Longing and desire, predator–prey power dynamics, changing spaces, time slips, decoded icons, and Miami on the horizon.
Dec 02, 2025
Hi artsies,
After many auction records were set last week (you can read my highlights here), things feel quieter in the art world as we head toward Miami Art Basel.
On a personal note, I’m in that end-of-year angst where there’s still too much to see, do, and process. So, fittingly, this week’s reads turn inward. From decoding icons to getting a taste of Miami ahead of Basel, this issue is an appreciation of how art shapes us: how it lets us play with time, our identities, our histories, and whatever’s coming next.
Inner Worlds and Lives
The artist’s Paris retrospective showcases five decades of work defined by “Psychological Cubism,” a term he coined that depicts the multitudes within the human mind through distorted portraits.
The group show, “Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow,” taps into the occult, showcasing art that conjures the half-seen or half-remembered.
Inspired by Titian, De Freston created unnerving, worshipful portraits of his pregnant wife to explore the male gaze and the unreachability of his subject’s unseen internal world.
Longing and Desire
Boagey’s compositions transform curated online hoards into critical documents that index the overwhelming forces of desire and capital in the late-capitalist internet age.
The new photo book contrasts unchanging passion—captured in kissing couples across London’s subcultures
Power Dynamics
By applying a “baroque” sensibility, the artist dissects the predator-prey power dynamics. But the meaning stretches beyond the animal kingdom.
Timed for their 250th anniversaries, the exhibition explores the rivalry.
Everyday objects symbolize submission, creating tension for the viewer and exploring subtle power dynamics.
Born from an intrusive thought, her series of absurd, controversial paintings (one of which was stolen during a show!) led to a new confidence in her art career.
Capturing our Surroundings
In her new photo book, Atlas of Echoes, van Rij presents a vision of the world through a slightly surreal lens, capturing a dreamlike universe that exists alongside the real one.
The London exhibition ‘Silence Split’ examines the themes of space, mass, and time.
Passing of Time
Nakamura’s paintings evoke a naive, folkloric aesthetic to articulate a sophisticated meditation on the passage of time, with light and color serving as the main focus.
After a decade-long hiatus, the artist returns with a powerful showing of feral, evocative abstract paintings.
A new NYC exhibition celebrates the heroic commitment behind The Rose, Jay DeFeo’s monumental painting that took eight years to create and had to be hacked from her apartment.
Decoding and Deconstructing
The drawing, believed to be a study for the Libyan Sibyl’s foot on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, is set to become one of the most expensive foot drawings ever sold.
“My garden is my most beautiful work of art.”
Les Distractions de Dagobert, recently sold for a record $28.5 million at Sotheby’s
Inspired by Gaudí’s broken plate mosaics in Barcelona, Schnabel’s plate paintings cemented his place in Neo-Expressionism.
A Taste of Miami
Pierson’s new exhibition at the Bass Museum of Art spotlights his formative visits to Miami in the 1980s, where the city’s cheap glamour and easy life fundamentally shaped his approach to art.
Returning to his hometown, the Haitian-American artist anchors his solo exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in spirituality, exploring Black existence outside of colonization.
And as we gear up for Art Basel, here is a roundup of roundups:
