Masterpieces Across Five Centuries Converge in The Scorpion and the Frog at Taichung Art Museum

Selected works by Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Artemisia Gentileschi, David Hockney, Gustav Klimt, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, Jacopo Tintoretto, and other iconic artists on public view

Spanning Renaissance portraiture to contemporary art, the exhibition reimagines art history through dialogues between instinct, intellect, spirituality, and the body

The exhibition is curated by New York-based writer and curator Philip Larratt-Smith. Since 2019, he has served as Curator of The Easton Foundation, which administers the legacy of Louise Bourgeois, and was the curator of Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter at the Jewish Museum in New York in 2021. 

“The conceptual framework of this exhibition is the mind-body split, which runs like a fault line through the YAGEO Foundation Collection, and which opens out to other polarities, such as abstraction and figuration, sacred and profane, the life of the mind and the realm of the senses. The exhibition is conceived as a series of interlocking dialogues among artists separated by time and geography that eschews conventional narrative in favour of an intuitive and imaginative logic.” Philip Larratt-Smith notes.

Yi-Hsin Lai, Director of Taichung Art Museum, notes, “Taichung Art Museum is committed to serving as a platform for cross-disciplinary artistic exchange. Made possible through the collaboration between the Taichung City Government and YAGEO Foundation, this exhibition brings important works to broader audiences and creates new opportunities for the public to encounter art.”

The Tension Between Reason and Instinct

The Scorpion and the Frog is a Russian fable of a scorpion and a frog crossing a river together. The story has long served as a metaphor for the conflict between rational thought and irrepressible instinct.

Taking its title from this powerful allegory, the exhibition presents works that explore spirituality, abstraction, and intellectual inquiry, while others engage more directly with psychology, desire, and the physical realm. Spanning different periods, genres, and media, they reveal a rich spectrum of artistic approaches and offer fresh perspectives on renowned artists’ iconic works through unexpected juxtapositions across time and artistic traditions. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, the exhibition inspires visitors to move between contrasting ideas and experiences, reflecting the complexity and contradictions of human nature itself.

 

An Overview of Highlight Works: Francis Bacon and Jacopo Tintoretto in Dialogue, Hockney’s Double Portrait Debuts in Taiwan 

One of the exhibition’s central highlights is the pairing of Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594, Italy) ’s Portrait of Cardinal Marcantonio da Mula (1562-63) with Francis Bacon (1909-1992, UK)’s Study for a Pope VI (1961). As one of Francis Bacon’s most significant works from his celebrated Pope series, Study for a Pope VI has been exhibited at leading institutions including Tate Modern London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Yale Center for British Art, and the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo. While Tintoretto’s portrait embodies the dignity and institutional power of the Church through a commanding and psychologically nuanced likeness, Bacon’s distorted pope dissolves the symbols of authority into an unsettling image of vulnerability and instinct. Together, the works trace the tension between the representation of social and spiritual order and an expression of desire and existential angst.

Another highlight of the exhibition is a classically composed double portrait of lovers by David Hockney (1937-2026, UK), the beloved British artist who passed away earlier this year. Seated apart from each other in a domestic setting, British writer Christopher Isherwood and his long-time partner Don Bachardy are both alone and together. It is less a depiction of two individuals than a portrait of a relationship. Bachardy looks out at the viewer, while Isherwood looks at Bachardy, many years his junior, and the object of desire. Making its public debut in Taiwan, this work belongs to a celebrated series of double portraits Hockney made.

The exhibition also brings together an extraordinary range of artists whose works traverse the territory between intellect and instinct, transcendence and desire. Spiritual contemplation, metaphysical inquiry, and conceptual rigour emerge in works by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654, Italy), Mark Rothko (1903-1970, USA), Gerhard Richter (b. 1932, Germany), Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948, Japan), among others. 

In conversation with these artworks are powerful examinations of the body as a site of desire, vulnerability, intimacy, and psychological intensity. Works by Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010, France), Gustav Klimt (1862-1918, Austria), and David Hockney, foreground the human figure in states of longing, reflection, transformation, and exposure. 

Bridging these poles are artists who challenge conventional distinctions between the cerebral and the sensual. Andy Warhol (1928-1987, USA), Jeff Koons (b. 1955, USA), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973, Spain), and Sanyu (1895-1966, China) employ abstraction, repetition, stylization, and artifice to transform familiar images and objects into meditations on identity, desire, history, and perception.

YAGEO Foundation comments, “We are pleased to collaborate with Taichung City Government to present this landmark exhibition. This exhibition marks the foundation’s most comprehensive presentation of its collection in Taiwan to date, representing a significant milestone in promoting public engagement with fine art.”

The exhibition invites audiences to join a compelling journey through some of the most profound artistic explorations of the human condition. By placing masterpieces from different eras and cultures into dialogue, the exhibition demonstrates the power of art to illuminate shared aspects of human experience across time and geography.

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The Scorpion and the Frog: Masterworks from the YAGEO Foundation Collection

20 November 2026 – 4 April 2027

Exhibition Room D and E, Taichung Art Museum

Open Hours: Tue-Sun, 9AM–5PM., Sat, 9AM–8PM, Open on national holidays

No. 2201, Zhongke Rd., Xitun Dist., Taichung City, Taiwan

Press Kit: https://tcam-taichung.tw/art07qniMr 

Taichung Art Museum: Website/Facebook/Instagram

YAGEO Foundation: Website/Facebook/Instagram

Organised by the Taichung City Government and YAGEO Foundation

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For Media Enquiries

Léa Tseng, Taichung Art Museum

a106050162@taichung.gov.tw

Megan Lan, Taichung Art Museum
meganlan@taichung.gov.tw