Jean Metzinger
Woman with a Fan (1913)
Luxembourg + Co
This Cubist painting’s storied provenance has made recent headlines. In 1928, the work was bought by Emanuel Lewenstein, a Dutch-Jewish businessman. After Lewenstein’s death, his widow is thought to have deposited the painting, along with other pieces from the family collection, for safekeeping at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. But in 1940, the painting mysteriously appeared for sale at an Amsterdam auction, just months into the Nazi occupation. The Art Institute of Chicago acquired the painting in 1959. This year, after extensive sleuthing, the Institute concluded the 1940 auction was a forced sale and restituted the work to Lewenstein’s heirs. The painting now returns to Paris, the city of its making, for the first time.
Takashi Murakami
Schoolgirl Ko² (2023-26)
Perrotin
Much of Takashi Murakami’s practice is inspired by otaku, a Japanese subculture revolving around anime, manga, video games, and cosplay. He traces the subculture back to Japan’s defeat in World War II, which he argues left the country in a state of arrested development. In the 1990s, Murakami began remaking otaku figurines at life size, starting with the 1.8-meter-tall Miss Ko²
(1997), which he has been iterating on since. The series’ name comes from ko, Japanese for child or woman, while the sculptures’ voluptuous silhouettes are derived from bishōjo, the idealized ‘beautiful girl’ of otaku culture.