September 11, 2026

DOIS RELATÓRIOS E UM SUPREMO

Crédito: Pedro Ladeira/Folhapress

 

Ana Clara Costa

 

No dia 9 de fevereiro deste ano, quatro delegados da Polícia Federal – Daniel Mostardeiro Cola, Guilherme Alves de Siqueira, Wedson Cajé Lopes e Victor Arruda de Oliveira –, assinaram um relatório sigiloso de 196 páginas descrevendo as relações pessoais e de negócios do banqueiro Daniel Vorcaro com ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF). O documento, cujo conteúdo a piauí revela com exclusividade nesta reportagem, dedica especial atenção a José Antonio Dias Toffoli. Havia uma razão para explicar o foco em Toffoli. Sorteado relator do caso Master no Supremo, o ministro tomara, desde o fim de 2025, uma série de decisões que dificultaram o avanço das investigações sobre o banco e seu dono. A Polícia Federal agora descobria que, enquanto conduzia o processo de maneira enviesada, o ministro mantinha relações até então desconhecidas com o principal investigado.

Assim que ficou pronto, o relatório foi encaminhado ao diretor-geral da Polícia Federal, Andrei Rodrigues. Diante da gravidade do que seus subordinados haviam encontrado, Rodrigues pediu uma audiência com o presidente do STF, Luiz Edson Fachin. O relatório também trazia mensagens extraídas do celular de Vorcaro que revelavam a proximidade do banqueiro com outro ministro, Alexandre de Moraes, mas, nesse caso, eram apenas uma pequena amostra do que ainda viria à tona.

A PF analisou dezessete contatos telefônicos entre Vorcaro e Toffoli e cruzou as ligações com mensagens em que o banqueiro e seus interlocutores tratavam de encontros, negócios, festas e viagens envolvendo ministros do Supremo, outros integrantes do Judiciário e membros do Congresso. Um personagem aparece repetidamente nas conversas: Fábio Faria, ex-ministro das Comunicações de Jair Bolsonaro. Faria serviu inicialmente como ponte entre Vorcaro e Alexandre de Moraes, antes que banqueiro e ministro adquirissem intimidade suficiente para trocar mensagens diretamente. Também fazia a interlocução de Vorcaro com Toffoli, embora, nesse caso, as ligações diretas entre os dois indiquem que o intermediário não era indispensável.

O relatório vai além das relações pessoais. Os investigadores reconstituem a maneira como Vorcaro abasteceu estruturas empresariais e fundos ligados a familiares de Toffoli. Nas conversas interceptadas, o resort Tayayá é chamado por Faria de “a fazenda de Toffoli”. A PF identificou ainda doze encontros marcados entre o banqueiro e o ministro, em Brasília, São Paulo e Londres.



É em Londres que uma dessas relações ganha contornos particularmente delicados. Em abril de 2024, o 1º Fórum Jurídico Brasil de Ideias reuniu autoridades brasileiras na capital britânica. O evento foi financiado quase integralmente pelo Master. As mensagens analisadas pela PF mostram que os custos da viagem cresceram vertiginosamente, e que pessoas envolvidas na organização chegaram a advertir Vorcaro sobre o risco de o banco pagar tantas despesas das autoridades convidadas.

Em 20 de abril, Leonardo Serrano Giunchetti, da SL Consulting, responsável pela logística da viagem, avisou Vorcaro de que os gastos com hospedagem no Hotel The Peninsula haviam aumentado, entre outras razões, porque autoridades fizeram upgrades em seus quartos. A conta do hotel chegaria a 760 mil libras (cerca de 5 milhões de reais) por três dias. Em mensagens posteriores, o valor subiria para 850 mil libras (cerca de 6 milhões de reais).

Giunchetti explicou ao banqueiro que o contrato com o hotel estava em nome do Grupo Voto, organizador do fórum, mas que o grupo arcaria com apenas 90 mil libras. O restante sairia, na prática, dos cofres de Vorcaro. E fez uma advertência explícita: “Todos esses upgrades de quartos de autoridades, etc., serão conta nossa. Isso, em teoria, por lei, não pode.” Não fica claro a que lei Giunchetti se referia. O Código de Conduta e Ética do STF proíbe o recebimento de presentes ou brindes que valham mais do que 1% da remuneração mensal de um ministro, que atualmente é de 46.366 reais brutos. A regra, porém, se aplica somente aos servidores do tribunal, e não aos próprios ministros. O Conselho Nacional de Justiça (CNJ) veda que magistrados recebam presentes ou vantagens que possam comprometer sua isenção. Mas, até hoje, nenhum ministro do Supremo foi punido por aceitar a generosidade alheia. 

Havia ainda uma maneira de evitar que as diárias aparecessem de forma tão evidente. Segundo Giunchetti, embora o dinheiro viesse de Vorcaro, a nota do hotel seria emitida em nome do Grupo Voto. O problema, escreveu ele, era que o “fluxo financeiro” deixaria clara a verdadeira origem dos recursos. “Acho que tudo bem, né? Pois quero evitar dar M para vocês depois”, acrescentou. Vorcaro respondeu que não haveria problema.

Em 23 de abril, véspera do início do evento, Vorcaro demonstrou preocupação em desvincular o nome do Master do encontro em Londres. Pediu a Giunchetti que retirasse “Master da lista de convidados” e disse que era preciso evitar, “a qq custo”, a exposição do banco e a sua própria. No dia seguinte, voltou ao assunto. “O negócio do pgto do hotel pode dar merda grande. Vc tem que pedir invoice total pra Voto”, escreveu, referindo-se à fatura do Peninsula. Giunchetti respondeu que a providência já estava encaminhada.

Vorcaro se ocupava dos mínimos detalhes da viagem. Sua atenção a eles, porém, contrastava com a que dispensava às contas que deveria pagar. Em uma das conversas, pediu a Giunchetti que providenciasse alguém do hotel para esperá-lo com as chaves do quarto, evitando que tivesse de passar pelo lobby com a roupa esportiva e o capuz que usara durante a viagem. Já durante o evento, avisou a Giunchetti que alguns convidados “mais velhos” passariam pelo hotel antes da famosa degustação de uísque Macallan prevista para aquele dia. Orientou Giunchetti a providenciar uísque do próprio hotel para servi-los enquanto a degustação não começasse. Por aqueles mesmos dias, Giunchetti enviou a Vorcaro uma cobrança de 2 milhões de dólares para ressarcir despesas do evento. O banqueiro não respondeu. Dias depois, cobrado novamente, determinou que a fatura fosse encaminhada à Moriah Asset, empresa que tinha como sócio seu cunhado, Fabiano Zettel.

