Artist Gavin Turk spoke with The Guardian this week in advance of his upcoming show this summer at Ben Brown Fine Arts, covering his practice, failing his MA Thesis show, and his views on the tag “conceptual art.” “People often don’t want to do any work with art – they just want to see something and enjoy it. I can’t see art in those terms. To me, art is always about ideas. Really, it’s all conceptual.” He says. (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
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…
Gavin Turk, Pop (1993), showing with Tate Modern’s “Pop Life: Art in a Material World” through January 17. Image via The London Paper.
Tate Modern is currently showing works by artists that embrace mass media and popular culture. Its motto is Andy Warhol’s proclamation that “good business is the best art,” and artists such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, and more present works that are, accordingly, a blend of popular and left of center culture. “Pop Life: Art in a Material World,” which also features a new piece by Takashi Murakami, closes on January 17.
Foreground, House of Martin Luther King (1990), by Rob Pruitt and Walter Early; background, Damien Hirst’s False Idol (2008). From “Pop Life,” images via The Guardian.
more images and story after the jump…
Jeff Koons’s giant rabbit at the Covent Garden in London via Hypebeast
A giant helium-filled Jeff Koons balloon made its UK debut on October 8th, the inflatable rabbit floated above central London, it will be displayed in Covent garden [The Independent]
Coinciding with the Frieze fair, the 10th Turbine Hall commission launches, Baldessari’s retrospective opening the same day, Hayward Gallery presents Ed Ruscha, Turner Prize coming up and many other shows and openings, turn London into the center of attention [Guardian UK]
Frieze art fair excites not merely the International art scene, but also the social diaries of those who like to mingle with the rich and famous [Guardian UK] the contemporary art event even has installations to turn its visitors into the subjects of the artwork. [The Independent] Only displaying works by contemporary living artists, Frieze has been considered 1-dimensional in the past. Frieze helps London take over the art world in October [The Independent]- but not without competition, as FIAC, the Parisian fair, is to begin next week and may steal the battle as art collectors in today’s economic climate are forced to pick which fairs they will be attending [The Wall Street Journal]
Unrecognized work by Leonardo Da Vinci via Antiques Trade Gazette
A drawing sold at auction for $19,000 in the late 1990s is now attracting attention for its authorship, if by Leonardo Da Vinci, a theory that recent research strongly suggests, the work could be worth as much as $147 million [Bloomberg]
The Wapping Project in London, often compared to Tate Modern, is expanding with the opening of the Wapping Project Bankside- a new gallery reminiscent of a New York loft to feature film, video and photography almost “a stone’s throw” from Tate [The Moment]
The Whitney Museum of American Art’s plans for a second Renzo Piana location have advanced [The New York Times]
To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week … (more…)
