To color a glamorous lady, bare however for a loosely hung fur coat and an extended drape of pearls, and have her not be the focus of a picture is simply one of many hanging features of Walton Ford’s new sequence of work, on view at Gagosian in New York by April 19. Based mostly on the artist’s analysis into the Marchesa Luisa Casati, the work are way more within the expertise of her feline companions: two dazzling cheetahs she reportedly paraded alongside the canals of Venice. One of many cats fiercely occupies the middle of La levata del sole (2025), backlit by the rising solar. The opposite is poised within the midground, a pigeon snapped in its maw. Standing off to the facet with a defiant pose and provocative gaze, Casati is alluring however hardly the portray’s most compelling function.
Ford is well-known for his work appropriating—and subverting—the conventions of pure historical past illustrations. He has perfected an aesthetic of animal liveliness, one which trades within the genteel authority of 18th- and Nineteenth-century science however smuggles in some modern humor and critique. Prints completed within the model of famed ornithologist John James Audubon, for instance, seem to duplicate Audubon’s life-sized depictions of American birds. However Ford’s variations are sometimes riven with barely suppressed psychological stress, channeling the violence behind Audubon’s representations. Audubon each cherished his birds, rendering them with ardent vivacity, and finally killed them in pursuit of his picture.
Walton Ford: Forse che si forse che no, 2024.
©Walton Ford. Photograph Tom Powel. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
Ford has discovered within the animal world a wealthy supply of narrative ironies, with animals each mirroring human dramas and revealing the animality of human society. In these new works, he brings a human actor into the scene in additional specific methods. Casati was a Milanese heiress dwelling massive in early Twentieth-century Venice; she turned concerned with the Futurists and sought to make her life a murals. Along with the cheetahs, she allegedly wore snakes as necklaces and cultivated a menagerie of lion cubs, panthers, monkeys, peacocks, and different unique species. Her wild events and exuberant life-style, mixed with the everlasting fantastic thing about Venice, present fascinating content material for Ford’s photos.
The work are themselves beautiful objects. Ford’s dexterity with watercolor balances trompe-l’oeil illusionism, significantly within the cheetah’s mesmerizing coats, with painterly abandon, as within the pooling reflections on the floor of the Grand Canal. Ford, the gallery reviews, initially meant to make only one portray on the topic: the golden, glowing, La levata del sole (2025). However he was so taken with the consequence that he carried on, and one of the crucial rewarding components of the present is seeing the characters develop throughout the sequence. Every work takes an Italian title, typically referring to literature printed by Casati’s lover, the army officer and decadent poet Gabriele D’Annunzio.
View of Walton Ford’s 2025 exhibition “Tutto” at Gagosian, New York.
Photograph Owen Conway. Courtesy Gagosian.
Decadence, a literary and creative motion that emerged within the Nineteenth century and was standard in Casati’s time, dwelled in hedonism as an antidote to bourgeois mores, and the decadence right here is actually ravishing. The cheetahs’ jeweled collars sparkle, the Marchesa’s lithe physique shimmers within the moonlight. After which, like every good factor, there begins to be an excessive amount of of it. The golden glow of La levata del sole turns into the sickly-sweet, bubble-gum pink of La Marchesa (2024). The latter work depicts the aftermath of a fête. Revelers within the background drape themselves amongst ruins, their our bodies seemingly turned to stone. There could also be some vanitas on this picture, with scattered carnival masks and overturned wine jugs nodding at symbolic resonance. However the cheetahs, licking the leavings clear, appear unbothered by any metaphoric significance.
Throughout the work, it’s the animals who take the cake. In one of the crucial enigmatic works within the sequence, Casati—wrapped in a powerful python—stands within the arched opening to a derelict alleyway whereas her companions scrounge discarded kitchen scraps. By the Thirties, Casati had misplaced her fortune, however Ford imagines a world during which she stored the cheetahs. Each have jewel-studded collars and diamond-encrusted leashes, although nobody deigns to carry them. Titled Desiderio infinito (2025), the work throbs with need: Casati’s, the cheetahs’, and our personal, for these scrumptious work.
