Artist Betty Tompkins gets a profile in The Guardian this week, as she looks back at her controversial body of work and its impact on the field of feminist art. “My work compared to an actual photorealist is lame. They’re interested in getting everything. I’m interested in getting just enough,” she says.  (more…)

David Hockney, Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969), via Christie’s

Following a marathon week of openings and shows between New York and London, the first major Contemporary Evening Sales of 2019 are in the bag, with a trio of sales closing out the week in London with a market picture that seemed relatively strong.  No doubt clouded in some part by the uncertainty of the impending Brexit, the week’s sales still managed to achieve some impressive figures and strong sell-through rates, keeping the uncertainty of the following months alive in the British capital.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Apex (1986), via Sotheby’s (more…)

Performa is launching a new website platform that will feature live-streamed and archived performances from its festival.  “Special Offer [the design studio working with Performa] have embraced Performa’s role as a generator of ideas and producers of live artworks,” said Esa Nickle, the producing director of Performa. “They have created a space that will allow global audiences access to works from the Performa archives, alongside newly commissioned performances and live broadcasts, from anywhere in the world.” (more…)

The Armory Show has awarded its annual prizes to Charlie James Gallery of Los Angeles for its Presents Booth, and to Ryan Gander and Lisson for their Platform section install, among others.  (more…)

Carolee Schneeman, via Artist

Artist Carolee Schneemann, the artist whose work relentlessly challenged and reframed cultural discourses and taboos around sex, identity and gender, has died at the age of 79.

Portrait Partials, via Artist

Born in Philadelphia, Schneemann studied at Bard in New York, and would continually challenge assumptions regarding her gender as an artist, including a suspension from the school over painting nude self-portraits.  Schneeman would still graduate, and would move to New York, where she became involved in the city’s experimental arts scene.  Exploring performance works, she would challenge the viewer’s engagement with the female body, famously pulling a reel of text from her vagina to read aloud in public for her work Interior Scroll, while another performance, Up to and Including Her Limits suspended her naked from the ceiling of a gallery, swinging about to mark the walls with crayon.

Meat Joy, via Artist

Schneemann would continue to make challenging and confrontational work throughout her career, ultimately receiving the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2017.  “I think I’m stubborn. In the beginning, I had no precedent for being valued,” she told the Guardian in 2015. “Everything that came from a woman’s experience was considered trivial. I wasn’t sure if my work would shift that paradigm or not, but I had to try.”

Pascale Marthine Tayou, via Art Observed

Considered among New York’s premier art fairs, and a leading cultural destination for discovering and collecting the world’s most important 20th- and 21st-century art, The Armory Show has long figured at the forefront of the city’s annual spring offerings for art exhibitions and shows.  This year, the fair has once again touched down in New York, bringing with it its annual  presentations by leading international galleries, innovative artist commissions and dynamic public programs. (more…)

LACMA has acquired an untitled Zeng Fanzhi painting from 2018 for its permanent collection, following on its commitment to expanding its collection of works from China. “Chinese contemporary art has emerged as one of the most compelling areas of the global art landscape,” says Dominic Ng, CEO of East West Bank. “The addition of a piece by Zeng Fanzhi—who is considered by many to be China’s greatest living artist—exemplifies Michael Govan’s vision to showcase a broad range of artistic voices and contributes to the ongoing cultural exchange between the East and the West.” (more…)

The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) is under fire by a group of artists whose work has gone “missing” from the museum collections, and is accused of selling works without permission from the artists. “TMoCA confirmed that my work is indeed in the collection, yet when I ask them to say this in writing, they turn tail,” says artists Barbad Golshiri. “I no longer have any motivation to find my work. That piece was about my own death. I consider it dead. It is as if it never existed.” (more…)

Adam Szymczyk, artistic director of Documenta 14 in 2017, will take a position as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and will supervise a project called Principle of Equality—Open Studio.  “Attention is given to listening and being listened to, those two states that form reciprocity, as seen in the dual figures of speaker/receiver (as per artist Moyra Davey), writer/reader, artist/viewer,” a description for the project states. “At some point in the process, these distinctions and their attendant hierarchies must give way to new relationships between equals.” (more…)

Inside Philanthropy has a piece this week on the growing impact of artist-endowed foundations in the art world. “The field’s transformational growth in just five years is eye-catching, but what’s really exciting is the robust, long-term increases in both its grantmaking and its operation of cultural and educational programs—archives and study centers, exhibition programs, artists’ residencies, etc,” says Christine J. Vincent, project director of the Aspen Institute’s Artist-Endowed Foundation Initiative (AEFI). (more…)

