All photos via Duyanpili. All rights reserved.

Two years ago Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei was asked by Shanghai government officials to build a studio in a grape field outside the city. An entire artists’ complex, worth $1 million, it was meant to attract other important artists and culture to Shanghai. As Ai Weiwei was set to open the space this summer, officials claimed that it in fact did not follow land use regulations, ultimately demolishing the structure Tuesday. Ai is quite skeptical of such an excuse, suspecting that his political activism has much more to do with the situation.

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Banksy, Save or Delete Jungle Book, 2001 (est. £60,000-80,000, realized £78,000), via Bonhams

Tuesday night’s auction of Urban Art at Bonhams in London – the fourth auction of its kind the house has mounted – realized just over £455,000 for 51 of 67 lots sold. Attesting to interest in the artist following the release of his film Exit Through the Gift Shop, ten Banksy lots offered at the sale accounted for approximately half of the evening’s earnings. The top lot was Banksy’s Save or Delete Jungle Book, which sold for £78,000 against presale estimates of £60,000-80,000. The image was created for a poster campaign about deforestation but was never circulated due to copyright issues with Disney.

Shepard Fairey, Peace Goddess on Wood, 2008 (est. £8,000-12,000, realized £27,600), via Bonhams

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Installation image, all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at the Palais de Toyko is Fresh Hell, a group exhibition curated by British-born New York-based artist Adam McEwen.  Shedding a bit of dark humor on the city of Paris, McEwen brings together medieval sculpture and conceptual work from artists long forgotten as well as contemporary artists, pondering just what sort of position and creative endeavors an artist can make in today’s world. The works deal with morbidity, decay, and notions of ‘the end,’ making Death the principle theme.

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Barbara Kruger, Circus (2010). All photos © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2010, Norbert Miguletz

Barbara Kruger’s Circus installation covers the rotunda of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt through January 30. With her unmistakable aesthetic and poignant use of language, Kruger interferes with the traditional manner in which information is transmitted through the museum institution.  Her commitment to dismantling clichés and pervasive stereotypes through the use of monumental text makes her work both politically relevant and visually arresting.

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Daniel Templon and the artist Jonathan Meese at Daniel Templon Gallery all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

Art Observed was on site to meet German artist Jonathan Meese for his opening reception at the Daniel Templon Gallery in Paris. Renowned for his unconventional and at times rebellious behavior in the Berlin art scene, the St. Neutralité exhibition marks the first opening for the artist after a two-year hiatus from gallery shows. Now 40, Meese returns filling two venues of the gallery—the Rue Beaubourg exhibits the artist’s recent paintings, and the Impasse Beaubourg houses an installation of new and old sculptures. Citing Paris as the “City of Love,” Meese chose it as the debut home for his new “lighter,” more humorous works.

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Chuck Close, mustache close-up of Lucas (1987-88), via ShowMedia

Throughout January, artwork by Chuck Close and Kehinde Wiley will travel New York City atop 500 taxi cabs, thanks to art enthusiast and ShowMedia president John Amato. With an estimated value of $100,000, Amato said, “I can do this as my annual holiday gift not just to myself, but to everyone who enjoys seeing the art as it travels around New York City’s streets.” ‘Art Adds’ is the second annual collaboration between ShowMedia and the Art Production Fund, a campaign bringing art to the streets for all to enjoy. The inaugural year featured Alex Katz, Shirin Neshat, and Yoko Ono.

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Kehinde Wiley, The Virgin Martyr St. Cecilia (2008), via ShowMedia

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North Gallery installation view. All photos via Marian Goodman Gallery

Conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner has placed text and curves upon walls and floors in his exhibition Gyroscopically Speaking, showing now at the Marian Goodman Gallery. The gyroscope as an object is problematic and unpresentable as a whole; one thing while it is still, a fascinating phenomenon of physics once spinning. Filling the North and South Galleries and the North Gallery Viewing Room, Weiner explores relationships between language and materials, humans and objects; the artist questions simultaneous realities of society and economics, forcing the viewer to engage an entirely new mentality.

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Taken from the Wind and Bolted to the Ground, (2009)

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Subodh Gupta, Spill, 2007, and Still Steal Steel #1, 2007. All photos via Saatchi Gallery unless otherwise noted

For the first time in France, Tri Postal art space presents 60 works by 28 artists from the collection of London’s Saatchi Gallery, showcasing contemporary Chinese, South Asian, and Middle Eastern artists with works in all media.  Dealer Charles Saatchi has been a pioneer in the acquisition of contemporary Asian Art, aptly naming the exhibition after the ancient trade route between Europe and Asia. Tri Postal is located in Lille, a one hour train ride from Paris.

Zhang Huan, Ash Head No. 1, 2007

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‘The Broad’ rendering, all photos via Los Angeles Times

77 year-old LA based billionaire art collector Eli Broad has unveiled the design for his new museum in downtown Los Angeles. Officially named The Broad Foundation, it will be known as the Broad.  Designed by New Yorked-based architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the museum’s three stories will house Broad’s collection of over 2000 contemporary works, including Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cindy Sherman. The sunny top floor will be known as the ‘gallery’, while the 1st and 2nd floors have been dubbed the ‘vault.’  Estimated at $130 million, completion is scheduled for 2013.

