The founders of Frieze, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, are interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week as they prepare to open this year’s edition in New York, reflecting on the early days of the fair, and how they first started their coverage of the art world in London during the 1990’s.  “You couldn’t get away from the feeling that something was happening in London, and though we really didn’t know anything about art or magazines, we just knew we had to respond to it,” Sharp says. (more…)

New York Magazine columnist Jerry Saltz is the first art critic to receive a National Magazine Award for a Column, following the announcement of the American Society of Magazine Editors’s annual awards.   (more…)

John Baldessari has created a series of “selfie collaborations” for the limited edition art and fashion publication Visionaire, featuring images taken by famous celebrities and embellished by the artist using some of his trademark images and iconography.  “I’ll probably be most remembered for putting dots over people’s faces,” Baldessari comments. “So it’s funny to do an issue devoted to selfies of famous people.”  (more…)

Jerry Saltz is in New York Magazine this week analyzing the state of abstract painting in the current market, and the increased popularity of what he deems “diluted” abstract works.  The piece is accompanied by a slideshow of several works, tracing markedly similar trends in the current market.  “The artists themselves are only part of the problem here,” Saltz writes. “Many of them are acting in good faith, making what they want to make and then selling it. But at least some of them are complicit, catering to a new breed of hungry, high-yield risk-averse buyers, eager to be part of a rapidly widening niche industry.” (more…)

The most recent issue of Vanity Fair is causing a commotion in the art world this week, following its nude photograph of Jeff Koons exercising on a fitness machine.   “Koons, at 59, has already begun a strict exercise-and-diet regimen so that he will have a shot at working undiminished into his 80s, as Picasso did,” the article notes. (more…)

Nate Lowman is in the New York Times Magazine this week, taking part in a dialogue with musician Devon Welsh of the band Majical Cloudz, where the pair discuss the interaction of sound and visuals in their work.  “If you discover as a kid that being a musician, or being an artist is something that you like, everyone should hold onto that,” Lowman says. (more…)

The newest issue of W Magazine is out, featuring a cover shot of actor George Clooney dressed by artist Yayoi Kusama.  Dressed in Kusama’s signature polka dots, Clooney is also profiled in the issue, promoting his film The Monuments Men, about a group of American G.I.s stealing masterpiece artworks back from the Nazis.  “Art takes different forms,” Clooney says in the interview. “But it represents something that is basic in all of us—our history.” (more…)

Leon Black, the head of Apollo Global Management LLC, has been named in the top 10 of Art & Auction magazine’s list of the 10 most powerful art world participants for the first time this year.  Black, who purchased Edvard Munch’s The Scream for a record setting $120 million in 2010, joined a list headed by Jeff Koons, whose balloon dog auction this month places him as the highest-selling living artist.  Other inclusions include dealers Larry Gagosian and David Zwirner. (more…)

The Fall/Winter issue of Document Journal will feature a special edition designed by Paul McCarthy. Dawing a naked figure over the photographed body of Kate Moss, as shot by Mario Testino, McCarthy turns a subdued image into a lurid, Freudian exercise. (more…)

The newest issue of Garage Magazine is featuring a diptych cover, created in a collaboration between fashion photographers Inez and Vinoodh, and artist John Baldessari.  Photographing supermodel Adriana Lima, Inez and Vinoodh then turned the image over to Baldessari, who abstracted the image in his signature color overlays.  The issue also features an interview with Baldessari, whose solo show at the Garage Center in Moscow opens this fall. (more…)