Artist Gary Hume is parting ways with White Cube Gallery, the Art Newspaper reports, partially due to the artist’s increasingly limited time spent in the UK.  As [he] is spending more time working in the US, by mutual agreement, he will no longer be represented by [us],†says a White Cube spokeswoman, who referred to the relationship between Hume and White Cube as “close and extremely positive.†(more…)
Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed
Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.
An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed
Gary Hume, The Indifferent Owl (2011). All images courtesy of White Cube.
Gary Hume returns to London for his first exhibition in the city in four years with The Indifferent Owl at White Cube Gallery. Occupying both the Mason’s Yard and Hoxton Square locations, Hume presents a collection of paintings and sculpture that shows off his streamlined aesthetic. With a muted palette and naturalistic subject matter—representations of birds and flora are dominant—The Indifferent Owl is a study in subtlety.
Doug Aitken, Now (2011) at 303 Gallery NY. All photos for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.
AO is on site in London for this week’s Frieze Art Fair. With 173 galleries selling an estimated $350 million worth of art, a level of anxiety pervades as the week’s results will be indicative of the overall international contemporary art market. Works like Christian Jankowski’s droll The Finest Art on Water and Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine directly comment on the world economic state, while the overall demeanor remains upbeat, with art world moguls and A-list celebrities enjoying the festivities.
Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine (2011), Thomas Dane Gallery
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Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 1990 (est. £5-7 million, realized £7.2 million ), via Sothebys.com
February’s Contemporary Art auctions began Tuesday night at Sotheby’s London. The auction house offered fifty-nine lots (a work by Anslem Kiefer was withdrawn) with a presale estimate of £30-43 million. The sale just beat its high estimate, raising £44.4 million with a 91.5% sell-through rate by lot and 95% by value. Sotheby’s noted that this is the strongest sell-through rate they’ve had in several seasons and that combined with the Contemporary offerings at the “Looking Closely” sale last week, the auction house has sold £88.2 million worth of Contemporary art in 2011 thusfar, making it the most successful Contemporary sales season at Sotheby’s London since July 2008.
Tobias Meyer standing in front of Andy Warhol‘s Marilyns at Sotheby’s London, via Art Observed
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Inside the Bermondsey Street warehouse, via NovaLoca
London art dealer Jay Jopling has just announced that the former Recall warehouse in Bermondsey Street will soon be converted to a gallery under his White Cube umbrella. Jopling, through White Cube, represents such artists as Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Marc Quinn and his former wife Sam Taylor-Wood, among others.
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Jay Jopling, via The Rich Life
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The Lehman Brothers corporate sign enters Christie’s, London. Image via the NY Times.
Two years after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the art that once decorated its offices is continuing to be sold off as part of their effort to repay creditors. Today, “artwork and ephemera” which once hung in the defunct bank’s European headquarters fetched £1,631,238 ($2,573,685) in a mammoth 6-hour sale at Christie’s in London. Today’s auction follows the September 25th sale at Sotheby’s in New York that raised $12.3 million.
The auction attracted over 1,100 registered bidders from around the world, including a record 330 clients who registered to bid via the internet using Christie’s LIVE. Many former Lehman employees were present for the bidding, one former staffer told AFP before the sale “It’s a memory I want. It was a sad end to it all but I had a lot of good times there, it was where I started off my career.”
Atomists – Jump over, Gabriel Orozco. Estimate: £60,000 to £80,000. Price Realized: £99,560 ($157,305)
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Julie Mehretu, Untitled 1, 2001 (est. $600-800,000), via Sothebys.com
Almost two years to the day after Lehman Brothers filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, the bank will auction off hundreds of artworks worth some $16 million in hopes of raising funds for its creditors. There will be an auction at Sotheby’s New York on September 25 followed by an auction at Christie’s London on September 29. The smallest of the three auctions will be held at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on November 7 and will focus on the Lehman’s Contemporary Art holdings.
Damien Hirst, We’ve Got Style (The Vessel Collection Blue/Green), 1993 (est. $800,000-1,200,000) via Sothebys.com
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Gary Hume, Big Bird, 2009. All images courtesy of Sprueth Magers.
