Christopher Williams, Cutaway model Nikon EM. Shutter:/Electronically governed Seiko metal blade shutter vertical travel with speeds from 1/1000 to 1 second with a manual speed of 1/90th./Meter: Center-weighted Silicon Photo Diode, ASA 25-1600/EV2-18 (with ASA film and 1.8 lens)/Aperture Priority automatic exposure/Lens Mount: Nikon F mount, AI coupling (and later) only/Flash: Synchronization at 1/90 via hot shoe/Flash automation with Nikon SB-E or SB-10 flash units/Focusing: K type focusing screen, not user interchangeable, with 3mm diagonal split image rangefinder/Batteries: Two PX-76 or equivalent/Dimensions: 5.3 × 3.38 × 2.13 in. (135 × 86 × 54 mm), 16.2 oz (460g)/Photography by the Douglas M. Parker Studio, Glendale, California/September 9, 2007– September 13, 2007. via The Museum of Modern Art, 2014.

Now at the Museum of Modern Art through November 2nd, 2014, Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness serves as a comprehensive overview of the 35-year-long career of the influential artist.  Part of the first wave of West Coast Conceptual artists, Christopher Williams graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and went on to become a preeminent conceptual artist and art professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.  His artistic legacy has fervently pursued notions of commercialism, production, capitalism, and process, and the execution of this retrospective very clearly outlines those themes.

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Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That), Installation view, Regen Projects II, Los Angeles. All images courtesy of Regen Projects.

Currently on view at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, is the group show Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That), curated by artist Walead Beshty. ‘Picture Industry’ refers both to the physical setting and the conceptual pretext within which the show is presented, with Los Angeles as the focus in terms of both place and content. Included in the exhibition are works by Tauba Auerbach, Thomas Barrow, Carol Bove, Troy Brauntuch, Tony Conrad, Abraham Cruzvillegas, De Rijke / De Rooij, Liz Deschenes, Isa Genzken, Wade Guyton, Robert Heinecken, Karen Kilimnik, Imi Knoebel, Michael Krebber, Glenn Ligon, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Albert Oehlen, Manfred Pernice, Seth Price, Richard Prince, Josephine Pryde, R.H. Quaytman, Eileen Quinlan, Miljohn Ruperto, Michael Snow, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Charline Von Heyl, Kelley Walker, James Welling, Christopher Williams & Christopher Wool.

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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

More images and text after the jump…

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George Condo, Cocktail Drinker (1995) All images via Luhring Augustine

In commemoration of their 25th anniversary, Luhring Augustine is hosting an exhibition titled, “Twenty Five.” The show pulls together works from the gallery’s past and present by artists including Janine Antoni, Nobuyoshi Araki, Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller, Larry Clark, George Condo, Gregory Crewdson, William Daniels, Günter Förg, Zarina Hashmi, Johannes Kahrs, Jon Kessler, Martin Kippenberger, Ragnar Kjartansson, Luisa Lambri, Glenn Ligon, Paul McCarthy, Yasumasa Morimura, Daido Moriyama, Reinhard Mucha, David Musgrave, Cady Nolan, Alberta Oehlen, Ed Paschke, Jack Pierson, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Stephen Prina, Pipilotti Rist, Josh Smith, Joel Sternfeld, Tunga, Guido van der Werve, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Williams, Steve Wolfe, and Christopher Wool.

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Installation view, Luhring Augustine

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Installation View  All photographs are via Gagosian Gallery unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia street, London is the exhibition titled “Crash, Homage to J.G. Ballard” , a group show dedicated, as the name suggests, to the oeuvre of J.D. Ballard, a prominent British novelist and short-story writer, a representative of the New Wave movement in science fiction.  The exhibition was put together to pay tribute to the enormous cultural influence of J.D. Ballard’s fiction on many visual artists. The impressive selection of works by  such prominent artists as Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, AndyWarhol and Helmut Newton illustrates profound engagement of the writer with the works of visual artists of his generation and their mutual influence.

More images and related links after the jump….
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