Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915), via Sotheby’s

The Impressionist and Modern sale has concluded at Sotheby’s tonight, with 51-lot sale that failed to live up to the auction house’s pre-sale proclamations of a record breaking sale.  The auction brought a final total of £178,590,000, falling just shy of the £186.44 million record for London auctions it was expected to beat. (more…)

Claude Monet, Iris Mauves (1914-1917), via Christie’s

The London summer auctions are underway, after Christie’s opening sale this evening at its King Street location, a steady if somewhat relaxed sale that seemed a markedly subdued affair compared to the fireworks the auction house saw last month in New York.  Capping the 52-lot sale with a final tally of £71,461,000, the evening was still a strong entry in the auction house’s recent outings.  Despite lackluster bidding, the sale achieved a remarkably strong sell-through rate, with only 8 works going unsold.  The auction house seemed content to let a number of works go just below estimate, continuing a commitment to a sales-first strategy outgoing president Steven Murphy had outlined late last year. (more…)

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915), via Sotheby’s

Following the big ticket sales in Art Basel this past week, the art market’s focus will shift to London this week, where a pair of major Impressionist and Modern Evening sales will launch the last two weeks of market activity before the summer months and their lull of activity.  Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s will face off again following last month’s monumental sales results in New York, with a number of extremely impressive works offered, often with equally impressive price tags. (more…)

Sotheby’s is looking to break the record for the most expensive art auction in London this week, with an Impressionist and modern sale expected to top £203 million.  “The forthcoming sale offers a rich range of highly desirable works, including those that rank among the finest by Manet, Degas, Klimt, Malevich, Gauguin and Miro,” says Helena Newman, global go-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art department. (more…)

Auction houses in China are pushing further into the Modern and Impressionist Markets, the South China Morning Post reports, part of an attempt at beating a sales slump that has plagued the market in recent months.  “Selling Impressionist and modern art will be great business for us, as the artworks are traditionally very highly priced,” says Hu Yanyan, president of China Guardian Auctions and China Guardian (HK) Auctions. (more…)

Early estimates claim that the Giacometti sculpture Looking Forward to the Past may smash its just recently set record of over $100 million next month at Christie’s Modern Sale in New York, with speculation that the work may achieve a final price of at least $130 million.  “It’s Giacometti saying: ‘Move forward! The war is behind us,’” Jussi Pylkkanen says of the work. “It’s the sculpture that symbolizes the future.” (more…)

Edouard Manet, Le Printemps (1881), via Art Observed

Christie’s concluded its sale of Impressionist and Modernist works last evening, capping a short but successful 39 lot sale that only saw four works fail to find a buyer, and which achieved a final tally $165,635,000. (more…)

Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Art Observed

Following the gallery’s exhibition of Sterling Ruby’s slurred, industrial run-off and massive assemblages earlier this summer, Hauser and Wirth New York returns for the first show of its fall season with a similarly inclined, yet considerably more restrained take on architectural and industrial forms.  This time, the work is Monika Sosnowska’s, and the subject is that of high architectural modernism, reinterpreting the forms and elements of “International Style” as developed and professed by landmark German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

(more…)

Kurt Schwitters, Ja – Was? – Bild (1920), via Christie’s

The Impressionist and Modern Evening Sales concluded Tuesday evening, capping a pair of sales that saw impressive prices on a number of works without pushing any major new records for artists at auction.  (more…)

Pablo Picasso, Le Sauvetage (1932), Via Sotheby’s

The Modern and Impressionist evening sales in New York have closed, following two nights of sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s that failed to achieve the same exceptional sales figures that have marked previous auctions, while still finding buyers for most of the works on sale. (more…)

Marianne Boesky and Dominique Lévy have announced their official co-representation of artist Frank Stella.  The two galleries will take over for the artist’s somewhat scattered representation of the past few years, representing him jointly worldwide. (more…)

Giacomo Balla, Mercury Passing Before the Sun (1914), via Art Observed

From the opening lines of the The Futurist Manifesto, on view near the ground floor of the Guggenheim’s current historical survey of the early 20th century Italian avant-garde, one can detect a certain mechanistic determinism, a powerful, single-minded focus on the power of industry, science and machines.  F.T. Marinetti’s famous lines summon the roar of the engine, and the hum of electricity in equal measure, damning an Italy obsessed with its own past, and embracing a new future as a world power.

