Anthony Cudahy: Conversation

From April 28 through September 10, 2023, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole will stage Anthony Cudahy’s first exhibition in a French institution. On the occasion of this invitation, the New York artist has chosen to engage a dialogue between his own paintings and those of the museum’s collections. He has assembled around twenty of his recent paintings, whose repertoire—flowers, the expression of love and intimacy or portraits–explores the registers of the romantic, the tender and the intimate. In resonance, he has associated them with selected oeuvres from the museum archives: idealized landscapes, nudes, scenes of violence and still lifes, paintings that are generally narrative in nature, with no preference in terms of period or style. Out of humility in the presence of “great painting” and prestigious signatures, with his taste for forgotten or lesser-known artists, Cudahy has chosen anonymous or unattributed works. This painterly conversation the artist has engaged, between New York and the Jura, builds bridges across the ages whilst bearing witness to a profound sensitivity. At the same time, this dialogue reintegrates works, rarely or never taken out of storage, into a new regime of visibility.

Born in Florida in 1989, Anthony Cudahy lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Hunter College in 2020. He has enjoyed numerous exhibitions in the USA and UK, notably at the 1969 Gallery (New York), the Deli Gallery (New York) and Farewell Books (Austin, Texas). His works have been included in group shows at the Perrotin Gallery (New York), Hales (New York) and the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (Georgia, USA), amongst others. From January through March 2023, he curated an exhibition of ten American artists entitled The Minotaur’s Daydream for the gallery Semiose (Paris, France) which represents him.

Over the years, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole has established itself as a major reference in painting. Its collections of French, Italian and Nordic paintings, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, were extended at the end of the 20th century by works from the Figuration Narrative movement of the 1960s and 70s (Monory, Télémaque, Erro, Fromanger, Aillaud, Rancillac, Cueco, etc.) and Nouveau Réalisme (César, Arman, Spoerri, etc.). Today, the museum’s collection is being developed along two major axes: image and narrative on one hand, and art and society on the other (Ida Tursic & Wilfried Mille, Nina Childress, Morgane Tschiember…). In addition to its permanent exhibitions, bringing together historic and contemporary art, the museum has organized major exhibitions throughout its history, with artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Peter Saul, Yan Pei Ming and Steve Gianakos.

Exhibition catalogue
Anthony Cudahy, Conversation, a 208-page bilingual French/English catalogue, with essays by Marc Donnadieu, an independent exhibition curator and art critic based in Paris (France) and Samuel Monier, Head of Collections and Temporary Exhibitions at the Musée des beaux-arts, Dole (France) as well as interviews with Martin Bethenod, publisher, journalist, and exhibition curator, and Jenna Gribbon, artist, accompanies the exhibition. Publication date: June 2023.
ISBN 978-2-37739-068-7. 29 EUR.