Mickalene Thomas offers Vogue Magazine a tour of her Brooklyn brownstone, which she shares with her daughter, Junya. “She reminds me of the freedom of childhood,” Thomas says, “how to play with materials without being beholden to weighted ideas and theories. Her work is a reminder for my own practice.” (more…)
Artist Mickalene Thomas is interviewed in the New York Magazine this week for the paper’s ongoing “21 Questions” segment, discussing her favorite New York sushi restaurants, her methods of working, and her nostalgia for the old Times Square. “’It’s interesting because it was a really sort of crazy under-culture of different types of people walking around expressing themselves, and trying to make their dreams happen. Now you just don’t have that anymore.” (more…)
Artist Mickalene Thomas premiered a film eulogizing her late mother on HBO last night, titled Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman. Capitalizing on the film’s release, Thomas has also published an essay and a number of new paintings and photographs of her mother on Creative Time Reports. “As an artist I have always been astonished not only by my mother’s strength and tenacity but also by her sustained elegance and charisma in spite of harsh obstacles,” she writes. (more…)
Painter José Parlá unveiled his 70 ft. mural inside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center last night. The painting, titled Diary of Brooklyn, was inspired by writer James Agee’s novel Brooklyn, and the artist’s impressions of the continued transformation of the borough. The Barclays center, which opened last fall, has commissioned a number of works by Brooklyn artists, including another mural by Mickalene Thomas. (more…)
Kehinde Wiley, The Three Graces, all images courtesy Galerie Daniel Templon
Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris is presenting Kehinde Wiley’s first solo show in France, entitled The World Stage: France, 1880-1960. Wiley’s portraits feature mostly black and brown men on elaborate, baroque backgrounds, their natural stances modified by Wiley to echo the Napoleonic, kingly gestures of traditional portraits like those of Anthony van Dyck.
Kehinde Wiley, Bonaparte in the Great Mosque of Cairo
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
Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 photo by ArtObserved
Despite the large number of exhibitors from New York who are in recovery from Hurricane Sandy, almost every Chelsea gallery scheduled to exhibit will be at this year’s 11th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach week. Events begin as early as today, Monday, December 3rd and run through Sunday, December 9th. Exhibitors and artists are preparing for a flurry of activity, with a multitude of fairs, some old, some new; public installations, exhibitions, collaborations and of course, parties centering around the Delano, The W, Soho Beach House, The Deauville, The Raleigh, The Standard and others. Check out the detailed schedule of events below.
Visionaire Magazine party at Delano Hotel 2011 photo by ArtObserved
Image: Mickalene Thomas – Din, une très belle négresse #2, 2012, Via Brooklyn Museum
Currently on view at The Brooklyn Museum is a selection of recent work by Mickalene Thomas. Her first solo museum exhibition, Origin of the Universe, features a selection of the artist’s most recent works, examining imagery of the female form, African-American identity and her childhood in 1970’s New York City. (more…)
Lehmann Maupin’s “Friends with Benefits,” installation view. All photography by M. Peralta for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.
“Friends with Benefits,” Lehmann Maupin‘s summer group show on view at their location at 201 Chrystie Street, is a correspondence between generations that reveals the concerns of each. The gallery asked five of their artists–Tony Oursler, Angel Otero, Tim Rollins, Mickalene Thomas, and Nari Ward–to request work from young artists they would like to support. Curated by Carla Camacho and Drew Moody, the result is an appealing disjunction of artistic histories, showing contemporary artists engaged with the concerns of a former generation while also reflecting on the artistic currents of their own time. The exhibition’s starting point, as described in the press release, is the notion of “the gallery community as a fertile space,” which takes a positive stance on the white cube as a place where older artists can encourage the work of younger artists.
Janaina Tschäpe’s table installation, a giant squid with condom roe. All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.
The Brooklyn Artists Ball took place last night, the annual fundraising gala hosted by the Brooklyn Museum. A number of artists and celebrities were in attendance, including Judy Chicago, Aurel Schmidt and Dustin Yellin, as well as those honored with the Asher B. Durand Award: Martha Rosler, Amy Sillman, Mickalene Thomas. Between a lively cocktail hour and an after party sponsored by W Magazine sat an elegant dinner with one-night-only 40-foot-long “table environments,” created by 16 Brooklyn Women artists. The event was the fifth anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, with Ms. Elizabeth A. Sackler present to receive the Augustus Graham Medal for strong commitment to the arts and the Brooklyn Museum.
Guests posing for the interactive video installation by Nicole Cohen
Anselm Kiefer, Winter Ade Scheiden Tut Weh Aberdein Scheiden Macht, Dass Mein Herz Lacht (Goodbye, Winter, Parting Hurts But Your Departure Makes My Heart Cheer), 2010
Listed at $100,000
Last night at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery on Chrystie street in the Lower East Side of New York, West-Village-based Foundation for Contemporary Arts held a benefit auction selling nearly 200 paintings and sculptures. All proceeds went to programs of the FCA, “hoping to assist and encourage innovation, experimentation and potential in the arts,” this year providing 14 grants to artists, of $25k each.
