Anish Kapoor has contributed to Artforum’s “500 Words” section this week, describing his recent work with the pigment Vantablack, and its capabilities for absorbing light to create a sense of infinite depth on a flat surface.  “I’m absolutely sure that to make new art, you have to make new space,” he writes.  “Malevich’s black square doesn’t just make a proposition about non-images or black as an image; it suggests that space works in a different way than previously conceived.” (more…)

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 175 X 222 Cm, 23 Mai 2013, via Art Observed

Held in high regard in his home country of France, and throughout much of continental Europe, the work of Pierre Soulages has never really achieved the same stature in the United States, despite his formal ties to the particularly American strains abstract expressionism and minimalism that have populated his work over the past sixty years.  But it’s that same lack of recognition that Dominique Lévy and Emmanuel Perrotin are looking to change this spring, bringing a selection of the artist’s most recent work, and some of his most classic canvases to show at the pair’s uptown exhibition spaces.

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 202 X 159 Cm, 18 Octobre 1967, via Art Observed (more…)

Pierre Soulages is profiled in The New York Times this week, exploring the artist’s 60+ year career, and his position as one of the most successful artists in France, and his continuous output, even as he approaches his 95th birthday.  “I’ve decided to lose count of his age,” says dealer Dominique Lévy said. “I always feel he’s challenging me and pushing me and such a force of nature.” (more…)

Leon Black, the head of Apollo Global Management LLC, has been named in the top 10 of Art & Auction magazine’s list of the 10 most powerful art world participants for the first time this year.  Black, who purchased Edvard Munch’s The Scream for a record setting $120 million in 2010, joined a list headed by Jeff Koons, whose balloon dog auction this month places him as the highest-selling living artist.  Other inclusions include dealers Larry Gagosian and David Zwirner. (more…)

The New York Times profiles the upcoming release of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, and the recent panel discussion the filmmaker and artist gave with writer Nelson George and fellow artist Kara Walker, discussing the influences for the film, and its place as a historical perspective on slavery.  “There’s a uniquely American exuberance for violence or an exuberance for getting ahead in the world and making a name for themselves. I’m talking about the sort of plantation class that fought for the entrenchment of the slave system,” Walker notes.  “That’s not something that can be overlooked when you think about the mythology of what it means to be an American, that one can become a self-made man if one is white and male and able.” (more…)

Richard Serra, Double Rift #9 (2013), ©Richard Serra Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian Beverly Hills through June 1 is Richard Serra’s Double Rifts series. Known for his immense sculptures, Double Rifts showcases a selection of recent drawings that are clearly related to, yet remarkably independent from Serra’s sculptural practice, welcoming new insights into the artist’s creative worldview.

(more…)

Alberto Burri, Black Cellotex (1986-87), via ArtCritical

For much of his artistic career, Italian painter Alberto Burri worked broadly with Cellotex, a compressed particle board that was used primarily in construction projects after the conclusion of World War II.  Sharing the sensibilities of his Arte Povera compatriots, Burri embraced the material’s easy accessibility and ubiquitous presence in the reconstruction of the country.  Using Cellotex, Burri would create painting after painting that worked beyond the limits of the flat plane of the canvas, bringing the heavily layered paint of his works out into the room.

Alberto Burri, Black Cellotex (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

(more…)