Rachel Cohen, author of “A Chance Meeting”, and of the forthcoming “Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade”, writes about the dual history of art and investment banking over recent centuries: “There is more than a shadow of resemblance between the purchase of the Hirst skull in 2007 and the mortgage-backed-securities debacle that made of Lehman Brothers in the following year one of the great public pictures of vanitas we’ve had. And, when you look further into these intersections, you often find that what is really at stake is a change in the way we feel and understand time.”  (more…)

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Anish Kapoor’s video, “Gangnam for Freedom”, supporting Ai Weiwei’s quest for free speech, relied on major participants such as Southbank Centre director Jude Kelly and writer Hanif Kueishi, with contributions by institutions such as the Guggenheim. “Our film aims to make a serious point about freedom of speech and freedom of expression”, said Kapoor. (more…)

On Jan. 30th, 2013, Christie’s offers the “Rockefeller Madonna,” a devotional panel by Botticelli whose provenance includes the collection of John D. Rockefeller Jr., a family name that has been known to add marketing heft to auctions.  The auction house is catering to new international collectors showing particular interest in 14th – 16th century works. “While [the estimated $5-7 million painting] is one of the most expensive works in the Renaissance sale, it seems like a bargain, when paintings by Warhol and Kline brought more than $40 million apiece at Christie’s last week.” (more…)

Roy Lichtenstein, Oh, Jeff… I love you, too… but.., 1964, courtesy Tate Modern

The Tate Modern is holding a retrospective of work by master of Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein, which consists of 127 works and runs through May 2013. The exhibition, the first major one since the artist’s death in 1997,  is said to attract more visitors than Damien Hirst’s 2012 show that brought people from all over the world through the doors of the Tate.

Lichtenstein was born in 1923 and passed away in 1997; he was considered to be the founder of Pop Art along with other preeminent artists such as Andy Warhol. His signature comic-book-inspired works that are brought to life with Ben-Day dots were the beginning of art based on popular culture. Images adopted from the media were rearranged and juxtaposed with unrelated material to relate to contemporary life.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!  (1963), via Tate Modern

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Stolen artwork is simply difficult to unload. “Nine times out of ten, when individuals commit a robbery like that, it is done by individuals or criminal organisations which have the ability to do a burglary, but they don’t usually have the ability to sell paintings,” says Robert Wittman, founder of the FBI’s art crime team and author of the memoir Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures. (more…)

Brian Donnelly, known as KAWS, discusses his Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon and his history as a toy-maker. The character, “Companion”, is in a retreating pose, hunched and covering its eyes. “I was thinking, God, if I had to sit there all day and have a million people pass me and stare, I’d be mortified”.  (more…)

A massive Antony Gormley sculpture, his largest to date, will go on view at White Cube next week. It is so enormous that visitors enter through one of the sculpture’s feet.  It is a direct response to the space afforded by White Cube’s South Galleries at Bermondsey.  (more…)

Ai Weiwei’s “Gangnam Style” video unwittingly focused attention on two relatively low-profile collectors and museum founders, Jens and Luise Faurschou. They own a major collection of postwar and modern artwork and recently opened a privately funded art museum in Copenhagen, Foundation Faurschou. (more…)

According to Artnet data, Businessweek reports that Damien Hirst works that were purchased during the artist’s commercial peak, between 2005 and 2008, have seen an average negative return of 30% when resold, particularly notable in a year of record auction results.  Sergey Skaterschikov, a Russian investor and business strategist, said that Hirst “degraded his market, almost cannibalized it, by developing this mass production of well-recognized images.” James Kelly, Hirst’s business manager, asserts that auction prices are a “totally misleading” indicator and don’t reflect private primary market sales data.  (more…)

Liam Gillick, Installation View – Rest area racks 1-3, (2011), courtesy Air de Paris

Currently held within Air de Paris are two simultaneous complimentary exhibitions. Liam Gillick is responsible for a series of works entitled Sit in the Machine, which features two contradictory films detailing a glamorized yet banal setting regarding the mechanics of car manufacture. Intertwined with the exhibition is a relaxation area that mimics the workers’ rest areas at the factory. Gillick thus constructs a social act, relying on the spectators’ interactions, creating a nonobjectual relational experience.

Liam Gillick, Installation View, (2012), courtesy Air de Paris

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The former personal secretary to Imelda Marcos has been charged with concealing and selling four Impressionist works, including Claude Monet’s 1899 “Water-Lily Pond” in September 2010 for $32 million after hiding it for two decades.  (more…)

Bernadette Corporation – Still From Get Rid of Yourself (2003), Via Artists Space

Over the past decade and a half, the loosely defined art collective of Bernadette Corporation has moved from underground fashion line and party promoter, to film producer, to editor and publisher of a variety of magazines, books and novels. It is currently based in New York as a collaborative with three principal members, Bernadette Van-Huy, John Kelsey and Antek Walczak. Challenging contemporary creative identities and consumer politics, the group has time and again subverted the traditional practices of art and art exhibition.

