Kenny Scharf - Emotional
About the Artist
Kenny Scharf, one of the original wild kids of the 1980s NYC East Village scene, which included artists like Basquiat and Keith Haring, has landed in Shanghai with his first major museum exhibition in China. If you've ever wondered what it's like to walk inside someone's technicolor emotions, this might be your shot. Spread across three floors, "Emotional" is a high-octane mix of graffiti, pop, sci-fi, and good old-fashioned feelings.
While Basquiat went cerebral and Haring leaned graphic, Scharf carved out his own lane: cartoonish, candy-colored chaos with a pulse of streetwise energy and a hint of existential dread under the glitter. It's pure visual joy, and a bit of anxiety underneath the surface.
Highlights
The show dives headfirst into six core emotions: joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and awe, each housed in its own color-drenched environment. Think emoji face gallery meets psychedelic funhouse. On the second floor, Scharf's manic grins and warped expressions sit alongside Old Masters like Rembrandt and Goya. It's a bit cheeky, but it also works. Who says cartoon faces can't feel things deeply?
Upstairs, things get weirder (in a good way). The third floor is a full-on chromatic breakdown of human emotion, and then on the fourth, the whole place goes off the rails, in a very Kenny Scharf way. The "Beach Club" is basically a daydream version of Miami transplanted to the banks of the Huangpu: pink sand, lifeguard towers, inflatable toys, and Scharf's trippy sculptures lounging under fake palm trees.
Bonus
On Saturdays until August 16, the fourth floor turns into a pop-up party venue courtesy of System, the Shanghai club that's been popping up around town since their venue shut last year. So you can dance through your feelings too.
Paths to Modernity: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris
The Exhibition
Blockbuster alert. Over 100 works from the Musée d'Orsay, including Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Gauguin, have landed at the Museum of Art Pudong for an unmissable show. Paths to Modernity is Orsay's biggest exhibition ever in China, and it's not touring. Shanghai is the only stop.
What to Expect
Spanning the 1840s to the early 20th century, it charts Realism to Impressionism to Symbolism, across two full floors. There's Millet's The Gleaners, Monet's Haystack, Manet's Emile Zola, Renoir's Girls at the Piano, Cézanne's portrait of his wife, and Van Gogh, including Bedroom in Arles and Self-Portrait.
Tips
The crowd is packed. It's summer, it's famous art, and it's actually worth the hype. Plus: your ticket also gets you into the adjacent Centre d'Art Rodin (through Oct 12). Scan your e-ticket at the museum to print a physical stub for entry. There's also a separate VR experience downstairs recreating 1874 Paris, which requires a separate ticket.
The biggest Western art show in town this year, maybe in years. Go for the masterpieces, the story, or just to say you saw Bedroom in Arles in Shanghai. You'll remember it.
Sebastião Salgado Retrospective Exhibition
About the Artist
Sebastião Salgado, who passed away earlier this year, wasn't just a photographer; he was a high priest of black-and-white humanism. This major retrospective at Fotografiska Shanghai (through November 9) bringstogether images from apocalyptic gold mines in Brazil, famine zones in the Sahel, glaciers in the Arctic, and mythic wildlife in the Amazon. It's not a quiet show.
You might know him from The Salt of the Earth, the Oscar-nominated doc by Wim Wenders and his son, or Genesis, his final project, an ecological love letter to untouched nature after decades of documenting human suffering. This show spans it all: 40+ years of turning brutal realities into something beautiful. Sublime, even.
What to Expect
Salgado's style is instantly recognizable: stark black-and-white, large-scale prints, heavy chiaroscuro. You'll see emaciated children on the African continent, women left untreated in the grip of illness, migrants clustered in refugee camps and urban slums, and laborers toiling under harsh conditions.
Tips: Don't Rush It
The exhibition spans over 40 years of work across multiple continents. Give yourself time. Salgado showed the world at its most raw and most luminous, and he made sure we saw it.
