Business Finance Media Technology Policy Wealth Insights Interviews

Art Art Fairs Art Market Art Reviews Auctions Galleries Museums Interviews

Lifestyle Nightlife & Dining Style Travel Interviews

Power Index Nightlife & Dining Art A.I. PR

About About Observer Advertise With Us Reprints

Danielle Orchard’s Indescribable Yearning

In "Borrowed Chord" at Perrotin Paris, she immerses the viewer in a world of female subjectivity rendered with the cool authority of a classicist and the instincts of a modernist.

Painter Danielle Orchard’s female figures evoke a particular tenderness, despite her protagonists’ aloof demeanors, which she cultivates by implementing a classical remove. Her new works in “Borrowed Chord” at Perrotin in Paris, are—as ever—ruminative in nature and soothing in tone, articulated primarily in oil stick on rough linen. They immerse the viewer in a world of female subjectivity, be it through experiences of early motherhood, the act of disrobing, gazing fixedly at one’s naked body, wrangling with creative choices, enjoying close sorority or embracing occasions of solitude.

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

“Orchard’s engagement with the figurative tradition treats the language of modernism not as a set of exhausted forms, but as a living system,” writes Max Weintraub in the exhibition text, astutely describing the work as having a “quiet authority.” Her skewed proportions and quixotic silhouettes purposefully eschew realism for something lively, shapely and imaginative.

We spoke to Orchard in Paris about her awe of Greek caryatids, how leaving New York City changed her practice and the celebrity she accidentally but repeatedly conjured.

Let’s start with the exhibition’s title. Where did it come from?

“Borrowed Chord” is this concept my husband—who’s a musician—was explaining to me in relation to a Simon & Garfunkel song that we were listening to. I asked him: how do you make something sound like indescribable yearning? And he was like, there’s actually a term for it. You take a traditional chord, and then you move in parallel to it, and then you return to it. The subtle departure from the familiar has this emotional effect on the listener. I feel like there’s a similar effect in painting with color, where you adjust the temperature slightly. I thought it had this really great color cognate.

I painted a guitar lesson [Borrowed Chord (2026)]. One woman is nude, one woman is clothed, so there’s this strange play with who’s the vulnerable party and who’s the confident one, which changes when you’re in any sort of situation where someone is imparting knowledge.

Did you envision a particular piece that they were playing?

That’s a really good question. I hadn’t thought about that at all. I was thinking of it as very rudimentary. I’m trying to learn a little bit of piano, and that kind of humility, starting at toddler level… It’s foundational, yet there’s that inherent vulnerability in learning anything new.

The nudity in your paintings is often a shared state among multiple figures.

In Frieze I and Frieze II, I was really just thinking about low-relief Greek and Roman friezes, and how they’re these intentionally decorative objects that are so beautifully ornate, but tucked into the highest corner, nearly impossible to view. I went to Greece, to the archeological museums, and spent a lot of time in Athens looking at that stuff. When you bring them down [to eye-level], everything’s kind of squat and strange. It felt like there was an inherent modernist painting idea.

When you’re painting multiple figures, do you know ahead of time how they are going to be in relation to each other? Or is that something that you work out in the moment?

Definitely in the moment. I use a lot of oil stick—it’s compressed oil paint, which is more like a drawing tool—and it’s a little bit unwieldy, because it kind of breaks apart as you’re drawing. It’s intentionally less controlled. As I’m working, I’m thinking about these fairly rigid stone forms, but then using this really loose, playful paint. [In Frieze I and Frieze II], there was this dissonance, but I guess the idea is mostly just to let the form build in a way that isn’t premeditated. I really wanted to let color dictate the form.

Are there other referential moments from your Greek visit?

In Greece, it was the first time I saw caryatids—the women who function........

© Observer