AO Art Observed™

Catherine Opie, Cathy (bed self-portrait) (1987). All Images via Stephen Friedman Gallery

San Francisco-based photographer and LGBT activist Catherine Opie showcases portrait and landscape photographs in her fourth solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery. Although the Girlfriends portraits have never been exhibited before, they chronicle almost 30 years of the artist’s social network, whereas Twelve Miles to the Horizon: Sunrises and Sunsets documents the sunrises and sunsets of an 11-day journey on a Hanjin cargo ship, which crossed from Korea to California via the Pacific Ocean in 2009. The exhibition’s opening in November was offset by Opie’s conversation with video artist and activist Emma Hedditch. The conversation also marked Hedditch’s latest film debut of Same Difference, which addresses children of same-sex partnerships as a response to Proposition 8.

Stephen Friedman Gallery installation view, featuring Twelve Miles to the Horizon Sunrises and Sunsets series (2011)

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JR, The Wrinkles of the City, Los Angeles 2010 (2011). All images courtesy of Galerie Perrotin.

Urban artist and 2011 TED prize recipient JR, who eschews the title “street artist,” comes to Galerie Perrotin in Paris with Encrages, his first major solo exhibition. In addition to new works, the show includes several previously seen plastered on city walls worldwide—those of Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, Shanghai, and Los Angeles, among others. “After displaying his work in the biggest museum of the world, the walls of the cities, JR faces the walls of the gallery,” states the exhibition’s press release. The artist also transformed the gallery itself, covering the entrance with a two-story strained and staring eyeball, framed by wiry eyebrows and leathery skin.

Outside view of Galerie Perrotin, Paris

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The Modern Painters End of Year Slideshow of 2011′s 100 Artists to Watch Next Year, installment 1 of 5 [AO Newslink]

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Cecily Brown, The Green, Green Grass of Home (2010). All Images via Gagosian Gallery.

Gagosian Gallery in Rome is currently exhibiting a series of paintings by New York-based, London-born artist Cecily Brown. The exhibit examines the human experience, captured in lavish colors, radical abstractions, and voluptuous forms. Brown brings a rich history of painting to her work,  as she channels everything from the sensuality of Rubens to the expressionism of Willem de Kooning.

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Art Info’s 2011 Most Important Art World Women which includes Qatar’s Sheikha Al-Mayassa Bint Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Fake Kardashians, Marina Abramovic, and Shala Monroque among others [AO Newslink]

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Ryan McGinley profiled in the Telegraph UK, “My photographs are a celebration of the fun and the beautiful. They are of a world that doesn’t exist, a fantasy. The life I wish I was living.”[AO Newslink]

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All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

The work of Daniel Buren has, for over 40 years, sought to explore the relationship of art and space, using his trademark striped painting technique as a method to emphasize the engagement between art, exhibition space and the viewer.  His current show One Thing To Another, Situated Works at the Lisson Gallery in London, continues this dialogue, exhibiting a number of brightly-colored works that incorporate Buren’s technique into new mediums.

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Vasily Kandinsky, Painting With White Border (2008)

Several rooms at The Guggenheim are devoted to Vasily Kandinsky’s works this season. The artist’s personal renaissance—an abandoned legal career, a relocation from Moscow to Munich—yielded iterations of nascent abstractionism that in turn contributed to a rebirth for the artistic community, cementing his place among the eminent artists and thinkers of the early 20th century.

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Trailer released for the documentary film ‘Ai Weiwei Never Sorry’ [AO Newslink]

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First incoming artistic director Alex Poots appointed the Park Avenue Amory this week, continuing to revamp its ‘stuffy’ former image [AO Newslink]

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Candida Höfer, Fundacao Bienal de Sao Paulo I (2005). All Images via Kukje Gallery.

German architectural photographer Candida Höfer‘s third solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery showcases works from 2005, 2008, 2009, and 2010, and most prominently highlights 12 photos from the 2009 series of the Prussian-style Neues Museum Berlin, a 1999 UNESCO World Heritage Site. Höfer took these photographs when the space officially reopened to the public in 2009, following renovations that began in 1997 to restore and repair World War II and Cold War damages, after the building had been abandoned for sixty years. While the building’s original designs from 1841–1859 were restored, the architects maintained evidence of war damage to preserve its history.

Candida Höfer, Neues Museum Berlin VIII (2009)

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American sculptor of crushed steel John Chamberlain (born 1927) has passed away [AO Newslink]

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2012 Whitney Biennial artists list released, which includes Kai Althoff, Wu Tsang, Vincent Gallo and Werner Herzog [AO Newslink]

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‪‬ Almost 50% of the New Delhi 4th annual India Art Fair (formerly India Art Summit) comes from Western Galleries, including White Cube, Hauser & Wirth, Paul Kasmin and Galleria Continua. [AO Newslink]

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Eva Rothschild, Blackout (2007) All images courtesy of 303 Gallery.