Só a degustação de Macallan custou a Vorcaro o equivalente a 3,3 milhões de reais, despesa paga, segundo as mensagens, com seu cartão de crédito. Dos mais de sessenta convidados do fórum, 22 participaram da degustação, um gasto de aproximadamente 145 mil reais por cabeça apenas naquele fim de tarde. Entre as cabeças estavam os ministros do STF Alexandre de Moraes e Dias Toffoli*; o diretor-geral da Polícia Federal, Andrei Rodrigues; o presidente da Câmara Hugo Motta; o ex-ministro Ciro Nogueira; o procurador-geral da República Paulo Gonet; o então ministro da Justiça, Ricardo Lewandowski; e os ministros do Superior Tribunal de Justiça Luis Felipe Salomão e Benedito Gonçalves. 

Ao final da degustação, cada participante recebeu uma garrafa de uísque avaliada em 1.800 libras, cerca de 12,4 mil reais pela cotação atual.



Além da proximidade entre Vorcaro e Toffoli, o relatório da PF concluído em fevereiro registra outro dado que não recebeu destaque no documento entregue por Andrei Rodrigues a Fachin: Alexandre de Moraes participou da organização do evento em Londres. As mensagens atribuídas ao ministro mostram que ele sugeriu convidados, fez convites pessoalmente e aprovou o cronograma da viagem. O próprio Toffoli, em nota enviada à piauí, afirma que “sua participação no referido evento de Londres se deu a convite do colega de Corte ministro Alexandre de Moraes”. O ministro diz também que “jamais teve relação de amizade ou intimidade com Daniel Vorcaro”.

Fabio Faria encaminhou a Vorcaro uma lista atribuída a Moraes com nomes que o ministro pretendia convidar. Nela, estavam representantes dos principais órgãos do sistema de Justiça, de Gilmar Mendes e Flávio Dino a Andrei Rodrigues e Paulo Gonet, além de dois amigos próximos de Moraes: Floriano Peixoto, ministro do TSE, e José Levi Mello, então no Cade. “Preciso ter os dias certos, local, hotel, para fazer os convites oficiais”, dizia uma das mensagens atribuídas a Moraes e repassadas por Faria. “Ele mesmo vai convidar”, explicou a Vorcaro.

Dias depois, o empresário Márcio Chaer, sócio do site ConJur, confirmou ao banqueiro que Moraes “realmente mandou WhatsApp para os colegas”. Contou ter falado com Gilmar Mendes, que confirmara o recebimento do convite, mas ainda avaliava se iria. “Difícil alguém não aceitar convite de AM”, escreveu Chaer. Segundo ele, o ministro Luis Felipe Salomão dissera que, “como o Xandão nunca nega fogo”, iria de qualquer maneira. Em seguida, Chaer encaminhou a Vorcaro a mensagem que Moraes enviara a Mendes: “Gostaria de te convidar para participar de um evento jurídico-político em Londres, de 24 a 27 de abril, com a presença do Financial Times, inclusive. Serão homenageados o presidente Temer e o presidente do Senado, nosso amigo Rodrigo Pacheco. Vc participaria de um painel. A estadia será até 28/4. É organizado por Conjur, Correio Braziliense e Banco Master.”

A formulação dava a impressão de que ConJur, Correio Braziliense e Master dividiam a organização do encontro em condições semelhantes. Havia, porém, uma diferença fundamental: dos três, apenas o Master financiava o evento. Vorcaro voltou a manifestar preocupação com a exposição do banco como patrocinador. Chaer o tranquilizou: “Do jeito que o ministro colocou, fica sóbrio.”

Moraes aparece ainda em outra etapa dos preparativos. Em uma troca de mensagens, Leonardo Serrano Giunchetti informou a Vorcaro que o cronograma do evento havia sido aprovado pelo ministro. A única objeção de Moraes, segundo o operador, fora ao aviso sobre o dress code para o jantar na Wallace Collection. O ministro teria considerado desnecessário e até ofensivo orientar os convidados sobre o traje, já que ministros usavam terno rotineiramente.

As mensagens não esclarecem por que o banqueiro se empenhava tanto em evitar que o Master aparecesse como financiador da viagem. Outros braços da investigação, porém, ajudam a dimensionar o momento vivido pelo banco. Em 2024, enquanto Vorcaro gastava milhões de reais para reunir autoridades brasileiras em Londres, o Master já enfrentava dificuldades para financiar sua própria operação.

O Banco Central havia identificado irregularidades e crescia no mercado a percepção de que as taxas oferecidas pelos CDBs do Master eram insustentáveis. Naquele ano, Vorcaro precisava captar pelo menos 15 bilhões de reais para reequilibrar o balanço do banco e honrar os compromissos com investidores. Até o fim de 2024, conseguiu apenas 2 bilhões. Ao longo do ano, o BC enviou nove ofícios cobrando do Master providências para obter recursos suficientes para honrar os rendimentos de seus títulos.



O relatório entregue a Fachin em fevereiro tem semelhanças importantes com outro documento produzido pela PF, desta vez sobre Alexandre de Moraes, cujo sigilo foi levantado por André Mendonça na semana passada, desencadeando uma crise sem precedentes no STF. Os delegados que assinam os dois relatórios são os mesmos. A fonte das informações também: o celular apreendido de Daniel Vorcaro, identificado pelo mesmo número de IMEI nos dois documentos. A metodologia e a estrutura se repetem. O que muda é o foco e o destino.

O relatório sobre Toffoli, com data de fevereiro, foi espontaneamente elaborado pela PF. O relatório sobre Moraes, datado de agosto, foi requerido de ofício pelo ministro André Mendonça, com prazo de urgência de 72 horas. Não fica claro por que a PF tomou a iniciativa quando o alvo era Toffoli, mas não o fez com Moraes. O que se sabe é que, de posse do relatório sobre Moraes, no dia 28 de agosto, Mendonça decretou sigilo grau 4, o máximo possível no sistema do STF. E quatro dias depois, retirou o sigilo, encaminhando o relatório ao presidente Edson Fachin para a possível adoção de medidas.

