange plastic subway seat. Cascading tassels of amaranthus, fuschia flowers and rose-pink cosmos petals reflect in an adjacent glass pane to produce a mesmerising double image. Through this visual mirroring – itself an experiment in form, colour and texture – Casteel explores her own intersecting worlds of Hudson Valley and New York City, and the relationship between objecthood and personhood.  

I always think of the paintings as being an opportunity for other people to slow down to observe something that they maybe haven't seen before or seen in this way before. Whether it is a person, whether it is a street scene, whether it is my garden or the environment that I am in. — Jordan Casteel

In recent years, Casteel has created intimate, small-scale portraits of flowers, painted en plein air in her upstate garden. Painted in springtime, Iris (2024) captures the titular flower mid-bloom. Daubs, flecks and outlines are traces of the artist’s hand, working intuitively, wet on wet, to feel out shape in real time. Treated with the same dignity as the figures who populate her portraits, Iris is a contemplation on the physicality of paint itself.  

Following her London presentation, Jordan Casteel will have her first solo exhibition in France at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais in 2026.