Eric Fischl is in the New York Times this week, advocating for a new method of art authentication using the artist’s DNA to show if the work is really their handiwork. “Authenticating a work from the very start can alleviate the pain and frustration people go through when they think they have something of great value and they really don’t,” he says. “What’s not sexy about synthetic DNA?” (more…)
Artist Eric Fischl spoke with the Wall Street Journal this week about his upcoming book, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas, as well as his career and work. “I thought I was opening up a pretty wide door. I thought that I was offering something I wish had taken a greater hold than it did. Which is that you turn to art to connect to other people, and you connect through common experience and emotional experience and life experience. It’s something that gives form to all the more difficult aspects of our lives.” He says. (more…)
Painter Eric Fischl has published a memoir of the 1980’s New York art scene, chronicling the excesses and darker side of the high-profile art world of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Mary Boone. Titled Bad Boy, My Life On and Off the Canvas, the tell-all book includes a story about an infamous 1983 party thrown by Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, with “lookout towers, armed guards, and a glamorous crowd . . . some naked,” with waiters offering “glasses of Champagne [and] a choice of cocaine or heroin.” (more…)
NYAA’s “Take Home a Nude” benefit, hosted by Sotheby’s, October 18, 2010. All photos by Deborah Heuberger for Art Observed.
For the 19th installment of the New York Academy of Art‘s annual Take Home a Nude benefit, the organization honored Eric Fischl for his outstanding contribution to contemporary art, scholarship, and the mission of the Academy. The representational style and enduring interest in the human form which characterize Fischl’s body of work are consistent with the Academy’s reputation as “The first and most significant graduate school in the United States to focus on the human body.”
What began in 1991 as a modest fundraiser held at the Academy’s Tribeca headquarters has evolved into one the most prestigious arts events of the season. This year’s venue was generously provided by Sotheby’s, where works were installed throughout five gallery spaces, hosting cocktail hour, silent and live auctions, and a post-auction dinner.
Andres Serrano, Taylor Mead, 2010.
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L: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (He entered shop after shop…), 2008 R: Eric Fischl, Rebirth I: (The Last View of Camiliano Cien Fuegos), 1986. All images courtesy of Haunch of Venison, New York.
On view at Haunch of Venison New York, until May 1, 2010, is “Your History Is Not Our History.” Organized by artists David Salle and Richard Phillips, this group show presents works produced in 1980s New York City.
Including works by Donald Baechler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ross Bleckner, Francesco Clemente, Carroll Dunham, Eric Fischl, Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger,Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Malcolm Morley, Richard Prince, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Jenny Holzer, Phillip Taaffe, Terry Winters and Christopher Wool, this exhibition seeks to convey “a more accurate portrayal of the energy and experimentation that was permeating the city during that time,” says Phillips.
L: Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1988 C: Jeff Koons, Buster Keaton, 1988 R: Eric Fischl, The Old Man’s Boat & The Old Man’s Dog, 1981.
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Ron, Will Cotton via Artnet
-Eric Fischl, Chie Fueki, Hilary Harkness, Will Cotton, Francesco Clemente, Peter Halley and Barbara Kruger are all a part of the long list of artists who have created, dedicated and portrayed Ron Warren in their works; Mary Boone’s assistant he has always played an understated yet influential role leading to a Mary Boone Gallery exhibition in his honor [The New York Times]
-The 2009 edition of the Power 100 by ArtReview is released with Hans Ulrich Obrist taking the first place and the list showcasing some changes in the influences and forces of the art world; the top ten include dealers and artists as Larry Gagosian, Francois Pinault, Eli Broad and Bruce Nauman [ArtReview]
-In related, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, the director of Serpentine Gallery, just voted to be the art world’s most powerful figure by the Power 100, gives an idea of how busy his week gets [The Independent]
-A $310 million collection of Mark Rothko paintings to be shown next spring in artist’s first Moscow solo exhibition at Dasha Zkukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture [Bloomberg]
To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week… (more…)
Minutes before the silent auction begin
Held in Sotheby’s New York on October 7th, 2009, the 18th Annual Take Home a Nude event manages yet again to attract not merely those who belong to the social circles of the art world, but also guests and celebrities who may not immediately connote that world. A wide variety of works and artists were represented at the event, and although some of the names, such as those of Jeff Koons and Eric Fischl could contribute to an environment of favoritism, there was pleasantly enough no hierarchy in the curatorship, neither of the event, nor the show.