Sobre o relatório de fevereiro, Mendonça não determinou nenhuma diligência equivalente à que requisitaria em agosto, nem sobre as relações de Vorcaro com Toffoli, nem sobre as de outros ministros da corte, como Kassio Nunes Marques, cujo filho advogado recebeu recursos com origem no banco Master, como mostrou a piauí. Procurado pela reportagem, Mendonça disse que o relatório não havia sido endereçado a ele, embora, como relator do caso, ele pudesse ter solicitado acesso. Toffoli, por sua vez, afirmou o seguinte: “Em relação ao citado relatório, desde logo cabe dizer que ele foi arquivado, com decisão de trânsito em julgado”. Também afirmou que “conforme nota oficial do STF, do dia 12 de fevereiro de 2026, os dez ministros tiveram ciência de todo o seu conteúdo e das devidas informações preparadas pelo ministro tanto no formato escrito quanto presencialmente, deliberando não ser o caso de suspeição. Previamente o presidente Edson Fachin já havia rejeitado o pedido de distribuição como inquérito. Decisões estas, repita-se, transitadas em julgado.”

Há uma imprecisão. Quando se reuniram, em fevereiro, os dez ministros arquivaram a arguição de suspeição contra Toffoli, mas não o relatório que a embasou. Esse documento, e toda a investigação que levou até ele, continuaram sob a posse da PF e, portanto, poderiam ter motivado novas diligências. Poderiam, também, ter tido o seu sigilo levantado. O relator, André Mendonça, não fez nem uma coisa nem outra.

Os despachos de Mendonça que alvejam Moraes se concentraram entre 24 de agosto e 1º de setembro. O timing chama atenção: o sigilo foi retirado por ele apenas 33 dias antes do primeiro turno da eleição presidencial e menos de cinco horas depois que a piauí revelou que o candidato a presidente Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) mentiu sobre os pagamentos que Vorcaro fez a pretexto de financiar a cinebiografia de Jair Bolsonaro. Moraes é o algoz do ex-presidente. E foi Bolsonaro quem indicou para o STF André Mendonça, que em seu governo foi advogado-geral da União e ministro da Justiça.

No relatório de fevereiro, a PF reúne, ao longo de 196 páginas, elementos que poderiam levantar dúvidas sobre a imparcialidade de Dias Toffoli para conduzir o caso Master. No documento mais recente, essa linha de apuração praticamente desaparece, reduzida a uma menção incidental. Com o mesmo material e método semelhante, os investigadores passam a construir um caso sobre as relações de Alexandre de Moraes com Vorcaro.

Até alguns dos personagens se repetem: Fabio Faria, Márcio Chaer e Ana Matos aparecem nos dois documentos. Há mensagens que também são reproduzidas em ambos. Uma delas é a conversa em que Chaer relata a Vorcaro as movimentações de Moraes para convidar Gilmar Mendes ao evento de Londres. O diálogo é o mesmo. A interpretação dada a ele, não.

No relatório sobre Toffoli, a PF apresenta a conversa no contexto das tentativas de Vorcaro de evitar que o Master aparecesse publicamente como financiador do evento. No relatório sobre Moraes, o mesmo diálogo é destacado como evidência da participação do ministro na organização do encontro.

Há uma característica importante nos dois documentos. Eles não são relatórios finais de investigação, não propõem indiciamentos nem solicitam novas diligências. São levantamentos produzidos pela PF a partir de buscas em seu banco de dados e destinados a fornecer informações para o prosseguimento das investigações. As hipóteses neles reunidas, portanto, não são conclusões dos delegados sobre a prática de crimes.

Foi sobre esses dois documentos de natureza semelhante que recaíram tratamentos radicalmente diferentes. Quando decidiu levantar o sigilo do relatório sobre Moraes, Mendonça tinha conhecimento da existência do levantamento anterior, centrado em Toffoli.  O primeiro permaneceu sob sigilo e sem consequência processual. Sobre o segundo, Mendonça determinou à PF que aprofundasse a análise das mensagens, encaminhou o resultado à Procuradoria-Geral da República, levantou seu sigilo e levou o caso para apreciação do plenário do Supremo.

O resultado foi uma assimetria: as informações reunidas pela PF sobre Moraes vieram a público e provocaram uma crise no Supremo; aquelas que diziam respeito a Toffoli permaneceram desconhecidas até agora. A decisão de Mendonça determinou, na prática, qual dos dois ministros seria submetido ao escrutínio público, e quando. 

A crise que agora coloca Moraes e Mendonça em lados opostos, levou ao afastamento de Andrei Rodrigues da PF – decisão depois revertida – e abriu uma disputa sobre os limites da atuação do Supremo começou, em parte, com uma decisão seletiva de um dos ministros.




Segundo o artigo 33 da Lei Orgânica da Magistratura, quando surgem indícios da prática de crime por um magistrado, a autoridade responsável pela investigação deve remeter os autos ao tribunal competente. Foi o que Andrei Rodrigues fez em 9 de fevereiro. Naquela noite, Toffoli divulgou uma nota em que classificou as informações reunidas pela PF como “ilações” e afirmou que a corporação não tinha legitimidade para pedir sua suspeição. O relatório, porém, não fazia esse pedido. Três dias depois, Fachin convocou os ministros do Supremo para discutir o material entregue pela PF.

Os detalhes da reunião foram publicados pelo Poder360, que reproduziu falas literais dos dez ministros presentes, grau de precisão que levantou dentro do tribunal a suspeita de que o encontro tivesse sido gravado. A reportagem também permitiu reconstituir como cada ministro recebeu as descobertas da PF. Cármen Lúcia foi a única a afirmar expressamente que não havia lido o relatório. Cristiano Zanin, por outro lado, demonstrou ter examinado o documento em maior detalhe. Entre as informações sobre Toffoli, disse ter chamado sua atenção a descoberta de que Vorcaro cogitara contratar uma empresa israelense de inteligência. Nada além.

A maior parte dos ministros, porém, concentrou a discussão menos no conteúdo das descobertas do que na maneira como a PF havia chegado até elas. Gilmar Mendes sugeriu que o relatório era uma retaliação. “Eu acho que o que está por trás disso é que o ministro Toffoli tomou algumas decisões ao longo do seu tempo nesse caso Master aqui no STF que contrariaram a Polícia Federal. E a Polícia Federal quis revidar.” 

