Anna Betbeze, Oasis 2011 (2011), via Kate Werble Gallery

Luxembourg & Dayan’s “Unpainted Paintings” is an international survey of Modern artworks from 1950 to today. Organized by Alison Gingeras, chief curator of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy, “Unpainted Paintings” runs through May 27^th.  The show asks viewers to contemplate what makes a painting a painting, displaying works that confound conventional definitions of the medium.

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Andy Warhol, Liz #5, 1963 (est. unpublished, realized $26.9 million). All images via Phillipsdepury.com.

The week’s Contemporary art sales ended Thursday night with a fifty lot auction at Phillips de Pury & Co. The sale just missed its low presale estimate of $84.5 million before fees were added. Thirty-eight lots sold for a total of $82.7 million, or $94.8 million with fees. For the third time this week a Warhol canvas was the top lot. Liz #5, rumored to be sold by hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen, sold for $26.9 million against an unpublished presale estimate of $20-30 million. Unlike Warhol’s photo-booth self portrait on offer Wednesday night at Christie’s, Liz #5‘s trip to the auction block was brief. Bidding opened at $18 million and rose to $24 million before contenders called it quits.

Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat, Third Eye, 1985 (est. $2-3 million, realized $7 million)

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Ai Weiwei, Colored Vases (2009), all images by Soraya Gilanni for Art Observed

AO was on site for the preview of Lisson Gallery‘s major survey show of work by Ai Weiwei. Any reading of the exhibition cannot help but be inflected, if not radically transformed, by the knowledge that the artist’s whereabouts and condition are still unknown after being detained by authorities in Beijing on April 3rd, 2011. The exhibition, which will open to the public on May 13th, coincides with the London display of Ai Weiwei’s Animal/Zodiac heads at Somerset House.

Lisson director Greg Hilty and founder Nicholas Logsdail began the day by addressing the absence of the artist directly. They explained that Lisson Gallery had considered canceling the show, but that the “general consensus” among all involved was that it should “absolutely go ahead” despite the fact that Logsdail described the opening day without the presence of the artist as “mortifying.”

Ai Weiwei, Surveillance Camera (2010)

Weiwei often pushes the boundaries of institutions that exhibit his work, therefore the difficulty of putting on a survey show lies in that the nature of his practice is hard to define. The selection is curtailed to video and sculptural works in a kind of redress of the attention attracted by works like his famous Sunflower Seeds and Template.

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Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963-64 (est. $20-30 million, realized $38.4 million). All images via Christies.com.

Christie’s nearly white-glove sale of of Post-War and Contemporary art on Wednesday night brought in more than twice as the equivalent sale at Sotheby’s on Tuesday evening. Sixty-three of sixty-five lots sold for a whopping $301.7 million, giving the sale a sell through rate of 95% by lot and 99% by value. The total beat the high presale estimate of $299 million despite the fact that a Rauschenberg combine estimated to fetch between $12-18 million was withdrawn from the sale. Wednesday night’s results were the best the auction house has seen for a Contemporary evening auction since May 2008 (that sale realized $331 million). Bidding went on for about two hours, approximately fifteen minutes of which was spent on a single lot. Two telephone bidders chased Andy Warhol‘s blue self-portrait, one on the phone with Brett Gorvy of Christie’s and the other with Philippe Segalot, formerly of Christie’s. The audience laughed as bidding escalated in $100,000 increments and cheered each time one contender took a bigger leap ahead. In the end Gorvy’s buyer was triumphant and paid $38.4 million for the four-part piece, which was estimated to fetch between $20-30 million. The sale was a record for a Warhol portrait (self or otherwise) at auction.

Mark Rothko, Untitled No. 17, 1961 (est. $18-22 million, realized $33.7 million)

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Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Aparición), 1991 (est. $600,000-800,000, realized $1.65 million). All images via Sothebys.com.

Tuesday evening’s auction of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s New York brought in $128 million for forty-nine of fifty-eight lots sold. The sale’s estimate of $120.8-171.4 million included two lots that were withdrawn from the sale. Inclusive of the buyer’s premium, the night’s earnings barely passed the low presale estimate (prices realized include the buyer’s premium, estimates do not), and the results stood in stark contrast to Monday night’s sale at Sotheby’s of works from the collection of Allan Stone, which realized $54.8 million against a high estimate of $46.8 million. At the press conference auctioneer Tobias Meyer explained that estimates were “possibly aggressive” and that Sotheby’s had worked with sellers in reevaluating their expectations in response to the market, which in some cases meant lowering the reserve price. The sale’s top two lots – Sixteen Jackies by Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons‘ Pink Panther – both fetched respectable prices despite the fact that they fell short of presale estimates.

