Archive for August, 2012

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Friday, August 31st, 2012

Campbell’s Soup will unveil a special edition of Andy Warhol labels on their condensed tomato soup starting this Sunday. The 1.2 million cans, which will be sold at Target, will include famous quotes such as “In the future, everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes” on each of the four color schemes. Surprisingly, the soup company initially considered taking legal action when Warhol began to use their likeness, but started to embrace his paintings when by 1964, it was clear that they had become a phenomenon.

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Friday, August 31st, 2012

Although previously believed that Edvard Munch died childless, a possible granddaughter, Janet Weber, has now come forward, saying that she believes she is related to the famous Norwegian artist. Her grandmother, Eva Mudocci, was a violinist who Munch created a lithograph of in 1903, and, despite the fact that she was with her partner, Bella Edwards, for 50 years, she allegedly gave birth to twins in 1908 who did not know of their father.

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Washington, DC: Barbara Kruger: “Belief + Doubt” at The Hirshorn Museum Through August 27, 2015

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012


Barbara Kruger – Belief + Doubt (2012), Hirshorn Museum

Descending the stairs into the basement of the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, DC, visitors are greeted with a towering series of sharp, incisive phrases: “Belief + Doubt = Sanity,” “Forget Every Thing,” “Plenty Should Be Enough,” all spelled out on the walls and floors in red, black, and white.  These are the words of media artist and provocateur Barbara Kruger, who rose to prominence with her sharp critiques of consumer culture.

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London – Olafur Eliasson’s “Little Sun” at The Tate Modern through September 23, 2012

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012


Olafur Eliasson – Little Sun (2012), The Tate Modern

As part of the London 2012 Festival, the Tate Modern is hosting a special exhibition in collaboration with artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen.  Spotlighting the duo’s new creation, Little Sun aims to bring solar-powered lighting to parts of the world with no electricity.

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New York – John Chamberlain: Sculptures in the plaza of the Seagram Building, presented by Gagosian Gallery, through November 16th, 2012

Monday, August 27th, 2012


John Chamberlain displayed in the Seagram Bulding’s Plaza, all photos by Maya Steward

In the mid-1970’s, John Chamberlain took a little-known detour from his practice of employing automobile scrap-metal in his large-scale sculptures. Though still working within the same medium, he did so on a domestic level, manipulating household aluminum foil to craft sculptures fractions the size of his well-known work. Thirty years later, Chamberlain recreated these diminutive pieces, vitalizing their erratic biomorphic forms on a magnificent scale in industrial aluminum.  Four of these totems are currently on view in the Seagram Building’s Park Avenue Plaza.

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Sunday, August 26th, 2012

Cecily Brown, Glenn Brown, and Luc Tuymans have been announced as featured speakers in the inaugural Frieze Masters Talks, an addition to the fair this year. The program will bring together artists, directors, and curators to discuss how contemporary artists engage with art past and present. Jasper Sharp, responsible for programming the talks said, “I look forward not only to learn how each artist in their own way approaches, draws on or rejects historical work, but also to discover and reconsider specific works from their chosen collections with a different eye.”

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Sunday, August 26th, 2012

Will Gompertz, writer, editor, and a director at the Tate, has created a new timeline for Modern Art, using the map of the London Tube as a guide. Gompertz focuses on how Duchamp’s Fountain changed the course of art history forever.

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Sunday, August 26th, 2012

The Soli Brug Gallery, based in Norway, lost a Rembrandt etching in the Norwegian postal system after using regular mail instead of paying for a courier or insurance. The 1658 etching, “Lieven Willemsz, van Coppenol, Writing-Master,” which the gallery had just purchased, was worth up to $8,600.

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London: Ryan Gander: “The Fallout of Living” at Lisson Gallery Through August 25th

Saturday, August 25th, 2012


Ryan Gander – The Fallout of Living (Gallery View), Lisson Gallery

The work of Ryan Gander is an exercise in polysemy.  The British sculptor continually explores concepts of loose association and interaction in his work, combining disparate elements to form complex relational narratives. Working in a diverse range of media that includes found objects, plexiglass, wood and marble, his pieces blend intimate symbolism with common artifacts, creating pieces rich in interpretive significance on any number of planes.

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Saturday, August 25th, 2012

Talking Heads frontman and cycling advocate, David Byrne, has designed a set of alphabetically-inspired bike racks that are now installed outside the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A special “David Byrne alphabet” was developed due to the fact that normal rack elements do not allow for the creation of all letters. The racks currently spell out “pink crown” and “micro lip,” and BAM states that they “will reach out via social media to its audience and local community to solicit suggestions for additional letters and words to be used for the ever evolving installation.”

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Saturday, August 25th, 2012

A plan to erect a statue of “1984” author George Orwell in front of BBC’s new Broadcasting House has been shot down by Mark Thompson, the company’s director general. Though Orwell worked as a journalist for BBC during the second World War, Thompson stated that the author is too left-wing a figure for the BBC to honor. The George Orwell Memorial Trust has raised more than £60,000 for the endeavor, and is now in talks with the city of Westminster in hopes to erect the statue close by.

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London: Julian Opie at Lisson Gallery Through August 25th, 2012

Saturday, August 25th, 2012


Julian Opie – (Installation View), Lisson Gallery

Billed as “the largest single display of his practice to date,” Lisson Gallery is currently exhibiting a broad selection of works from British multi-media artist Julian Opie.   Bending the artist’s fascinations with traditional portraiture and painting through his own aesthetic lens, the show continues Opie’s explorations of modern visual language and its relation to art history.


