AO Art Observed™

Julian Schnabel, Flag Paintings, via Art Observed

Currently on view at Karma on Great Jones Street in New York is an exhibition of new work by American artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, featuring spray and ink painted flags Schnabel found and has used as a canvas, changing the meaning of the symbols and questioning nationalistic, religious, and cultural definitions.

Julian Schnabel, Flag Paintings (Installation View), via Art Observed

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The New York Times looks at the results of returning treasured art works to their countries of origin, and examines the varying levels of prominence or neglect these works often reach once returned.  “It’s not the same with music, it’s not the same with film, it’s not the same with literature — but when it comes to physical objects,” says J. Paul Getty Trust President James B. Cuno, ”these things are kept as evidence of a proud past, as defined by the nation-state government.” (more…)

Another letter from Third Point’s Daniel Loeb attacks Sotheby’s for failing to acknowledge the strength of his choices for board seats at the auction house.  ”We are convinced that having an owner’s perspective in the boardroom yields better results, that this board is in dire need of fresh insights, and that our candidates are more qualified than the company’s emissaries we are seeking to replace,” Loeb writes. (more…)

The current Sigmar Polke retrospective at MoMA has posed interesting challenges to curators, namely how to maintain the artist’s Potato House (Kartoffelhaus) and Potato Drawing (Kartoffelzeichnung), which both incorporate real potatoes as a symbol of post-war Germany, and which are also subject to the tubers’ potential to decay.  “The potatoes are allowed to sprout,” says MoMA curatorial assistant Magnus Schaefer, but “if they’re beginning to rot, we have to replace them.”  (more…)

Carter, Beside Myself (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Lisa Cooley’s Lower East Side exhibition space is a body of new work by Carter, including paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture and film from the artist’s wide-ranging and impressive output.  Continuing his exploration of varying identities and their interconnected relationships to the art object, the show continues Carter’s ongoing interest with presence throughout.

Carter, Fully Present (2013-2014), via Lisa Cooley (more…)

Pieter Vermeersch, Untitled (2013), all images courtesy Team Gallery, Inc.

Currently on view at Team Gallery in Lower Manhattan is a solo show from Belgian artist Pieter Vermeersch, composed of large paintings on canvas and wall murals, for which he has employed techniques of grid painting and color mapping, reminiscent of Gerhard Richter and Robert Bechtle. The exhibition will continue through April 27, 2014.

Pieter Vermeersch (Installation View)

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The New York Times addresses the publication of Thomas Piketty’s critically-lauded book on capital accumulation and income inequality this week, questioning how the work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, can be applied to the art world, where the vast increase in high-figure spending has priced many interested parties out from buying works  “The art market has become an excuse for banking in public,” says dealer Ivor Braka. ”People are displaying wealth in the most ostentatious way possible. It’s luxury goods shopping gone wild.” (more…)

Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, the suspected accomplice in the fraudulent art sales made through Knoedler Gallery, has been apprehended in Southern Spain, the Wall Street Journal reports.  Bergantino is expected to appear before a judge this week, who will decide on a potential extradition to the U.S. (more…)

The New York Times speaks with MoMA Director Glenn Lowry this week, evaluating his occasionally disputed decisions at the head of the museum, and the vast increases in attendance that he has seen during his time as museum head.  “Obviously I’m deeply empathetic to the feelings that that has elicited from a community we really care about,” Lowry says. “On the other hand, sometimes you have to make really tough decisions if you think they’re right.”  (more…)

Ross Bleckner, via Art Observed

Painter Ross Bleckner has returned to New York this spring, with an exhibition of new paintings at Mary Boone Gallery, featuring several continuations of past series of works, while branching off in new directions.  It’s been some time since the last solo exhibition of works by Ross Bleckner in New York, nearly four years to be exact, and the artist seems to have been biding his time, putting together a strong selection of works.

Ross Bleckner, ALP30 (2013), via Mary Boone (more…)

Alberto Giacometti, Crowd at Intersection (1965), all images courtesy Gagosian Hong Kong

Gagosian’s Hong Kong gallery space is currently showing the complete suite of lithographs from Alberto Giacometti’s Paris sans fin (Paris without end) series, alongside sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs, and archival material from the late years of the artist’s life.

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Kehinde Wiley, via Art Observed

On Wednesday night, the Brooklyn Museum opened the doors for its annual Gala, bringing together a diverse group of artists, collectors and trustees to honor painter Kehinde Wiley, artist Jenny Holzer, and developer Jane Walentas.

