Taste Test<\/a><\/p>\n\n What is \u201cgood taste\u201d anyway? Allow your favorite actor, musician, celebrity, or comedian to let you in on what they\u2019re watching, reading, and consuming.\n <\/p>\n
\n Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Petra Kleis, Eva Helene Pade, Getty Images, Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n
When Eva Helene Pade gets to work on a painting, she can never really predict what will come about. Though her work is figurative, she doesn\u2019t use models or references. \u201cI have a blurry image in my head and I figure it out as I go along,\u201d she tells The Cut. \u201cI work in these color blobs and then find the characters.\u201d It\u2019s what she imagines sculpting is like. \u201cYou play around with it, you mold it, and you find a face in a splash of paint you made before. Or you find something from the paint underneath \u2014 I paint in many very thin layers \u2014 that you didn\u2019t know was there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pade was born in Odense, a city on an island in the middle of Denmark. She lived in Berlin before returning to Denmark to earn her B.F.A. at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2021. During the pandemic, away from the noise of what other students or her professors thought, Pade started looking at Lucian Freud\u2019s early works, which he painted on wood. \u201cIn the beginning, I would imitate his work, just to study it,\u201d she says. \u201cI was interested in finding out how you could paint figuratively, but not in a Renaissance kind of way or in a photographic way.\u201d She wanted to uncover how her favorite artists make it look effortless. Ultimately, she says, \u201cI had to dig in and find my own way. I think it took on its own weird look.\u201d Pade presented her first solo\u00a0exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac London in 2025 and is now debuting three new paintings at TEFAF New York. She lives and works in Paris.<\/p>\n
Without a strong point of reference, Pade\u2019s pieces have a dreamy, romantic quality to them. She blends figures together so that they become \u201cone multitude of people, something abstract, rather than single portraits in a big painting.\u201d And you never really know where her figures are situated in space. \u201cThere are hints and notions of places that feel familiar because I like to use elements of smoke and light and shade,\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t really interest me if I can tell exactly where they are because, this way, it becomes a bit uncanny and I can have more elements of abstraction in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who are the artists that, to you, make it look effortless?<\/strong>
For me, a big one is Edvard Munch, but there are other artists like Miriam Cahn and Marlene Dumas, painters who cut it to the bone and make it look easy. Some people might think it looks childish, but it\u2019s an incredible skill to get that precision. They can let it look ugly at times, but it still carries a lot of depth. In the ugliness, it\u2019s beautiful. Miriam Cahn\u2019s paintings, for example, are very violent, but they also feel very fresh and unplanned and spontaneous. The colors are very precise, but the way she attacks it is extraordinary.<\/p>\nYou don\u2019t paint clothing on your figures because, as you said, it would very much place them in time. It makes you feel like a stylist and takes the focus away from the subjects. What is your own personal style? Where do you shop?<\/strong>
I like a uniform because I\u2019m lazy and because now, I do so many different events. I feel like, as an artist, you can get away with it. I wear jeans, a leather jacket, and big boots. I shop mostly vintage and mostly online, because I get a bit cheap about it. If I go to a shop, I know I can get it much cheaper online because I know what to search for. There are two shops in Paris I really like. I have a friend, Didier, who has one called Plaisir Palace. It\u2019s a really cool one, a lot of vintage Yves Saint Laurent, insane pieces. And then there\u2019s one called Iregular. It\u2019s close to where I live and it\u2019s just more \u201990s, cool, good leather jackets.<\/p>\nWho would you invite to a dinner party, dead or alive?\u00a0<\/strong>
I\u2019d invite Cate Blanchett because she seems cool, and I\u2019d invite Stefan Zweig, an Austrian writer \u2014 I just finished one of his books. I\u2019d probably invite David Bowie. I feel like he would be great to talk to as a person changing between different art forms. I\u2019d like to invite Marlene Dumas. I want to pick her brain about how she paints. I\u2019d like to invite Virginia Woolf also. She might not be the life of the party, but she would probably be interesting.<\/p>\nI think it could be a bit dangerous and great at the same time. It would probably be in Paris, in some park like Buttes Chaumont. People would just join in and it would become a whole public event.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll add Pina Bausch. Can I invite Bruce Springsteen as well? It would be a horrible party, actually, just me fangirling. The only thing they have in common is that I invited them.<\/p>\n