Zanin questionou a própria extensão do levantamento. Disse ser relator de um processo envolvendo três ministros do Superior Tribunal de Justiça há um ano e meio e jamais ter recebido da PF quantidade comparável de informações. “Isso aqui tudo é nulo”, concluiu. Nunes Marques foi ainda mais taxativo: “Para mim, isso é um nada jurídico.” E acrescentou: “Isso é um absurdo: o juiz lá da comarca do interior passará a ser comandado pelo delegado local se aceitarmos esse tipo de situação.”

André Mendonça também saiu em defesa de Toffoli. Para ele, as mensagens reunidas pela PF não demonstravam proximidade entre o colega e Vorcaro. “Isso não existe. Está aqui claro que não existe: relação íntima em 6 anos só com 6 minutos de conversa? Como disse o ministro Fux, a palavra do ministro Toffoli tem fé pública. Então, isso está descartado.”

Flávio Dino fez a defesa mais veemente de Toffoli. “Essas 200 páginas para mim são um lixo jurídico. Não adianta discutir esse lixo jurídico. A crise hoje é política, presidente [Fachin]”, afirmou. Dino criticava a intenção de Fachin de levar a questão ao plenário no dia seguinte e defendia que o presidente do Supremo resolvesse o impasse internamente. Ao falar das hipóteses que, em sua opinião, justificariam uma arguição contra um integrante da Corte, mencionou apenas crimes de extrema gravidade, como estupro e pedofilia, desde que houvesse provas. E resumiu sua posição: “Em qualquer outro pedido de arguição eu sou STF futebol clube.”

O Poder360 não publicou a fala de Moraes naquela reunião, mas relatou o que ele dissera em um encontro mais reservado pouco antes. Moraes teria antecipado que votaria pela manutenção de Toffoli na relatoria e classificado como “absurdo” o fato de Andrei Rodrigues ter investigado um ministro do Supremo sem autorização. Disse ser “amigo” do diretor-geral da PF, mas sustentou que a corporação havia errado e que, se de fato tivesse havido uma investigação, o material deveria ser anulado. Moraes não reconhecia que, na verdade, havia sido protegido por Andrei Rodrigues. Àquela altura, já era público que o escritório de Viviane Barci de Moraes, mulher do ministro, havia firmado um contrato de 129 milhões de reais com o Banco Master.

Toffoli terminou a reunião com maioria suficiente para permanecer à frente do caso. Apenas Cármen Lúcia e Fachin sinalizaram ser favoráveis ao seu afastamento e à redistribuição da relatoria. Ainda assim, Toffoli decidiu deixar voluntariamente o processo, numa tentativa de conter a pressão sobre a Corte. Os ministros acertaram também a divulgação de uma nota em desagravo ao colega. No texto, manifestaram “apoio pessoal” a Toffoli, afirmaram respeitar sua “dignidade” e reiteraram a “inexistência de suspeição ou impedimento”.

O relatório que provocara a reunião, porém, permaneceu sob sigilo. E as informações nele reunidas não tiveram o mesmo destino que, meses depois, teriam as descobertas da PF sobre Moraes.

Em nota enviada à piauí, a assessoria de Dias Toffoli afirma que “o ministro jamais teve relação de amizade ou intimidade com Daniel Vorcaro”, e que “sua participação no referido evento de Londres se deu a convite do colega de Corte ministro Alexandre de Moraes”.

PIAUI 

*

 

September 8, 2026

The Mysterious and Lonely Final Decade of Yayoi Kusama’s Life

 

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama wearing a fiery red wig and sitting in a wheelchair in a room covered in yellow polka dots. 

The Japanese artist spent the last seven years in isolation and declining health. Still, it was the most prolific chapter of her career.

  

 The last years of Yayoi Kusama’s life were some of her most profitable.

Before her death last month at 97, she had become one of the most coveted artists of our time. One of her abstract paintings sold at auction for $10.5 million in 2022. And under a 2023 partnership deal with Louis Vuitton, the Japanese artist’s designs graced a purse that cost more than $150,000 and a $50,000 surfboard. An unsettling robot version of the artist even appeared in storefront advertisements with the luxury brand.

In April, the gallerist David Zwirner will exhibit a selection of Kusama’s final works in New York.

“We’re so excited about the last decade,” the dealer said. “Arguably, this was the most extraordinary and successful decade of her career.”

It was also the most elusive, as the artist receded from view.

One of Kusama’s last public appearances was in 2017 at the opening of her museum in Tokyo. Longtime friends, curators and collectors said that she stopped receiving most guests in 2019 at the psychiatric hospital where she had lived for decades.

Yet her studio — a small group of assistants meant to carry out her artistic vision — was more prolific than ever, producing dozens of paintings and sculptures with her signature.

Image
A yellow sculpture of a pumpkin covered in black polka dots of varying sizes is displayed in a white-walled room.
One of the artist’s signature pumpkin sculptures, at the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo in 2024.Credit...Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

In 2024, a new pumpkin sculpture on the Yayoi Kusama Museum’s Tokyo rooftop prompted questions. Although it was signed and dated by the artist, it was created at a time when, according to those closest to her, she was mostly bedridden and making paintings with the help of assistants who carried small canvases to her.

It is normal for artists to outsource the fabrication of artworks while still being closely involved in the design process. Artists like Jeff Koons have become famous for their use of studio systems. But could a nonagenarian like Kusama have the capacity to oversee such a large-scale production?

“The last decade or so of Kusama’s life might be described as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a pumpkin,” said Thomas Danziger, a lawyer whose clients have vied for the artist’s works at auction. “Savvy buyers would be wise to ask as many questions as they can, recognizing that they are unlikely to get solid answers.”

Pumpkins were once a symbol of vitality for the artist.

It was a bountiful comfort of Kusama’s childhood in Matsumoto, a Japanese city about 100 miles northwest of Tokyo that was relatively untouched by the devastation of World War II. Despite having eaten pumpkins to the point of nausea in her adolescence, by her own account, the artist maintained an attachment to them into adulthood. She produced enormous, bronze, polka-dot sculptures honoring them.

A surfboard covered in yellow polka dots against a black background.
A Louis Vuitton surfboard covered in the artist’s designs.Credit...via Christie's

Throughout her life, Kusama experienced auditory and visual hallucinations. She also had what she described as an obsessive compulsion to make art on her own terms.

