Louise Bourgeois UNTITLED (detail) (1998-2014), Suite of 8 Holograms © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY.

Throughout the course of her fifty-year career, artist Louise Bourgeois has experimented with a broad span of media, while remaining primarily focused around her foundational sculptural works and works on paper.  That broad range of work is offered a new wrinkle in Holograms, a recently concluded exhibition at Cheim & Read that brings together a body of work never been shown in its entirety in the Chelsea exhibition space’s intimate rear gallery.  Offering a profound elaboration on the artist’s less-known approaches to her work, the show documents Bourgeois’s dialogue with the New York-based fine arts holographic studio C-Projects, resulting in eight holographic photographs blanketed with an alluring red tone, which granted the artist the potential to orchestrate her contemplative, often surreal techniques in this unexpected, yet fertile, medium.

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Louise Bourgeois, My Blue Sky (1989-2003), via Hauser & Wirth

During the last decade of her life, Louise Bourgeois began immersing herself in the techniques of soft-ground etching, rendering delicate lines and twisting, nuanced forms on a series of copper plates before transferring the images to paper.  Combining a number of the artist’s long-running pictorial interests in conjunction with her often inventive approach to both her tools and her own personal history, the works stand as a striking, yet subdued, re-interpretation of her own practice, branching out into new modes of practice in her final years.

Louise Bourgeois, Turning Inwards (Installation View), via Hauser & Wirth

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Steven Parrino, Untitled (1991), all images courtesy Patrick Seguin

On-view through November 26^th, 2016, Galerie Patrick Seguin presents Olympia, in collaboration with New York-based gallery and bookstore Karma, one in a series of annual shows hosted by the gallery, entitled Carte Blanche, in which international galleries are invited to organize and curate exhibitions at the Paris space.  Drawing on a wide range of artists’ works on paper, the show features pieces by Wade Guyton, Sigmar Polke, Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso, and more. (more…)

   
Revolution in the Making (Installation View), all photographs courtesy Thisbe Gensler, via Art Observed

This past month has seen the much-anticipated opening of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel’s new gallery space in Los Angeles’ Arts District. The scale of the former flourmill—totaling over 100,000 square feet of exhibition spaces, book store, Printed Matter Lab, courtyard and garden, forthcoming restaurant, as well as offices—rivals the real estate of many museums, as do its curatorial aspirations.  Swiss couple Iwan and Manuela Wirth have partnered with former MOCA curator Paul Schimmel, a definitive fixture of Los Angeles art history and pioneering figure in its contemporary art scene. In his opening remarks during the press opening, Schimmel described his vision of the gallery as a community-driven, public-oriented space that would proffer a seamless urban experience for the creative downtown demographic, not only focused on changing the traditional relationship of the gallery to its public, but also between art and life.  In partnering with Hauser & Wirth, lauded for its museum-caliber exhibitions and dedication to scholarship and publications, Schimmel announced this new institution’s role in serving and revitalizing the arts of Los Angeles. (more…)

The New York Times takes a look inside 347 West 20th Street, the former home of Louise Bourgeois that has been converted into a museum documenting the artist’s rigorous studio practice. “It has a heart and a soul. People are very moved when they come here,” says former assistant Jerry Gorovoy. (more…)

Louise Bourgeois, Maman (1999), Collection The Easton Foundation, Courtesy Garage Museum Photography by Olga Alekseenko.

Organized by Haus der Kunst, Munich in collaboration with Moscow’s recently opened Garage Museum, Structures of Existence: The Cells is the largest presentation of the series Louise Bourgeois created in the last two decades of her life, shown alongside the early paintings and drawings which led to the development of her monumental pieces. (more…)

Hauser Wirth and Schimmel is set to open this March, featuring a show of female sculptors, the LA Times reports, including Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Yayoi Kusama, and others.  The show is inspired by gallery founder Ursula Hauser.  “I come from the museum world, where it’s always best to start with what’s in a collection, with the history of an institution and build out from there,” Schimmel says. “This came from a real personal recognition that these are artists who [Ursula] deeply related to, but were under-appreciated.” (more…)

Cy Twombly, Untitled (New York City) (1968), via Sotheby’s

Tonight Sotheby’s has logged its response to Christie’s moderate outing last evening, as the auction house’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale saw steady, albeit occasionally slow proceedings, bringing a final sales tally of $294,850,000 with 13 of the 57 lots offered going unsold. (more…)

Louise Bourgeois, Spider (1997), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Christie’s continued its impressive run of record-setting sales last night, with a steady, competitive sale tonight that ultimately brought a final tally of $331,809,000, with 13 of the 70 lots offered passing (barring several withdrawn, high-priced lots).  (more…)

Louise Bourgeois, Arch of Hysteria (1993), all photos via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

The first sight of the Louise Bourgeois Suspension exhibition at Cheim & Read must be the closest simulation available of watching artworks ascending to heaven. There is a sense that each of the pieces are being called upwards, as their weight hangs below them, pulling them back towards the ground. However, the works don’t fight this strange, heavenly magnetism, and in fact, seem to accept to their celestial trajectory.

“Hanging is an ambivalent gesture,” says Jerry Gorovoy, her assistant and close friend of thirty years, who was kind enough to expand upon her works on the opening night of the show.  “It’s as though they’ve given up.” It’s this sense of the works’ submission that makes the tension of their bold physical presence so palpable.

