Mark Flood, Available Nasdaq Symbol (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists are prepared to plumb the depths and egoistic state of the art market, image culture and corporate personhood the way Mark Flood has for the past decades.  Time and again, the artist’s occasionally crass, bold-faced techniques and assemblages of mass-media signifiers toys with the spectacle of consumption, mocking both advertisements and political symbolism as bound up in a state of image-consumption.  It’s this dichotomy, writ large against the backdrop of the art market that defines his current show of work at Zach Feuer in New York. (more…)

Jay DeFeo, White Shadow (1972), via Osman Can Yerebakan

Jay DeFeo’s most seminal work in her career took eight years to be completed and weighs more than two thousand pounds. A monumental embodiment of extreme orientation to detail and experimentalism, this work of DeFeo has been the artist’s most recognized part of her oeuvre, but a year after her retrospective at The Whitney, the legacy of Jay DeFeo is growing in New York City, as Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents a body of fifty works spanning the years 1965-89.

Jay DeFeo, Tuxedo Junction (1965-74) via Osman Can Yerebakan (more…)

Ed Ruscha is featured in the Wall Street Journal’s recurring “My Favorite Things” feature, showcasing some of his most treasured artworks and possessions, among them a map of land owned by Gordon Matta-Clark in New York City, the head of a toy baseball player he was given by KAWS, and even a piece of cast-off plumbing pipe.  “I like the feel of corroded copper,” Ruscha says. (more…)

Investor Daniel Loeb has officially been acknowledged as one of Sotheby’s newest board members, alongside two of his own candidates, expanding the auction house’s board to 15 members.  The appointment was part of a May 5th agreement between Sotheby’s and Loeb, and brings in jewelry designer Olivier Reza and Harry J. Wilson to help lead the company.   (more…)

The Andy Warhol Museum has recruited a group of five musicians, including Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, Eleanor Friedberger, Television’s Tom Verlaine, Suicide’s Martin Rev and Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500, to score a selection of never-before seen Warhol films.  The performances will launch on Oct. 24 at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, before opening in New York at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from Nov. 6-8. (more…)

San Francisco real estate mogul Luke Brugnara has been charged with mail fraud following the aborted purchase of $11 million in works by Willem de Kooning, Edgar Degas, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.  Brugnara reportedly purchased the works from a New York dealer with the intent of opening a museum, but never paid for the artworks, claiming he had received them as a gift.  When the dealer accompanied the works to California for delivery, she was astonished to find that the address he had given was not inhabited.  “Brugnara instructed the delivery personnel to leave the crates in his garage. The art dealer had never before seen anyone request art of such value to be placed in a garage,” writes FBI special agent Jeremy Desor. (more…)

MOCA has named scholar, art writer and curator Helen Molesworth as its new Chief Curator.  Molesworth, who will assume the position beginning September 1st, previously worked at ICA/Boston and before that served as the leader of the department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum.  “I love the way she talks about art, thinks about art, writes about art,” he said. “She has an incredible connection with artists and audiences and patrons. She brings an incredible integrity and high level of scholarship and a passion for living artists. And she has a great sense of humor,” said director Philippe Vergne. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal takes an early look inside the New York home of Lousie Bourgeois, set to reopen next year as an art research center, exhibition space, and sculpture garden.  Filled with drawings and notes on the walls, yellowing paper and notes, the space is an indication of Bourgeois close affinity for working from home.  “It’s decrepit splendor,” says her longtime assistant Jerry Gorovoy.  (more…)

As Jeff Koons prepares to open his major retrospective at the Whitney next month, the artist will also be installing Split-Rocker, his cartoonish, monumental flower sculpture at Rockefeller Center on June 25th, two days before the show opens.  “We couldn’t do any topiary at the Whitney, because there wasn’t any space,” Koons told the New York Times. (more…)

Gardar Eide Einarsson and Oscar Tuazon, Liberator I (2014), via Team Gallery

Chez Perv, a group exhibition of work by Oscar Tuazon, Matias Faldbakken and Gardar Eide Einarsson is currently on view through June 1 at the Team Gallery in New York. Concrete slabs and immoveable duffle bags mark this show’s exploration of the hard edges and enormous weight of the physical world, deriving its title from a New York Post cover story on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal. Politically potent, heavily minimalist, and privileging the alienating, this group show brings the stillness of the physical world to the fore.

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Wolfgang Tillmans, Eastern Woodlands Room (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

The 8th edition of the Berlin Biennale has opened its doors, taking up space within the Haus am Waldsee and Museum Dahlem, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as a number of satellite events, projects and talks spread across Berlin, running through the beginning of August.  Curated by Juan Gaitán, the exhibition this year features an explicit look at the nature of images in contemporary society, in their proliferation, reception and interpretation.

