Vasily Kandinsky, Murnau: Street with Women (1908), Courtesy The Neue Galerie New York

Currently on view at The Neue Galerie in New York is a survey of German Expressionist works, taken from the gallery’s permanent collection, that explores the opposing but connected themes of primitivism and modernity throughout the work of the era, including work by Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Paul Klee, among others.

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Paul Klee, Comedians’ Handbill (1938), via Metropolitan Museum of Art

On view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through February 24, “Late Klee” presents a concentrated survey of the last fifteen years of Paul Klee’s life and career. The one-room exhibition consists largely of small-sized works on paper and cardboard, each representing a facet of the artist’s prolific oeuvre and wide-ranging interests. (more…)

Richard Deacon, Four by Four (2012), via Marian Goodman

Marian Goodman is currently presenting a selection of new works by Welsh sculptor Richard Deacon, documenting the artist’s ongoing interest in form and surface through a variety of both hung and freestanding sculptures.  Composed of both wood and metal works, Deacon’s pieces on view explore the implications of texture on the form and presentation of the work, and the dissonances in volume and presence that result. (more…)

Gert and Uwe Tobias at FRAC-Auvergne (Installation View), via FRAC-Auvergne

The work of Romanian brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias operates in a peculiar space between diverse artistic traditions.  Combining watercolor, woodcut prints, sculptures, typewriter drawings and ceramics, the Tobias brothers have created a body of work that combines Art Nouveau with Romanian folk heritage, Paul Klee with Russian Constructivism, and archaic technologies with contemporary art theory.  Using the broad world of contemporary art as their sounding board, the Tobias brothers seek to reevaluate and re-contextualize their native heritage.  (more…)

New York art dealers R. Scott Cook and his wife Sousanna A.E. Cook have been ordered to pay $17.96 million in damages to collector George Ball after allegedly fleeing the country with 11 of his works, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse.  Ball claims that the couple had agreed to sell his pieces at Christie’s on his behalf, but instead left the country for France without ever listing the works.

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Grand Palais, courtesy FIAC

FIAC, or the 39th International Contemporary Art Fair, will open tomorrow (Thursday) in Paris, with a VIP preview today, with 184 galleries exhibiting at the Grand Palais, and this year utilizing the restored Salon d’Honneur as well, which lies at the center of the structure. As in past years, galleries will exhibit sculpture at the Tuilieries Garden nearby. Approximately 65,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Tuilieries Garden courtesy FIAC (more…)

Picasso’s Portrait d’Angel Fernandez de Soto sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for £34,761,250 – the 2nd highest price for a work of art sold by Christie’s in London (est. £30-40million)

Last night Christie’s held London’s biggest ever art auction when 46 Impressionist and Modern works racked up £153 million ($227 million), but the total was off from the pre-sale estimate of £164-231 million. While nearly quadrupling the anemic $60.4 million brought in by Christie’s at the same sale last June, tonight’s results suggest that while the art market may have recovered, pricing points are still a moving target. The sale was dominated by UK and European bidding – that includes Russia and former Eastern Bloc countries – which bought 55 percent of the lots sold, the U.S. accounted for 40 percent, and Asia for the remaining five percent. The sale saw only 46 of the 62 lots on offer sell, for a buy-in rate of 25 percent by lot and just 26 percent by value. Eight lots sold for over five million pounds and 31 broke the million-pound mark (37 works sold over $ 1million).

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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

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Half Gallery, opening reception. Image by ArtObserved.

AO was on site June 8th for the opening of “A Ways A Way,” the new exhibition at Half Gallery.  Curated by Meredith Darrow and Devendra Banhart, A Ways A Way offers synoptic views of work by artists Scott Campbell, William Eadon, Kevin Long, Megan Marrin, Keegan McHargue, Fabrizio Moretti, Angeline Rivas, Adam Tullie, and Banhart himself.  Coming from various corners of the artistic field, these men and women form a motley roster of familiar names: in addition to be being creators of fine art, Campbell is a renowned tattoo artist, Eadon is a deisgner, Long skateboards and plays guitar, Moretti is the drummer for The Strokes and Little Joy, Rivas and Tullie co-own Cavern Collection, Banhart is a singer-songwriter, Marrin works in mixed-media, and McHargue choreographs.  In attendance last night were Cynthia Rowley, Kathy Grayson, and a repletion of artists, gallerists, friends, and passerby.  Viewers spilled jocundly onto the surrounding sidewalk, chatting and enjoying a lovely night outside of the diminutive, buzzing gallery.