Her newfound fame over the last decade meant that she was overseeing a multimillion-dollar business outsourcing the creation of her pumpkins to fabricators as far away as upstate New York.

“She first creates drawings and maquettes in her studio and her room, followed by production in collaboration with fabricators,” her foundation said in a statement on Sunday. “She personally supervises the production of the works and approves the finished sculptures.”

In 2017, Kusama appeared in a wheelchair and fiery red wig at the museum opening, across from the psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she had lived for nearly four decades. When a reporter asked about the relationship between her history of mental illness and her art, a handler suggested the question was “too sensitive.”

But Kusama insisted on answering, saying that she had a compulsion to keep painting.

“I still see polka dots everywhere,” she said. “Art is everything for me and I have been struggling for art.”

Curators described Kusama as being very involved in organizing exhibitions through her 80s.

“She would change her selection four times,” said Marie Laurberg, the director of the Copenhagen Contemporary art center who organized the 2015 Kusama retrospective at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

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A painting in yellow, black, orange and blue with faces.
A 2021 Kusama painting in acrylic and marker pen called “Look Into My Heart, My Dear.”Credit...Yayoi Kusama, via Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner

Laurberg recalled Kusama as being warm and friendly. When she arrived at the artist’s Tokyo studio for a meeting with Kusama’s assistants, the artist herself appeared.

“She invited me for coffee on a whim,” Laurberg said. “I go downstairs and she is in a painting coat without the wig or anything.”

By 2019, some friends noticed a change.

Ryutaro Takahashi, a psychiatrist and prominent collector who has bought Kusama’s work since the 1990s, had a meeting scheduled with the artist that year.

“She was firing many of her staff, one after another,” said Takahashi, who described Kusama as “paranoid” during this time. “Then she told me: ‘Don’t come anymore.’”

She stopped attending the major, annual exhibitions around the world celebrating her work. Curators and collectors had access to her through the remaining assistants.

The artworks kept coming, including a 2020-21 series of soft sculptures, “Desire for Death,” a set of orange-tipped spikes that look like jagged teeth or a mountain range.

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A sculpture resembling teeth covered in fine, colorful lines.
Kusama’s “Desire for Death B” (2020) is part of a series of soft sculptures.Credit...Yayoi Kusama, via Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner

By 2023, Kusama was no longer living at the psychiatric hospital because it was undergoing construction.

“She stayed at another hospital,” her foundation said, declining to name the institution to protect her privacy.

“She remained actively engaged in making paintings from her hospital room” until July, her foundation explained, adding that some of those acrylic works would be on view at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam for a solo exhibition opening this month.

Haruyo Saimaru, one of Kusama’s relatives and an artist herself, said that “the family members are under pressure by the foundation not to reveal anything” about the artist’s funeral service. Saimaru said it was conducted at a temple under someone else’s name so that the public wouldn’t know it was for Kusama.

The foundation said the funeral was private for close family members and friends, declining to disclose further details.

Kusama’s 2023 collaboration with Louis Vuitton had raised the artist’s profile again, even as longtime fans struggled to understand it. The fashion brand created an animatronic version of Kusama in New York and installed a towering version of the artist over its headquarters in Paris.

Kusama herself appeared in a promo for the collaboration, wearing large sunglasses inside one of the company’s Tokyo locations.

“She is an artist where her image and her persona has been such an integral part of her work,” said Natasha Degen, director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York, who noted that most items in the Louis Vuitton collaboration recycled designs from old paintings. “At the time, people were questioning if she could have possibly signed off on over 450 handbags, shoes and garments.”

Kusama’s foundation said the last interview she conducted was by video in 2023. She spoke with Wakato Onishi, a senior staff writer at The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily, for a series on geniuses. The article said that Kusama continued to paint but could no longer produce large pieces.

“It’s difficult to achieve evaluation in art history unless you keep trying to create good works for about 100 years,” she was quoted as saying. “I hope to create works which would be remembered by history.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES  

September 5, 2026

What Is ‘Narrative Art’? The Lucas Museum Finally Shows Us Its Vision.

 

 

 After several delays, George Lucas’s legacy project is finally ready to open. There’s less “Star Wars” than you might expect.

 Matt Stevens and

It has been almost a decade in the making, but details about the new museum founded by the “Star Wars” creator George Lucas were long as closely guarded as Darth Vader’s true identity.

Among the most important questions: What exactly constitutes a museum of narrative art?

“A museum focused on storytelling in all its forms,” Tracey Bates, the museum’s chief executive, said in a recent interview.

“Narrative art is the universal art of storytelling through images. It’s existed throughout our lifetime,” she added. “Storytelling has always existed. We’re just now a museum that is platforming and showing that.”



After repeated delays and considerable staff turnover, the project is finally ready — as Hollywood says — for its close-up. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, set on 13 acres in Exposition Park in South Los Angeles, will open on Sept. 22 at an estimated cost of more than $1 billion, all of it provided by Lucas himself.

The director, 82, had made clear his intention to get it done during his lifetime. And now he has.

To get the obvious question out of the way — is this just a museum of “Star Wars” stuff? — the answer is that Lucas’s cultural juggernaut of a film franchise makes up only about seven percent of the museum’s gallery space. That said, an enormous Naboo N-1 Starfighter does greet visitors in one of the lobbies. And fans can encounter Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder in the cinema gallery and a statue of Yoda atop a fountain in the gardens.

Its architecture can be a bit intergalactic, and Luke Skywalker is never far, but most of the museum is devoted to art far removed from any “Star Wars” theme.

The rest of the museum’s content is largely 20th-century American art organized into broad categories like “family,” “work” and “sports.” There are Norman Rockwell scenes of everyday life; a Pikachu from Pokémon; art from the world of fantasy (“The Lord of the Rings” to Conan the Barbarian); and an entire gallery of graphic art and comic book images.

Also on display is a strip of “Alley Oop,” a comic about a time-traveling cave man; it’s the first artwork Lucas ever acquired. Lucas so reveres comic strips that the filmmaker once tried to make a version of the comic “Flash Gordon,” explained the senior curator, Ryan Linkof. But someone else got the rights, he said, so Lucas made “Star Wars.”

In the lead-up to the museum’s opening, Lucas and Mellody Hobson, his wife and business partner, have been loath to discuss details of the museum’s contents, and Lucas declined to be interviewed for this article.

But along the way they have made clear their general goals: to emphasize storytelling and to highlight illustration, an area often overlooked — and in their view undervalued — by the art world.

