One Good Exhibition: “There’s Nothing Left About Still Life” at Deji Art Museum

Welcome to One Fine Showwhen the Observer highlights an exhibit that just opened at a museum outside of New York City, a place we know and love is already getting a lot of attention.

Late last year, I had the privilege of being a guest at Shanghai’s West Bund Art & Design, the most important exhibition in mainland China. It was the first show at the futuristic and newly constructed West Bund Convention Center, and along with strong sales—Perrotin reported that 40 percent of his state-of-the-art booth was sold on the first day—there is an array of exquisite and sophisticated art, especially in its curated xiàn chǎng section, the equivalent of the Untitled section at Art Base Switzerland. But I spent the days leading up to this exhibition in a no small area of ​​impressive art: the Deji Plaza shopping mall in Nanjing, upstairs which houses the Deji Art Museum.

Deji was a revelation on several levels. As with the West Bund fair, sales at the mall were nothing to sneeze at: $3.5 billion by 2025, which, according to the Economist, would make it the highest-grossing mall in the world. The museum on the top floor was open until midnight, an idea that more museums should adopt because it remained popular throughout the night. Its most popular exhibit, “Nothing Works About Still Lifes,” reopened in October and is one of those great shows that shows the surprising depth that can be explored with works of art on a single subject: flowers.

Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch, Henri Rousseau, Andy Warhol, Yayoi Kusama, David Hockney and Anselm Kiefer are all on display, alongside works by many Chinese stars. The bright-faced names featured in this exhibition from Deji’s extensive and vibrant collection may make it sound straight and dull, but the exhibition is anything but. Almost everything on display is an experiment in some way, an unexpected contribution from the artist or an unusual take on this classic subject. This is announced in the first room dominated by the sculptural monument of Jeff Koons, Ballerina in pink (2009-2021), made of lace-like white marble and red-cut roses—actually deep red. Like the pink color of its title, the floral contrast of the piece is very much in the mind of the viewer.

The blockbusters on display are so spectacular and expensive, that going through the show can feel like going to a really good preview at an auction house. I found myself particularly drawn to the lesser-known works that show the depth of the collection. A bunch of fake-looking greens around the yellow hides in the middle Corbeille de Fleurs it would make me think the work was done in the 2010s or maybe the 1980s, but it was actually done in 1925 and Georges Braque of all people.

Not that blockbusters aren’t just fun. This is Renoir’s place Fleurs and Vase (1878) is shown next to the original Majolica vase depicted in the painting. This show rewards a deeper look and offers threads to follow. That first room with Koons includes two works by Picasso, both titled Vase de Fleurs from 1901 and 1904, that marks, economically, the transition from his Blue to his Rose period. The threads between West and East are less satisfying to explore. This is Wu Dayu’s place Untitled 128 (c. 1980) combines the bursts of color found in European modernism with the vivid Chinese philosophical ideas of inner strength and resonance. Sanyu Blue Flower Vase (1956) is currently sui generis. The vase is a painting that contrasts with the deep details of the flowers, and the background is so rich that it can be a wonderful painting that can’t be seen without anything else in it.

But each work in this exhibition is precious. West Bund Art & Design Shanghai 2026 will be just as well attended as the previous edition, and if you’re in the region, a day trip to Nanjing to see this exhibition at Deji could be time well spent.

“Nothing Remains of Current Lives“ can be seen in Deji Art Museumno closing date is listed for publication.

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