AO Art Observed™

‪‬New Museum Associate Director Massimiliano Gioni appointed Director of Visual Arts for the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, the youngest director in 110 years at age 39 [AO Newslink]

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‪‬New Museum announces spring exhibition schedule (May through August) featuring focused solo presentations by Phyllida Barlow, Tacita Dean, Nathalie Djurberg, Klara Lidé [AO Newslink]

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‪New York Health Department limits ‬New Museum to one person per bath for Carsten Holler’s “Psycho Tank” installation [AO Newslink]

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Sliding down with canvas mat in Carsten Höller’s Untitled (Slide), 2011. All photos on site for Art Observed by Nicholas Wirth.

Carsten Höller‘s 40-foot-high, 102-foot-long transparent metal slide—a “pneumatic mailing system”—awaits the daring visitor at the top floor of the New Museum. Surveying eighteen years of the artist’s work, The Experience exhibition is organized “experientially,” as opposed to chronologically, moving from a low-speed mirrored carousel down the slide to realistic albeit neon animal sculptures, disorienting architectural interventions, a sensory deprivation pool, and the artist’s simple yet highly effective upside-down goggles. The series of interactive environments function like science experiments, designed “to explore the limits of human sensorial perception and logic through carefully controlled participatory experiences,” as the exhibition’s press release explains.

Installation view, fourth floor.

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‪‬Carsten Höller installs 102 foot slide, “a happiness-producing machine,” through the floors of the New Museum for his upcoming retrospective [AO Newslink]

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A video projection on the facade of the New Museum on Bowery by Flash:Light – All photos by Ilhan Kim for Art Observed unless noted

The New Museum’s “Festival of Ideas for the New City,” took place from May 4th- 8th, 2011 off the Bowery, in downtown Manhattan. Promoting the ideas of community, diversity, collaboration, dialogue, and change, this effort was carried by several institutions, including universities, grassroots groups, museums, arts oriented spaces, businesses, and the city. The festival, by delivering many conferences, shows, and street performances, created a very unique and somewhat mesmerizing ambiance to the neighborhood, as it was temporarily transformed into an exhilarating forum of expression, where the simultaneous manifestations of different artistic ideals and perspectives, derived into a multitude of individual and collective experiences, for both participants and audiences.

The Streetfest on Bowery

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Founded by the New Museum, the Festival of Ideas for the New City is a collaborative program which embodies the Lower East Side’s re-invention as a cultural hub and alternative to chic Chelsea. During the four-day long effort, innovative ideas, fresh talent and some familiar faces will be showcased with a mix of street festivities, panel discussions and gallery projects.

The changing Lower East Side freflected in an 1984 issue of New York Magazine.

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Stock, Ryder Ripps (2011).

The crowd on the New Museum’s 7th floor at Rhizome’s 15th anniversary benefit party.

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New Museum Spring Gala After Party 2011

Art Observed was on site at the New Museum‘s annual Spring Gala After Party in the financial district on April 6th. More than 40 floors above Manhattan, the room was a mixture of art world insiders, socialites and fans, including Hope Atherton, Urs Fischer, John Waters, Gavin Brown and Jen Brill, with music by DJs Harley and Cassie and a performance by the band Hess is More.

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George Condo, Homeless Harlequins (2004). Via New Museum

Over eighty paintings and sculptures fill two floors of the New Museum with a survey of George Condo’s work from the past thirty years, the opening drawing celebrities like Marc Jacobs and Kanye West, for whom Condo recently painted an album cover. The characters in Condo’s portraits maintain a human quality despite their oversized ears and exaggerated expressions. He attributes his ability to draw up absurd yet empathetic portraits to his mimicry of classic techniques—careful color choice, appropriate brush strokes. Through his impeccable technique, he has gained a follower: Eneas Capalbo is marking his tenth year of copying Condo’s work. His exhibit, a token of how much he admires the artist’s work, opened at the Half Gallery the same day as Condo’s.

Installation view. Via New York Times

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Detail, nude (xxx), 2010. All images courtesy Gladstone Gallery.

