Joseph Kosuth is interviewed in the WSJ this week, as the artist reflects on his work and his current show at Sean Kelly Gallery. “If you begin with the presumption that artists work with meaning, not with forms and colors, you get a whole other approach for seeing art,” he says. “The idea was to get rid of the aura around the work of art. It’s a burden, and we don’t need it.” (more…)
Joseph Kosuth, Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology (Installation View), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
A preeminent member of the pioneering group of conceptual practitioners that sought to dissolve art making from declarations of objective emotion or feeling, Joseph Kosuth remains a marker stone for the reach and potential for Conceptual Art, still using his work to scrutinize the limits and definitions of contextual meaning, often removed from primarily aesthetic concerns, at age 70. Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology strikes the viewer as a large-scale installation orchestrated by Kosuth at Sean Kelly Gallery, where the artist, who splits his time between New York and London, is showing his first exhibition since 2011. (more…)
Sol LeWitt, Drawing Series I,II,III,IIII (Drawings for Xerox Book) 24 Drawings (1968), via Art Observed
In 1968, a group of artists interested in the material limits of art practice, and the interrelations between text, language and action launched The Xerox Book, a published art book culling contributions from Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Lawrence Weiner to be printed and copied as an easily distributed art work. Presented at Paula Cooper’s 21st Street Location in New York, The Xerox Book is a return to this landmark publication, incorporating a series of works and objects drawn from or inspired by each artist’s contributions.
The Xerox Book (Installation View) © Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, Photo: Steven Probert
Joseph Kosuth, Neon, 1965
All images courtesy MACRO Rome.
MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, has filled its expansive Enel Hall with close to 70 illuminated works for its show Neon: the Luminous Matter of Art. An exhibition dedicated solely to the use of neon, the show brings together 50 artists who have worked with the medium in contemporary practice. The sculptures, installations and textual works lay the art-historical framework for conceptual practice based on semiotics while also (more literally) paying homage to the medium’s origins as material for signage.
Delving into the past 50 years, on view are works by Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Tracy Emin, and Jason Rhoades, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Maurizio Cattelan, Spencer Finch, Dan Flavin, Claire Fontaine, Piero Golia, Douglas Gordon, Alfredo Jaar, Gyula Kosice, Mario Merz, François Morellet, Bruce Nauman and Keith Sonnier, among many others.
Image: Daniel Buren, “Le Décor et son Double”. Photo Dirk Pauwels via S.M.A.K.
In 1986, French artist Daniel Buren created an installation for the home of collectors Annick and Anton Herbert called “Le Décor et son Double”. He installed a copy of the room in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent. This second copy was recently conserved and acquired by the museum (now renamed S.M.A.K.) and is being exhibited once again.
Head of a Muse, Raphael via Guardian UK
-Offered for the first time at public auction as part of Christie’s Old Masters sale, Raphael’s drawing “Head of a Muse”- a study for a figure in one of his Vatican frescoes, if it achieves its estimate £12-16million, will break the auction record for an old master drawing currently held by Michelangelo’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s works [Guardian UK]
-As art collectors become more cautious with their purchases, dealers at Frieze and FIAC fairs put works on reserve, among them $40 million Mondrian allegedly put on hold for Bernard Arnault [Bloomberg]
-Ms. Temkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, introduces unexpected changes, unframing certain paintings and subjecting the almost sacralized permanent collection to frequent renewal [The New York Times]
“Your Mercury Ocean” Skateboard by Olafur Eliasson via aarting
-Another collaboration between Mekanism and Olafur Eliasson results in a 13-ply deck 3d patterned skateboard with a mirror coating [aarting]
-In related, Olafur Eliasson commissions by the mayor of Copenhagen to design a bridge for the Danish capital; the artist shares his plans for a transparent bridge in a close vicinity to the water [The Art Newspaper]
– The survey carried out by the Art Fund, the UK’s independent art charity, shows that despite the substantial drop in public funding and investment income, a figure that proves to grow in the context of economic fall is the number of visits to museums [Art Knowledge News]
-In the midst of economic uncertainty, gallery Matthew Marks, which represents artists such as Jasper Johns, and Peter Fischli and David Weiss, plans on expansion with a new space on the West Coast [The New York Times]
To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week… (more…)
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…)