Andy Warhol, Sixteen Jackies, 1964 (est. $20-30 million, realized $20.2 million)

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All photographs by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

MONUMENTA is an invitation from the French Ministry for Culture and Communication for an internationally-renowned contemporary artist to create a site-specific work for the Grand Palais in Paris; this year’s invitation went to Indian-born Anish Kapoor. With 13,500 square meters of space, the Palais serves as a magnificent backdrop for artistic interaction. Previous invitations include Anselm Kiefer (2007), Richard Serra (2008) and Christian Boltanski (2010).

Entitled Leviathan, Kapoor’s sculpture is a breathtaking 35 meters high. “My ambition,” the artist shares, “is to create a space within a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais. Visitors will be invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience.”

Although Kapoor was all smiles during the inauguration of the sculpture, he took the publicity as an opportunity to show solidarity for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Kapoor dedicated the sculpture to his incarcerated colleague, and issued a call to museums and galleries of the world to close for a day in protest of Wei Wei’s detention by the Chinese government.

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Walead Beshty, Installation View: PROCESSCOLOR FIELD (2011)   via Regen Projects

Currently at Regen Projects are new color field photographs by Los Angeles based artist, Walead Beshty.  This marks Beshty’s first show at Regen Projects, and it transitions between themes of history, formality and structure.  The gallery is dense with Beshty’s large-scale photographs, which speak to photographic process and its potential to present as sculpture,  environment and painterly object.

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Ryan McGinley, Jake (Fall Foliage) (2011), via Gabriel Rolt

Although it was his pointed and unabashed live action shots of young, fit nudes jumping off cliffs, climbing trees, and running down sand dunes that transformed Ryan McGinley into an a globally recognized artist, the artist’s current exhibition at Gabriel Rolt in Amsterdam, Somewhere Place, showing through May 14^th, reveals a turn towards more cinematic, choreographed, Baroque imagery. The exhibit also marks McGinley’s first foray into color studio photography, and the young nudes that have become characteristic of his work have moved indoors, calling attention to McGinley’s increased use of choreographed settings and postures in his work.

Ryan McGinley’s “Somewhere Place” Installation, via Gabriel Rolt

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Spring Love (2010) by Beatriz Milhazes, via Fondation Beyeler

Currently on view at the Fondation Beyeler is an exhibition featuring work by renowned Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes (b. 1960 Rio de Janeiro). Incorporating basic motifs from the diverse and tropical culture of Brazil, Milhazes’ work also recalls symbolism from the history of Brazilian culture. After major exhibitions including those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Fondation Cartier, Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and the Pinacoteca, São Paulo, this is  the artist’s first exhibition in Switzerland. The solo exhibit will feature four new large-scale paintings revolving around the theme of the four seasons which were commissioned for the show. Also included are a selection of the artist’s colorful collages as well as a mobile and a vibrant floor work.

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Wim Wenders, Open-Air Screen (2007), via Haunch of Venison

Currently on view at Haunch of Venison London are two solo exhibitions, Wim Wenders and Eve Sussman, artists who work in a variety of media and cannot be pigeon-holed as either photographers, filmmakers or video artists. On their own, these dueling solo exhibitions would be worth a visit but together they are enhanced in their coexistence. Wim Wenders, a German director known for such films as Paris Texas (1984), The Wings of Desire (1987), and Buena Vista Social Club (1999) shows a series of photographs depicting landscapes and cityscapes, for the most part completely devoid of human subjects, and Eve Sussman is showing her photographs alongside one of her video projects.

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James Cuno, who resigned this morning from the Art Institute of Chicago to become President/CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Image via ArtDaily

Earlier this morning, James Cuno announced in an email to the staff of the Art Institute of Chicago that he would be leaving his post as the museum’s director to become the President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Cuno, who has been at the helm of the Art Institute for seven years, is an accomplished leader: he has seen the museum through the addition of a new wing and has raised museum attendance by 33 per cent. Previously, Cuno has been director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Harvard University Art Museums, whose budget and staff he doubled in his 12-year reign, Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art, and UCLA’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.

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The Getty Center. Image via Artinfo.