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery is nude, an exhibition of cast wax sculptures by Ugo Rondinone. The seven life-size figures, which occupy the gallery in various moments of repose, are made from a mixture of wax and earth pigments. Rondinone’s work has been described as perverse and grotesque to pretty and breathlessly romantic; this exhibition seems to fit into the final category, reflecting on poignant expressions of the human condition.

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Exit Art Founders Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman at Exit Art, 578 Broadway, Manhattan, 1986. Courtesy of Exit Art

Exit Art’s Alternative Histories attempts to assess the inception and development of “alternative” art spaces in New York since the 1960s. The show presents various forms of documentary and archival material drawn from more than 130 organizations and collective experiences which have, from this establishment’s perspective, shaped  the cultural topography of the city over the past 50 years, informing and inspiring generations of artists and practitioners.

All installation views courtesy Exit Art

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Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, Dreammachine, 1962. Installation View, The New Museum. All images via Artnet

Currently on view at the New Museum is “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine,” the first comprehensive American exhibition to feature the interdisciplinary British artist, writer, and collaborator. Often overlooked, both popularly and commercially, Gysin (1916-1986) has frequently been characterized as a foil of failure within the historical narrative of Beat-Era success stories. He is generally credited as the inventor of the “cut-up” method, a medium which culminated in his co-authorship of the experimental collage-manifesto The Third Mind with William S. Burroughs.

Brion Gysin and William S. Burroghs, The Third Mind, 1965.

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Rivane Neuenschwander, I Wish Your Wish, 2003, installation view (detail) © New Museum, all installation photos by Jordana Swan

Earlier this week at the New Museum, Rivane Neuenschwander’s first American museum retrospective, “A Day Like Any Other”, opened, finally giving the States the opportunity to view the internationally acclaimed work of this Brazilian-born artist.  Art Observed was on site for the three-floor opening, which spans a decade of Neuenschwander’s refined and poetic presentations on how she understands the world.

Rivane Neuenschwander, Rain Rains, 2002, installation view

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All images courtesy of Patrick McMullan

On Wednesday night, AOL inc. kicked-off their 25th Anniversary celebrations in New York with an intimate ceremony at the New Museum to launch Project on Creativity – a new initiative spearheaded by a series of portraits of the innovators and creatives photographed by American artist Chuck Close – a select few, including images Dalai Lama, segway inventor Dean Kamen, artist Kara Walker, director Gus Van Sant and the actress Claire Danes, were displayed in the Seventh-Floor Sky Room at the Museum which was packed with the members of the New York society world including Andy and Kate Spade, Lisa Anastos, Genevieve Jones, Jennifer Missoni, Will Cotton, Waris Ahlualia, Glenn O’Brien, Bill Powers and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. The ground floor of the museum was dedicated to a high-tech display of original artwork by four artists from around the world who are part of a larger group of 41 young artists who are to be featured on AOL’s homepage as well as AOLArtists.com – a new destination where users can learn more about how AOL is using creative expression across their sites and the artists who created involved. In addition to these initiatives, AOL representatives used the evening as an opportunity to announce plans for 25 for 25 - a scholarship program, which will grant 25 $25,000 scholarships to tomorrow’s journalists, artists, illustrators, chefs, producers, videographers, and editors. The evening continued for guests who headed a few blocks north to the Bowery hotel for the official after party which was headlined by an intimate performance John Legend.

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All images and text by Eric Forman for ArtObserved

Last Saturday at the New Museum, new media arts organization Rhizome presented Seven on Seven, a day-long conference showcasing seven collaborations between one artist and one “technologist.”  Each pair had only 24 hours to conceive an idea and whip up a prototype.  The event referenced “9 Evenings,” a famous 1966 collaboration between artists and engineers organized by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver.  That group had 10 months and came up with many influential technological “firsts.” Seven on Seven had more modest aims, and the results, though uneven, were varied and entertaining, most straddling the line between functional social experiment and pop-up work of art. Rhizome executive director Lauren Cornell curated the pairings and many of the participators gushed about the fun they had brainstorming together.  The audience, a packed house of well-heeled digerati who paid what some said were “exclusionary” amounts for tickets, seemed to enjoy the proceedings, not least the cocktail reception in the New Museum’s sleek Sky Room. Some grumblers asserted that networking was the true raison d’être of the event, although there was widespread admiration for what the participators pulled off in such a short time.

