An article in Barron’s this week charts the instability and unpredictability of various materials in contemporary art as a considerable liability towards a work’s valuation and security as an investment.  “A great deal of art being sold today may deteriorate quickly and cause the monetary value to decline – precipitously in some cases,” says Emily MacDonald-Korth, founder of Longevity Art Preservation LLC. (more…)

The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced with four artists – Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell – competing for the £25,000 prize.  The shortlist is notable this year for its strong focus on installation and new media-based works.  “This reflects the mobility of art today, while the prominence of film, performance, and participation reveals an interest in work that adapts according to changing surroundings.” says jury chair and Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis. (more…)

An iconic still life by Vincent Van Gogh, painted only a few years before the end of the artist’s life, is anticipated to sell for $30 to $50 million at Sotheby’s in New York this November, a figure that indicates strong competition for the work.  The piece could very well see fierce bidding to break the artist’s record of $82.5 million, set in 1990.  (more…)

The Telegraph takes a look at the focus on post-war Italian art spanning much of the market in London this, including upcoming auctions focusing on the Arte Povera and related movements, as well as a handful of selling exhibitions.   (more…)

Richard Tuttle is interviewed in the Financial Times this week, in advance of the artist’s new installation commission at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.  “There’s a whole body of my works which starts with the material and then moves to the other sides where the material doesn’t matter,” he writes. (more…)

Walead Beshty, Performances Under Working Conditions (Installation View) via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

Following Petzel Gallery’s open invitation for Walead Beshty to curate its summer group exhibition, the Chelsea space is presenting his first solo show with the gallery, titled Performance Under Working Conditions. Examining modes of work and the kinetic, human element of labor, the exhibition uses minimal, repeated actions to underline the interaction of human and non-human agents.

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Christie’s has added a new fee to its auction sales this month, a 2% performance fee that rewards sales far exceeding pre-sale estimates.  “The purpose is to incentivize and reward high performance that exceeds consignors’ expectations,” says Christie’s head of communications Paddy Feeny.  (more…)

The Guardian visits Tracey Emin in her Spitalfields studio this week, as the artist prepares for an exhibition of new work next month at White Cube.  “Work is good,” she says.  “If I don’t make things, I become ill and depressed. Painting makes me feel like a better human being. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”  (more…)

Eric Fischl is in the New Yorker this week, taking writer Emma Allen on a tour of the Art Southampton fair in Long Island while he captures photographs for the artist’s newest series of paintings depicting the wealth and society of the world’s most prominent art fairs.  “They’re all art fairs,” he says of his work.  “All people in various relationships to each other or to the art, usually ignoring it, sometimes looking at their phones.” (more…)

Painter Chris Ofili is profiled in the New Yorker this week, in advance of the artist’s upcoming retrospective at the New Museum.  “Painting is a kind of pursuit, a hunt,” he says. “I think it’s more interesting when you can corral your subjects, instead of just going right to them. Enjoy and engage with the process—you want to keep going into the unknown, to the point where you don’t think about how long it’s going to take to get there.” (more…)

Camille Henrot, recipient of last year’s Silver Lion in Venice, has been awarded the 2014 Nam June Paik prize.  The artist was selected from the shortlist exhibition at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, and will receive a $32,o00 prize. (more…)

Tomma Abts, Feke (2013), via Art Observed

Currently on view at David Zwirner’s 519 19th Street Space in New York, Tomma Abts is presenting a body of new paintings and drawings, a new entry in her ongoing practice involving flux, change and construction over the course of the compositional process.  Under formal analysis, Abts’s work is rooted in the history of 20th Century abstraction, colorful shapes and lines converging in a studious and well-executed canvas that exploits its own relations to its surrounding space as much as the picture plane itself, but upon closer inspection, the works on view here often offer a much deeper narrative.   (more…)

Gert & Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2014), all images via Maureen Paley

In their second solo exhibition at Maureen Paley, Gert & Uwe Tobias have brought a new selection of their mesmerizing woodcuts and collages. With a collection of fantastical characters printed on dark backgrounds, the woodcuts exemplify the tension between the fanciful and the terrifying present in fairy tales and folklore.  These passed-down stories, as told in countless variations, have a tone that is at once childlike and unsettling, a contrast that the Tobias brothers exploit in their work. (more…)

Allan McCollum, Collection of Thirty-Six Perfect Couples (2005-2014), via Art Observed

Now on view at Petzel Gallery is a solo exhibition of works by Los Angeles-born, New York-based artist Allan McCollum.  Entitled The Shapes Project, the purpose of the series on view was to design a system that would allow for the production of a single, unique shape for every person in the world, using rapid manufacturing technologies to produce infinite variations of shape and form. This exhibition will be McCollum’s sixth solo exhibition at Petzel.

