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On the occasion of Yayoi Kusama’s new exhibition at David Zwirner New York, we revisit a conversation on the legendary artist’s effect on culture at large with two experts on art in the digital landscape: Jia Jia Fei, a digital strategist for the art world, and Christian Luiten, founder of the popular digital platform Avant Arte. I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers will be on view at 535 and 519 West 19th street through July 21st, 2023.

In this live episode, Helen and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh discuss his new book, Gerhard Richter: Painting After the Subject of History. This conversation was recorded in the exhibition Gerhard Richter, on view at David Zwirner through April 29th. Gerhard Richter: Painting After the Subject of History is now available wherever books are sold.

On the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, Helen speaks to the writer Hugh Eakin about his new book, Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America, a behind-the-scenes look at the dealers, writers, and curators who helped bring the artist—and Modernism—into the mainstream.

Helen speaks to the legendary Black lesbian feminist scholar Barbara Smith and Meg Onli, co-curator of the 2024 Whitney Biennial, about identity politics in the art world today, the role of criticism, and questions of cultural appropriation. Barbara Smith is the 2022-23 Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence at Brooklyn College, and you can donate to her work at The Smith Caring Circle. Meg Onli is the curator of Carolyn Lazard: Long Take, on view at the ICA Philadelphia until July 9th, and the co-curator of Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation, on view at the Julia Stoschek Foundation in Berlin through July 30th.

Helen talks to writer Nicholson Baker about how history is written, and the continued relevance of his World War II book Human Smoke (2008). Baker is the author of numerous books, including Vox (1992) and The Mezzanine (1988) and was the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001.

We revisit one of the most popular episodes of Season 6, a conversation with the artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Elizabeth Petyon, on the occasion of their recently announced solo debuts with the gallery. Rirkrit’s show The Shop opens at David Zwirner Hong Kong March 20th, 2023, and Elizabeth’s show Angel opens at David Zwirner London on June 7th, 2023

Creative Director of LOEWE and founder of JW Anderson, Jonathan Anderson, speaks with Helen about his innovative approach to fashion, from collections that are equal parts cultural commentary and artistic play, to pushing gender boundaries and materiality, to redefining the word “luxury.” Jonathan and Helen sit down to break open the divisions between craft and art, creation and appropriation, and high and low culture.

A post-mortem on the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, with curator Cecilia Alemani. Cecilia and Helen Molesworth discuss the unique challenges of mounting an exhibition at scale in the COVID era and what it was like being the first Italian woman to curate a Biennale.

The novelist, playwright, activist, and AIDS historian Sarah Schulman discusses her most recent book, Let the Record Show, A Political History of ACT UP New York [1987-1993], a landmark document of the activist response to the AIDS crisis. Schulman describes the triumphs, challenges, and simultaneous histories of ACT UP, and what they teach us about movements in general.

Jon Gray, co-founder of the Bronx-based collective Ghetto Gastro, talks to Helen Molesworth about the collective’s work at the intersection of the culinary world, hip-hop, fashion, art, activism, and community building.

Host Helen Molesworth calls art writer Johanna Fateman (Le Tigre), gallerist Brendan Dugan (Karma Gallery) and the curator,and writer Ebony L. Haynes (Senior Director of 52 Walker) to discuss how they carved their unique paths in the art world and what continues to inspire them.

A conversation between the Academy award-nominated writer, producer, and director Luca Guadagnino and the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans on the relationship between painting and film. They muse on the specificity of light to their mediums, the role of the uncanny, and paintings and films as a mirror of who we imagine ourselves to be. Guadagnino’s most recent film Bones and All debuted to critical acclaim last Fall. Michaël Borremans held his seventh solo exhibition at David Zwirner, The Acrobat, in Spring of 2022.