Orly Genger, via Art Observed

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The Museum of Modern Art has announced that it will host the first-ever U.S. museum retrospective of works by Robert Gober.  Titled The Heart Is Not a Metaphor, Mr. Gober’s work will be on view beginning in October.  “Robert is totally involved and approaching himself as if he were one of his subjects,” says Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture. (more…)

Artist Pharrell Williams is continuing his ventures into the art world later this year, curating a show at Emmanuel Perrotin’s Paris space.  The show, titled G I R L after the artist’s hit album, will feature 40 works by 32 artists (half of them women), including Tracey Emin, Alex Katz and Bharti Kher, as well as Daniel Arsham and Gregor Hildebrandt.  The works selected mix images of women and of love, viewed from a variety of angles,” the artist’s team said in a press statement. (more…)

Erwin Wurm, Kiss (Abstract Sculptures) (2013), via Art Observed

Taking up the main room of Lehmann Maupin’s considerable Chelsea gallery, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm is presenting a series of recent sculptural works, continuing the artist’s irreverent and bizarre abstractions of both contemporary materials and the human form.  Short but sweet, Wurm’s show takes on his past approaches to figurative sculpture, and recasts it in an increasingly abstract, yet surprisingly cohesive series of sculptures, using the full body of his work to create new pieces that combine his aesthetic endeavors into more nuanced wholes.

Erwin Wurm, Synthesa (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

Actor Antonio Banderas has been chosen to portray Pablo Picasso in an upcoming film by Carlos Saura.  Banderas will act alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, who will play the artist’s longtime muse, Dora Maar.  ”I turned down the chance at one point of playing Mr. Pablo, but the time has come in my life where I understand him better,” says Banderas. “I am nearly at the age he was when those events happened, in 1937, when he was 55 or 56, and I’m getting close.” (more…)

Artist Joan Jonas will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale next year, the New York Times reports.  The pioneering video and performance artist was selected by the State Department’s bureau of educational and cultural affairs, and will create a site-specific work at the U.S. pavilion.   “Joan has been a visionary for such a long time,’’ says Paul C. Ha, the director of the M.I.T. List Visual Arts Center, and commissioner of the exhibition. “Yet she hasn’t had much exposure in Venice.’’ (more…)

Tauba Auerbach is interviewed in the Evening Standard this week, following the opening of her first solo exhibition in London at the ICA.  “I don’t think beauty and complexity are at odds,” she says.  “I feel that I’m more compelled to spend time with objects that I find seductive. I want to examine them and understand them.” (more…)

A trio of sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman are set to be installed at Hampstead Heath in London.  The rudimentary sculptures of a group of dinosaurs, titled The good the bad and the ugly, were previously installed at the Gherkin building.  Installed next month, they will constitute the largest piece of public art the park has seen since 2005, when Giancario Neri’s The Writer was placed on view.   (more…)

The shortlist for the BP Portrait Award has been announced, featuring works by Thomas Ganter, Richard Twose, and David Jon Kassman.  The nominees will be on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery from  June 26th to September 21st, with the winner announced just before the exhibition opens on June 24th. (more…)

Scottish-born painter Alan Davie passed away last week at the age of 93.  Davie’s expressionistic, abstract canvases earned him considerable attention during the late 1950′s and early 1960′s, and was considered as a major influence on the work of David Hockney.  The artist’s work is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Tate Britain.  “It’s an urge, an intensity, a kind of sexual need,” Mr. Davie said recently in an interview with The Telegraph. “I don’t practice painting or drawing as an art, in the sense of artifice, of making an imitation of something. It’s something I do from an inner compulsion, that has to come out.” (more…)

Ali Banisadr, Ran (2014), all images courtesy Sperone Westwater

Currently on view at Sperone Westwater in New York is an exhibition of new works by Iranian painter Ali Banisadr.  Entitled Motherboard, the exhibition is Banisadr’s first solo show at at the gallery, and will remain on view through April 19, 2014.

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Michael Majerus, your bad taste (2002), via Matthew Marks

Spread over Matthew Marks Gallery’s spaces on 502, 522 and West 22nd Street is an exhibition of works by late Berlin-based artist Michael Majerus.  Presenting over twenty-five paintings and multimedia installations, the show is the most comprehensive of Majerus’s work in the United States as well as the first staged in the country since his life was cut short at the age of 35 by a plane crash in 2002.

Michael Majerus, pornography needs you (2001), via Matthew Marks

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Jordan Wolfson, (Female Figure) (2014), via Art Observed

How does memory function in the 21st century?  How does nostalgia?  These are questions bound up in the work of Jordan Wolfson, on view now at David Zwirner.  Spread along a series of assemblages, video, and the artist’s notoriously eerie animatronic robot, the show is a striking step for the artist, showing his unique approach to art-making in an ever-stronger expressive capacity.

Jordan Wolfson, Raspberry Poseur (2012), via David Zwirner (more…)