Madelon Vriesendorp’s Skyscrapers Copulate at Sir John Soane’s Museum

Madelon Vriesendorp’s paintings of skyscrapers copulating have landed in London, and they are doing something quietly subversive at Sir John Soane’s Museum. The exhibition Madelon Vriesendorp: Mind Games pairs Vriesendorp’s surreal erotic cityscapes with the neoclassical collections of the man who built the museum, a pairing that turns out to be unexpectedly funny.

The show brings together more than 50 works from Vriesendorp’s career, including her best-known painting, “Flagrant Délit” (1975). That piece shows two Manhattan skyscrapers caught in a post-coital moment by a spotlight atop the RCA Building. It is delightfully absurd, and it is also the cover image for Rem Koolhaas’s book Delirious New York (1978).

The RCA Building Moment

“Flagrant Délit” belongs to a series of paintings that explore the psychological and sexual aspects of contemporary architecture. Several of those works are on view, along with a 2026 cover commissioned by the New York Review of Architecture. The painting’s influence runs deep.

Koolhaas chose the image for his book’s cover, calling it a “retroactive manifesto.” That title sums up what Vriesendorp’s work does: it takes familiar buildings and makes them strange, erotic, and a little bit deranged.

Soane’s Grand Tour

Sir John Soane was born nearly two centuries before Vriesendorp, and he shares some of her habits. He was an architect who loved collecting, and he had a penchant for mischief. The exhibition draws attention to the parallels between the two.

Soane received a travel stipend as an architectural student at the Royal Academy in 1778. It was custom for upper-class British men to embark on a Grand Tour of Europe. Soane followed the custom, traveling through Italy for two years and bringing back drawings, paintings, sculptures, and antiquities. Those objects formed the beginnings of his house-and-office-turned-museum.

A Collection of Bad Taste

Vriesendorp and Koolhaas moved to New York in 1972, first to Ithaca and then to New York City. There, Vriesendorp “discovered bad taste in a big way” and began collecting objects seriously. Her collection is decidedly more diverse and proletarian than Soane’s.

Where Soane collected antiquities and neoclassical treasures, Vriesendorp collected small toys, figurines, models, postcards, and everyday objects. Her full collection numbers in the thousands. The exhibition includes a handful of postcards with an architectural focus, but the whole collection encompasses categories like Luna Parks, lighthouses, bus terminals, penitentiaries, airplanes, disasters, and babies.

Vriesendorp called it simply “Americana.” The contrast is Soane’s neoclassical reverence being replaced with a postmodern embrace of the banal, the camp, and the kitsch; the Enlightenment regard for knowledge is traded for a critical examination of the dominant culture.

The Exhibition’s Quiet Rebuke

The pairing is not a clash so much as a gentle joke. Vriesendorp’s work is displayed alongside drawings of Soane’s own projects and architectural drawings by his teacher George Dance. The juxtaposition is quietly playful, a rebuke to the museum’s neoclassical sensibility.

The show celebrates shared connections between the two artists while offering that quiet, sly rebuttal. It is a smart curatorial move, one that lets the work speak for itself while drawing attention to the contrast between reverence and wit.

What the Show Proves

The exhibition proves that Vriesendorp’s work has staying power. “Flagrant Délit” has been an icon of the contemporary urban imagination for decades, and the 2026 cover commission extends the painting’s reach.

The show also demonstrates that Vriesendorp’s way of seeing has influenced architects and artists. Her approach to architecture — treating buildings as psychological and sexual subjects — is central to her practice.

Key facts:
– More than 50 works on view
– “Flagrant Délit” painted in 1975
– Book cover used for Koolhaas’s Delirious New York (1978)
– 2026 cover commissioned by the New York Review of Architecture
– Vriesendorp’s collection numbers in the thousands

Comparison of collections:

The exhibition is a reminder that great art can be playful without losing its gravity. Vriesendorp’s skyscrapers copulating are absurd, but they are also deeply felt. They capture something about the way cities feel — erotic, tense, full of hidden life.

Mind Games is a quietly brilliant show. It pairs two artists who share a love of collecting and a willingness to be mischievous. The result is a museum experience that rewards close looking and a good laugh.

art retrospective · Delirious New York · Madelon Vriesendorp · Sir John Soane · skyscraper art