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Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, 2010 recipients of the Pritzker Prize

Just announced, this year not one but two architects have been awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture. Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizama, the lead architects of the Japanese firm SANAA, were praised by the jury thus, “For architecture that is simultaneously delicate and powerful, precise and fluid, ingenious but not overly or overtly clever; for the creation of buildings that successfully interact with their contexts and the activities they contain, creating a sense of fullness and experiential richness; for a singular architectural language that springs from a collaborative process that is both unique and inspirational; for their notable completed buildings and the promise of new projects together.”

New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2007

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Urs Fischer’s ‘Noisette’ via New Museum

Swiss artist Urs Fischer is the first artist to take over all three galleries of the New Museum, with an exhibition entitled “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty,” Fischer’s first major American museum show. The announcement of Fischer’s show caused a good deal of excitement and speculation. Fischer, who famously dug out the floor of Gavin Brown‘s gallery in 2007, is well known for spectacular punk gestures, and observers were curious to see what he would do. Curator Massimiliano Gioni calls the exhibition not a retrospective or a survey, but an “introspective,” an in-depth look at Fischer’s practice combining previous works with new works and site-specific installations. In the post-boom era where museums are abandoning blockbuster shows and retreating to their collections, the New Museum gave Fischer a considerable amount of freedom, allowing him to significantly alter one of the galleries structurally, and flying last minute a gigantic sculpture from China.

Installation view of Urs Fischer’s ‘Marguerite de Ponty’ via New Museum

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The New Museum

In September, the New Museum announced a series of exhibition entitled “The Imaginary Museum,” the first of which will be curated by Jeff Koons from the collection of Dakis Joannou, who in addition to heavy collecting the work of Koons, is a trustee of the museum. The museum’s decision to show works from the collection of one of its trustees raised some ethical red flags by several bloggers, and last week gained momentum with a front page article on the NY Times followed by considerable coverage elsewhere, including an editorial in The Art Newspaper by Modern Art Notes’ Tyler Green, who had previously blogged about the situation, and responses by Jerry Saltz in New York Magazine. The cover of the November issue of the Brooklyn Rail featured a satirical cartoon by artist William Powhida with the title, “How the New Museum Committed Suicide with Banality,” taken by a post by James Wagner, skewering the incestuousness and insiderness of the New Museum, and Artinfo called the controversy the “New Museum scandal.”  The New Museum responded in defense, and a number of other museum directors also defended the museum’s decision.

Dakis Joannou and Jeff Koons at the New Museum’s 30th Anniversary Gala in 2007 via The Art Newspaper (more…)

The First Annual Art Awards via Guggenheim.org

Last night, October 29, marked the inauguration of a new annual art event: Rob Pruitt presented The First Annual Art Awards at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Yorkin association with the city’s oldest alternative art space, White Columns.

The awards were conceived by artist, Rob Pruitt, as a performance-based artwork; for the occasion he recruited the characters of Index Magazine’s wry satirical web series, Delusional Downtown Divas. The New York Times have reported that “…the Divas schemed to infiltrate the art establishment by any means possible. In one segment they pitched a tent in the Guggenheim, doing their laundry in the lobby fountain.”

Jeffrey Deitch and Kembra Pfahler at The First Annual Art Awards at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum via style.com

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AIDS-3D, OMG Obelisk, 2007 - Photo via Art Observed

The New Museum presents The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, an exhibition representing fifty international artists who were all born around 1980. Underpinning the exhibition theme is the idea that artist make firm gestures in the early stages of their artistic development. The exhibition gives insight into how this generation of artists experienced and reinterpreted, through their art work, personal and world events that occured during their lifetime so far. Within that reinterpretation, issues of memory , and cross-cultural and cross-generational communication arise. Addressing these issues through questions of technology, identity, collaboration and family uncovers an intimacy in the work that is not obvious at first. Taking up a large part of the museum (the lobby, second floor, third floor, fourth floor and fifth floor), the exhibition will run through 5 July 2009.

