Helen and Steve Locke discuss the best—and most unexpected-–art shows they saw in 2023, from global exhibitions to gallery shows in New York.

What does it mean to a painter of modern life? Helen & Steve Locke discuss artistic rivalry, leisure, and labor politics in Manet/Degas, a historic exhibition pairing two giants of the 19th century, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 7, 2024.

In dark times, reading criticism can be a ballast. In this mini-episode, Helen and Steve Locke return to some of their favorite texts and writers, from Walter Benjamin to W.E.B. DuBois.

On the occasion of Ruth Asawa’s solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, artists EJ Hill and Sarah Sze talk with Helen Molesworth about Asawa’s legacy. This episode features the late artist’s voice, courtesy of audio from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and the California State University, Sacramento.  Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) was a sculptor, educator, and arts activist who challenged conventional notions of material and form through her emphasis on lightness and transparency. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the world since the early 1950s. Ruth Asawa Through Line is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through January 15, 2024. EJ Hill is a visual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His show Brake Run Helix is on view at MASS MoCA through January 2024. Sarah Sze is an artist based in New York. Her solo exhibition Timelapse just closed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and her show Metronome will open in November at OGR Torino, and at Aarhus, Denmark in 2024; she also has a forthcoming solo show opening at the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2024. Featured audio: Oral history interview with Ruth Asawa and Albert Lanier, 2002 June 21-July 5. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and Japanese American Archival Collection, JA 70 [Florin JACL Oral History Project.] Donald & Beverly Gerth Special Collections & University Archives. California State University, Sacramento.

A special live episode hosted by Helen Molesworth, recorded in July at David Zwirner Los Angeles during Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again. Her first solo exhibition with the gallery, the presentation is now on view at David Zwirner New York through October 28th.

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.

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

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 celebrated artist on the role of art criticism today, and how she probes and ultimately goes beyond the limitations of her painting in her other practice as a writer. This episode with Sillman, who in 2020 published Faux Pas, a new collection of her writings, is guest-hosted by Jarrett Earnest, and is the last of his three-part miniseries on serious artists who are also serious writers.  Amy Sillman: Faux Pas is available here. Her work will be featured in the 2022 Venice Biennale, and was recently on view in Toni Morrison’s Black Book, an exhibition curated by Hilton Als at David Zwirner’s 19th Street gallery in New York.

A conversation about the art of scents with the perfumer Frederic Malle. The latest in a storied French fragrance family, Malle—whose grandfather launched Christian Dior’s fragrance line, and whose uncle is the great filmmaker Louis Malle—had ambitions of being an art dealer before he took up the family trade, and his unique brand of of scent-making combines science, psychology, marketing wizardry, and (most importantly) art history.

When the artist Alex Da Corte and the writer Charlie Fox talk about Edward Scissorhands, Frankenstein, Hercules, Michael Myers, A Clockwork Orange, Scar from The Lion King, they’re also talking about beauty and body anxiety and disability and sexual attraction and queerness—the anxieties of existing physically in the world every day. Da Corte, whose elaborate videos, sculptures, and installations critically re-stage pop culture, art history, and his own life, and Fox, whose recent book This Young Monster celebrates beautiful misfits and freaks across all walks of culture, go deep on how they live—in their minds and in their work—far from what they call normative behavior. Visit Da Corte’s solo exhibition in New York at Karma through November 3 and his work at the Venice Biennale through November 24, in the main exhibition May You Live in Interesting Times. Buy Fox’s book This Young Monster here. 

A conversation about instinct in creative practice that nods to punk rock, fatherhood, and the ethics of artistic expression. In the fifth episode of Dialogues, artist Marcel Dzama—known for his whimsical style, distinctive color palette, and varying mediums that include drawing, sculpture, film, and costume design—is paired with musician and composer Will Butler, a key member of the indie-rock band Arcade Fire. Recounting influences from their upbringings that range from Duchamp to biker culture, Vikings to variety shows, the duo discuss the role of art as a form of revolution in the current political climate. See Dzama’s work in the exhibition Marcel Dzama: A Jester’s Dance on view at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor through September 23, 2018. Watch Will Butler perform live in Arcade Fire, currently on tour through North America. Visit everythingnow.com for tour dates and more information. For more of what’s to come on Dialogues, listen to our trailer or visit davidzwirner.com/podcast.