Originally called the Prinzessinnenpalais, Deutsche Bank’s PalaisPopulaire opened in September this year

Featuring over 300 works by some of the art world’s biggest names alongside emerging artists, Deutsche Bank’s new exhibition space, the PalaisPopulaire, presents a museum-quality show of inter-generational exploring the numerous ways in which artists work on paper – and with surprising results. Anna Wallace-Thompson hopped over to Berlin to check out its inaugural show, The World on Paper

What would be the art world equivalent of a kid walking into a candy shop? Probably something akin to walking through swish, space-age sliding doors into a room to find oneself surrounded by names such as Joseph Beuys, Marcel Dzama, William Kentridge, Imran Qureshi, Katharina Grosse, James Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter… the list goes on. And on. And on. To say that the inaugural exhibition of Deutsche Bank’s new arts, culture and sports space at the fittingly titled PalaisPopulaire is something of a showstopper is to put it mildly.

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Opening in late September after extensive renovations, the 18th century venue – originally called the Prinzessinnenpalais – has been remade twice during its colourful history, once in the 1960s, when it became a sort of ‘it’ destination, and now by architectural firm Kuehn Malvezzi. In its newest shiny incarnation it offers over 750 square metres of exhibition space, and The World on Paper brings together 300 works (you guessed it, on paper) by 133 artists from 34 countries. “The focus of this show was really to present the heart of our collection,” says Friedhelm Hütte, curator of the show and head of Deutsche Bank’s worldwide art programme. “Paper is so interesting because artists write on it, they use it as a kind of diary, they can cut it, make three dimensional works, and so we thought – this is almost like the laboratory of an artist, you can see what they are thinking, watch that process of how they develop their ideas. Paper is a very authentic medium and often so innovative – first ideas are often fixed on paper.”

Study for “The Swimmer in the Economist,”, 1996/97James Rosenquist

The exhibition is divided into three sections, with visitors invited to explore these different ‘worlds’ across three floors, wandering through investigations of the body and self-image, abstraction on paper, and examinations of urban spaces and technology. It could be a messy combination of disparate subject matters, yet somehow it’s not. “It was also important for us to present more than just the big names, the ‘hit list’, as it were,” says Hütte. “We wanted to have some surprises and show artists either who aren’t that widely known, or little-known works by well-known artists, such as the early works by Gerhard Richter we’ve selected.”

“DeLuxe”, 2004/05 Ellen Gallagher. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo credit: Alex Delfanne

In fact, it would be easy for an exhibition like this to pay lip service to big names and act simply as a promotional tool for that ‘hit list’, and the grandeur of Deutsche Bank’s (admittedly impressive) corporate collection. In fact, what is so interesting about The World on Paper is precisely that it is not a ‘safe’ show – after all, corporate collections can so easily become bland lists of big names, ticked off with due diligence but with little willingness to push the envelope into uncomfortable territory. Not so here. See, for example, Iranian artist Parastou Forouhar’s untitled pieces from her series Take off Your Shoes (2001/2002), which depict women in chadors dealing with the bureaucracy of the Islamic regime. Then there is the riot of delight that is American artist Ellen Gallagher’s multi-piece grid of photogravures, DeLuxe (2004/05). Take an array of magazines and promotional materials from the 1930s to 1970s, then remake them with interventions in screen print, embossing, laser cutting, tattoo engraving (yes, really) and Plasticine and what do you get? A bitingly witty investigation of cultural identity and race through the countless advertisements for beauty creams, hair pomades, wigs and more, that have been targeted at African Americans. “Of course we could have put together a show without any risks,” says Hütte. “We could simply have focused on the big names and the big works, but this is what one would expect, and what would be interesting about that?”

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One of the most delightful surprises is the sense of delicacy that winds its way through the works. There are the bold heavy-hitters, of course – the Rosenquists, the Kentridges – but there is immense tenderness too, such as in the evocative Heartbeat Drawing 24 Hour (1998) by Japanese artist Sasaki, or Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s witty take on traditional Chinese manuscripts in My History (2008), in which traditional Chinese painting meets life in the UK (complete with punting in Cambridge). “There are very special pieces here that one wouldn’t expect,” agrees Svenja Gräfin von Reichenbach, director of the PalaisPopulaire. “I find the three drawings by Bruce Naumann we have on display particularly special, as well as the paper works by Richter – they are so private.”

“Moondiver II” by Zilla Leutenegger at Deutsche Bank’s PalaisPopulaire

Ultimately, The World on Paper is a great barometer of our times – it stretches from Post-war Modernism all the way to the present day, and marks the increasingly international nature of Deutsche Bank’s collection. “We wanted this so be our first really international show,” says Hütte. “The character of the collection has completely changed during the last decade, and of our 50,000 works, here we have 134 artists from 34 nations represented.”

Perhaps the best indicator of what the show represents – and what it promises for the future of the PalaisPopulaire – is the playful intervention in the main space’s rotunda. Here, Zilla Leutenegger has installed a multimedia mural and video projection entitled Moondiver II. As visitors wander through the impressive space with its winding staircase, a large, starkly-drawn black construction crane carries a delicate, luminous moon back and forth. It’s that combination of bold and delicate, traditional mural and contemporary video projection that sums up The World on Paper: everything is possible, and this is just the beginning.