The benefit was extremely well attended, with some of the artists joining as well. The large number of works represented a variety of globally well-known artists, including Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Brice Marden, Francesco Clemente, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Julie Mehretu, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, David Salle, Frank Stella, Elizabeth Neel, Julian Opie, Cecily Brown, Vija Celmins, Robert Gober, Nate Lowman, Dan Colen, Dana Schutz, Kara Walker, and T.J. Wilcox, to name a few.
More photos after the jump…
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Exhibition view, “The Female Gaze: Woman Look at Women,” at Cheim & Read. Pictured works include Victoria Civera’s Searcher (far left) and Vanessa Beecroft’s Blonde Figure Lying (floor).
Through September 19, 2009, Cheim & Read will show “The Female Gaze: Women Look At Women.” Featured are works by women of women, with aim to reorient the typically-male framing of women in art. Works range in medium from the paintings of Alice Neel and Lisa Yuskavage to the sculptures of Kara Walker, the text poems of Jenny Holzer and the photographs by Diane Arbus, the installations by Louise Bourgeois and even collage work by Ellen Gallagher.
Related links:
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Cheim & Read – Exhibition – The Female Gaze [Cheim and Read]
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Now Hanging: Girlie Show [The Moment Blog, New York Times]
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The Female Gaze, The Cheim and Read Gallery, New York [Financial Times]
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The Female Gaze: Women look at Women [Artforum]
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“The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women” at Cheim & Reid [Contemporary Art Daily]
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Cindy Sherman, Untitled, at Cheim & Read.
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Manaus, Christophe Schlingensief. Inferno, this year’s theme of the 16th Annual Watermill Summer Benefit. Via Hamptons
The Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation’s sixteenth Annual Summer Benefit will take place on July 25th in the Hamptons. Robert Wilson, its Artistic Director, envisages an event that will include various installations, theatrical performances and auctions all framed by this year’s theme- Inferno. An auction in support of artistic programming at the Watermill Center conducted by Simon de Pury, Chairman of Phillips de Pury auction house, will certainly be one of the highlights of the evening.
Related Links:
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Inferno: The Sixteenth Annual Watermill Summer Benefit [Artdaily]
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Sixteenth Annual Watermill Summer Benefit [The Watermill Center]
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About Watermill [the Watermill Center]
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16th Annual Watermill Center Benefit [Artinfo]
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Summer Is a-Kooning In: We Preview Watermill Benefit Goodies! [NYObserver]
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Simon de Pury [Bigthink]
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Welcome to Watermill – a review of last year’s (2008) Watermill Benefit [BIZBASH]
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Julian, Elizabeth Peyton. At the Annual Watermill Benefit this year. Via Watermill Center
More pictures and text after the jump… (more…)
‘Don’t forget about me (Keri)’ by Mickalene Thomas via Lehmann Maupin
Open now at Lehmann Maupin in Chelsea is ‘She’s Come UnDone!’, an exhibition of photographs, paintings, and collages by Mickalene Thomas. This is Thomas’s first solo show in New York, coming on the heels of growing international attention in the past few years. Thomas is known for paintings of black women, sometimes nude, often in a kitschy 1970s domestic setting with lots of woodgrain paneling and animal prints, and incorporating a lot of rhinestones.
Artists On Artists / Mickalene Thomas By Kara Walker [Bomb]
In the Studio: Mickalene Thomas [Art + Auction]
Mickalene Thomas – She’s Come UnDone! [Lehmann Maupin]
Mickalene Thomas
David Zwirner booth at the Armory, showing Yan Pei-Ming, John McCracken, and Rachel Khedoori.
New York Armory Week 2009 is in full swing, with attendance higher than expected moving into the weekend. Despite the absence of several blue chip galleries – including Matthew Marks and Lehmann Maupin – the gallerists’ collective mood seems hesitant but optimistic. 177 contemporary galleries are exhibiting in the Armory’s 11th year, along with the addition of a Modern wing at Pier 92 selling more established, less edgy work.
The Armory Show 2009 and the Armory Modern
Piers 92 and 94
12th Avenue at 54th Street
March 4-8, 2009
Armory Opening Party at MoMA.
RELATED LINKS
Sales still down, but spirits are buoyant [Art Newspaper]
On the Piers, Testing the Waters in a Down Art Market [New York Times]
Has the Recession Sparked a New Renaissance? [Guardian UK]
On the Scene at the Armory Preview Party [Style File Blog]
MoMA’s Armory Show Opening Benefit Party [Patrick McMullan]
Armory MoMA After Party [Guest of a Guest]
Now Dealing | The Armory Show [TheMoment]
Window-shoppers Descend on Armory Art Show [NYMag]
What’s Selling (or Not) at the New York Armory Show [NYMag]
‘Creepy’ Bernie Madoff Watercolor Fails to Sell at Armory Show [NYMag]
Dealers Sold on Armory Modern, Collectors Less So [ArtInfo]
The Herd Is Out, but Holding Back [ArtInfo]
more stories and photos after the jump…