What is your pre-painting ritual?\u00a0<\/strong>
I turn off my phone for at least an hour and then listen to music that gets me in the mood, that puts me in a certain mind-set that fits the dynamic of the painting that I\u2019d like to get into. For example, I started a new painting today that\u2019s quite inspired \u2014 not the motif, but the feeling of it \u2014 by Pina Bausch\u2019s dance called Caf\u00e9 M\u00fcller. I listened to the music from that to hopefully get into a bit of her mind-set and how she would have tackled it.<\/p>\nDo you have any other rituals? Are you always in the same space when you paint?<\/strong>
I\u2019ve done residencies where I paint outside or in a basement, and in the end, when you have the canvas in front of you, it\u2019s the same mind-set and the same process. I just need to isolate everything that\u2019s on the outside and make sure I\u2019m not disturbed for at least an hour, which is the time I set aside to start the painting and get the colors down. It needs to dry for a couple of days, and then I can start carving out these different figures.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s your comfort rewatch?<\/strong>
I\u2019ve watched Fleabag a lot of times. I think it is amazing. That maybe wins over Sex & the City, which is more sporadic. I like the humor. It\u2019s so tough, but it\u2019s also hilarious and inappropriate. This makes me want to rewatch it again.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s your favorite game to play?<\/strong>
I like Scrabble and I love chess, but no one wants to play chess with me because apparently, I\u2019m a really bad winner \u2014 and a bad loser. With chess.com, I can play online with friends who want to play but are not there. I also used to play Scrabble online with my dad. He\u2019s in Denmark. Now, I play a lot of Wordle and Connections. I\u2019m kind of obsessed. I play Wordle every day. I try to use game apps to not be on socials.<\/p>\nWhat music do you listen to when you\u2019re alone?<\/strong>
At the moment, I\u2019m listening a lot to PJ Harvey. She has an album I didn\u2019t know very well called To Bring You My Love, and it\u2019s so good. She\u2019s a badass. It\u2019s a little bit punk in the attitude, but it\u2019s also kind of soft. And I\u2019m listening to a playlist with the soundtrack of Pina Bausch\u2019s Sweet Mambo, because I saw it recently again here in London, and the soundtrack is amazing.<\/p>\nWhen I exercise, I listen to disc two of Scarface. You have like seven bangers in a row \u2014 Debbie Harry has a song \u2014 and it is the best stuff to work out to while I\u2019m running, but also lifting. I feel like it\u2019s good to be in the mind-set of an \u201980s cartel drug dealer when you work out. That\u2019s the attitude. You have those boys around you in the gym, and I can pretend that they\u2019re my goons.<\/p>\n
Name a book you couldn\u2019t put down.<\/strong>
The most recent one I just finished reading is Stefan Zweig\u2019s The World of Yesterday. It is just a masterpiece. It\u2019s a memoir, written before his suicide. But it\u2019s not just about him; it\u2019s also about the people he meets and his friends, who were big artists and writers at the time. He lived through this strange period of the late 1800s in Vienna, which was the capital of literature and intelligence. And then, of course, the First World War comes. They sort of build themselves up again, but nothing\u2019s the same. And then the Second World War comes, and he has to escape Austria. It says a lot about the politics at the time and the belief system of people at the time, and a whole generation that\u2019s lost. It\u2019s relatable to a lot of things today, in a scary way. I\u2019ve already bought copies for four friends.<\/p>\nDo you collect art? And do you have a favorite piece that you own?<\/strong>
I collect, but it\u2019s mostly things that I swap with my friends or younger artists that I can afford. My favorite piece is by a very good friend of mine, Igor Moritz. He painted a portrait of me playing chess. In truth \u2014 sorry, Igor \u2014 it doesn\u2019t look like me a lot, but it captures an essence. We were at the same residency in the South of France, and it\u2019s a lovely painting that makes me think of him and what a good time we had.<\/p>\nThen, I have a little etching by James Ensor because I can\u2019t afford a James Ensor painting. It was the first thing I bought with the money I earned from a painting in my first show, and it\u2019s signed by him. It\u2019s a self-portrait of him painting alongside his masks, and he also made that into painting. But because I follow all these auctions, there were some etchings by him, and the signature is not at all the same. I think the guy I bought it from maybe signed it himself and scammed me.<\/p>\n
What would your last meal be?\u00a0<\/strong>
I would probably eat a lamb stew. Any kind of stew would be nice, but that\u2019s only if I die in winter. If I die in summer, my last meal would be a shrimp cocktail, and then I\u2019d have strawberries with milk and sugar for dessert. That\u2019s my Danish heritage.<\/p>\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n
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