“The World on Paper” runs until 7 January 2019 at PalaisPopulaire

Poster parade organized by the Women’s Freedom League to promote the suffrage message

As we celebrate the 100 year anniversary since women were given the vote in parliamentary elections, Angela Westwater, one of the art world’s pre-eminent gallerists, reflects upon the great women gallerists who have inspired her, and the changing landscape of the New York gallery scene over the past 40 years

In the midst of today’s debate on justice and equality for the genders across all industries, the gallery world is a particularly interesting case to think about. While there is actually a large contingent of women gallerists, historically and today, they don’t always get the same level of recognition as their male counterparts. Many powerful women paved the way for the young dealers of today with the risks and bold chances they took. Taking just New York as an example, even as far back as the 1930s and 40s, there were Peggy Guggenheim and Betty Parsons, both of whom championed Abstract Expressionism. Having recently seen the ‘Bacon–Giacometti’ exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, I also think about the legacy of Erica Brausen, who started London’s Hanover Gallery in 1946 and gave Bacon his first show the following year.

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A more immediate example, and one who has inspired me personally, is Virginia Dwan. She had a gallery in Los Angeles in 1959 before moving to New York in 1965. Virginia and I actually met through the artist Robert Smithson, who, in fact, helped me land my first job as a gallery girl in 1971 at the John Weber Gallery. She championed artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, Richard Long and Robert Smithson early in their careers. While the Abstract Expressionist artists were still dominant in the US, and the American scene was frankly a bit parochial, she stood out for being very attentive and receptive to what was going on in Europe, an attitude that my partners Gian Enzo Sperone, Konrad Fischer and I shared when we opened our first space in 1975. Virginia also demonstrated real curiosity, as well as a commitment to not only mounting gallery shows but also sponsoring artists’ projects outside the traditional venues, such as Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in 1970, and aiming to reach a broad audience through accessible means such as artists’ books. Holly Solomon was a similarly fantastic, energetic woman who was a collector before she founded her eponymous gallery in 1975 in the early days of the art scene in SoHo. Partly because she had studied acting, Holly sponsored evenings of artists’ performances along with readings and musical events, which broadened the very definition of art for many people.

So, what did these women and their experiences teach me? Their achievements opened my eyes to the fact that there are different ways of being. They taught me the importance of maintaining as much openness as possible and listening to the artists themselves – see what they have to say, and be open to what you learn along the way in their studios.

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When Sperone Westwater opened, SoHo had far fewer galleries than today. It was still an area of light industrial manufacturing, with a handful of artists living there. To start a gallery in 1975 was, to say the least, not a solid business plan. This was at the moment of the Daily News’s headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead”, printed after President Ford had refused to bail out the city in the midst of a major financial crisis, suggesting it instead go into bankruptcy. So, it was an adventure. I had my two partners in Europe, coming and going and planning the exhibitions together, but on a day-to-day basis it was just me and one assistant, and my desk was a door laid across two filing cabinets. Frankly, at the time when we started, I really wasn’t thinking about actually making money at all. Perhaps I should have been.

Bruce Nauman’s ‘Leaping Foxes’ (2018), part of his retrospective exhibition ‘Disappearing Acts’, at the Schaulager in Basel

I admit I approached the idea of opening a gallery with some trepidation, but, in the way of so many developments in my life, it came up partly as a reaction to what I had done before. Apart from serving as gallery girl for John Weber, I spent three incredible years as managing editor at Artforum, from 1972 to 1975, working with the legendary John Coplans, one of the founding editors, while he was editor-in-chief. He was a great mentor, and I loved being involved at a very lively, very controversial and very disruptive time at the magazine, then still in its youth. Part of what I did was to lobby hard to have attention paid to women artists. We put Louise Bourgeois on the cover. We put Jackie Winsor on the cover. We put Agnes Martin on the cover. I wrote a little bit myself, but frankly, what I learned was that I wanted to move on from working with words about art and on to working directly with the artists and their creations. I found that much more gratifying.

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But Artforum did provide me with an incredible grounding and a connection to so many prominent and strong women whose work we published, including Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson and Lucy Lippard. They set a stellar example, and perhaps since they didn’t seem to feel they had to prove themselves in any way, I guess I didn’t either. The art world was much smaller then, and so I found it, in my own perhaps naïve way, very welcoming. There was a sense of community, especially downtown in SoHo in the early 1970s, and a marvelous sense of camaraderie.

In this sense, if I think more broadly about the challenges faced by today’s women gallerists in relation to my own experience, I don’t know that I ever thought about what I could or couldn’t do, or what I was or wasn’t ‘allowed’ to do back then. I think now, oddly, there are probably more conventions or standard operating procedures than there were for me, perhaps because of the increasing professionalization of the art world. I guess I just felt my way along.

Speaking of which, I remember calling the collector Franz Dahlem, who was associated with Heiner Friedrich who would go on to cofound the Dia Art Foundation in 1973. I remember calling him from a post office in Florence in 1972, telling him I wasn’t sure how I’d get to Kassel to see Harald Szeemann’s Documenta. He invited me to stay at his house and visit the Ströher collection in Darmstadt, then we could go on to Kassel together. I jumped on a train, got a tour of the collection, and spent the night. There were a number of paintings that they had hung up-side-down – or so I thought. The next morning, who should drive us to Kassel but Georg Baselitz!

What I have learned during my time as a gallerist, and what the great pioneering gallerists who went before me have shown, is the importance of relationships. I think – I hope – that my relationships with all of my artists are ones of great integrity and trust. For example, we showed Bruce Nauman first in 1976, and in 2016 we celebrated our fortieth anniversary with his extraordinary show of Contrapposto Studies from 2015–16. His incredible retrospective, ‘Disappearing Acts’, just closed at the Schaulager in Basel and opens on 21 October this year at the Museum of Modern Art and PS1 in New York. The number one priority of the gallery is always the artists. Of course, a little passion and perseverance can’t hurt.

Angela Westwater is co-founder of Sperone Westwater gallery in New York