Related Links:
Take Home a Nude [New York Academy of Art]
Liev Schreiber eyes “Take Home a Nude” benefit at Sotheby’s [NY Daily News]
Take Home a Nude [Interview]
About Last Night… The “Take Home a Nude” Benefit Auction [PaperMag]
Dustin Yellin, Anatomy No 2, presented as one of the works on “Take Home a Nude”, this piece is almost a 3 dimensional painting trapped in a rubber box
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Exhibition View, Chapman Brothers faux show Good News! at Orel Art. Via Times Online
British Art Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman’s fake identities, art movement, and exhibition as Russian artists is on view after a quiet opening [TimesUK]
Gallery owners reveal the difficulties of running their business in times of the economic crisis [Forbes], yet some of L.A.’s resilient galleries find opportunities in the crisis: such as reduced rent [Los Angeles Times]
Wassily Kandinsky’s ‘Dramatic and Mild,’ estimated to sell between $6-8 million at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Fall Auction via ArtDaily
Part of the Arthur Sackler Collection is to be auctioned this fall by Sotheby’s, including a rare Kandinsky painting [ArtDaily]
Christie’s sales fell 35% in the first half of the year, though the auction house accounts for 61% of all global auction sales [Bloomberg] and a breakdown of Christie’s first half results [Art Market Monitor]
Cindy Sherman’s self-portait for Vogue
Cindy Sherman takes a self-portrait for Vogue in couture, parodying the magazine’s many domestic fashion spreads [Vogue via Economist]
Basquiat Reeboks via Solediction
Reebok releases a line of high tops featuring the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat [Solediction]
A charity auction in September to raise funds for orphans in Africa will featureworks by prominent YBAs such as Tracey Emin and Antony Gormley, as well as David Bowie, while also including work by South African artists like Marlene Dumas as well as emerging artists [Independent]
The bike Damien Hirst designed for Lance Armstrong to ride in the last stage of the Tour de France via Daily Mail
PETA outraged over Damien Hirst’s use of dead butterfly wings on Lance Armstrong’s bike [Daily Mail]
Richard Prince buys a townhouse on the Upper East Side for $11.5 million [NY Observer]
The pop-up Lola Gallery opens in Southampton [Vanity Fair]
Bill Viola’s ‘Ocean Without a Shore,’ which premiered at the church of San Gallo at the 2007 Venice Biennale via FAD
Bill Viola has been commissioned to create two altarpieces for permanent display in St Paul’s Cathedralin London [FAD]
A new program offers a master’s degree in international art crime [NY Times]
Chelsea art dealers predict that the presence of the High Line will kill the art scene there [Artnet]
Billionaire art collector Eli Broad via Forbes
Forbes names the top ten billionaire art collectors, including François Pinault, Eli Broad, and David Geffen [Forbes]
In related, Vice Chairman of Forbes, Christopher “Kip” Forbes, selling 36 works through private transactions [Bloomberg]
In further related, a growing number of collectors prefer private transactions, the publicity can come after the deal is made [Bloomberg]
Carsten Höller at the Double Club, Via Guardian
Carsten Höller’s Double Club “modern day Studio 54” moving to Paris from London [Guardian]
As visitors wait in line for up to 3 hours, the Banksy show in Bristol extends its visiting hours into the evening [Evening Standard]
Will Cotton’s studio via Whitewall
A look inside Will Cotton’s studio [Whitewall]
Tracey Emin tells in her interview the difficulties she had to face: from tapeworm to family troubles [Times Online]
An interview with Eric Fischl on 9/11 and bull fighting in his Soho studio [Artnet]
An almost conclusively thorough article on Dash Snow [NY Times]
Jenny Saville’s Hyphen, 1999, part of Paint Made Flesh at The Phillips Collection.
“Paint Made Flesh,” a series of 43 oil paintings that focus on the human body, is showing at The Phillips Collection through September 13. Featured artists incude Pablo Picasso, Leon Golub, Ivan Albright, Cecily Brown, David Park, Philip Guston, and more. “At times when figure painting was considered outdated,” comments Assistant Curator Renee Maurer, these and other artists included in the show “continue to explore the expressive potential of the painted human body.”
Related links:
Current Exhibitions at the Phillips Gallery
Paint Made Flesh
“Paint Made Flesh” Survey opens at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC [Art Knowledge News]
“Paint Made Flesh” Is More Than Skin-Deep [Washington Post]
“Paint Made Flesh” : Modern Bodies, Naked Eyes [NPR]
John Currin, Hobo (1999), via NPR.
Corrida In Ronda No. 5, by Eric Fischl. Courtesy of the artist.
The Jablonka Galerie’s current exhibition features paintings by Eric Fischl. The show is comprised of new works by the artist which are centered around a particular type of bull-fighting. The so-called Corrida paintings are showing through July 15.The series focuses on the Corrida goyesca de Ronda, the tradition of the bull fight in the Andalusian city of Ronda. Since its inception in 1954 with founder Antonio Ordoñez, the Corrida fills the city every year with color. Fischl has captured this celebration in his paintings, which will be hosted by galleries in New York and in Málagua following their current showing at the Jablonka Galerie in Berlin.
A view of the Eric Fischl exhibition at Jablonka Gallerie.