Gary Hume’s first solo exhibition in Berlin in over 15 years is currently on view at Sprueth Magers. The show consists of a selection of new works, including Big Bird (2010), a major large-scale six-panel painting, in addition to a group of six paintings, four sculptures and five works on paper. Painted in Hume’s trademark bright palate, the series of six paintings relate to his earlier American Tan series which explored cheerleaders as an emblem of American society. Elegantly simplistic in appearance, yet endlessly complex in its meaning, Hume’s imagery conveys a potent sense of discontinuity at the heart of representations of beauty.
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Eight Elvises, which sold for $100 million in a private deal last year via TheEconomist
– The Economist has a downloadable special report on the art market, in it Sarah Thornton reports in an article on Warhol, in the wake of the sale of his work in the recent New York contemporary auctions for $43.8 million, that in August 2008 Andy Warhol’s singular “Eight Elvises” was sold privately to an unknown buyer for $100 million [Economist]
– Close to $100M of Russian art aims to be sold for Russian Art Week in London, where the vast growth of wealth in Russia allows for repatriation of that country’s works [Bloomberg] more on this here [WallStreetJournal]
A discerning look into some of the less disclosed but nevertheless driving forces and relationships behind various high profile exhibitions [Financial Times]
to stay apprised of the latest relevant news of the art world read more…
Gary Hume, ‘Two Girls,’ (2009). Â Via Artnet.
Currently showing at Matthew Marks Gallery are 13 paintings by British artist Gary Hume. Known for emerging onto the London art scene in the 1990’s with his ‘door paintings,’  Hume’s latest work evokes the rural environment of his studio space; an old barn in the Catskills of upstate New York, where all pieces were completed. While representational paintings of hospital doors were found in Hume’s earlier work, his current show includes barn doors, along with images of blackbirds, roses and daisies, “all things he sees from his window.”
Related Links:
Gary Hume: Yard Work [Matthew Marks]
Gary Hume at Modern Art, Oxford [ArtObserved]
Art: In Living Color [VOGUE]
Profit and Gloss [Guardian]
Gary Hume Interview [White Cube]
Hume, Four Doors I, (1989-90) via ArtBistro
Almost two decades after Gary Hume emerged onto the British art scene with his famous “Door Paintings”, the Modern Art Oxford will present the first survey of his work. The exhibition will go through August 31 and was curated by Suzanne Cotter. The first of his “Door Paintings” was inspired by an ad for a British private health insurance company, which featured an image of waiting in a dismal hospital waiting area. Since then, the style of his doors have evolved and the series has provided Hume with great success. His works are large scale, monochrome, painted with household gloss paint.
Garry Hume: Door Paintings [Modern Art Oxford]
Gary Hume at Modern Art Oxford [Artbistro]
Gary Hume: the doors that unhinged the establishment [Telegraph]
Gary Hume: Door Paintings [Artrabbit] (more…)
Installation View via Matthew Marks Gallery
Painting: Now and Forever, Part II remains on view through August 15 as a joint exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street and Greene Naftali Gallery, 508 West 26th Street. The show is a reprisal of one held ten years ago, but from a different angle. The artists in the current show are Kai Althoff, Cosima von Bonin, Merlin Carpenter, Mathew Cerletty, Wojciech Fangor, Katharina Fritsch, Gelitin, Isa Genzken, Poul Gernes, Daan van Golden, Jack Goldstein, Rodney Graham, Wade Guyton, Richard Hawkins, Mary Heilmann, Sophie von Hellermann, Charline von Heyl, Ull Hohn, Sergej Jensen, Mike Kelley, Ellsworth Kelly, Karen Kilimnik, Martin Kippenberger, Michael Krebber, William Leavitt, Michel Majerus, Bjarne Melgaard, Laura Owens, Blinky Palermo, Stephen Prina, R.H. Quaytman, Ugo Rondinone, Paul Sharits, Josh Smith, Reena Spaulings, Lily van der Stokker, Atsuko Tanaka, Paul Thek, Anne Truitt, Kelley Walker, Christopher Wool, and Katharina Wulff.
Painting: Now and Forever, Part II [Artcal]
Painting Now and Forever, Part II at Green Naftali [Flavorpill]
Painting: Now and Forever, Part II at Green Naftali and Matthew Marks [Design Boom]
Painting: Now and Forever, Part II, in collaboration with Green Naftali Gallery [Matthew Marks]
Painting: Now and Forever, Part II [Village Voice]