Umberto Boccioni, Elasticity (Elasticità), (1912), Courtesy Guggenheim Museum (more…)

Reinard Mucha, Before the Wall Came Down (2008) and Lennep (2009), via Luhring Augustine

The first steps into Reinard Mucha’s show of new works at Luhring Augustine are something of a jarring affair.  Enormous wall-mounted pieces, composed from steel beams, glass casings, and cracked wood blocks are stacked on top of each other in bizarre, serial constructions.  In one work, a series of electric trains continually run through a series of stacked, oval tracks, running through metal pipes, joined by a series of boom boxes above the sculpture, all tuned to country music stations.

Reinard Mucha, Hidden Tracks (Installation View), via Luhring Augustine (more…)

René Magritte (Belgium, 1898-1967). La clairvoyance (Clairvoyance). 1936. Oil on canvas. 21 1/4 x 25 9/16″ (54 x 65 cm). Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Ross. © Charly Herscovici -– ADAGP – ARS, 2013

The work of René Magritte is nothing if not recognizable.  His subtle, often humorous subversions of painterly convention and semiotic understanding are foundational elements of the early 20th century avant-garde, from  to his classic piece of semantic self-destruction, The Treachery of Images to the dreamlike paintings of imagined worlds and pastiched approaches to conventional subjects.  It’s these iconic works that form the center of the artist’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, examining his early works as the foundations of both his own career, and the vital lifeline of Surrealism in the twentieth century.

René Magritte (Belgium, 1898-1967). La durée poignardée (Time Transfixed). 1938. Oil on canvas. 57 7/8 x 39″ (147 x 99 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Joseph Winterbotham Collection. © Charly Herscovici -– ADAGP – ARS, 2013 (more…)

Elmgreen and Dragset, Tomorrow (Installation View) via Art Observed

Snaking through the hallways of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s London space is an immersive, illusory installation by Danish artists Elmgreen and Dragset, a multi-room piece realizing the home and studio of a fictional, disillusioned architect named Norman Swann.

Elmgreen and Dragset, Tomorrow (Installation View) Courtesy the Artists and Victoria Miro, London. © Elmgreen & Dragset. Photography: Anders Sune Berg (more…)

Geraldo de Barros, Composição Concreta (1953), Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth‘s upper east side town house is Sensitive Geometries: Brazil 1950s – 1980s, a two-floor installation that presents a range of artists working in an abstract idiom through the radically liberalized postwar decades in Brazil, encompassing multiple generations and artistic movements. Wide scale cultural changes in the wake of World War II, including the reinstatement of democratic rule, a flourishing economy and increased international exchange, inspired an artistic revolution that would ultimately mark Brazil as the epicenter of contemporary art it is today.

João José Costa, Untitled (1959), Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth (more…)

Speaking on the state of contemporary art, Grayson Perry has called the majority of contemporary art “rubbish.”  Speaking during the inaugural Radio 4 Reith Lecture, Perry began by discussing his own appeal as an artist.  “Although we live in an era where anything can be art, not everything is art.  I think the art world is happy to dig down into the lower regions of society for a bit of gritty reality, but what it’s frightened of is the middle classes with good taste, often. Maybe I appeal to too many of those people.”  He continued:  “At any one moment most of the art being made is awful.” (more…)

Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Sainte‐Geneviève, Paris, (1838‐1850) View of the reading room, Photograph Michel Nguyen © Bibliothèque Sainte‐Geneviève Michel Nguyen, courtesy of MoMA

Moving beyond mere architectural details, The Museum of Modern Art’s current exhibition, Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light,is not simply a survey of the French architect’s (1801-1875) work and influence, but also something of a meditation and retrospective on the library’s role in society.  As information continues its march from papers to servers, and books are routinely traded in digital form, Labrouste’s vision of the library as a central mechanism for the dissemination of knowledge offers an intriguing meditation on the significance, symbolism and vitality of the library today.  The show is also apropos here in New York as the city’s Central Public Library, in response to these changes, prepares for a potentially devastating renovation.

Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, (1838-1850) Southwest corner elevation and section (Late 1850), Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

(more…)

Hannah Hoch, Roma (1925). Via Focus.de

Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936, currently on at the Guggenheim, is more history lesson than study of art object.  A mix of known artists with the unknown, names like Hannah Hoch, Picasso and the  little remembered Amleto Cataldi (whose third Google result is someone’s Facebook profile) are shown contextualized within this period of political transformation.  Curated by Kenneth E. Silver—author of Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, which is considered an authority on interwar modernism—Chaos and Classicism offers an illustration of how art can just as easily support, as it does challenge, institutional power. Traveling up the Guggenheim’s ramp, the exhibition lays bare the changing sentiment of the period—from a reliance on the order and beauty of Classicism after the horrors of the first world war to fascism’s adoption of those same classical themes for world take over.

More text and images after the jump…

(more…)