Global contemporary art events and news observed from New York City. Suggestion? Email us.
NEWS

Jail for Spanish Forger Who Attempted Sale of 15 Fake Works

February 21st, 2023

A Spanish court has sentenced an art collector to prison for selling a set of fake works, including a series of forged works attributed to Edvard Munch and Roy Lichtenstein.
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The Guardian Interviews Former Subjects of Painter Alice Neel

February 21st, 2023

The Guardian has a piece this week on what it was like to be painted by Alice Neel. “One day Alice said she wanted to paint me and to bring some things I could wear, so I packed a little suitcase and had various costumes,” says artist and sex activist Annie Sprinkle. “I’d just had my labia pierced and I was showing it off, and she really wanted to see that. She picked a leather outfit and I put a feather in my hair.”
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Alice Walton’s Art Bridges Foundation Behind $4.5 Million Robert Colescott Buy

February 21st, 2023

Alice Walton’s Art Bridges Foundation is apparently behind the $4.5 million purchase of a Robert Colescott at Bonhams this month. “This work in particular presents a hopeful and powerful message, and we are pleased that it resonated so strongly with individuals and institutions alike,” says Ralph Taylor, Bonhams’s global head for postwar and contemporary art.
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REFERENCE LIBRARY

Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney
image via IndieWire
b. 1967
Lives and works in:

New York, NY

Represented by:

Gladstone Gallery

Education includes:

Yale BA, New Haven, CT

Barney is a contemporary artist who works in several mediums including film, sculpture, photography, drawing and performance art. His compositions are often overly decadent, and even fantastical. The involve a mysterious symbolic system that alludes to associative dream states as described by Freud, offering a living and photographed quality, as opposed to a painted or surreal.

Cremaster 3

Cremaster 3, image via ArtRage


His works have been exhibited around the globe and has gained much attention thanks to his “Cremaster” film series. He is featured in the permanent collections of the Guggemheim, MOMA New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and several others.
Many of his pieces incorporate a performance aspect, including his 2006 “Drawing Restraint 13: The Instrument of Surrender” in which the artist
dressed like General Douglas MacArthur and walked into a vat of petroleum jelly.
He lives with his partner, Icelandic singer Bjork, and their child.

Cremaster 4

Cremaster 4, image via ArtRage

Drawing Restraint 9 at Serpentine Gallery [ArtObserved]
Guardian of the Veil at Regen projects L.A. [ArtObserved]

The Cremaster Cycle via www.babylonberlin.de

The Cremaster Cycle- via www.babylonberlin.de

Wikipedia Entry

Artist’s Website

The Official Cremaster Cycle
Matthew Barney DVDs:

Matthew Barney Books:

More information coming soon.

Comments and suggestions: info@artobserved.com