Archive for October, 2010

AO Auction Results and news summary: Results at Sotheby's Hong Kong Auctions Indicate Continued Growth of Chinese Market, Record Set for Zhang Xiaogang

Friday, October 8th, 2010


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Zhang Xiaogang, Chapter of a New Century – Birth of the People’s Republic of China II, 1992 (est. 21—23 million HKD, realized 52,180,000 HKD), via Sothebys.com

This week’s auctions at Sotheby’s Hong Kong indicated that the Chinese art market continues to show signs of growth, as both Contemporary Art sales easily passed the earnings of the equivalent sales in 2008 and 2009. Monday featured back to back auctions. First, the 20th Century Chinese Art sale realized 137,313,750HKD (est. 130 million HKD) with 29 of 38 lots sold. The afternoon Contemporary Asian sale realized 205,896,250  HKD, well above the presale estimate of 150 million HKD.

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Go See- New York: Roy Lichtenstein “Mostly Men” at Leo Castelli Gallery through October 30, 2010

Thursday, October 7th, 2010


Roy Lichtenstein, Ivan Karp, 1961. Image copyright Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

As Roberta Smith recently described in the New York Times, “Autumn in New York is the perfect time for an accidental festival of the work of Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.” Leo Castelli Gallery‘s contribution to this apparently serendipitous trilogy of current exhibitions is “Mostly Men;” an exploration of the artist’s representations of both males and maleness. Paintings, drawings, and sculpture spanning Lichtenstein’s entire working career are brought together in a show which both underscores and confronts the iconic status of women and girls in his body of work.


Roy Lichtenstein, Alan Kaprow, 1961. Image copyright Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

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Go See- New York: "Miró: The Dutch Interiors" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 17, 2011

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010


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Joan Miró, Dutch Interior I, 1928. Image via The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.

Currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is “Miró: The Dutch Interiors,” an exhibition featuring three surrealist works and the two seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings that inspired them. Joan Miró first encountered the domestic scenes of Jan Steen and Hendrick Sorgh when he visited the Rijksmuseum during a 1928 trip to Amsterdam. The impact of these works on the Catalan artist resulted in The Dutch Interiors: a series of three paintings in which Miró re-envisions the Old Master works as abstract compositions, nearly four-hundred years after their original production. The exhibition, which debuted at the Rijksmuseum earlier this year, is the first occasion on which Miró’s reinterpretations of these scenes have been displayed with the works upon which they are based.


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Hendrick Sorgh, The Lute Player, 1660. Image via the Rijksmuseum.

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AO News Summary: Versailles Denies Rumors That Contemporary Art will move venues in reaction to Murakami Controversy

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010


Flower Matango, Takashi Murakami (2010) via Chateau de Versailles–>

Despite reports that the palace would not feature contemporary art in the royal apartments in future years, directors at Versailles have denied this and other rumors that the decision was a response to controversy over the current Takashi Murakami exhibition in that space. Initially, an article in The Art Newspaper indicated that Jean-Jacques Aillagon, President of Château de Versailles, had elected to use other venues on the palace grounds in the future. Spokesmen from Versailles shortly after responded to correct the story, noting that while contemporary works will be shown in the palace gardens in 2011, nothing else has been decided beyond that time. The source added that there is not reason to believe that shows by living artists will not return to the indoor space again.

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Go See – New York: Guillermo Kuitca: Paintings 2008-2010 & Le Sacre at Sperone Westwater September 22nd through November 6th, 2010

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010


Exterior View of Sperone Westwater, 257 Bowery, NYC, image courtesy of Dezeen.

Sperone Westwater opened the doors of its new gallery space on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010. A retrospective of Guillermo Kuitca’s work was chosen as the Bowery location’s inaugural show. The gallery has a longstanding relationship with the Argentinean artist, whose work is inspired by the study of architecture, theater, and cartography. This is his eighth solo show at Sperone Westwater. “Guillermo Kuitca: Paintings 2008-2010 & Le Sacre 1992” consists of recent paintings, which developed from his famous 2007 series with which he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennale, and the important 1992 installation Le Sacre.