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Jeff Koons, Pink Panther, 1988 (est. $20-30 million), via Sothebys.com

This week Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips de Pury will hold Contemporary art auctions in New York. After an anemic week of Impressionist and Modern art sales, the auction houses hope to broker nearly half a billion dollars of Contemporary art. On Monday Sotheby’s will offer forty-three lots during two parts of a three part sale of the collection of Allan Stone (consisting mostly of works by Wayne Thiebaud and Willem de Kooning), followed by their fifty-nine lot Contemporary art evening sale on Tuesday. The next night Christie’s will offer sixty-six works expected to fetch at least $230 million. The week ends with Phillips de Pury’s fifty-one lot sale that carries an estimate of $85-120 million.

Andy Warhol, Sixteen Jackies, 1964 (est. $20-30 million), via Sothebys.com

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A video projection on the facade of the New Museum on Bowery by Flash:Light – All photos by Ilhan Kim for Art Observed unless noted

The New Museum’s “Festival of Ideas for the New City,” took place from May 4th- 8th, 2011 off the Bowery, in downtown Manhattan. Promoting the ideas of community, diversity, collaboration, dialogue, and change, this effort was carried by several institutions, including universities, grassroots groups, museums, arts oriented spaces, businesses, and the city. The festival, by delivering many conferences, shows, and street performances, created a very unique and somewhat mesmerizing ambiance to the neighborhood, as it was temporarily transformed into an exhilarating forum of expression, where the simultaneous manifestations of different artistic ideals and perspectives, derived into a multitude of individual and collective experiences, for both participants and audiences.

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The Streetfest on Bowery

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Glenn Ligon, Untitled (2009). All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.

Ongoing at the Whitney Museum is Glenn Ligon’s mid-career retrospective, America. Showcasing his work including the well-known text-based paintings of the 1980’s through current day, the exhibition provides a broad perspective into the artist’s continually evolving career.

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Installation view at the Whitney Museum.

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Installation view of “For the Time Being” at Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, (Antony Gormley is at right) All images Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

Antony Gormley with Cumulate (2011)

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Subodh Gupta, Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas. All images courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

Opening tonight at Hauser & Wirth New York is an ascetic new exhibition by Indian artist Subodh Gupta. The artist, who is often referred to as “The Damien Hirst of Delhi,” earned his nickname from a dazzling sculpture of a skull entitled Very Hungry God (2006). He is the leader of a group of Indian artists whom mega-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist frequently heralds as art world game-changers, and his works regularly fetch auction prices over 1 million USD.

In contrast to this glitzy reputation, “A glass of water” is shockingly subdued. The exhibition takes its name from a work in which a metal drinking cup rests atop a table, filled to the brim with fresh water. Its origin and constant replenishment remain a mystery. The tension created– that the cup may overflow at any moment, from a visitor’s step or breath– “serves up a rich metaphor for the almost unbearable tension between luxury and depletion, accumulation and deprivation, acquisition and exhaustion that are the daily diet of exploding international culture,” explains the exhibition statement.

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All images Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

In his third solo exhibition at Air de Paris, Rob Pruitt toys with the idea of “acceptable” art. The self-titled show puts on display two new bodies of work from Pruitt- the first is a series that takes wall art from IKEA and reinvents it as richly layered paintings, and the second a pair of cardboard robots, made from found materials.

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Maurice de Vlaminck, Paysage de Banlieue, 1905 (est. $18-25 million, realized $22.5 million). All images via Christies.com.

The second and final Impressionist and Modern art evening sale in New York this spring was held Wednesday night at Christie’s. The auction realized $156 million, just below the low presale estimate of $162.3 million. Ten of the fifty-seven lots offered failed to find buyers, giving the sale a sell through rate of 82% by lot and 81% by value. The evening progressed much like the Sotheby’s sale last night. There was frenzied interest in a few lots, but otherwise buyers seemed unimpressed by the offerings and hence hesitant to bid. First place was shared by two works – Maurice de Vlaminck‘s Paysage de Banlieue and Monet‘s Les Peupliers both sold for $22.5 million. The Vlaminck was sold by billionaire collector Steven Cohen and just about doubled the artist’s previous auction record set in 1990 for $10.8 million.

Claude Monet, Les Peupliers, 1891 (est. $20-30 million, realized $22.5 million)

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Ai Wei Wei’s Animal/Zodiac Heads, unveiled today outside the Plaza Hotel. All images Ian Hassett for Art Observed.

