One Fine Show: “Sophie Calle, Something Missing?” at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

It’s been several years since the exhibition, but I still can’t understand why the Brooklyn Museum allowed a stand-up comedian from Netflix to curate a show about how much she hates Pablo Picasso. Some will probably disagree with me, but I don’t feel that popularity online affords one sufficient qualifications to try to take down one of the greatest artists of all time. Should we let MrBeast make a video essay on whether Federico Fellini is overrated? I’d sooner read Hawk Tuah’s withering dissertation on Virginia Woolf.

Sophie Calle (b. 1953), on the other hand, is eminently qualified to unpack Picasso, and does so in “Sophie Calle: Something Missing?,” a new exhibition that fills the entire West Wing at the Louisiana Museum. Picassos in Lockdown—her body of work that emerged around the Musée Picasso in Paris at that peculiar time in world history, when, like our faces, the works were covered with rudimentary coverings to protect them from unseen forces—is one of seven series presented in Humlebæk. In total, the show spans more than 300 individual parts across photography, text and video, covering almost 40 years of work.

The Blind (1986) was central to her takeover of the Picasso Museum in 2023. In this early series, Calle asked 23 people who were born blind what their image of beauty is. It establishes her format of pairing words with images and immediately demonstrates how effective it is. Blind n°4 (1986) highlights the answer “Green is beautiful. Because every time I like something, I’m told it’s green.” This is paired with a framed photo of grass that will shock you with its mundanity. You’ll look hard for more there, wondering if our ability to see might be its own kind of disadvantage.

A retort is explored in Voir la mer (To See the Sea) (2011), the show’s lone video work. In it, Calle finds migrant workers from Turkey’s interior and brings them to the Black Sea, instructing them not to look up until they’re at the water‘s edge. Then they turn around. This mute piece takes its inspiration from the Rückenfigur paintings that allowed the viewer to bask in the glory of nature during the Romantic era, and the revelation of the face is not only emotionally impactful but also a breaking of the fourth wall. The old man, who has waited his whole life to see this, looks accusatorily out at you. The little girl almost shrugs, in a way that makes you feel silly to think that she’d be impressed.

Why capture images at all? The answers lie in Because (2018-2023), a series that pairs a photograph with a hanging panel of felt. Embroidered on the felt is the reason the picture had to be taken. Real-Fake (2018) features a photo of artificial flowers in a museum that says “no need to touch, they are fake.” The reason: “Because you could replace the word ‘fake’ with ‘real’ and the meaning would be exactly the same.” It feels strange to describe the imperfection of these flowers, which is what necessitates the sign, because Calle’s work has more or less anticipated my doing this. Among the missing in her work is us.

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