FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 2026
La Belle et La Bête: 812 Royal Gallery and Chloë Cassens present a group exhibition exploring beauty, duality,
and the enduring legacy of Jean Cocteau
Opening during the New Orleans French Film Festival, the exhibition includes works by Shirley Yang Crutchfield, Laine Lovick, Gordon Massman, Tess Riehlmann, Garland Robinette, and Michael Azgour
Artwork: Garland Robinette
New Orleans, LA – 812 Royal Gallery, in partnership with the New Orleans French Film Festival and cultural collaborator Chloë Cassens, presents La Belle et La Bête, a group exhibition exploring contrasts: beauty and beast, urban and rural, opulent and minimal, animal and human. The exhibition will debut with an opening reception on Friday, March 20th, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.
Opening in conjunction with the New Orleans French Film Festival, La Belle et La Bête draws thematic inspiration from its title, borrowed from the 1946 film by Jean Cocteau, which marks its 80th anniversary this year. The exhibition is co-curated with Chloë Cassens, the representative of the Severin Wunderman Collection, the world’s largest collection of Cocteau’s artworks, and the granddaughter of Severin Wunderman, the founder of Gucci Timepieces. Her unique perspective brings a deeply personal dialogue and scholarly understanding of Cocteau’s legacy to the exhibition.
La Belle et La Bête features works by Shirley Yang Crutchfield, Laine Lovick, Gordon Massman, Tess Riehlmann, Garland Robinette, and Michael Azgour. In parallel with Cocteau’s poetic ethos, the exhibition encourages viewers to ponder not only on the beauties that lie in extremity but the gray areas in between. Together, the artists explore duality and transformation, echoing the themes that run through Cocteau’s titular film and the broader cultural mythology it has inspired for generations, most notably Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991).
Shirley Yang Crutchfield leans into the beauty of opulence, combining traditional 14th-century Italian gilding methods with contemporary subjects to create portraits of women that shine with beauty, grit, and strength. Laine Lovick’s atmospheric landscapes merge figures with architectural minimalism, where beauty emerges from forms that feel both serene and beastly. Gordon Massman’s thickly layered oil paintings explore the psychological interior, uncovering moments of beauty within the darker depths of the human psyche. Tess Riehlmann presents flora as figures, emphasizing the beauty of the natural world while reflecting on humanity’s more destructive, beastly relationship with it. Garland Robinette juxtaposes vibrant, explosive palettes with gentle, melancholic figures, searching for beauty within emotional tension. Michael Azgour’s paintings fragment memory, capturing emotionally charged moments that reveal the fragile beauty hidden within distortions.
Through these varied practices, La Belle et La Bête reflects on the power of contrast, suggesting that beauty and beastliness are not opposites, but intertwined forces that shape how we see ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
Details
La Belle et La Bête
Opening reception: Friday, March 20th, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Opening: March 20, 2026
Location: 812 Royal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70116
About 812 Royal Gallery
812 Royal Gallery is a contemporary fine art gallery nestled in the heart of the historic French Quarter that reflects the cultural depth and creative energy of New Orleans while presenting artists from around the world. The gallery features a carefully curated selection of original paintings, works on paper, and sculpture by accomplished artists. With an emphasis on whimsical, colorful, and intelligent yet emotionally resonant work, the curation represents a wide range of styles and perspectives that speak to both tradition and contemporary life.
812 Royal Gallery’s curatorial approach is rooted in a close understanding of each artist’s practice and personal narrative. By highlighting story, creative process, and cultural context, the gallery invites viewers to engage with art beyond aesthetics alone.
About Chloë Cassens
Chloë Cassens is the representative of the Severin Wunderman collection, the largest in the world of works by the artist Jean Cocteau. Her perspective on Cocteau is singular as she is Wunderman’s granddaughter. An in-demand expert and scholar of Cocteau, she has spoken to audiences at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice; L’Alliance in New York City; the British Film Institute in London; the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles; and many more. Chloë has been featured in Le Monde and the Observer, and the New York Times has called her “The Little Scorpion of the French Riviera.” Her writing has appeared in periodicals such as A Rabbit’s Foot, 7Hollywood, and S&M Magazine.
Chloë was born in Los Angeles and raised between L.A., Switzerland, and France. She received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Barnard College. She lives in Los Angeles and Paris with her dachshund, Louis.
You can follow her at @chloecassens on Instagram. You can subscribe to Sacred Monster at www.sacred-monster.com.
Sacred Monster, Vol I is available to purchase at https://www.chloecassens.com/; Skylight Books in Los Angeles; and Librairie 1909 in Paris.