“For thousands of years, narrative art has illustrated our myths — the stories we believe that are not necessarily true, but that give us meaning, purpose and a sense of community,” Hobson said in a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday. “Our goal is to create a museum that celebrates illustrators and the art that shows us who we are.”

Critics have questioned whether the images have a thematic core beyond being fun and accessible. The museum has said, yes, there is, but there is also nothing wrong with being fun and accessible.
ImageThree images of a police figure and a child in a diner. They hang on a gallery wall.
Norman Rockwell’s drawing of an encounter between a police officer and child running away from home, its painted companion and a work by Richard Williams referencing it.
Batman and Frida Kahlo.Credit...Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, CDMX/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Lucas’s phrase for what he hopes to display is “the people’s art,” and in walking the halls, one can see disparate examples of that, such as a painting by Frida Kahlo juxtaposed with a pop culture artifact like Christian Bale’s Batman suit from “The Dark Knight.”

While some of the artists featured at the museum are household names, many of the illustrators and artists are not included in leading institutional collections.

The inaugural exhibitions at the Lucas Museum include more than 1,300 objects installed across 33 galleries that occupy about 100,000 square feet — not gargantuan but in the upper ranks of museums for sheer size. The ground floor sets the tone with a “history of narrative art” starting with a light-box projection of prehistoric paintings from the Altamira cave in northern Spain and a digital reproduction of the Sistine Chapel.

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In a room, gave paintings are projected on the walls. Above is an image of the cosmos. Ahead, there’s a sculpture of a human figure.
The recreation of cave paintings in an exhibit designed to trace the evolution of imagery and narrative back to prehistoric times.

The fourth floor, home to most of the museum’s galleries, includes book illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, several works by Maxfield Parrish and a room filled with manga that has a full, 43-piece comic that reads right to left along a sweeping curved wall.

The fifth floor is devoted to large-scale public art and murals by the likes of the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, the activist painter Judith F. Baca and the French street artist JR.

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A reproduction of a mural by Diego Rivera shows multitudes of people. At center, a bald man appears to operate a machine surrounded by an abstracted version of an atom. Soldiers are top left. Protesters gather top right. Marx and Lenin are in the throngs.
Because much of the art on display is by illustrators, some of the artists are not as well known as others like Diego Rivera, who is represented by a reproduction of one of his murals.Credit...Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, CDMX/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Given the widespread and enduring love of all things “Star Wars,” the museum is likely to become a popular destination, but it has also elicited a robust amount of skepticism. As early as 2017, Christopher Knight, the former art critic for The Los Angeles Times, declared the museum “a terrible idea” with a “dubious artistic mission.”

The Lucas Museum takes pride in being more user-friendly than esoteric — fun as well as serious. Bates said the museum was appealing to a universal love of storytelling in all its forms, and added that the mix of work on display “is what makes us really special.”

“I don’t think we’d ever want to apologize for feeling more accessible,” Bates said. The whole idea, she added, is to “create a lot of art lovers.”

Though initial plans to build it in San Francisco and Chicago were foiled, the Lucas Museum now seems to have the wind at its back in Los Angeles. Momentum is already building around the 2028 Olympics here and the museum’s location in Exposition Park — already home to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California African American Museum, the California Science Center and a Metro stop — is likely to help draw tourists and locals alike.

The 13 acres of landscaped exterior space is its own attraction, dotted with sculptures like this one of Jabba the Hutt and Princess Leia.

Visitors will find museum grounds that feature verdant parks and gardens, designed by Studio-MLA and the landscape architect Mia Lehrer, as well as 10 large outdoor sculptures. One depicts the impressively gelatinous “Star Wars” character Jabba the Hutt being vanquished by the diminutive, if formidable Princess Leia.

In an interview, Lehrer described how her team created meandering pathways and changing topography to surprise visitors as they round each corner. The landscaping is designed to mirror Southern California’s Mediterranean biome in its planting selections. Jacarandas and bougainvilleas — Lucas’s favorites — were a must, she said.

The building itself is also an attraction — a sprawling, spaceshiplike structure designed by Ma Yansong of the architecture studio MAD (with the company Stantec as the architect of record). It features an elliptical oculus and glass elevator tubes suggestive of a futuristic movie.

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Glass-walled elevators.
The building is filled with content, but is also designed to be an experience in itself.

Ma said in an interview that he was inspired by tree canopies and clouds, and that he sought to design a building that would respond to Hobson’s interest in inspiring young people.

“Curiosity,” he said. “Architecture has to attract people to explore.”

The museum joins several other building projects that have raised the city’s cultural profile, namely the $724 million Geffen Galleries, which opened this year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Dataland, a museum highlighting A.I.-generated art; and the Academy Museum dedicated to the movies.

The Lucas Museum’s campus includes a research library; two theaters; and a rooftop restaurant called Skywalker Grill, which offers a burger made with Wagyu beef from Skywalker Ranch, Lucas’s compound in Marin County, Calif.

And then, of course, there is the gift shop, where 25-cent pencils can be sharpened down from “1st Draft” to “FINAL DRAFT” by would-be screenwriters. The collectible hand-painted porcelain cookie jar in the mold of R2-D2 retails for $210.

In addition to galleries, the museum has a library, two theaters and other spaces.

Gift shop proceeds will help generate revenue for the museum, along with admission fees of $25 for adults and membership packages starting at $140.

Such charges have drawn some criticism, but Bates said the museum — which would not disclose its annual operating budget — “has to be self-sustaining” if it wanted to “outlive its founders.”

Still to be seen is whether critics will come to embrace the museum as a professional cultural institution or dismiss it as Lucas’s vanity project. While its former director, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, was hired away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to broaden the Lucas’s scope beyond Lucas, she departed last year in a move that was framed as a resignation.

Lucas installed himself as the head of “content direction” and named Jim Gianopulos, a former movie studio executive and Lucas Museum trustee, as interim chief executive.

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The Lucas Museum, as seen from above, in a landscaped setting. The building resembles a spaceship.
The museum is in an area of Los Angeles, Exposition Park, which is also home to other cultural attractions that will probably help draw visitors.

Jackson-Dumont’s exit was accompanied by several other senior leadership departures — including the chief financial officer, the general counsel, the head of development, the director of exhibitions as well as the heads of information technology, security and education.