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Sarah Lucas, Dacre (2013) via Osman Yerebakan

Britain introduced many significant female artists in the 90s during its highly touted YBA (Young British Artists) era, woman who presented feminine sexuality not as an object, but as a subject in itself. Commonly interpreted as a tool or a meta for male artists, female sexuality was reformed into ‘a maker’ that creates art alongside a group of female artists (with inspirations from pioneers such as Louise Bourgeois or Georgia O’Keeffe), instead of being the object that the hand works on. Artists like Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor-Wood and Sarah Lucas presented bodies of works that came from the essence of being a woman by explicating femininity in unorthodox ways.

Sarah Lucas, Priapus (2013) and Chicken Knickers (2014) via Osman Yerebakan (more…)

Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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FIAC crowds, photo by Tiphaine Popesco for Art Observed

FIAC closed today, Sunday October 21st, with dealers reporting strong sales and a collective sigh of relief that the proposed inclusion of artwork over €50,000 to France’s wealth tax had not passed.  The fair was, by all accounts, well-organized and exhibited an impressive program of young galleries alongside work by established blue-chip artists. This year the fair added exhibition space in the Salon d’Honneur, the newly-renovated upper floor of the historic Grand Palais.  In past years the fair has seen more European collectors, but this year dealers reported sales to many collectors from Asia, Russia and the Middle East as well. The fair was directed by Jennifer Flay.

Marc Quinn, The Origin of the World, 2012, photo by Tiphaine Popesco for Art Observed

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The Getty Institute has announced that it will purchase the former Knoedler Gallery’s complete archives. Before the gallery was mired in lawsuits and closed its doors, it was an 165-year old institution whose client roster included Paul Mellon, Henry Clay Frick and Robert Sterling Clark. It exhibited and sold work by van Gogh, Manet, Winslow Homer, Frederic Church, John Singer Sargent, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman, among others. The well-preserved archive includes stock books, sales books, photos and illustrated letters from artists and collectors. (more…)

The Telegraph reports that collector David Roberts plans to open a 12,000 sq ft arts center to house his collection in London’s Camden Town. Roberts estimates the value of his collection of about 2,000 works at around £36 million, with works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Matthew Day Jackson and Thomas Houseago. Vincent Honoré will serve as curator; he previously worked for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Tate Modern.  (more…)

Shot of the Contemporary Art Evening Auction. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Last night in London, Sotheby’s demonstrated a sound Contemporary Art Evening Sale, with sales totaling £69 million, against an estimate of £57-82 million. They possessed a good sell-through rate at 87.3% by lot and 93.4% by value. In a press release, Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art Europe, was quoted: “The auction this evening was led by blue-chip artists, such as Bacon, Basquiat, Richter and Lichtenstein… With buyers from 15 different countries, the global demand for this area of the market continues to be underlined.” Despite the overall formidable sales of last night, Sotheby’s did not receive quite the same reception as it did in its evening auction in New York in the Spring.

Glenn Brown, The Tragic Conversion of Salvador Dalí (After John Martin) (1998), which sold for £5.2 million with an estimate of £2.2-2.8 million

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‪‬Philanthropist Jo Carole Lauder has headed the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE) since 1996, placing artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Louise Bourgeois in American embassies across more than 140 countries, “the art in our embassies program waves a less obvious cultural flag for America,” says the foundation’s president Eden Rafshoon

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‪‬Frieze New York announces artists to be included in sculpture park overlooking East River on Randall’s Island, including Louise Bourgeois, Ernesto Neto, Subodh Gupta, Jeppe Hein, and Jaume Plensa, curated by Tom Eccles

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Louise Bourgeois, Untitled (1996)

Passage Dangereux, on view now at the Hamburg Kunsthalle, is a centennial celebration of the late Louise Bourgeois, showcasing work from the last 15 years of her life. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Bourgeois’ work evades stylistic categorization, toeing the line between figuration and abstraction in a range of artistic genres, media, and modes of display. The Kunsthalle honors this unique artist on the advent of what would be her 100th birthday, in a diverse show of sculpture, installation, and print, several of which have never before been seen in Germany, to confront existential and deeply autobiographical themes.

Louise Bourgeois, Maman (1999)

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‪‬Yayoi Kusama and Phyllida Barlow to create new works for first Kiev International Biennale, titled ‘The Best of Times, The Worst of Times. Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art,’ to run May 24 through July 31, 2012, and also include works by Ai Weiwei, Louise Bourgeois, Chapman Bros, and Paul McCarthy [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Christie’s unveils Louise Bourgeois 11-foot-tall Spider sculpture for November 8th auction with the theatrics of Spiderman [AO Newslink]

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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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Installation view. All images courtesy of Cheim and Read unless otherwise noted.

For the first time in its fifteen years, Cheim and Read is showcasing all of its female artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, and Diane Arbus, for a celebratory exhibition. Less of a critical show on feminism, the exhibition is more of a simple gathering of varied artists. “The Women in Our Life: A Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition” reminds us of the voice and vision of some of these major players in contemporary art.

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View of the Vardø, Norway memorial “Steilneset”, 2010. All images via Wallpaper*

Architect Peter Zumthor and artist Louise Bourgeois have collaborated to design a memorial to the victims of the Finmark witchhhunts of the early 17th century.  The Steilneset stands on the edge of the small town of Vardø in Norway, where 91 women were burned at the stake or tortured to death.

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