Peter Doig, Rain in the Port of Spain (White Oak) (2015), all photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Venetian Ettore Tito was one of the first stars of the Venice Biennale at its inception, presenting his work in almost every one of the early exhibitions through at 1920.  The artist’s colorful compositions often tinged with a slightly surreal, impressionist edge, were a prize of the Italian state in the early decades of the twentieth century, and often filled rooms during the first exhibitions in the city.

It’s a fitting parallel then, that the Scottish-born Peter Doig would be tapped for an exhibit at the former home of the artist, and current location of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa.  Presenting a body of new works, including fourteen paintings and an additional six large-scale canvases, the exhibition’s intimate locale and rich history offers a strong parallel for Doig’s own interpretive and illusory meditations on modernity, memory and fantasy.

(more…)

Isa Genzken, Geldbild I (2014)

Referred to as “one of the most important and influential female artists of the past 30 years” by MoMA on the occasion of her retrospective at the museum in 2013, Isa Genzken‘s new work is the subject of Hauser &Wirth’s current solo exhibition in London. Less known in the States compared to her artistic influence and recognition in Europe, Genzken has pursued a notably progressive career in the recent decade, building new bodies of work and showing in various international venues. (more…)

Lisa Yuskavage is interviewed in The Paris Review this week, shortly after opening a show at David Zwirner earlier this month.  In the interivew, Yuskavage reveals some unconventional aspects behind her new work, including dabbling in online dating networks.  “It’s interesting because in order to make some of these paintings of men, I did something a few years ago—I didn’t realize why I was doing it at the time. I joined Grindr. I had a Grindr persona.”  Yuskavage tells the magazine.  “You didn’t think I was going to say that today, did you?” (more…)

Artist David Hockney is interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week, reviewing his recent work, and offering his take on the meaning of being an artist. “Lots of people don’t really look,” he says. “They scan the ground in front of them, but they don’t really look that hard.” (more…)

Julian Stanczak, From Life (Installation View)

On view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash’s Chelsea location is a career spanning exhibition of Julian Stanczak, the renowned Polish artist considered to be one of the pioneers of Op Art movement. Starting with his works from the 1960’s until the present, the exhibition celebrates the artist’s long career, starting at a Polish refugee camp in Uganda in the 40’s after the artist permanently lost the use of his right arm due to an infection of encephalitis. (more…)

Artist David Hockney is the subject of a new biography by author Christopher Simon Sykes, who has chronicled some of the artist’s least known and most peculiar stories in a new book,  A Pilgrim’s Progress.  The book includes a number of Hockney’s famous feuds with artists and actors like Dennis Hopper and Rudolph Nureyev, whom Hopper once fired from a collaborative project.  “Well, Rudi, it’s obvious that we are not going to be able to work together, so I’m afraid it’s all finished,” Hockney reportedly said. (more…)

The New York Times has published a profile on painter, performer and gallerist Emily Sundblad, one of the proprietors of the multifaceted Reena Spaulings Gallery space.  “When people asked what it was called, we told them different names,” Sundblad notes. “We didn’t know exactly what the space was yet, but we knew for sure that it wasn’t a traditional New York gallery, and we didn’t want our own names on it.”  (more…)

Paige Powell, a former girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, has released a series of polaroids of the young artist near the apex of his creative output, and sat down with Wall Street Journal this week to discuss the artist’s life and work. “He was so young and he was almost at the height of—you know, before he died—acknowledgement in the art world of his talent, his genius,” she says. “He had people coming at him all the time.” (more…)

Joan Mitchell, Cypresses (1975), all images courtesy Cheim & Reid

On view at Cheim & Read in New York is an exhibition composed of seven large-scale canvases by Chicago-born painter Joan Mitchell, presented in collaboration with the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Spanning a long stretch of her career, the works on view were inspired by the form and structure of trees, painted in an expressionistic way, and will remain on view through August 29, 2014.

(more…)

The Tuscan town of Porto Ercole has announced plans to bury the remains of Renaissance painter Caravaggio after the artist’s remains were discovered in a church there in 2010.  Caravaggio’s body will be stored in an enormous arch monument created by the sculptor Giuseppe Conte, which will be inaugurated on July 18th, the date of the the painter’s death. (more…)

Jenny Saville is interviewed this week in The Telegraph, discussing her painting techniques, and love of the human form.  “I paint flesh because I’m human,” she says. “If you work in oil, as I do, it comes naturally. Flesh is just the most beautiful thing to paint.” (more…)