As we close out the year, Helen calls up her dear friend Steve Locke to carry on the tried and true tradition of end-of-year lists. It turns out there was a lot to love in 2022. Mentions:  -Lynne Tillman, Mothercare  -Craig Drennen at Freight and Volume -Marlene Dumas at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice  -Bob Thompson at Colby College and the Hammer Museum -Milk of Dreams (Venice Biennale) -Mira Schor's instagram account -Ruth Erickson’s A Place for Me at the ICA Boston -Cauleen Smith at Moran Moran gallery in LA

In this episode, Helen Molesworth calls an old friend, the painter Alexis Rockman, to try and understand the art world’s reaction to recent acts of museum vandalism perpetrated by Just Stop Oil, putting them in context with theories on environmental activism and the harsh reality of the climate crisis.  Alexis Rockman is a painter whose realist landscapes imagine the future effects of the anthropocene on the natural world, and was one of the first artists to investigate global warming in his work. Stay tuned for Helen’s next episode, which takes stock of the very best art exhibitions of 2022. Mentions: -Just Stop Oil on Instagram -Climate Emergency Fund -Alexis Rockman, Manifest Destiny in the Smithsonian Museum  -Reluctant Radical by Ken Ward

Lucas Zwirner returns as host for a conversation with the MacArthur award-winning poet and translator Peter Cole and the renowned critic and scholar of avant-garde poetry, Marjorie Perloff. On the occasion of Peter’s new book of poetry, Draw Me After, which is inspired by the work of Terry Winters and Agnes Martin, they come together for a state of the union of art and poetry.  Draw Me After: Poems is available now.

Following recent controversies in the art and fashion worlds, host Helen Molesworth and the artist Steve Locke, a returning guest, sit down to talk about a subject that has been thorny for as long as there have been arguments about art. So, appropriation: When is it strategy and when is it theft? Who gets to claim authorship of what? And what is actually original nowadays?

In the premiere episode of a new series hosted by Helen Molesworth, the curator and writer talks with her friend the artist Steve Locke about the re-emergence of art and culture of the 90’s, and why certain ideas, obsessions, and artists of the era—from Wolfgang Tillmans to Marlon Riggs to Friends—are bubbling back up into the mainstream now.  This fall, Helen will be hosting regular episodes of the podcast that react to the shifting news and ideas in the art world and culture at large. Please follow Dialogues so you don’t miss an episode.  This episode’s guest, the artist Steve Locke, currently has a solo exhibition at Alexander Gray Associates in New York, open through December 17, 2022.

In this special episode produced and hosted by the painter Lisa Yuskavage, six artists—Joe Bradley, Carroll Dunham, Rashid Johnson, David Reed, Sarah Sze, and Charline von Heyl—give Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, their insights on Matisse’s Red Studio (1911) and the elusive nature of creativity. It was inspired by the recent exhibition Matisse: The Red Studio at MoMA, now on view at the SMK Denmark through February 26, 2023. Dialogues is returning soon with new episodes hosted by the writer and curator Helen Molesworth, please stay tuned to this feed.

A special preview of a new podcast miniseries, Death of an Artist, hosted by the curator and art historian Helen Molesworth, who will also be hosting new episodes of Dialogues, coming very, very soon.  For more than 35 years, accusations of murder shrouded one of the art world’s most storied couples: Was the famous sculptor Carl Andre involved in the death of his wife, the rising star artist Ana Mendieta? Helen revisits the question of Mendieta’s death, takes a closer look at the incident in which she fell from the window of their 34th floor New York apartment, and interrogates both the silence and protest that have followed this infamous story since 1985. You can hear the full episode and all of Death of an Artist here.  Stay tuned to Dialogues for new episodes hosted by Helen Molesworth coming next month.

The artists and former partners on what it means to be an artist now—and what it meant when they emerged in the New York art world of the 1990s. Tiravanija, who will have his first exhibition with the gallery in Hong Kong later this year, is renowned for participatory installations that have a living, social dimension to them. Peyton is one of her generation’s best-known painters, recognized for her intimate paintings of people.