Anonymous Portrait, Fabrizio Moretti, 2010. Image by Oskar Proctor for ArtObserved.

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Eberhard Schrammen, “Maskottchen (Mascot)” (c. 1924), in “Bauhaus 1919-1933” at MoMA. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin Photo: Gunter Lepkowski © Estate Eberhard Schrammen

Complementing the Maholy-Nagy exhibition in Frankfurt showing at Shirn Kunsthalle through February 7, 2010, New York’s Museum of Modern Art is celebrating the early-20th century Bauhaus collective in a show which runs in the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Gallery through January 25, 2010. This presentation of the highly influential German school comprises 400 works, many of which have never before been exhibited publicly in the United States. Drawn from both private and public collections, including 80 works from MoMA’s holdings, the show also features 150 pieces from the three German Bauhaus collections, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar. The exhibition comes to MoMA after an earlier version at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius Bau, which showed from July 22 to October 4, 2009.

Vasily Kandinsky, “Schwarze Form (Black form)” (1923), via MoMA. Private collection. Courtesy Neue Galerie New York. Photo: Jeffrey Sturges © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

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The show is comprised of works by 63 artists, with some pieces showing publicly for the first time. The sweeping comprehensiveness of the exhibition allows for a juxtaposition of artists rarely seen. Paintings by Claude Monet accompany those by Cy Twombly and Paul Signac. Cubist Georges Braque brings the cartoons of Jean Dubufett into sharper relief. Included are Paul Cézanne and Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko and Sam Francis, in an exhibition that shows even the pop art of Andy Warhol and the Surrealist paintings of Salvador Dalí.

Ferdinand Hodler, “le Grammont,” at Fondation l’Hermitage. Image courtesy of the museum.

Yves Klein, “ANT 20,” at Fondation l’Hermitage. Image courtesy of the museum.

Initially founded in 1984 with the Bugnion Family collection, Fondation l’Hermitage now boasts over 600 works, shown in rotation along with its temporary exhibitions. The Fondation is also home to a collection of 12th-19th century Chinese porcelain, donated by the Vergottis Foundation and on permanent display in its underground space.

René Magritte, “La Ruse Symétrique,” at Fondation l’Hermitage. Image courtesy of the museum.

Paul Klee, “Felsenlandschaft,” at Fondation l’Hermitage. Image courtesy of the museum.

Edgar Degas, “Danseuses (Danseuses au repos),” at Fondation l’Hermitage. Image courtesy of the museum.

– R. Fogel

Claude Monet’s ‘Au Parc Monceau’ sold for £6.3 million, well above its high estimate of £4.5 million, via Christie’s

Yesterday’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale at Christie’s in London realized £37.2 million, falling shy of estimates of £37.8-51.7 million, including buyer’s premium. 30 of the 44 lots offered sold, with a rate of 68% sold by lot and 84% by value. The highlight of the sale was Monet’s ‘Au Parc Monceau,’ which sold for £6.3 million, far above its high estimate of £4.5 million. Joan Miró’s ‘Peinture (Femme se poudrant)’ also attracted spirited bidding, selling for just under £4 million, against estimates of £2.2-2.8 million. The star lot, a Picasso Musketeer painting, ‘Man with sword,’ sold for £5.8 million, in the lower end of estimates of £5-7 million. Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale takes places tonight in London.

Christie’s Impressionist/Modern Evening Sale Results [Christie’s]
Only a Few Hills in the Valley of Christie’s Season-Opening Art Auction [NY Times]
£1.5m Pissarro painting looted by Nazis withdrawn from auction [Telegraph]
Christie’s London sale falls short of low estimate [Reuters]
Buyers Focus on Works Worth the Fight [NY Times]
Monet, Picasso Fetch $20 Million; Auction Shrinks 74% [Bloomberg]
Christie’s Auction of Impressionist and Modern Art in London Realises $60.4 Million [Artdaily]
Christie’s misfires on £37m Impressionist and Modern art sale [Wealth Bulletin]
Christie’s Kicks Off London Season With Modest Imp/Mod Sale [Artinfo]
Family wrangle halts sale of £1.5m Pissarro stolen by the Gestapo [TimesUK]
Family Dispute Halts Sale of Pissarro Stolen by Nazis [Artinfo]
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