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Go See – Los Angeles: Paul McCarthy ‘Three Sculptures’ at L & M Arts through November 6, 2010

Monday, October 4th, 2010


Paul McCarthy, Ship of Fools, Ship Adrift, 2010. All images via L & M Arts.

L & M Arts is currently celebrating the inauguration of their Los Angeles branch with ‘Three Sculptures;’ an exhibition of new work by transgressive sculptor, filmmaker, and performance artist Paul McCarthy. Three large-scale pieces in differing mediums are installed throughout the gallery’s well-received new space, which consists of two adjacent buildings and an outdoor garden. The property was transformed from a disused power station and (literally) a pile of bricks, by local architect Kulapat Yantrasast, with gallery co-founder Robert Mnuchin personally designing the garden landscape. The works on view in this important exhibition reflect the artist’s continued exploration of certain themes and motifs which have pervaded his work for nearly twenty years.


Paul McCarthy, Ship of Fools, Ship Adrift, 2010.

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Go See – New York: John McCracken’s ‘New Works in Bronze and Steel’ at David Zwirner through October 23, 2010

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010


John McCracken, New Works in Bronze and Steel, image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner

David Zwirner is currently presenting a new body of work by Californian artist John McCracken. McCracken first gained international recognition with his monochromatic geometries placed between flat surfaces and three-dimensional objects. In the present exhibition, he addresses the gallery space as a whole, allowing its architecture and light to participate fully in the installation. In the first room, three bronze planks lean against the wall, in an apparent departure from the materiality of his previous works in fiberglass and resin, while continuing to work in his signature format – the narrow, rectangular, monochromatic panel. Their shiny, reflective surfaces introduce the exhibition’s key motifs, inserting them into a dialogue, both formally and conceptually, with the four free-standing stainless-steel sculptures in the adjacent room: Star, Infinite, Dimension and Electron.

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Go See – New York (With Video): Yoshitomo Nara "Nobody's Fool" at the Asia Society through January 2, 2011

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010


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Yoshitomo Nara, No Hopeless, 2007

The current retrospective of Japanese Neo-Pop artist Yoshitomo Nara at the Asia Society is his first in New York, showcasing over one hundred works in a variety of mediums–including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, installations, poems, and drawings–all with the artist’s signature kowa kawaii, or “creepy-cute” aesthetic. Before the visitor enters the exhibition, there is an outdoor installation of Nara’s sculpture White Ghost, on view at Park Avenue and 67th and 70th streets. The sculptures are identical, and face each other across three blocks, acting as komainu, or protective guardians of entrances. The sculptures display a combination of slightly-sinister features with the aesthetic of friendly cartoons, a strategy repeated throughout the many works in the exhibition. Watch the AO Onsite video of White Ghost below:

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AO Guest Editorial (With Video): Collective Show at Participant Inc., September 15 through September 26, 2010

Friday, October 1st, 2010


Collective Show opening reception at Participant, Inc., September 19, 2010.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, New York witnessed a group of particularly daring and passionate artists, institutions, and commercial galleries emerge as sites of discourse about the production and exhibition of art, film, music, performance, and theater. Exit Art, the Filmmaker’s Cinématèque and Jonas Mekas, Paula Cooper Gallery, P.S.1 and Alana Heiss, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery, George Maciunas and the Fluxus group, the Wooster Group, and many others, devised brilliant strategies for funding, producing, and displaying art in a difficult moment in New York’s history, when the real estate climate was arguably even more hostile than it is today. The contributions of these innovators were profound and historic, and deserve to be acknowledged in the context of our current cultural predicament.

Over the subsequent forty years, a divide has developed between the heirs of these original non-profit spaces, those organizations who are able to exist and exhibit work based solely on donations, and the commercial gallery sector; corporate entities which, in theory, fund their operations through sales of the artworks they show. Any group that hopes to be successfully established within this economic system must adhere by its basic tenant: that one chooses to be either an institution or a gallery.

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