Bernadette Corporation – Only She Could Be Other (2011), courtesy Artists Space (more…)

The Republican Study Committee published a memo last week on how to fix copyright law, but on Saturday afternoon the group pulled the memo, stating that it did not have “all facts and viewpoints in hand.” Copyright protections now extend 70 years past the life of the author; for a corporation, 95 years after publication. Critics of the law say that coupled with punitive laws on copyright violation, this policy hinders creativity and innovation. One such copyright lawsuit involved Richard Prince’s appropriation of photos by Patrick Cariou.  (more…)

Rocco Landesman, the former Broadway producer who been the head the National Endowment for the Arts since 2009, announced Tuesday that he was retiring from his post as chairman at the end of the year. The senior deputy chairman, Joan Shigekawa, will take on the role until a permanent successor is nominated by the White House and confirmed by Congress, the endowment said. (more…)

Gallerist Cecilia Jurado of Y Gallery, NY in front of two works by Carlos Motta photo by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved

Latin American week began with the Pinta art fair, which ran from November 15th – 18th, 2012, after which followed auctions at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Co. Several records were broken for Latin American artists, proving that the market is still robust, especially on the high end.

Roberto Matta, Nada 1943 courtesy Sotheby’s sold for $1.82 million (more…)

ICI Executive Director Kate Fowle, Leo Award recipient Dasha Zhukova, and Independent Vision Curatorial Award recipients Nav Haq and Jay Sanders

All photos by C. Daleli for ArtObserved

On Monday, November 19th, 2012, Independent Curators International held its Annual Fall Benefit & Auction. ICI’s Executive Director, Kate Fowle, kicked off the party with a toast to all Honorees, Board of Trustees and supporters of the institution. The intimate Honoree Hour celebrated the recipient of this year’s Leo Award, Dasha Zhukova. Agnes Gund, President Emerita of the Museum of Modern Art and member of the Board of Trustees of the National Council on the Arts presented the award to Zhukova after listing her endless accomplishments are an art world patron. This was followed by acclaimed curator Hans Ulrich Obrist presenting the prestigious Independent Vision Curatorial Award to Jay Sanders and Nav Haq.

Wendi Murdoch (more…)

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art has relocated about 200 works of art into a fortified walk-in safe. The pieces that were moved include the museum’s roughly 100 works by relatives of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The Ashdod Art Museum – Monart Center is protecting their 15 pieces by contemporary Israeli artist Tsibi Geva. These works are in an underground vault that is protected against rocket fire and biological weapons. The Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, however, believes such precautions are unnecessary. Likewise at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the country’s most important museum for cultural property. “It’s business as usual,” commented director James Snyder. (more…)

Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures launched into orbit today from Kazakhstan at at 1:15 pm EST, with liftoff at 1:30 pm EST (US time/date). It may be viewed at: www.echostar.com/launch (more…)

The new Parrish Museum building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is a sleek longhouse-inspired design, almost resembling an ultramodern chicken coop in Southampton. It hosts details such as a 600-foot-long outside wall of seamless concrete with a surface impression of wood grain, and the roof extends dramatically over a courtyard for outdoor events. The museum originally agreed to an $80 million design that was a host of connected buildings that would look like Long Island artist studios, but eventually requested the current iteration, costing just $26 million. (more…)

Annegret Soltau (b. 1946), NY Faces, chirurgische Operationen, 2001-2002, 51 x 51 cm, photo restitching, © Annegret Soltau

A series of paintings by Francis Bacon curated into dialogue with 5 internationally-acclaimed contemporary artists (Swedish Nathalie Djurberg, Romanian Adrian Ghenie, Italian Arcangelo Sassolino, Japanese Chiharu Shiota, and German Annegret Soltau) opened at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS) in Florence, Italy on October 5th, 2012 and will remain on view until the end of January 2013.

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Art by Offenders, “Wasted!,” HMP Channings Wood,  James Wood Silver Award for Oil or Acrylics, all images courtesy of the Koestler Trust

The selection made by British artist Sarah Lucas for Southbank Centre’s annual “Art by Offenders, Secure Patients, and Detainees” exhibition challenges stereotypes and gives a voice to the imprisoned. This display of visual art, film, music, and writing by prisoners, which opened September 20th and will run through November 25th, is presented in a partnership with the Kosteler Trust (the UK’s best-known prison arts charity) and Southbank Centre.

Art By Offenders, “Fun to Do,” HMP Blantyre House, Htein Lin & Vicky Bowman Highly Commended Award for Oil or Acrylic

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A new book about “superflat” art in Japan has been written by sociologist Adrian Favell. He examines “cool Japan,” a methodology of spinning Japanese culture to western audiences, and its effect on the success of artists like Murakami and Nara, as well as the current movement away from superflat in Japanese art. The book is entitled “Before and After Superflat: A Short History of Japanese Contemporary Art 1990-2011″ (more…)

The owner of a foundry used by Jasper Johns has been arrested for trying to sell a fake version of the artist’s sculpture, Flag. Authorities say that Brian Ramnarine created the cast for the piece but did not return the mold, and 20 years later tried to sell a bronze piece created from that mold without John’s knowledge and that he faked a signature.
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