Bates stepped in as chief executive in January, having advised the museum as a consultant over the last six years.

She downplayed the staff turnover. Lucas, she said, “has always been the chief curator.” She added that “the planning, the mission, vision and values of this organization have never changed.”

Some of those values are evident in a gallery devoted to illustrations from children’s books. The Cowardly Lion stands in the middle of the room, brave and tall, near drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh and creatures from Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are.”

Bates calls this one of her favorite, most emotional spaces in the museum. It is in the pages of storybooks, she said, where we learn “things aren’t hiding in our cupboards” and where our relationship with art so often begins.

THE NEW YORK TIMES 

Filmmaker Joel Coen Puts His Spin on the Photos of Lee Friedlander

  

Two women in glamorous get-up at a party in 1969, the black-and-white photo is splintered by two posts.

It was a happy fallout of Covid.

During the pandemic shutdown, the filmmaker Joel Coen and his wife, the actress Frances McDormand, hunkered down in their home on the Marin County coast of California. The photography dealer Jeffrey Fraenkel and his husband, Alan Mark, a real-estate consultant, relocated from San Francisco to their weekend house in a neighboring town. The two couples, who knew each other casually, began spending more time together.

One evening, Fraenkel asked if Coen and McDormand were familiar with the work of Lee Friedlander. At 88, Friedlander is one of the greatest living photographers, whose pictures Fraenkel has been exhibiting for more than 40 years.

“I thought Lee was ripe for an outside approach and inviting a filmmaker seemed like the way to go,” Fraenkel said of his matchmaking inspiration. “Anyone who’s seen Joel’s movies knows he has a special eye for images.”

Although the subjects of Friedlander’s black-and-white photographs since the early ’60s have been wide-ranging — public monuments, motel rooms, party scenes, portraits, self-portraits, nudes and landscapes — what unites them is his unerring sense of composition. In his ability to create harmonious wholes out of urban fragments, he is the contemporary heir to Eugène Atget, who memorialized Paris in the early 20th century. Like Atget, too, Friedlander finds unexpected juxtapositions in the reflections in plate-glass windows.

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Two men in glasses looking at a large group of prints by Lee Friedlander. Other hands are in the photograph, pointing at images on the page, but we don’t see those people.
Jeffrey Fraenkel and Joel Coen looking at Lee Friedlander prints.Credit...Lee Friedlander

The witty and carefully crafted movies that Coen has written and directed — most with his brother, Ethan, including “Barton Fink,” “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men”— display a similar flair for revealing the mystery in what might seem at first glance to be ordinary and banal.

Fraenkel’s question about Friedlander landed on fertile ground. “I certainly knew of him, and I think Fran did a little,” Coen said recently, in a joint video interview with McDormand from California. “Jeffrey floated the idea of doing a show of Lee’s photographs. He said it could be whatever you want. ‘Just 10 photographs if you like.’ ”

Coen and McDormand visited the Friedlanders in New City, N.Y., to make sure they were simpatico. The meeting was a great success. “They came here with Jeffrey,” Friedlander recalled. “We were ready for them with food, but they brought food, too. We had a sort of picnic indoors. When Joel and I met, we both thought we might have known each other. We didn’t, but we were so familiar with each other.”

Over the last year, Coen expanded the project into a sequenced book of 70 Friedlander photos, “Framed,” that is the basis for two exhibitions, at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, from May 6 through June 24, and at Luhring Augustine in New York, from May 13 to June 24. Each show will display about 45 photos.

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A photo of a broad street, or highway, that curves around to the left of the photo. In the background is the Memphis Pyramid, and the back of a Yield sign in the foreground meets the pyramid so we see one triangle on top of the other. Barbed wire is on a fence on the left.
Lee Friedlander, “Memphis,” 2003. The landmark Memphis Pyramid touches tips with a Yield sign that is mounted on a slightly off-kilter vertical post. Along with the post’s shadow, the shadow of the photographer can be seen at the bottom right.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
Image
A street scene with cars coming around a corner. Buildings are in the background and the corner has a post that’s tilted to the left, bisecting the photo.
Lee Friedlander, “Tucson, Arizona,” 1970. A post that was once vertical has tilted diagonally, so it resembles a giant arrow shot into the ground.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York

Coen began by leafing through books of Friedlander pictures and decided to arrange the new book to draw attention to Friedlander’s compositional approaches. “Looking through these books and going back and forth, it was a pattern recognition for me — patterns which I know are instinctive but are manifold in everything he does,” he said.

He began with the artist’s simplest formal structures and advanced into greater complexity. “The first thing I noticed was the splitting,” Coen explained. Friedlander repeatedly organizes a picture with a vertical post dividing the frame. “The post, the post,” Coen continued. “Then I see the posts are slightly diagonal, and the affinity between the diagonal post and how car interiors are designed. Then I see how he uses diagonal shadows like the posts. Now I see how he is using television screens like windows. Now I see how he is using light to define the same areas.” As the book unfolds, the themes and variations become evident.

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A street scene in Seattle with four bystanders by a building. One woman is standing holding a baby, while another is looking toward the camera, holding books. The photo is shot from the back seat of a car, the car door is open, creating various angles and bisecting the photo.
Lee Friedlander, “Seattle,” 1967. Putting together the new book, Joel Coen found “an affinity between the diagonal post and how car interiors are designed.” The door and window frames of the car divide the street scene of bystanders.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
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An interior scene, with a television on the left and a mirrored door opening to a bathroom with a toilet seat up on the right. The mirror on the door reflects a window and we see a blurry urban skyline in the distance.
Lee Friedlander, “Nashville,” 1963. “I see how he is using television screens like windows,” Coen said. In both “Nashville” and “Waddy, Kentucky,” a scene outside the window is complemented by another on the TV set.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
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The interior of a wallpapered room. A television set is on the left with a closeup of a man facing the camera; on the wall is a photo of a man's head and shoulders. A window reveals a man leaning over an old tractor (or what looks like a tractor).
Lee Friedlander, “Waddy, Kentucky,” 1969.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York

“Because he’s a filmmaker, he would show me the sequences on an iPad,” McDormand recalled of the way her husband storyboarded the book.

In addition to the book, Coen created for the two gallery shows what he calls a “flip book” — a three-and-a-half-minute video of images arranged in an order that highlights these strategies.