The Generational: Younger than Jesus
The New Museum
235 Bowery, New York
8 April 2009 – 5 July 2009

RELATED LINKS
Exhibition Page and Media [The New Museum]
Exhibtion Blog [The New Museum]
Announcement of the Opening [Art Newspaper]
Questioning the Durablity of Young Artists [Two Coats of Paint]
A “Wunderkind” Review [C-Monster]
BLT Gallery “Wiser than God” responds [Two Coats of Paint]
Video Review of the Exhibition [The World's Best Ever]
Jerry Saltz reviews the Exhibition [New York Magazine]
A “Refreshing” Show [NY Art Beat]
New Art is Complete Anarchy [New Yorker]
A “Vibrant” and “Energetic” Show [NY Art Beat]
“Useless Information” [ArtNet]
The Strengths and the Weaknesses [ArtNet]
An Impression of the Opening Night [New York Times]
Review of the Opening Night [Art Forum]

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Huang Yongping's Sixty-Year Cycle Chariot sold for double the high estimate of $194,00, setting a new auction record for the artist, via Artdaily

Contemporary Asian Art Sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong brings in $8.5 million USD, well wthin expectations with over half of the lots above estimate [Artdaily] more here [Bloomberg] and here [AuctionPublicity] and here [Economist] and here [Artinfo]
and finally more here [China Daily via ArtPatrol]
And in related: The Getty acquires 9 contemporary Chinese photographs for $100,000, boosting its Asian collection despite a tighter budget [Bloomberg]

Takashi Murakami will soon debut a new collaborative collection with Louis Vuitton [HypeBeast]
New York financier/art collector Ezra Merkin charged with $2.4 bilion fraud, the proceeds of which were used to fill his apartment with $91 million worth of art including Mark Rothko works from his collection, one of the largest in the world for the artist [Guardian UK]

Terence Koh via Glob

Kate Moss by Damien Hirst on the cover of Tar Art Magazine, Via New York Times

Kate Moss by Damien Hirst is the new cover of Tar Magazine (anagram for “art”) [NY Times]
Art funds launched in 2008, such as the London-based Art Trading Fund, are shelved due to failure to raise required funds [ArtNewspaper]
Art:21, Art in Twenty-First Century is now available for free on Hulu [Hulu]

"G8" by Andrei Molodkin via Financial Times

Russian Artist Andrea Molodkin, previously cited by AO here, prepares for Venice Biennale [Financial Times]
Jeff Koons is speaking at Strand Books tonight at 7:00-8:30 in New York [Via FAD]
New York Old Masters dealer Lawrence Salander is indicted and pleads guilty in $88 million charge [Bloomberg]

A look inside Rome’s MAXXI designed by Zaha Hadid via c-monster

A preview of the MAXXI in Rome, $108 million art museum designed by Zaha Hadid [c-monster]
Adam Lindemann, financier, collector and author of Collecting Contemporary launches a new book from Taschen: Collecting Design [ArtInfo]

Flash Art’s current cover featuring a portrait of Barack Obama by Marlene Dumas via Art Fag City

Marlene Dumas’s portrait of Barack Obama is the cover of Flash Art [Art Fag City]
Madonna’s art collection is estimated at £80 million pounds [TimesUK]

A selection from the site via The World’s Best Ever

A timeline of modern & contemporary art artists by movement, school, style, period, theme & art prize [The-artists.org via The World's Best Ever]
Richard Serra to receive honorary degree from Pratt Institute at its 120th Commencement on May 18th [MediaBistro]

Interview with photographer Nan Goldin on why she is auctioning some of the curiosities she has collected [TelegraphUK]
SFMOMA announces plans for a future expansion, doubling gallery space [SF Chronicle]

A preview of SANAA’s design for the 2009 Serpentine Pavillion via Architect’s Journal

