La Lecture, 1924, Femme au Livre, 1924, Positioned together, Tous les Deux, ensemble, New York

Over the past four decades, Louise Lawler has gained access to the most elite private art collections, gifting her viewers with intimate photographs that capture the often uncanny interaction of highly recognizable modern art masterpieces within the bourgeois trappings of the domestic sphere. Lawler’s privileged admittance extends behind closed doors, as she also goes backstage at auction houses, and into the storage rooms of the world’s most prestigious museums. In the early 1980s, Lawler met the collectors Burton and Emily Tremaine, who granted her the rare opportunity of photographing their renowned art collection as it was displayed in their home. The resulting photographs formed the basis for Lawler’s life-long practice.

In La Lecture, 1924, Femme au Livre, 1924, Positioned together, Tous les Deux, ensemble, New York, an early photograph from 1985, Lawler demonstrates the subtle irony that underpins these quietly subversive pictures. Two paintings by Fernand Léger are “positioned together”—installed side-by-side on the wall of a collector’s living room—where the utterly banal furnishings of domestic life create a captivating contrast between the simple comforts of home and the commanding presence of the Cubist master painter. The sofa, side table and lamp—even the fringed pillows that match the Léger’s color scheme—lend the piece an uneasy intimacy that verges on voyeurism. Their juxtaposition unravels the many opposing and often contradictory relationships that predicate the making, exhibition, sale and collection of art, which Lawler unleashes for the viewer in this quietly radical work.