812 Royal Gallery Artist Bios
Shirley Yang Crutchfield is a Chicago-based artist whose gold-leafed works draw on art history, fashion, contemporary heroines and her own entrepreneurial journey. She uses traditional 14th-century Italian gilding methods to create portraits of women that shine both literally and symbolically with beauty, grit, and timeless strength. Her work is influenced by Byzantine art, Renaissance, Baroque and contemporary aesthetics, fashion, and the portrayal of strong female figures. Shirley has exhibited at galleries internationally, including Sun Valley Contemporary (Sun Valley), Dacia Gallery (New York), Chicago Fine Art Salon (Chicago), Echo Park Art (Los Angeles), and Las Laguna Art Gallery (Laguna Beach), and her work has won several international awards.
Laine Lovick is a New Orleans–based artist whose work spans atmospheric landscapes, architectural abstractions, and gestural studies of the human figure. She studied Studio Art at the LSU School of Design, where she developed a deep interest in interpreting form through movement and simplified, expressive mark-making. Her work draws on influences from architectural minimalism, classical figure study, and contemporary explorations of emotional presence. Laine’s practice merges structure and intuition to create pieces that explore resilience, identity, and the quiet narratives held within the human form. Her use of repurposed materials ties her practice to minimalism, pairing raw surfaces with raw media such as charcoal and conté. This approach distills the human form to its essentials, emphasizing immediacy and the integrity of the gesture.
Gordon Massman is a self-taught painter and poet based in Rockport, MA. Massman’s subjects, while usually psychologically distressed, are offset by a subtle sense of humor, either on the canvas itself or in witty titles. Parodying his own angst and that of the human race with poetic sincerity, Massman’s paintings are shameless confessions of the human psyche, unfolded in graphic, chaotic detail. Massman studied literature and creative writing at the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He taught writing and literature at The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, MA, and is the published author of five poetry volumes, having composed thousands of poems over a span of forty-five years. Massman has exhibited in the United States, and his work is in the collection of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.
Michael Azgour creates bold, geometric abstractions that balance precision with expressive mark-making. His practice merges calculated realism with layered pattern and repetition, resulting in compositions that feel both controlled and emotionally charged. In recent years, his work has increasingly examined the omnipresence of photography in modern life and the way digital imagery reshapes personal perception. Azgour’s paintings reflect our contemporary relationship with images, where snapshots, filters, and video fragments influence memory and identity. Areas of pigment dissolve into pixel-like structures, blurs, and distortions that echo the altered portraits and curated feeds of the digital world. Through fractured compositions and shifting atmospheres, he encourages viewers to question authenticity and reconsider how technology shapes what we believe to be real.
Azgour earned his M.F.A. in Studio Painting from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He has also studied at the University of California, San Diego, Stanford University Continuing Studies, and the University of British Columbia. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, Poland, and Hungary. His paintings are held in the collections of the Than Mor Art Museum in Hungary, Lionsgate Entertainment in Los Angeles, Hotel Union Square and the Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation in San Francisco, and Aviation Capital Group in Newport Beach.
Tess Riehlmann is a New Orleans based artist whose work is inspired by the unique and whimsical architecture of the city. Most days the artist rides around on her bike collecting ideas for her pieces. Through these rides her appreciation and awe of the city continues to grow as well as influence her. With a background in interior decorative painting and restoration, usually in residential spaces, the artist is able to observe the historical significance of these structures as well as the effect the outside world has on them every day. Beyond the tinkering and reconfiguring that humanity has inflicted on many of these buildings over the years, the impact the environment has had is inseparable. The ever engulfing flora and the rising waterlines are a constant reminder that no matter how large and beautiful our homes may be, nature will always be bigger and more beautiful. Riehlmann attempts to portray this in her works by playing with size and scale demonstrating our minuteness with massive botanicals and shrunken landmarks.
Garland Robinette was born in Texas and raised in the bayous of south Louisiana, the adopted son of an oil-rig foreman and his wife. While most of the boys and men around him spent their time hunting and fishing, he preferred drawing portraits of friends and playing the piano. The Vietnam War introduced him to a new kind of resilience, one that shaped but never diminished his natural sensitivity. He returned home with two Purple Hearts and, while battling PTSD, took a job as a janitor at a local radio station. When given a chance to speak on air, his broadcasting talent quickly became apparent, launching a lifelong career in the public eye.
Throughout his life, Robinette never stopped creating art. He began with drawing and gradually expanded into other mediums as his reputation as an artist grew. One of his earliest major commissions was the official papal portrait of Pope John Paul II during the pontiff’s visit to New Orleans.
Robinette studied at the John McCrady School of Art in the French Quarter and also performed at Le Petit Théâtre. He later enrolled at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Ausoklis Ozols. He developed close friendships with fellow artists Henry Casselli and Rolland Golden, whom he credits as major influences. From Casselli, he learned to communicate emotion through his work, and from Golden, he gained an appreciation for color, perspective, and creative experimentation. He also regularly attended life drawing sessions with the spirited Pone Aliquid Group, where he painted alongside Dell Weller and other local figurative artists.
Today, Garland Robinette has come full circle, returning to his home state of Texas. He and his wife Nancy live and work in Georgetown, where they run their art studio together.