Artist Lauren Halsey is the winner of this year’s Frieze Art Award, a $25,000 prize that will also see her create new work for the upcoming edition of Frieze in New York. “I’m honored to receive this year’s Frieze Artist Award, and to debut a new installation in New York this coming May,” she said in a statement. “The fair produces environments that can seem like worlds unto themselves, and I hope that this work will shift the visitor experiences in unexpected and meaningful ways.” (more…)

David Hockney gets an interview in the NYT this week, as he opens a show of his works alongside Vincent Van Gogh’s for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam’s blockbuster spring exhibition.  “It’s clarity of space, I think,” Hockney says of his love of Van Gogh. “Van Gogh could see space very, very clearly.” (more…)

Blain|Southern is opening a New York space, taking over the former Cheim & Read space in Chelsea. “We’ve been planning to open in NYC for some time but it takes time to find a space and location in-line with what our purpose-built spaces in London and Berlin offer our artists,” the gallery said in a statement.  (more…)

Architect Arata Isozaki, the designer behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles’s Downtown Campus, has won the The Pritzker Architecture Prize, the architecture world’s most prestigious award. “Possessing a profound knowledge of architectural history and theory, and embracing the avant-garde, he never merely replicated the status quo, but his search for meaningful architecture was reflected in his buildings that to this day, defy stylistic categorizations, are constantly evolving, and always fresh in their approach,” the jury said in a statement. (more…)

A piece in DW this week catalogs the recent disputes between France and Italy over the loan of Da Vinci works to the Louvre, which has led to an arranged meeting between the presidents of the two countries. “There are so many French people who love Italy and Italians who love France and the French. But suddenly, we almost forgot that we have to keep on learning to understand each other,” Emmanuel Macron said in a statement. (more…)

Artist Jacolby Satterwhite gets profiled in Complex this week, as his contributions to a new Solange video has earned him impressive attention.  “I’ve been doing small projects with Saint Heron for the past couple of years,” he says. “I did a video installation for her creative collective Saint Heron at the Metropolitan Museum about three years ago. And just other miscellaneous stuff. Eventually she reached out to me to produce a film for this.” (more…)

In the face of a no-deal Brexit, British museums and galleries are rushing to ship works to and from the European Union (EU) before the exit deadline of March 29th. “We are covering our backs because no decision has been made yet, but we are looking at an enormous amount of money to reimport incredibly expensive works. It’s crippling,” says a gallery spokesman for Tornabuoni Arte.” (more…)

Hank Willis Thomas has been tapped to design a memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Art News reports. “Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King are monumental examples of the capacity of love to shape society,” he said. “I can only hope The Embrace can be a reminder and a call to action to each of us to never forget what they’ve taught us.” (more…)

Jim Shaw, The Potato Family (2018), via Metro Pictures

Currently on view at Metro Pictures, artist Jim Shaw returns to New York with a series of five new paintings, united under the name The Family Romance.  Continuing the artist’s penchant for blending personal, political, and surreal narratives, the show traces Shaw’s interests in behavioral psychology and themes surrounding the family unit. (more…)

Alighiero Boetti, Per Nuovi Desideri (1988), via Repetto

As the winter months drags slowly to its conclusion, and the weather shifts into more temperate conditions, New York City will once again step into its role as a central hub of the contemporary art market, and the global art fair circuit, kicking off its string of fairs across the city.  Centering around the annual Armory Show Art Fair on the West Side, the week serves as one of the more important selling weeks of the first half of 2019. (more…)

Seth Price at Petzel, via Art Observed

Marking the first entry in the busy weeks of March in New York, the ADAA Art Show opened its doors this week, putting a few days between its own fair and the mass of exhibitors opening their doors in the coming days.  The first week of March is always a packed one for gallerists and artists, with the usual string of exhibitions and openings coupled with the ever-growing number of art fairs taking up space across the city during Armory Art Week.  With that in mind, the ADAA’s attempts at putting some space between its event and the rest of March’s bustling pace has made it a fitting first entry, a considered, careful staging that sets the tone for the days to come. (more…)

Christie’s will offer Robert Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II at auction this May in New York, carrying a $50 estimate that should smash the artist’s current record. “Everyone has been waiting for this painting,’’ says Sara Friedlander, Christie’s international director and head of its postwar and contemporary art department in New York. “It’s the very best of the silkscreen paintings that’s left in private hands.’’ (more…)

Damien Hirst has unveiled a specially-designed suite at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. “I love what Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta have done with the Palms,” Hirst said in a statement. “It’s amazing being able to work with them because they are great collectors and totally understand art. They have allowed me to create a suite in the hotel and design everything and completely fill it with my art.” (more…)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has tapped Rita Gonzalez, a long-running curator at the museum, as its new head of contemporary art.  (more…)