Related links:
Eric Fischl at Jablonka Galerie (pdf)
Eric Fischl [artist homepage]
Jablonka Galerie
Anish Kapoor’s ‘Shooting into the Corner’ via The Independent
Britain’s Royal Academy opens its galleries in September to Anish Kapoor for the first single artist exhibition there since 1988 [Independent] and Kapoor’s commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim, ‘Memory,’ opens in October [Guggenheim]
Gilbert and George in Hong Kong via Financial Times
Gilbert and George describe their trip to Hong Kong for the opening of ‘Louis Vuitton: A Passion For Creation’ at the Hong Kong Museum of Art [Financial Times]
Oreg0n art dealer indicted for running gallery as a Ponzi scheme [Artinfo]
Glenn Brown’s ‘Christina of Denmark’ via Art in America
Lynn MacRitchie visits painter Glenn Brown’s studio [Art in America]
Predictions about the future of auction houses following the burst of the art market bubble [CNBC via Art Market Monitor]
Aerial view of Governors Island via Governors Island
Pablo Picasso’s ‘Homme à l’épée’ via Philippe Sollers estimated to sell for £5-7 million at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale later this month
Christie’s announces its Impressionist and Modern Art Sale, with important works by Monet, Duchamp, and Picasso as highlights [Auction Publicity] and in other auction news, Latin American sales follow the downward trend [Artinfo]
Terence Koh and Tom Sachs celebrate the release of Koh’s new book at Julian Schnabel’s house via Style
Vito Schnabel holds a dinner party at Palazzo Chupi in honor of Terence Koh’s new book, ‘Flowers for Baudelaire’ [Style]
Eric Fischl is organizing a touring exhibition aimed at involving artists in the evolution of American identity in the wake of post-9/11 politics [LA Times]
Takashi Murakami signing posters for the Vogue Nippon launch via Hint
Comme des Garçons x Vogue Nippon concept shop opens, featuring Takashi Murakami collaborations [Hint]
Controversial modern museum, the Ara Pacis, in the heart of historical Rome, is vandalized [BBC]
Jenny Holzer’s ‘Monument’ via Economist
Daniel Arizona looks at how Jenny Holzer’s early aphorisms stand up now and how her new ‘Redaction Paintings’ capture today’s anxiety [Economist]
Antony Gormley and Sir Peter Blake among judges of Saatchi Gallery-Sunday Telegraph Art Prize for schoolchildren [TelegraphUK]
Alanna Heiss via ArtNet
Alanna Heiss has retired after 37 years of curating MoMA’s PS1; an article on her final show [NYTimes]
$250,000 worth of prints including those by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse stolen in Berlin [AssociatedPress]
A chronicle of the rise of auction prices before the fall, and a rumor that 2/3 of the bidders for Hirst’s monumental September auction may not actually pay for the works, and part 2 here [Bloomberg]
A video of Eric Fischl at Mary Boone [Newarttv]
Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally via the ArtNewspaper
US lawsuit filed to confiscate Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally from the Leopold Museum in Vienna is suspended [ArtNewspaper]
Art dealers as paparazzi fodder? White Cube owner Jay Jopling garners attention with singer Lily Allen in St. Barths [TheMirror]
also on the island, dealer Larry Gagosian and the band Kings of Leon fete collectors Roman Abramovich, Dasha Zhukova and Aby Rosen, designer Marc Jacobs, hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, musician Jon Bon Jovi and actor Daniel Craig among others [IndependentUK]
In other art world vacation news, Damien Hirst hires 4 guards formerly in the British Special Forces to protect him during his Mexico holidays [MercoPress]
The Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion via architecturelist
The Zaha Hadid-designed Chanel Mobile Art tour is stopped; London, Moscow, and Paris canceled [ArtInfo]
Emmanuel Perrotin on three current Parisian exhibitions [The Moment – NYTimes]
MoMA to launch two-year series of live performance works [NYMag]
Collector Ronald Lauder interviewed at his Klimt-rich Neue Galerie in New York [Financial Times]
Damien Hirst bans a documentary film of his Statuephilia work [TelegraphUK]
The Velvet Underground’s John Cale will represent Wales at Venice Biennale of Art next year [BBC]
The controversial act of State museums deaccessioning works [NYTimes]
The Getty endowment has declined 25% [LATimes]
Art Info’s Top 5 art world figures of 2008 [ArtInfo]
Ten Breaths: Tumbling Woman and Ten Breaths: Falling Angel by Eric Fischl as part of his exhibition Ten Breaths via Eric Fischl.
On display now at the Chelsea location of Mary Boone Gallery is a series of recent sculptures by Eric Fischl. The collection of figurative works consist of three life size figural groups and two diametric single figures. The three life size bronze casts are based off of photographs the artist took of Brazilian dance troops and is is typical of Fischl’s work which aims to subtly express the frailness and internal conflict which characterizes humans. Pictured above is Ten Breaths: Tumbling Woman a variation of the artist’s 2001 work Tumbling Woman, a similar bronze sculpture made to commemorate the lives lost on 9/11. The sculpture was displayed at Rockfeller Center for one week in September 2002 before it was removed after public outcry. Many viewers found the piece to be in poor taste as it was a graphic reminder of people falling from the World Trade Center. The variation is on display now at Mary Boone below the figural sculpture Ten Breaths: Falling Angel, a glass cast of an angel mounted on the ceiling of the gallery.
Eric Fischl Press Release [Mary Boone Gallery]
more images and info after the jump… (more…)