SANAA, the Japanese architectual duo behind the New Museum, release first glimpse of design for the 2009 Serpentine Pavilion [Architect's Journal]
Jim Dine donates 40 drawings influenced by Greek and Roman sculpture to the Morgan Library [Artinfo]

Picasso Portrait seen here at the home of Julian Schnabel highlights Christie's Impressionist Sale [via artinfo

Installation view of Rothko’s ‘Seagram Murals’ via MSNBC

Tate Liverpool exhibits Rothko’s Seagram Murals after a 20-year absence [Artdaily]
Rochelle Steiner, under whose tenure Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls” was sponsored, leaves the Public Art Fund [NY Times] and in related, Sotheby’s CEO takes big paycuts in the wake of the market downturn [Bloomberg]

Alex James, bassist of Blur via The Mirror

Blur’s Alex James to judge Charles Saatchi’s art-star reality TV show [The Mirror]
Jonathan Jones on how consumerism spawned Warhol and Pop art and thus the shallowness of contemporary art [Guardian]
Vanity Fair’s imagined conversations overheard at a MoMA party [VanityFair]
A new show at Paris’s Musee d’Art Moderne acknowledges how Italian Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico sold backdated copies of his own work [Bloomberg]

Patti Smith via The Art Newspaper

Patti Smith, whose Polaroids are showing at Robert Miller gallery, on her early career as an artist and why she feels Jeff Koons’s work is “just litter upon the earth” [The Art Newspaper]

Andy Warhol’s BMW Art Car via W Magazine

The BMW Art Car series by artists such as Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg to appear at New York’s Grand Central Terminal starting March 24 [W Magazine]
Chinese art dealer who sabotaged Christie’s sale of bronzes during the Yves Saint Laurent sale weeps at his shattered credibility [Bloomberg]

Steve McQueen modeling for T Magazine

A brief profile of Turner prize winning film artist Steve McQueen’s fashion aesthetic [The Moment]
The Las Vegas Sun does a post-mortem on the Las Vegas Art Museum, which closed last month [Las Vegas sun via ArtsJournal]

Trailer for ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ via Entertainment Weekly

Soon to open in New York, an art world outsider chronicles his relationship with an art world insider in the film ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ [Entertainment Weekly]
Susan Moore looks at the recent emergence of a homegrown art scene in the United Arab Emirates [Financial Times]

Collectors Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant via Artnet

Art in America and Interview Magazine owner Peter Brant opens his private collection to the public, by appointment only, at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center [NY Times]
How the former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland was unable to secure an immense 16,000 piece art collection obtained during a takeover of ABN Amro as that bank’s CEO deftly transferred ownership to a foundation before the merger [TimesUK]
Turner Prize winning sculptor Antony Gormley announces first public art installation for Scotland [TheScotsman]

Laura Hoptman, Massimiliano Gioni and Lauren Cornell, curators at the New Museum of Contemporary Art via NY Times

A preview of the New Museum’s inaugural triennial, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” [NY Times]
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s book “The Conversation Series” includes interviews with artist such as Wolfgang Tillmans and Gilbert and George [ArtInfo]

A peek at Pierogi Gallery’s new annex, the Boiler via NY Times

Williamsburg’s Pierogi Gallery opens new annex, The Boiler [NY Times]
Chelsea galleries, including Andrea Rosen, Barbara Gladstone, Mary Boone and Matthew Marks, to show work at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba [The Art Newspaper]

Anish Kapoor’s ‘Temenos’ via AnishKapoor

Construction begins on first of five of Anish Kapoor outdoor sculptures in the UK: the ‘world’s biggest art project’ [DesignWeek]

Portrait of Pope Benedict XIV by Pierre Subleyras via NY Mag

Old masters prove to be a bellwether in the market downturn [Financial Times] as such, The Metropolitan Museum acquires a Renaissance portrait of Pope Benedict XIV for nearly $1 million amidst financial woes [NY Mag] and this painting also is featured here in a separate video discussion on the resilience of old master paintings [Sotheby's]