Eva Rothschild‘s latest exhibition is her second at 303 Gallery, titled The Heart of a Thousand Petalled Lotus. The main white room is peppered with matte black objects and looming sculptures, focusing on the form of the line and simplistic silhouettes of shape. Crudely structured objects are precisely wrapped and woven with red and white, while a series of totem pole-like columns huddle together. Also included in the show are brighter, more psychedelic paintings, a distinct difference from her sharply calm sculptures.

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‪‬ Artwork of Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst outperforms S&P 500 in 2011, with new sales records set by Roy Lichtenstein and Gerhard Richter among others [AO Newslink]

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‪‬ Forbes publishes its ’30 Under 30′ in Art and Design, which includes artists Aurel Schmidt and JR as well as dealer Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld [AO Newslink]

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Leonardo da Vinci, St. Jerome (circa 1482). Image via the Vatican Museum.

The National Gallery‘s Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan brings together the most comprehensive display of surviving paintings and drawings by the artist to date, as only a small number of da Vinci’s works remain accounted for. While da Vinci’s interests included painting and sculpture, anatomy, engineering, and music, the National Gallery defines the scope of the show to drawings and paintings dated primarily within the 1480s and 1490s—the period in which da Vinci was the court painter to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza.

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani: Lady with an Ermine (1489–1490). Image via the Czartoryski Museum.

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Pablo Picasso, Studio with Plaster Head (1925).  © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Modern Antiquity at the J. Paul Getty Museum displays the works of four iconic Modern Art masters who combined ancient objects with 20th-century aesthetics to create what are now seminal artworks. From Picasso’s post-cubist womanly forms to Picabia’s “transparencies,” one can experience the relation of these modern works to their classic counterparts in the setting of the Getty Museum, famous for its antiquities collection. Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, and Picabia each uniquely found inspiration in the antique classical objects in museums that they frequented. Despite the fact these ancient objects belonged to other times and cultures, these artists felt a contemporary affinity towards them as they made up part of their everyday life. This major exhibition focuses on the works these four artists made between 1905-1935.

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Lichtenstein, Landscapes in the Chinese Style, installation view. All images via Gagosian Gallery.

Most recognized for his 1960s output of super-sized pulpy comic book prints and cartoon imagery explosions, Roy Lichtenstein‘s work continued to span an additional 30 years, in which he explored a number of styles and motifs that he is not commonly associated with. The current show at the Gagosian in Hong Kong seeks to exhibit some of Lichtenstein’s lesser-known works and, in particular, a number of pieces that re-interpret the style of Chinese landscape paintings.

Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape With Scholar’s Rock (1996)

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‪‬BP Oil £10m controversial sponsorship of four British museums to continue, Tate director stating, “The fact that they had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them.” [AO Newslink]

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John Baldessari – The First $100,000 I Ever Made (2011) Traffic View

In 1934, the United States government initiated a cash bailout of its Federal Reserve banks, sending out 42,000 $100,000 bills bearing the likeness of former President Woodrow Wilson.  These bills were used to guarantee the gold reserves still on hold in these banks, effectively supporting their investments on the verge of a total banking collapse.  This bit of fiscal lore is the inspiration behind a new installation by John Baldessari at the Highline Park in New York City.  The First $100,000 I EverMade hangs above 10th Avenue traffic, bringing historical context to the forefront of the current fiscal malaise.

The Original $100,000 Bill

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Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animal/Zodiac Heads (2010). All Images Courtesy of Fitz & Co. for Paul Kasmin Gallery.

Ai Weiwei‘s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold is the opening exhibition for Paul Kasmin‘s new Chelsea Gallery space at 515 West 27th Street in New York, the former Bungalow 8 space. The opening also included a book launch by Ai Weiwei on November 17th, with a 222-page publication named for the showcase. As the name indicates, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold features all twelve of the ancient Chinese Zodiac’s animal heads: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. The gold heads are Ai Weiwei’s interpretation of an original Zodiac bronze set designed for the 18th century imperial retreat ‘Old Summer Palace’ of Emperor Qianlong, located west of Beijing, which were originally installed to spew water as a functioning clock fountain in the Haiyantang (“Hall of the Calm Sea”) at Yuanmingyuan (“The Garden of Perfect Brightness.”) The gold heads on view at Paul Kasmin are not the artist’s only interpretation of the Old Summer Palace Zodiac—a larger bronze set is on a global, multi-year tour, currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through February 2012 (previously covered by AO).

Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animal Zodiac Heads – Rat (2010)

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Carsten Höller, Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes. Image via Enel Contemporanea.

Well-known Belgian artist Carsten Höller is the recipient of the 2011 Enel Contemporanea Award. Now in its fifth year, the Enel Contemporanea is sponsored by the Italian power company Enel, also sponsor to the 54^th Venice Biennale. In an effort to explore the connections between energy, a lifeline for contemporary society, and current art production, Enel annually commissions an original work that takes on themes around power and energy. Höller, oft associated with what Nicolas Bourriaud coined as Relational Aesthetics in the 1990s, contributed Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes, now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (MACRO). Selected by a committee of curators from around the world, past projects have included The Butterfly House by Dutch duo Bik Van der Pol (2010), an open-air installation on Tiber Island by US artist Doug Aitken (2009), and a lunar eclipse by Canadian artist Angela Bulloch above the Arc Pacis (2007).

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