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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island (1976) (P.054), all images courtesy Victoria Miro

Photographer Francesca Woodman is the subject of an exhibition exploring her broad range of innovative techniques at Victoria Miro this month, focusing on a theme of the zigzag as both a geometric and compositional form.

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Maria Bukhtoyarova is the subject of a profile in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the young collector (just over 30), reviews her already impressive collection of works.  “I got interested in art in the late 2000s when I was working for L’Officiel magazine in Moscow,” she writes.  “In 2009, I went to Venice to visit the Biennale. It was an experience that brought me into the art world. I was fascinated by all the art around me and its power.” (more…)

Bloomberg takes a look this week at the trend towards artists painting luxury automobiles, profiling specially commissioned projects by Frank Stella, Jeff Koons, and others, and investigating the economic versus aesthetic values that the work brings up.  “It’s not a given that because it’s a Calder or a Warhol car it’ll automatically get a huge premium — that has not been proven by the market,” says luxury auto insurance head McKeel Hagerty. “An art car raises more questions about the real value of the car than it answers.” (more…)

The Guardian has premiered a trailer for a new, upcoming documentary on the life and work of David Hockney, which will premiere this November.  In the film, Hockney takes director Randall Wright on a tour of his extensive archives and studio, and discusses his years painting in both the UK and United States. (more…)

French street artist JR has announced a collaboration with underground comic book legend Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus.  The book is part of an ongoing project JR has been engaged with on Ellis Island, which the artist has documented on his Instagram over the past few days.  (more…)

Roxy Paine, Checkpoint (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

Roxy Paine makes work that can perhaps only be described as a challenge: large-scale carved wood sculptures capturing the most banal and unimposing scenes of contemporary American life.  Executed with a painstaking hand, the intense verisimilitude of his scenes and objects takes on a surrealist edge, oscillating between stark realism and its material grounding. (more…)

A potential ban on cadmium pigments in the EU has many artists concerned in the quality and consistency of their materials.  The ban, favored by the Swedish government, claims that the cadmium in paints ends up in sewage when artist’s rinse their brushes, and ultimately may wind up spread over fields in various fertilizers, but many seem to disagree.  “[Nickel cadmium] batteries are the real problem, it’s just an easy fix to ban everything with cadmium in it,” says Michael Craine, the managing director of Spectrum Artists’ Paints. “Artists are not rotters; they are not tipping this stuff down the drain, it’s an expensive substance.”  (more…)

A recent US Fifth Circuit Court decision over the estate of collector James A. Elkins Jr has considerable implications for collectors leaving behind works after their death.  The court decision allowed a considerable discount on the the Elkins Family’s collection, which included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Jackson Pollock, as the works were owned partially by the collector’s children, and not wholly by himself.  “Finally we have an applied fractional discount based on the facts,” says art lawyer Joy Berus,  in Newport Beach, Calif. “These are major discounts. It’s a huge affirmation that opens the door to help art owners reduce their estates.” (more…)

Parisian Taxidermy specialist Peyrolle has announced a collaboration with Damien Hirst.  Titled Signification (Hope, Immortality and Death in Paris, Now and Then), the “Cabinet of Curiosities” includes stuffed birds and insects, alongside a selection of cleaning products.  “From the Surrealists to now, artists have come to Deyrolle not only to be inspired, but also to have a relationship with le vivant — the living — and the collapse of the living,” says Deyrolle’s owner Prince Louis Albert de Broglie.  (more…)

Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art has announced that the New York-based DIS Collective will be the curator’s for the 2016 edition of the Berlin Biennale. The collective has made increasingly larger waves among the institutional art world in the past years, drawing rave reviews for its DISown exhibition, as well as its DIS Images Studios project last year.  Previous curators include Klaus Biesenbach, Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni. (more…)