Robert Longo, Untitled (Bodyhammer: 9mm) (2008), via Art Observed

Few writers have walked such a fine line between coy observations of modernity and the possible dystopian future that lay just under the surface of daily life in the way that writer J.G. Ballard had over the course of his more than fifty years of writing.  Mixing a playful sense of imagination with dark and disturbing meditations on the state of the world, the writer’s work continues to serve as a major inspiration for artists and philosophers in the 21st century, just as some of the futuristic conditions he so often described have begun to manifest themselves in the real world. (more…)

Jenny Holzer/Lady Pink, Trust visions that don’t feature buckets of blood (1983-84), via Art Observed

Taking its own unique turn on the group exhibition, Sprüth Magers is currently showing a powerful two-floor exhibition devoted to the female artists on its roster, examining their shared interests in political and institutional critique, and explorations of the art object’s role in relation to the gallery.  Culling together a series of seminal works from Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Rosemarie Trockel, the exhibition is a well-executed work of its in, ultimately welcoming unforeseen material and political connections among this group of artists. (more…)

Cindy Sherman, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Metro Pictures, Cindy Sherman has installed a series of new photographs, portraits that mark her first new body of work in five years. The pieces, exploring more nuanced cultural frameworks at play in Hollywood image production, feel like a fitting conclusion to a long-running body of work, while expanding Sherman’s critical dialogue with the image through a studious selection of figures and contexts.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

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Mike Cooter, MacGuffin: some archetypes towards a definition (2016)

Swiss Institute’s Fade In: Int. Art Gallery-Day is a group exhibition featuring an ambitious array of contemporary artists, including Cindy Sherman, Allan McCollum, Christian Marclay, Dora Budor and Jamian Juliano-Villani, interpreting the ubiquitous relationship of moving images to the field of visual art. Comprised mostly of commissioned works, the exhibition transforms the gallery’s spacious interior into a vigorous stage, expanding outwards from the gallery entrance towards a deep corner of the storage room on the lower level. (more…)

Maurizio Cattelan, Him (2001), via Christie’s

This week’s marathon series of art auctions is underway in New York City, as Christie’s launched a rare, specially-curated Sunday sale, ending its 39 lot Bound to Fail auction with a final tally of $78,123,250, with only a single lot going unsold.  The fair, which followed hot on the heels of the last hours of Frieze, saw modest bidding and consistently dependable sales, although several works sold for final prices below estimate. (more…)

Robert Rauschenberg, Tablet Series (1974)

Currently on view at Luxembourg and Dayan, the group exhibition In The Making seeks to shed light on the often overlooked, yet crucial creative dialogue between the artist and their assistant or assistants in the studio.  Organized by Tamar Margalit, the exhibition, which runs through April 16th, unfolds in a manner similar to a family tree, connecting infamous or remote dots in New York art scene after the 1950’s through shared studio spaces, practices, and the informal education process that often occurs in the relationship between artist and their hired team. (more…)

The Broad Museum has announced a major exhibition on Cindy Sherman, drawing heavily from the museum’s own collection of the artist’s works (Eli Broad was one of her early collectors).  The show is curated by Philipp Kaiser, formerly of LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art and a guest curator at Cologne’s Museum Ludwig. (more…)

Cindy Sherman is featured in an expansive profile in Harper’s Bazaar this month, featuring a selection of new works by the artist in which she takes on the persona of a street style fashionista, and reflects on her career and focus on the future.  “I want to continue to be happy with what I’m working on because that’s the biggest challenge. I’m hard on myself, but everyone is always waiting for someone to fall. That’s a common problem for artists,” she says.  “They fall into a mold of their greatest hits and just repeat it. When I feel that I’m repeating myself, or about to, it’s time to move.” (more…)

Cindy Sherman is set to play aging diva Maria Callas in a new film show by Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli, the Art Newspaper reports.  “The video was shot last May in Paris at Théâtre des Variétés, featuring Cindy as the quintessential opera diva. The film depicts fictional, pivotal chapters of the singer’s life and career, in her full glory and darker situations, showing her fading away,” Vezzoli says. (more…)

Artist and dealer Margaret Lee is interviewed this week in New York Times Magazine, discussing her busy schedule as an artist, owner of the 47 Canal gallery, and the solitary studio assistant for Cindy Sherman.  “It was good for me to see that you can be this amazing artist and not be an ego-driven, horrible monster,” she says. (more…)

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #138 (1984), via Skarstedt Gallery

Skarstedt Gallery is currently presenting the retrospective 1980’s Revisited, revisiting the works, theories and artists that helped to define the dynamic decade in contemporary art.  Fetauring works by Carroll Dunham, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, David Salle and Cindy Sherman, the show highlights the varied and often conflicting artistic styles of the time, particularly in the newly developing approaches of Appropriation, Neo-Expressionism, and Graffiti.  The 1980’s were a controversial decade for the art world, a period of active boundary breaking by artists looking to challenge contemporary society.

Jeff Koons, One Ball Total Equilibrium (1985), via Skarstedt Gallery

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Sia performs live. All photos by C. Dalaeli for ArtObserved

Performa’s Relâche—The Party welcomed more than 500 guests on Thursday evening. Event co-chairs RoseLee Goldberg, Julie Blakeslee and John Spong, Toby Devan Lewis, Andrea & Marc Glimcher, Wendy Fisher, Amanda & Glenn Fuhrman, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, and Cindy Sherman helped organized the black and white haute couture themed party, a tribute to Francis Picabia and Erik Satie, and their groundbreaking 1924 Surrealist performance Relâche in Paris. The party was honoring Milly Glimcher, art historian and curator of “Happenings: New York, 1958–1963” at the Pace Gallery, 2012.