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Barbara Kruger, Past / Present / Future (2010). Via The Citrus Report

Closed since 2003, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has partially reopened with an innovative program of exhibitions, lectures, performances and workshops titled The Temporary Stedelijk. Taking Place is a group show highlighting the museum’s permanent collection, showcasing exciting recent acquisitions and also featuring new site specific work, such as Barbara Kruger‘s Past / Present / Future (2010). Ann Goldstein, recently named director of the Stedelijk and former senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, organized the program after complications prevented the Stedelijk from re-opening as planned in Fall 2010.

Roman Ondak, Measuring the Universe (2007), Via Uapmarker

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Isa Genzken, Mona Isa III (Elefant), 2010. All images via Galerie Chantal Crousel

In her Mona Isa exhibit at the Chantal Crousel, Isa Genzken draws on iconic historical images and common modern objects to create a collection of works that bring a new relevance to both the monumental and the everyday. Taking from the concept of objective abstraction, even in her sculptures, Genzken’s work brings the surface meaning of an image or object into question.

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Hannah Hoch, Roma (1925). Via Focus.de

Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936, currently on at the Guggenheim, is more history lesson than study of art object.  A mix of known artists with the unknown, names like Hannah Hoch, Picasso and the  little remembered Amleto Cataldi (whose third Google result is someone’s Facebook profile) are shown contextualized within this period of political transformation.  Curated by Kenneth E. Silver—author of Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, which is considered an authority on interwar modernism—Chaos and Classicism offers an illustration of how art can just as easily support, as it does challenge, institutional power. Traveling up the Guggenheim’s ramp, the exhibition lays bare the changing sentiment of the period—from a reliance on the order and beauty of Classicism after the horrors of the first world war to fascism’s adoption of those same classical themes for world take over.

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Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mappamondo (Globe), 1966-1968. Via NY Times

Prior to being encased in the metal cage above, Michelangelo Pistoletto‘s solid newspaper Globe was rolled through the streets of Philadelphia as a recreation of the artist’s first ‘walking sculpture.’ Using mirrors, public performance, and sculptures like the newspaper ball, the Italian artist includes his audience as a core function of his work.  Spanning his early years, from 1956-1974, From One to Many at the Philadelphia Museum of Art captures the evolution of Pistoletto’s participatory art with over 100 works, from the Mirroring Paintings, Minus Objects, and Rags, to various footage of Happening-esque enactments by his acting troup Lo Zoo, with a portion also devoted to his all inclusive art-community Citadellarte which he founded in 1998.

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Philippe Parreno, Invisibleboy, 2010. Via Serpentine Gallery

“I’m best known for my film about Zidane, which showed a super-visible body. After making that it seemed a good idea to make films about someone who doesn’t exist, at least not on paper.” In the Guardian, Philippe Parreno is referring to his most recent video, Invisibleboy currently on view at the Serpentine Gallery. The film depicts the imaginary reality of a young illegal alien in New York’s Chinatown, with the creatures that inhabit the boy’s mind scratched onto the film stock.  Along with three other short video pieces, Invisibleboy is part of Parreno’s highly choreographed exhibition at the Serpentine, which, despite their highly disparate content, are conjoined by Parreno’s use of the exhibition space as an experiential medium. From a Thai compound to Robert Kennedy’s funeral ride, Parreno’s work is highly specific and seemingly unrelated, yet his consideration of time and sequence with regard to the viewer’s experience are the central themes in his body of work. The concept of viewer perception also exists within the narrative of much of his work.

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Photo credit Joshua White courtesy of L&M Arts

L&M Arts in Venice Beach presents Willem de Kooning: Figure & Light, a collection of drawings and paintings spanning the artist’s first involvement in the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1950s to the end of his career in the 1980s.  The exhibition is divided into two galleries with the first displaying relatively small-scale works from de Kooning‘s iconic Women series.  The second room showcases the artist’s later abstract paintings realized between 1980 and 1985.

Willem de Kooning Two Women II, c. 1952. Photo credit Joshua White courtesy of L&M Arts

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Roy Lichtenstein, I Know How You Must Feel, Brad!, 1963. Via Albertina

Roy Lichtenstein’s work has long been considered key in defining American pop art, and the three recent exhibitions in New York speak to how much of an audience he can draw in.  The exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum highlights Lichtenstein’s pop art beginnings: 55 large-scale, black-and-white drawings done in the 1960s.  Together on display for the first time, these drawings give some insight on how Lichtenstein developed his style of using Benday dots to simulate commercial reproduction, and his subject matter of appropriated comic strips and advertisements. Organized by curator Isabelle Dervaux, the exhibition will move to The Albertina in Vienna, Austria from January 27 to May 15, 2011.

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