The city of Paris has named a public square in its 13th Arrondissement after Jean-Michel Basquiat, a fitting choice given the area’s popularity with street artists and street art tourists.  “Basquiat is one of the biggest contemporary artists,” 13th Arrondissemnet mayor Jérôme Coumet says. “He defended the cause of African-Americans in the US, and was also a lover of France. He was the artist who blazed the trail for street art, and art in public space.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles the work of the overlooked New York School painter Raymond Spillenger, who passed away last year at the age of 89, leaving behind a massive collection of paintings and drawings that speaks to the artist’s long and often unacknowledged career.  “Was it fear of failure?” says his son Clyde. “An unwillingness to be self-promoting? Some of the others had big personalities, but our father was quiet and diffident, not the type to compete.” (more…)

Sterling Ruby is interviewed in the New York Times this week, following the opening of the artist’s new show at Hauser and Wirth.  “When you look at what I do,” he says, “it’s schizophrenic to the point where it should never have a market. With my work, you can’t be like, “Well, we can plug this into what’s happening in the market because it looks like the last series.” (more…)

Ross Bleckner, via Art Observed

Painter Ross Bleckner has returned to New York this spring, with an exhibition of new paintings at Mary Boone Gallery, featuring several continuations of past series of works, while branching off in new directions.  It’s been some time since the last solo exhibition of works by Ross Bleckner in New York, nearly four years to be exact, and the artist seems to have been biding his time, putting together a strong selection of works.

Ross Bleckner, ALP30 (2013), via Mary Boone (more…)

Scottish-born painter Alan Davie passed away last week at the age of 93.  Davie’s expressionistic, abstract canvases earned him considerable attention during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and was considered as a major influence on the work of David Hockney.  The artist’s work is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Tate Britain.  “It’s an urge, an intensity, a kind of sexual need,” Mr. Davie said recently in an interview with The Telegraph. “I don’t practice painting or drawing as an art, in the sense of artifice, of making an imitation of something. It’s something I do from an inner compulsion, that has to come out.” (more…)

The New York Times delves into the work and life of Oscar Murillo, charting the artist’s meteoric rise over the past two years, and his current popularity on the market.  “I came to this by simply working,” Murillo says. “It’s the market, and that has nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to keep things normal. I’ve had to live below my means for so long that I’m keeping it that way.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Gaugin’s travels to French Polynesia later in his life, and his search “for the childhood of mankind,” a series of travels covered in MoMA’s current show Gaugin: Metamorphoses, curated by Starr Figura, with assistance from Lotte Johnson. (more…)

This past week, artist Richard Prince had his Instagram account deactivated for posting an image of his work Spiritual America (a nude photo of ten year-old Brooke Shields) on his account, then reinstated.  The artist recounts the experience on New York Magazine’s website:  “The thing goes black on your phone, and they have a little graphic username login. I could not, through my phone, reenter the world of Disney. It’s like Walt is behind me.” (more…)

Georg Baselitz is profiled in The Telegraph this week, as the artist prepares for three concurrent shows in London over the next few months.  Speaking the anniversary of the bombing of his hometown, Dresden, Baselitz reflects on how the violence of World War II found its way into his art: “the degree of destruction I’ve seen, which I’ve been surrounded by, is no longer comprehensible. It was so radical, so absolute. Today you’d ask: how could it even happen? But that was my time.” (more…)

Artist Eric Fischl is profiled in the Financial Times, and speaks about his current retrospective at the Albertina, his life and career, and the reception of his work by both collectors and museums.  “I very naively thought as a young artist that the work I was doing was not suited for individuals to live with because it had such harsh content, Fischl says, “but I thought museums would want it because it is about the truth of life. Turned out to be the opposite. Museums are afraid of sexual content.” (more…)

Christie’s London art auction next month will see the sale of another iconic Francis Bacon painting, a portrait of the painter’s lover George Dyer, which is estimated to sell for $49 million.  “These sellers understand margins, and the uplift can be colossal,” says dealer Alan Hobart. “The auction houses have the buyers at the top end of the market. It’s globalized money. Bacon is now an auction commodity.” (more…)

96 Cheyne Walk, the former East End London home of painter James Whistler, has been placed up for sale, with an asking price of £30 million.  The artist lived there for just over 10 years, from 1867 to 1878m during which time he created his most iconic work, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, affectionately referred to as Whistler’s Mother.  Other residents of the Chelsea street have included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Eliot, Henry James, former British prime minister David Lloyd-George, Laurence Olivier and the musician Mick Jagger. (more…)

Youssef Abdelke, a notable Syrian painter who has repeatedly spoken out against the Assad regime in his home country, has been released from a two month-long imprisonment by government authorities.  The 62 year old artist and former Syrian Communist Party Member had previously posted on his Facebook page that he “is healthy and in anticipation of leaving the palace of justice, free as [he] has always been.” (more…)