The Frick Collection presents a site-specific installation by the Swiss-born artist Nicolas Party (b. 1980) that combines Rosalba Carriera’s Portrait of a Man in Pilgrim’s Costume with an ensemble of pastel works of Party’s own devising.
The installation, in the Italian Galleries on the third floor of the museum’s temporary home, Frick Madison, juxtaposes Rosalba Carriera’s portrait, a spectacular eighteenth-century pastel bequeathed to the Frick in 2020 by Alexis Gregory, with a suite of works by Party, all created using pastel. The installation places three portraits—the one by Rosalba and two by Party—in the context of three ephemeral pastel murals depicting swathes of drapery inspired by the work of the eighteenth-century artists Jean-Étienne Liotard and Maurice-Quentin de La Tour. As an ensemble, the installation focuses on themes of concealment and disclosure. This is the second Frick installation to be inspired by the Frick’s popular Diptych series, each volume of which focuses on a single work from the collection. Party’s installation is the centerpiece of the most recent Diptych, which spotlights Rosalba’s Portrait of a Man in Pilgrim’s Costume and is co-authored by Party and Xavier F. Salomon, the Frick’s Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator.
Funding for the installation is generously provided by The Christian Humann Foundation and the David L. Klein, Jr. Foundation, with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
Above (detail): Rosalba Carriera, Portrait of a Man in Pilgrim’s Costume, 1730s. Pastel on paper, laid down on canvas, 23 1/4 x 18 15/16 in. (59.1 x 48.3 cm). Shown with Nicolas Party (b. Lausanne, Switzerland, 1980), Drapery (Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Full-length Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour), 2023. Pastel on wall, 146 3/4 x 202 1/2 in. (372.7 x 514.4 cm). Photo Joseph Coscia Jr.