In conjunction with an exhibition on the third floor of the Arsenal Building, the Pulitzer fountain outside the Plaza Hotel by Central Park is currently the site of Ai Wei Wei’s Animal/Zodiac Heads, as part of a multi-year touring exhibition that will cross the United States.  The exhibition takes place in the wake of international uproar and protests over the disappearance of artist and activist Ai Wei Wei, who was taken into custody by the Chinese government on  April 3rd, 2011 and has since been missing. The unveiling had been moved up to Wednesday from Monday due to the Mayor Bloomberg’s wish to postpone it to attend a news conference responding to the death of Osama bin Laden, which had been announced the night before.

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Founded by the New Museum, the Festival of Ideas for the New City is a collaborative program which embodies the Lower East Side’s re-invention as a cultural hub and alternative to chic Chelsea. During the four-day long effort, innovative ideas, fresh talent and some familiar faces will be showcased with a mix of street festivities, panel discussions and gallery projects.

The changing Lower East Side freflected in an 1984 issue of New York Magazine.

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Alexej von Jawlensky, Frau mit Grunem Facher, 1912 (est. $8-12 million, realized $11.3 million). All images via Sothebys.com.

Tuesday night’s auction of Impressionist and Modern art at Sotheby’s New York, which carried presale estimates of $158.9-229.7 million, realized $170.5 million for forty-four of fifty-nine lots sold. The sale had a sell through rate of 74.6% by lot and 84.8% by volume. In reflecting on the evening at the press conference, Simon Shaw, head of the Impressionist and Modern department at Sotheby’s New York, noted that while bidding was “not euphoric,” there was still solid bidding both in the room and on the telephone. The sale’s top lot – Picasso‘s 1934 portrait of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter – did not reach its low estimate when it sold for $21.4 million (allegedly to an Asian buyer), and several other top lots were bought in. Still, the evening saw spirited bidding for a few works, and several artist records were set.

Paul Gauguin, Jeune Tahitienne, c. 1893 (est. $10-15 million, realized $11.3 million)

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Gallerist Charles Riva with Brancusi Tree (2007). All pictures by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

Art Observed was on site at the opening of Paul McCarthy “Selected Works” at the Charles Riva Collection Thursday, April 28th. The show’s opening fell on the inaugural night of Art Brussels 2011, which ArtInfo calls a “slow burn” – in an interview with Perry Rubenstein, the gallerist compared the show to Art Basel Miami Beach: “The collectors that attend [Art Brussels] are true connoisseurs — they look at work many times and engaged in informed dialogue before acquiring.” The same thoughtful collecting can be seen in Mr. Riva’s selection of 30 of McCarthy’s most seminal works.

Paul McCarthy is a multimedia artist, who is known for his sexually-tinged transgressive work. He fires satirical shots at beloved American icons and myths– of Hollywood, of Manifest Destiny, of Democracy itself.

Installation view, Paul McCarthy “Selected Works” at Charles Riva Collection.

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Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Turning the Seventh Corner (2011) via Ex Berliner

Friday night, April 29th, Tim Noble and Sue Webster opened their new site-specific installation, “Turning the Seventh Corner”, at Blain|Southern‘s Berlin space as part of the city’s Gallery Weekend.  The new installation has been made in conjunction with architect David Adjaye, with whom Noble and Webster have worked previously,  (“Toxic Schizophrenia (Hyper Version)”, (2007), MCA Denver) and also on the home in which the the artists live..  Noble and Webster co-opted the second floor space of the gallery, creating two doorways into a neighboring space, providing an entrance and an exit for their installation.  “Turning the Seventh Corner” is an experiential installation that draws inspiration from the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs and reflects Noble and Webster’s continued interest with shadow and light.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Two Shooters Portrait, (2011), via Blain|Southern.

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Pablo Picasso, Femmes Lisant (Deux Personnages), 1934 (est. $25-35 million), via Sothebys.com

The New York spring sales begin this week as Sotheby’s and Christie’s hold their Impressionist & Modern evening auctions on May 3rd and 4th, respectively. Sotheby’s 59-lot sale is estimated to fetch $158.9-227.9 million, while Christie’s 55-lot sale is expected to bring in at least $160 million. Five works to hit the auction block (one at Sotheby’s and four at Christie’s) carry estimates of $20 million or more. The headlining work at Sotheby’s is a 1932 portrait by Picasso of his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. The painting is similar to the portrait of Walter that led the February Impressionist and Modern sale at Sotheby’s London and sold for £25.4 million (about $42.4 million) against a high estimate of £18 million ($30 million). Femmes Lisant (Deux Personnages) last changed hands in 1981 and is expected to fetch between $25-35 million.

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