Julian Opie – (Gallery View), Lisson Gallery

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London: Antony Gormley: “Still Standing” at White Cube Hoxton Through September 15th, 2012

Thursday, August 23rd, 2012


Antony Gormley – Still Standing Installation View, White Cube Gallery

Coming off a a major exhibition of work in Sao Paulo, Antony Gormley returns to the White Cube in Hoxton with a selection of works from the past two years, continuing his explorations into the displacement of human space through architectural practice.


Antony Gormley – State V (2011), White Cube Gallery

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Salzburg: Georg Baselitz at Thaddaeus Ropac through August 30, 2012

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

Georg Baselitz, Stunde der Nachtigall (2012). All images via Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

A new series of paintings by Georg Baselitz is on view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg through August 30. In Das Negativ, Baselitz paints from photographic negatives, resulting in a necessarily dark palette, with subjects obscured in their reversed portrayals– a step beyond the artist’s usual practice of painting his figures upside down. Though essentially painted from life, Baselitz subverts any realistic elements with his intense gentural abstraction, and tenebrous palette.

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Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

Beyoncé travels to the remote West Texas art town of Marfa.

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Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

The Hirschhorn Museum was closed temporarily after a security guard’s apparent suicide. The man was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the lower level of the security guard’s locker room. Patrons were immediately evacuated, but had no exposure to the shooting scene.

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Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

Rob Pruitt’s chrome statue of Andy Warhol, which has been in Union Square since March of last year, will be traveling to Texas where it will be displayed in front of the Contemporary Art Museum Houston beginning next month, through the end of the year.

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London – Metamorphosis 2012: Titian with Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross, Mark Wallinger at The National Gallery through September 23rd

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012


Titian, Diana and Actaeon (1556-1559)

A monumental figure of the Italian Renaissance, Titian was considered  a master of color and figure whose vibrant works and striking subject matter cemented his reputation as the chief talent of the Venetian School of the 16th century.  His series the Poesies represents this skill through a series of depictions of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, pushing the evocative nature of visual storytelling to its limits on canvas.  Now, several of these works are being publicly shown again at the National Gallery in London.


Mark Wallinger, Diana (2012)

Yet another monumental event The National Gallery is showing the Death of ActaeonDiana and Actaeon (both based on the myth of Actaeon the hunter, who stumbled upon the bathing Goddess Diana, and was transformed into a stag, doomed to a savage death at the hands of his own hounds) , and the recently acquired Diana and Callisto.  In addition, the museum has sought to tie the past with the present, commissioning a number of new works by Chris Ofili, Conrad Showcross and Mark Wallinger to be shown in conjunction with Titian’s classic pieces.

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East Hampton, NY – Nate Lowman, Dan Colen, Rob Pruitt and Piotr Urlanksi: “Holy Crap” at The Fireplace Project through September 17th, 2012

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012


Rob Pruitt – Holy Crap (2012), The Fireplace Project

Continuing in their six year mission to bring noteworthy contemporary art to the Hamptons, The Fireplace Project has opened its doors to New York gallerist and curator Michele Maccarone.   Focusing on a crop of New Yorkers, Maccarone has included works by Nate Lowman, Piotr Urlanski, Rob Pruitt and Dan Colen.  Titled “Holy Crap,” the show examines each artist’s practice of using scrap, detritus and trash in their work.


Dan Colen – Hard Day’s Night (2012), The Fireplace Project

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Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

Two famous Spanish directors, Carlos Saura and Fernando Colomo, will release two films featuring different aspects of Picasso’s life. One will focus on the painting of Guernica, and the other will explore how Picasso became wrapped up in the theft of the Mona Lisa back in 1911. Carlos Saura’s Guernica film will star Antonio Banderas as Picasso and Gwyneth Paltrow as Dora Maar, Picasso’s mistress.

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AO On Site – Far Rockaway: Creative Time Artist Sandcastle Competition, Friday August 18th, 2012

Monday, August 20th, 2012

Creative Time Artist Sandcastle Competition, all photos by Maya Steward.
On Friday, August 17th, Creative Time, held its Inaugural Artist Sand Castle Competition. Artists Tom Sachs, Dustin Yellin, Ryan McNamara, Snarkitecture, Jen Catron & Paul Outlaw, Jen DeNike, Ricci Albenda, Marie Lorenz, Mary Mattingly, Kenya (Robinson), Shelter Serra, Laura Wasserson & Amit Greenberg, and William Lamson competed to create castles, with sand, water, and any amenities they could make use of beach-side.
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Monday, August 20th, 2012

Artist Wes Lang has designed the cover for the the Grateful Dead’s newest box set, Spring 1990, a famous year of concerts for the iconic rock band.

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Sunday, August 19th, 2012

Henry Wyndham, chairman of Sotheby’s UK, was in a grouse hunting accident in Scotland where he was shot in the arm, throat, and face, sustaining 52 lead pellet wounds overall.  Wyndham is expected to fully recover.  Wyndham closed the most expensive work at auction, a Giacometti, in 2010. ‘Henry was very lucky – if he had not been wearing glasses he would have been blinded.’

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Sunday, August 19th, 2012

In “I was Jeff Koons’s Studio Serf” John Powers talks about his time working for Jeff Koons on the Celebration Series, as a studio assistant in 1995, casting light on the system behind production top works of contemporary art at auction. “The goal was to hand-fashion a flat, seamless surface that appeared to have been manufactured by machine, which meant there could be no visible brush strokes, no blending, no mistakes.”

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