Liubov Popova’s magazine cover design for Questions of Stenography, at SMCA. Via The Guardian.

Greece’s State Museum of Contemporary Art (SMCA) is showing works by “two of the most important artists of the Russian avant-garde,” Aleksandr Rodchenko and Liubov Popova.  The 350 paintings, drawings, constructions, photographs, and essays featured in the exhibition are drawn 15 institutions from around the world, including 60 works which the SMCA donated from the collection of George Costakis.  Showing in the Moni Lazaraston exhibition hall, the exhibition travels to the State Museum from a successful run at London’s Tate Modern, which drew over 102,100 visitors.  After its close at the State Museum on September 20, “Defining Constructivism” will continue its tour of Europe with a move to Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, where it will remain through January 2010.

Related links:
Rodechenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism [SMCA]
Aleksandr Rodchenko on artnet
Liubov Popova on artnet

Aleksandr Rodchenko’s illustration for the Young Guard magazine (1924), at SMCA. Via studio international.

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Ian Peck and Baird Ryan at Art Capital Group. Via The New York Times

Art Capital Group founded in 1999 and based in New York is a company that provides financial and consulting services to art owners in creating liquidity from assets. In other words, Art Capital allows clients to discreetly get loans in using artwork as collateral. Whether it is due to the tender nature of the business that steps into the fields of intellectual property when dealing directly with artists, or the necessity on the company’s side for firm and assertive approach in an economic environment that is nothing short of unstable; Art Capital Group seems to often be caught up in lawsuits with its clients. One of the most prominent photographers Annie Leibovitz has recently become the center of one of those litigious disagreements.

Related Links:
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For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture [The New York Times]
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That Old Master? It’s at the Pawnshop [The New York Times]
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Lender Sues Annie Leibovitz, Seeking Her Homes to Pay $24 Million Debt [The New York Times]
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Leibovitz, Photographer, Sued Over $24 Million Loan [Bloomberg]
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Art Capita Group, Inc. [Business Week]
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Annie Leibovitz pawns rights to all future work [Guardian]

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Annie Leibovitz via Daily News

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September (Ben) (2001) by Elizabeth Peyton, via The Guardian

Now on view at the Whitechapel is “Live Forever” exhibiting Elizabeth Peyton’s portraits of pop culture, celebrities and famed performers. The exhibition is the first European retrospective for the artist including more than 100 works made over the last 15 years.  The exhibit includes portraits of British artists such as David Hockney, Jake Chapman and Angus Fairhurst who committed suicide last year as well as images of Michelle Obama.

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton [Exhibition Page]
Manhattan Rapsodies [The Guardian]
Elizabeth Peyton brings fame and celebrity to the Whitechapel Gallery [The Guardian]
Elizabeth Peyton is a pin-up painter [This is London]
Elizabeth Peyton at the Whitechapel [FT]
Elizabeth Peyton [The Guardian]
Too Cool for Art School [Reuters]

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Dash Snow, Polaroid, Courtesy Peres Projects, Berlin Los Angeles

To commemorate the death of downtown New York artist Dash Snow on July 13, 2009, Deitch Projects has organized an open memorial exhibition at its Grand Street address.  Alerting Snow’s friends and family via email, Deitch Projects asked them to bring in works about Snow or by Snow, to present to the public until August 15, 2009.  These works, which are not identified nor organized in any particular order, occupy one room of the gallery, while the other is kept open for Snow’s friends and admirers to bring additional artworks or texts in his memory during the run of the show.  The exhibit constitutes a portrait of Dash’s multifaceted and ultimately self-destructive personality, by presenting an assortment of the artist’s photographs, drawings and collages, complete with a large recreation of his graffiti tag, “Sacer,” on the exterior of the gallery.

Deitch Projects, 76 Grand Street. Photo by Arrested Motion

Related Links:
Dash Snow – 1981-2009 – A Community Memorial [Deitch Projects]
Images of a Camera-Toting Artist Turn a Gallery Into a Chapel [NY Times]
Terrible End for an Enfant Terrible [NY Times]
Dash Snow Memorial [Arrested Motion]
Dash Snow – Selected Works [Peres Projects]

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