To learn what the artist thinks of Coen’s curatorial approach, I traveled to suburban Rockland County on the west side of the Hudson to pay a call on Friedlander and his wife, Maria Friedlander, driving down a wooded road, past an apple orchard, to the rambling 1947 house faced with brown shingle and stone from a local quarry that they have inhabited for over half a century.

Friedlander said he found Coen’s observations intriguing. “I tend to put posts in,” he remarked. “He says all kinds of nice things that I don’t recognize. Splitting, splintering. Evidently my pictures are that way, but I didn’t think, ‘I want to take a splintering picture.’ If you’ve done the same thing for 60 years, you don’t think of motive very much. I just walk and see something interesting.”

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A view from a bridge of a river, foliage on either side. On the right we can see buildings in the background. The shot is murky and gray; two large cables cut through the center of the photo vertically.
Lee Friedlander, “New York City,” 1973. “The post, the post,” said Coen. “I’ve always been very much of the opinion that the obligation of the person who makes the work is to make the work, and the obligation of the people who view the work is to think about it.”Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
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A street corner where two multi-lane streets come together. A star is embedded in the pavement, suggesting the Hollywood stars. In the foreground, a man leans against a post with a box at the top that says "Fire." The post is for calling the fire department.
Lee Friedlander, “Los Angeles,” 1967.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
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A split image. On the left is a large building with State Bank of Albany spelled backward; it’s a mirror image. On the right a woman is standing on the sidewalk. A trash can near her reads, Keep Albany Clean. Across the street are large buildings.
Lee Friedlander, “Albany, New York,” 1967. Only after printing the negative did Friedlander realize that the left side of the image is a building reflection that merges seamlessly into the directly viewed building on the right.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York

Friedlander works with film. Unlike a digital photographer, an artist who shoots film doesn’t see the images until the film is processed and printed on contact sheets. Photography thrives on accidents; there can be surprises. “In one photograph, the reflection looks like part of the building,” Friedlander said of “Albany, New York, 1967,” a picture that Coen chose for the book. “I didn’t notice until I printed it.”

Friedlander is the most cerebral of photographers, making intricate images marked by divisions, reflections and repetitions; and yet, discussing his work, he insists that none of this is on his mind when he takes the picture. “It’s just a great game,” he said. “As complicated as a picture could get, it’s done in 1/100th of a second — or less.”

When asked about this paradox, Coen said, “I’m extremely sympathetic to Lee’s point of view in how he thinks about his own work. It comes up with any writer, photographer or filmmaker, because you’re always asked to analyze your own process or the obsessions of your own work. I’ve always been very much of the opinion that the obligation of the person who makes the work is to make the work, and the obligation of the people who view the work is to think about it.”

“You’re not living retrospectively,” McDormand interjected. “You’re living alive in the moment, creating something.”

“But when I look at someone else’s work, I take on the mantle of the opposite side of the fence,” Coen continued. “Whether you intended it or not, I’m telling you what I see and what I’m drawn to.”

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A man stands against a wall, he’s wearing a V-neck T-shirt and has glasses hanging around his neck. His eyes are closed, and a square of light illuminates his face and casts a shadow of his head on the wall.
Lee Friedlander, “Tokyo,” 1994. The artist is a master manipulator of shadows, as seen in this self-portrait.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York

A still photographer and a filmmaker have very different aims, Coen said. “I take photos with my iPhone like everybody else, but I was looking at a visual form that I have no connection to. The primary thing in cinematography is a narrative, and everything else is secondary. Often the director of photography will set up a shot that is so beautiful but so deficient from a narrative point of view.” And the shot is scrapped.

Coen said that Friedlander’s photographs are animated with his idiosyncratic wit. “They are extremely cerebral, they are extremely formal,” he explained. “At the same time, they have a sense of humor, a very delicate one. For that reason, they’re not cold. I love the fact that they’re so complicated that way, but he doesn’t talk about them analytically.”

McDormand is drawn to the long, close marriage of the Friedlanders, who were wed in 1958. “I think Jeffrey was interested in us meeting them,” she said. She remarked that for her, this was a story about three married couples. “The six of us, we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do,” she said. She was especially moved by Lee’s portraits of Maria, in particular “Maria, Las Vegas, 1970,” which is also in the new book.

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The photographer’s wife Maria was often his model, as seen in this black and white photo of her partially nude in their bedroom.
Lee Friedlander, “Maria, Las Vegas,” 1970. “There is a tenderness,” Frances McDormand said of this photo. She found the casting of “his shadow across her partially nude body” to be “resonant of their whole relationship.”Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
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A room that leads into other rooms, all spare. The shadows of a man and a woman standing next to each other are in the foreground, illuminated by a rectangle of light.
Lee Friedlander, “Santa Fe,” 2005. Married since 1958, Lee and Maria Friedlander are side by side in the mirrored image at the end of the corridor and in the looming shadows in the foreground.Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York

“There is a tenderness,” she said. “One of the most resonant ones, for both of us, is his shadow across her partially nude body. For me, and then meeting them, that photograph is resonant to their whole relationship.”

Friedlander continues to photograph, and six days a week, he prints from his old negatives in a spacious darkroom he constructed in the basement of his house. “I love working,” he said. The prints he is making now are of the landscapes he photographed 20 years ago in the West — thick tangles of branches, boulders and pine needles.

“I’m still shooting the same subjects when I go out west,” he said. “The more jumble, the better I like them — if they work. I don’t want to repeat Ansel Adams. It wouldn’t be any fun to do that.”

Images like “Albany, New York, 1967,” where a woman stands by a post that divides a row of tall buildings from the mirrored reflection of other tall buildings, or “California, 1970,” with the diagonal struts of Plexiglas pay-phone enclosures interrupting and refracting the city scene, organize urban chaos miraculously. Coen said that as he perused Friedlander’s photographs, he thought at one point, “‘These are impossible compositions. How does it happen that these things that seem to be so impossible are so perfect?’ Thinking more about an artist I admire was the whole motivation.”

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A busy urban corner. At right is a man in a phone half-booth; at left is a rotary phone in a half-booth and much of the photo is shot through its glass, refracting light and images. A woman is in the middle of the photo; we see someone’s legs near her, as if the person is lying on their side. People and street signs and buildings are in the background.
Lee Friedlander, “California,” 1970. A street scene that is jazzily syncopated with diagonal metal frames and plexiglass transparencies and refractions. Credit...Lee Friedlander, via Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
 
THE NEW YORK TIMES