Assume Vivid Astro Focus and Lady Gaga to collaborate on a holiday window at Barney’s New York [AO Newslink]

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Move over vaporetti — there’s a new barge in town. Slated to gracing the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice over the past five days was a project by The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, entitled “Commercial Break.” The exhibition is organized by Neville Wakefield, a contemporary art writer prolific curator globally. Powered by POST Magazine, “Commercial Break” considers itself to be a provocative architectural intervention in a city where no advertising is traditionally displayed. Unfortunately, as Artinfo reported, the city pulled permits a few days before and the videos were instead screened at the project’s Bauer Hotel party. The woman behind the “GCCC” is Dasha Zukhova, girlfriend of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich; it is the institution’s second project in Venice.  All videos are now viewable on the exhibition’s website.

Among videos featured is one by  Richard Phillips, starring Lindsey Lohan.

More text and images after the jump…

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Kathy Grayson, center, at the opening of ‘New York Minute’ via Depart Foundation

New York City has been the center of the contemporary art world for over half a century, and while contemporary art production and dissemination has been influenced by globalization, with new centers of of activity gaining recognition around the world in cities such as Berlin, Moscow, or Shanghai, there’s still something about New York that attracts new and established artists alike. ‘New York Minute’ is an exhibition produced by the young Italian philanthropist Pierpaolo Barzan’s DEPART Foundation to bring the energy and sense of community found in New York’s downtown art scene to Rome, hosted by Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO).

‘New York Minute’ brings together sixty artists who live and work in New York, or are involved in its extended network, and showcases new tendencies in art that have developed out of that community. Curated by Kathy Grayson, director of New York’s Deitch Projects, the exhibition groups those new tendencies under three headings: the brash and gritty street punk aesthetic of artists such as Dash Snow, Terence Koh, Aurel Schmidt, the rainbow inflected wild figuration of Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Paper Rad, or Jules de Balincourt, and the new abstractions of artists including Tauba Auerbach, Xylor Jane, and Dan Colen.

The opening night brought thousands of young Romans looking to vibe on the energy brought to the city by the New York contingent. Kathy Grayson answered ArtObserved’s questions about what makes the New York scene so special, how ‘New York Minute’ is spreading its infectious communal energy, and what the plans are for the future.

DEPART FOUNDATION BOWS WITH “NEW YORK MINUTE” [Artnet]
New York Minute [Art in America]
Minute Made [Artforum]
Sixty New York-Based Artists Featured in Exhibition at Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Roma [ArtDaily]
The Heart of the New York Art World Beats in Italy at the “New York Minute” Show [Paper Magazine]
It’s a New York Art ‘Renaissance,’ Argues Upcoming Show [NYMagazine]
Wine-Maker Uncorks New York in Rome [Bloomberg]
New York Minute with Dash Snow, Aurel Schmidt, Barry McGee and Others [The Fader]
“New York Minute” exhibition [SLAMXHYPE]

The logo of ‘New York Minute’ by Chris Johanson via Depart Foundation

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Richard Serra’s Equal Parallel: Guernica-Bengasi, 1986, returned to El Museo Nacional Centro de Art Reina Sofia, Madrid via Art Daily

Missing Sculptures by Richard Serra are replaced at El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia [ArtDaily]
How Art Capital Group is providing liquidity backed by significant fine art [The New York Times]
A new book on the world’s largest unsolved art theft, the Gardner Museum Heist [Wall Street Journal]
A new Julian Schnabel-designed steak house back room? [NYMag]
The Moscow Art Fair has been postponed [Bloomberg]

A still from the Marcel Dzama video via Pitchfork

Animated Marcel Dzama for NASA’s video [TheWorldsBestEver]
The Prado’s conclusion that Colossus is not a Goya is brought into question [Wall Street Journal]
How the Brooklyn Museum’s Shelly Bernstein expands the institutions presence via internet outreach [New York Observer]
Francis Bacon, and a new exhbition in the unlikely city of his death [New York Times]
An agreement reached with further clarifies the collection boundaries between the UK’s National Gallery and the Tate [Guardian UK]

Assume Vivid Astro focus via the TheMoment

Assume Vivid Astro focus collaborates with the New York Times [TheMoment]
The last days of Soho’s Guild and Greyshkul gallery [New York Times]
A detailed new report on the growing impact of China, Russia, India and the Middle East in the global art market [ArtDaily]
How the fall of the art boom is useful to trim the movement of blockbuster art to the only fleetingly interested masses [Newsweek]
Mega dealer David Nahmad on the market’s rise and fall: “It’s almost a fraud. I would never advise my clients to buy contemporary art.” [IndependentUK]

Lucian Freud has painted a wine label for Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2006 [Forbes]
Sotheby’s reports $2.8 billion in sales in 2008 [ArtDaily]
UK Government cuts VAT taxes after court rules that video and light art is sculpture in a case involving Dan Flavin and Bill Viola works imported by Haunch of Venison [The Art Newspaper]
How the Whitney recently benefited from the weakness of the corporate system [NYTimes]
The Times UK and Saatchi Gallery begin a top 200 artist survey with results to be announced in May [TimesUK]

New York and Berlin gallerist Javier Peres, much a part of the success of Dan Colen, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, and Terrence Koh, opines on the “new, new school’ and the ways of the market [NYObserver]
The “serene mastery” of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi [WallStreetJournal] now at showing at the Met [ArtObserved]
In art market layoffs: Damien Hirst cuts up to 17 of the 22 in his studio [GuardianUK] and Pace Wildenstein cuts as well [Blackbook]

The highest priced “antique” on UK’s Antiques Roadshow is a £1m model of Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North [GuardianUK] more here [BBC]
The Museum of Modern Art is armed with a Twitter account [ArtFagCity]
On the heels of his recent no-sale at Phillips, [Art Observed] Damien Hirst is sanguine on the art market: “What goes up must come down” [ArtInfo]
Over 1/2 of the best selling artists of last year were Asian [Independent]
Global art dealer Jan Krugier dies at the age of 80 [ArtForum]

Famed street artist Swoon and crew float junkyard utopia downstate to Deitch Studios in LIC [NYTimes]
Anthony Haden-Guest on the effect’s of global financial turmoil on corporate art sponsorship [Portfolio]
Assume Vivid Astro Focus installs colorful window display at the Modern restaurant at the MoMa [NYSun]
A critique of Sarah Thornton’s book, ‘Seven Days in the Art World’ (with Video) [Art Market Monitor]
Sotheby’s holds a preview for $120.8M of Damien Hirst’s direct auction works in New Delhi, India and the Hamptons [Bloomberg]