Standing before its balustraded doric portico of Hertford House, you could easily be convinced you’d abandoned the present day for the delicious abundance of the eighteenth century. Ascending the building’s grand staircase, draped in plush ruby velvet, you will find The Wallace Collection's most recent exhibition: Flora Yukhnovich and François Boucher: The Language of the Rococo. It’s here where the ‘present’ you so eagerly left behind at the front door begins to creep its way back into existence: in a setting where History seems to dominate, Yukhnovich’s two large-scale oil paintings assert themselves in the liminal place between the historical and contemporaneous.
Flora Yukhnovich in her London studio, February 2022. Photography courtesy of Eva Herzog/Victoria Miro
Rococo is a style deeply rooted in the pleasures and excesses of the pre-revolutionary ancien regime. American art historian Fiske Kimball traces its sniping etymological origins to the atelier of David, where his student Maurice Quai combined the words rocaille and barocco. Rocaille referred to grottoes adorned with “rocks, shells, scrolls, and falling water in an imaginative, pictorial combination,” while barocco hinted at its “malformed” nature. These elements flourished into what would become the Rococo’s hallmark: an exuberant, asymmetrical display of S-curves, C-curves, shells, batwings, and palmettes - a delicate web of tendrils that evoke the fluidity of free-flowing water.
Of course, Rococo’s excess was not without its critics. Eighteenth-century art critic Charles-Nicolas Cochin, for example, attributed the degeneration of the arts to French goldsmith and architect Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, a prominent designer who famously abandoned classical straight lines in favour of undulating, unpredictable forms. Cochin wrote in 1754 that:
"[Meissonier's style] began to destroy all the straight lines which were the old custom; he turned and had the cornices curved in every way, he surrounded them at the top and bottom, at the front, at the back, gave shapes to all of them, even to the mouldings which seemed the least susceptible to it; he invented contrasts, that is to say he banned symmetry & he no longer made the two sides of the panels similar to each other."
Meissonnier's Oeuvre, 'the Bible of Rococo', 1759
Yukhnovich’s work emerges as a striking dialogue with this legacy, deftly navigating its lavishness while interrogating the historical narratives surrounding it. Drawing upon the same exuberant curves and organic forms that defined this ornate style, Yukhnovich infuses her semi-abstract compositions with a vibrant palette and fluid brushwork, breathing contemporary life into motifs steeped in tradition. Yet rather than simply replicating the Rococo’s visual language, she challenges its implications and subverting conventional ideas of femininity and beauty. As such, Yukhnovich’s art invites viewers to engage with the Rococo not as a relic of the past, but as a dynamic aesthetic that speaks to current themes of identity and perception.
Installation photography courtesy of StudioInternational/Martin Kennedy
Born in 1990, Yukhnovich is known for her intellectual and corporeal approach to painting, intertwining a dizzying Rococo aesthetic with fantastical explorations of modern culture. Her influences are diverse - ranging from eighteenth-century giants like Jean-Honoré Fragonard to the pop culture icons of Barbie and Disney. Her studio floor is littered with endless reference images, forming a carpet of art historical mish-mash. She seamlessly blends these sources into a body of work that is playful yet reflective, defying expectations of “serious” painting while critiquing the very stereotypes her art engages with.
“I thought I had to make serious, important paintings. I felt I was drying up because of that pressure: I wanted to make something playful and fun.”
The current exhibition at the Wallace Collection marks a noteworthy departure from her previous shows. While Yukhnovich has long drawn on Rococo elements, here she engages directly with two of Boucher’s pastoral works, Pastoral with a Couple near a Fountain and Pastoral with a Bagpipe Player, both created in 1749. Yukhnovich’s two new works take centre stage on the landing, replacing the Boucher masterpieces that once adorned its powder-blue walls. Now displayed frameless in the Housekeeper’s Room, the Bouchers are stripped of their traditional adornment, inviting viewers to see them as contemporary objects - subverting the conventional hierarchy between ‘old’ and ‘new’.
From left to right: Flora Yukhnovich, A World of Pure Imagination, 2024, Folies Bergère, 2024
Yukhnovich’s large-scale oils are theatrical in their own right, echoing whispered patterns of the fête galante. A World of Pure Imagination (2024) and Folies Bergère (2024) brim with Rococo charm; their swirling wisps and persuasively playful colours evoking the sensuous excesses of eighteenth-century decorative art.
Yet, Yukhnovich’s work is more than an homage: she uses her medium to interrogate the Rococo’s association with femininity and superficiality, reclaiming these ideas for a contemporary feminist dialogue. Lush pastels and bold pinks, with frothy whites and electric aquamarines, transport the viewer into a fantastical space where scale is distorted - a rosebud may loom large while a bird is rendered small and fleeting. The Marquis de Mirabeau, a French economist of the Physiocratic school, wrote a scathing report on the effects of luxury, denouncing the Rococo as a fall from artistic grandeur to negligible unimportance – a goût moderne of “white, pink, clouds and cupids”. Yukhnovich captures the pastel chaos that Mirabeau was so quick to condemn in 1756, challenging a long-standing interpretation of the Rococo as superficial ‘nothingness’. She creates dreamscapes that feel at once familiar and strange, anchored in historical reference but vibrant with contemporary sensibility.
Standing before her two artworks, it feels as though one has been transported to some grand salon of a Parisian townhouse, rooms adorned with draping tapestries and polished parquet floors, air heavy with perfume and the soft rustle of silk. The sensory nature of her brushstrokes evokes the ludic frivolity of the Rococo, while her colourful abstraction tethers us to modernity. The curator behind this ambitious project - Xavier Bray, Director of the Wallace Collection - has fostered an environment where historical and contemporary voices are in dialogue, rather than opposition. The juxtaposition of Boucher and Yukhnovich encourages spectators to reconsider the Rococo, not as an artefact of excess and decline, but as a living, breathing aesthetic still rich with relevance today.
This exhibition succeeds in reawakening the Rococo’s capacity for both sensual pleasure and intellectual provocation. Yukhnovich’s handling of light, colour, and form demonstrates her deep technical understanding of the medium, pushing it into fresh territory. The playful distortion of proportions - figures that stretch and compress, objects that defy natural scale - becomes a visual metaphor for the fluidity of perception, gender, and history.
Yukhnovich’s art reminds us that the Rococo was never just about superficial ornamentation - it was, and still is, a rich language of excess, fantasy, and defiance. This exhibition is not only a must-see, but revelatory for those eager to see history reincarnated in deliciously playful ways.
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