Tonel, Commerce (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg; Courtesy Tonel (more…)

MoMA PS1 has announced the line-up for its annual Warm-Up Series of concerts at the Museum.  Held each Sunday, highlights include performances by Pantha du Prince, Total Freedom, Dam Funk and Detroit Techno legend Kevin Saunderson.   (more…)

The Atlantic documents a conservation approach pioneered in the 1980’s by Raymond Lafontaine, using color and lighting theory to hide fading and prevent having to tamper with the surface of the work.  “In human color perception you have a light source, a surface, and a viewer, and the three interact,” says Jens Stenger, a conservation scientist who is using the technique to work on six murals by Mark Rothko at Harvard.  “If you can’t change the surface, you can change the light source to change the color.” (more…)

President François Hollande is set to inaugurate the first Pierre Soulages museum this week, established near the artist’s hometown in the South of France.  “One of the objectives of the museum is to present a variety of works but also a fluid aspect [of Soulages’s canon],” says historian and chief museum curator Benoit Decron says. “I’ll turn to a network of collectors and [will make] acquisitions backed by public and private bodies.”  (more…)

The Guardian reports on a dispute between Marina Abramovic, the Serpentine Gallery and a group of writers, curators and artists who claim that Marina Abramovic’s new performance at the Serpentine fails to acknowledge the work of Mary Ellen Carroll, another artist who has explored concepts of non-action and doing “nothing” as the core of her performance works.  “There are differences,” says art historian David Joselit . “I am not prepared to say Marina Abramović is involved in plagiarising or anything like that.  I just think there should be a conversation.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal notes an increased focus by novelists on the high-priced art market, setting artists and the auction market as the backdrop to their works.  “Art has become much more mainstream, maybe even more than reading,” Robin Desser, editorial director at Alfred A. Knopf, says. “You can’t get into the Degenerate Art show” at the Neue Galerie in New York.” (more…)

Julian Schnabel, Untitled (los Patos Del Buen Retiro II) (1991), via Art Observed

It’s not difficult to make links between young painters currently working today and Julian Schnabel.  The improvisatory, often deconstructive approach to the canvas as such pervades much of the medium’s current practice, and as if by some tacit understanding, few artists can be seen at as many shows of young painters as Schnabel himself, a man who seems invested not only in the next generation of New York artists (his patronage of the BHQF, for example, among others), but also in his impact on them. (more…)

Richard Prince has published a reflection on the state of the art auction market his website this month, noting the dissonance between his work and the astronomical sums paid on the secondary market for them, as well as his own feeling of disconnection from the works as they sell.  “The auctions might think they have something to do with what I make, but they don’t,” he says. “What they have is what they’ve always had… themselves.” (more…)

More than 100 conservators have volunteered to aid in the restoration of the Glasgow School of Art building destroyed by fire late last week, coming from across the UK and abroad to answer a call for help from the school.  “We have people offering to source freezers, drying facilities and secure storage for collections,” Alison Richmond of Conservation Organization Icon adding that some volunteers are familiar with the building and its collection. “We have this small army of expert helpers and are standing by.” (more…)

A group of professors, admitted students and alumni from the Cooper Union have filed a lawsuit against the school’s Board of Trustees, in an attempt to halt the charging of tuition against students next fall, and to force an investigation into how the board has handled the school’s finances over the past several years.  “The Board of Trustees has permitted the school to engage in numerous financial transactions that bear no reasonable relationship to the educational purposes of The Cooper Union,” the lawsuit alleges. (more…)

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has launched a new collection tactic, called “Rapid Response Collecting,” in which the gallery acquires objects and materials as they enter into the public consciousness.  One recent example is a pair of Primark jeans, an emblem of the international trade at the center of the Bangladeshi factory collapse last year.  “Much of the commentary in the media around the Rana Plaza disaster was about international labour laws, building control in Bangladesh and the responsibilities of global corporations and of consumers,” says Corinna Gardner, V&A curator of Rapid Response Collecting.  “But at its heart was a material thing: a pair of jeans that you can buy on any British high street.” (more…)

As Brazil prepares to host the World Cup this summer, Brazilian artists Os Gemeos have created a custom design for the plane used by the Brazilian team, featuring the pair’s signature style.  “Everyone has thought about walking on clouds. And this is only possible with a plane and faces painted on it,” says Otavio, one half of Os Gemeos. (more…)

Charles Saatchi will offer Tracey Emin’s iconic My Bed piece for sale this July at Christie’s in London.  The work, which Saatchi bought for £150,000 in 2000, is estimated to sell between £800,000 and £1.2m, a price which Emin  is “philosophical” about.  “It’s still my bed. I love it,” the artist says. (more…)

Jean-Michel Othoniel, Double Collier Autoporté Or (2014), all images courtesy Galerie Perrotin Hong Kong

On view at Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong is a solo exhibition of sculptures by French contemporary artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. For the works, great hanging sculptures composed of glass that Othoniel made in collaboration with a Feng Shui Master. Seeking to create forms that originate in human life, the works seek to achieve a symbiosis with the space that they inhabit.

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