Aerial acrobat performance (more…)

Image: Warhol’s Cow Wallpaper and Silver Pillows, The New York Times

“Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years” is a group show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that juxtaposes fifty Warhol works with one hundred of those by his peers and successors. The show attempts to capture the scope and breadth of Warhol’s impact on contemporary art history. Presented 25 years after his death at the age of 58 in 1987, the exhibition showcases the works of both artists who have risen to fame after Warhol’s death as well that of his contemporaries. Some of the artists included are Maurizio Cattelan, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Robert Gober, Takashi Murakami, Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha, Alex Katz, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter.

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Museum galas in Los Angeles continue to feature celebrities to bolster fund raising: The Hammer Museum has invited Katy Perry, Steve Martin and MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow to its gala on Oct. 6th. The Hammer fundraiser will honor artists Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman and it will be co-chaired by Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker. Individual seats range from $1,500 to $7,500; last year’s gala raised approximately $1.7 million. Additionally, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art gala takes place on Oct. 27th, honoring filmaker Stanley Kubrick and artist Ed Ruscha, with Steven Spielberg presenting and music by Florence and the Machine. The Museum of Contemporary Art has postponed its gala until the spring. (more…)

Photograph by James Franco

CoSTUME NATIONAL opened its “NEW NO DARK WAVE” exhibition, featuring a film installation and photographs by James Franco, as well as work by Tobias Wong, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aaron Young and Daniel Firman.

Exterior View

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The MET to open a major exhibition surveying Andy Warhol‘s influence on contemporary art, featuring work by Robert Gober, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, and others, in September 2012.

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Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Olympics (1984) which sold for a record-breaking price of £6 million

This evening in London, Phillips de Pury‘s Contemporary Art Evening exceeded pre-sale estimates of £15.1- £21.1 million, with sales totaling £23.4 million. Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s Olympics (1984) at £6 million broke the record for a Warhol-Basquiat collaboration. With three pieces in the auction selling for over a million pounds, the take was over twice the amount received just a year ago for the auction house. Of 30 original lots, 2 were withdrawn (including a Cindy Sherman piece) and 4 were passed on. Although the total sum was not as large as the sales of either Christie’s or Sotheby’s, it was the only auction house to surpass pre-sale estimates for this week.

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‪‬Collectors Michael Hort and wife Susan discuss with Forbes their collecting style, which includes works by Richard Prince, Marlene Dumas, Lisa Yuskavage, Cindy Sherman, Kehinde Wiley, and John Currin, as well as their Rema Hort Mann Foundation

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‪‬New Oslo museum Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art damaged by fire today, staff and artwork by artists including Warhol, Hirst, Prince, Sherman, and Koons remain safe. Scheduled to open in September this year, the extent and cause of fire is unclear at this point

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Gavin Brown and Mark Ruffalo cooking sausages. All photographs by Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.

The always fresh but now venerable Frieze Art Fair of Regent’s Park, London, has successfully completed its maiden voyage to this side of the Atlantic. The pavilion, designed by Brooklyn-based SO-IL Architects, places Frieze New York on Randall’s Island Park from May 4-7, 2012. The fair is being held in a distinctly snakelike structure that houses 180 leading contemporary galleries presenting works by more than 1,000 artists. There are a number of culinary options as well: Roberta’s, The Fat Radish Café, Frankie’s Spuntino Restaurant, Sant Abroeus Café and the Standard Biergarten.

Entrance to the Frieze Art Fair

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‪‬CNNCTD+ to launch ‘sound graffiti’ project May 1, installing 100 Playbutton MP3 players and headphones throughout Manhattan with participants including Cindy Sherman, James Franco, and Bill Powers

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Cindy Sherman, Untitled (1975). All images via Art Phalanx (© Cindy Sherman).

Vienna’s Sammlung Verbund is currently showing nearly fifty early Cindy Sherman photographs at their Vertical Gallery. The exhibition, That’s me – That’s not me, concentrates on works that Sherman produced before moving to New York City in 1977. They thus offer a rare glimpse into the artist’s formative years, and predate her more well-known Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), which critics and art historians have traditionally taken to be Sherman’s foundational works.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled (ABCDE) (1975/1985)

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‪‬Cindy Sherman’s ‘Untitled #96,’ valued at $2.8–3.8 million, could break $4.3 million record for any photograph at Christie’s auction in New York on May 8, the piece a consignment by the Akron Art Museum in Ohio [AO Newslink]

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Cindy Sherman, Untitled #466 (2008)

Cindy Sherman‘s retrospective is on view now at MoMA through June 11. Using herself as her only model, Sherman manipulates her appearance and environment, manifesting a dialogue about gender and social stereotypes through every carefully crafted and costumed persona. With eleven galleries dedicated to various series of her work—from the simplistic roles of femininity displayed in her pioneering Film Stills series, to her more complex transmutations of fashion centerfolds, or the aristocratic elite—her consistent process has yielded more emotionally, psychologically, and aesthetically nuanced characters since her earliest work in 1975.

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