Albert Oehlen, Untitled (2005), via Art Observed

In terms of painterly invention, few can keep up with Albert Oehlen, the German artist whose relentless reinterpretation of the medium has made him one of the more intriguing, and often unpredictable, guardians of the form.  Moving effortlessly from visceral abstraction to coy installation work and back, few elements of visual culture have avoided his scope over the past 30 years.  This drive towards the investigation of the image, and its potentials in an increasingly mediated world, sits at the center of Oehlen’s New Museum retrospective this summer in New York, combining a carefully selected series of works that move from his early recognition during the 1980’s through to the present day. (more…)

Francis Bacon, Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer (1967), via Christie’s

Another auction come and gone for Christie’s tonight in London, and another set of strong results, as the auction house capped a 76 lot sale to the tune of £95,646,500, meeting expectations, and setting several records for non-blue chip artists along the way, with 10 lots going unsold, including a string of Gerhard Richter works that may signal a downturn in the artist’s market popularity. (more…)

Yves Klein, Peinture de feu couleur sans titre (FC 27) (1962), via Christie’s

Following strong but subdued outings last week during the London summer sales, attention turns to the Contemporary market in the UK, as a trio of sales this week will usher in the summer months.  The sales start tomorrow, spanning three nights in the British capital, and drawing the first half of the year’s major sales to a close.

Andy Warhol, One Dollar Bill (1962), via Sotheby’s (more…)

Pablo Picasso, Les Femmes D’Alger (1955), via Art Observed

The crown for the most expensive artwork at auction has returned to the master, as Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes D’Alger lived up to its lofty expectations at auction this evening, as Christie’s “Looking Forward to the Past” exhibition kicked off Frieze Week (and a week of Contemporary Sales in New York) in grand style, tallying a massive $705,858,000 for a 35-lot offering that saw numerous records fall by the wayside, and only one lot going unsold, on the way to Picasso’s triumphant evening. (more…)

Claude Monet, Nymphéas (1905), via Sotheby’s

As the art world prepares to jet en masse to Italy this week for the opening of the Biennale Previews, the auction houses are also preparing for their biggest stage of the spring season, with two weeks of major evening sales in both the Impressionist/Modern and Post-War/Contemporary categories set to take place in New York. (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…)

Hermann Nitsch,Kreuzwegstation (Station of the Cross) (1961) at Hauser and Wirth, via Art Observed

The Viennese Actionist movement was one of the more visceral post-war collectives that sprung up from the war-torn landscape of mid-20th Century Europe.  The group of Austrian artists (while claiming they were never affiliated officially), among them Otto Mühl, Günter Brus, and Rudolph Schwarzkogler, combined disturbing and often surreal imagery with a ritualistic approach to art making, creating elaborate pieces that often involved flayed animal carcasses, body parts, and bucket upon bucket of blood.

(more…)

Isa Genzken, World Receiver (2012), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

Open since November, Isa Genzken’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art is a colorful affair, combining the artist’s playful manipulation of consumer objects, every day materials and multiple media forms with a studied historical perspective that underlines her architectural and structural interests.

Isa Genzken. Rot-gelb-schwarzes Doppelellipsoid ‘Zwilling’ (Red-Yellow-Black Double Ellipsoid “Twin”), 1982. Lacquered wood, two parts. Overall: 9 7/16 x 8 1/16 x 473 1/4″ (24 x 33.5 x 1202.1 cm) Part one: 5 1/8 x 8 1/16 x 236 1/4″ (13 x 20.5 x 600 cm) Part two: 4 5/16 x 5 1/2 x 237″ (11 x 14 x 602 cm). Collection of the artist. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin. © Isa Genzken (more…)

Christie’s offerings for its February 4th, 5th and 7th auctions in London are already indicating a strong sale, with works by Picasso and Magritte leading an offering that is anticipated to earn nearly $380 million.  Picasso’s Femme au costume turc dans un fauteuil leads the auction, and has not been on sale in over 50 years, valued at £15-£20 million.  “This stellar sale presents international collectors and institutions with rare opportunities to acquire exceptional works with illustrious provenance by key impressionist and modern masters,” Jay Vincze, Christie’s International Director and head of its Impressionist and Modern Art Department, said in a statement. (more…)

Collectors Keith and Katherine Sachs, longtime supporters of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, have endowed the institution with 97 works by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden and Gerhard Richter, among others, valued at over $70 million.  This museum has always been committed to contemporary art,” said Museum Director Timothy Rub. “Now, with the Sachs gift, we will have one of the best collections of contemporary art in the country. It’s transformative.” (more…)

Steven Parrino, Skeletal Implosion, 2001

Dedicated to the movement of abstraction throughout the past decades of art, and equally to the divisive concept of “the end of painting,” The Show is Over is an exhibition presented by Gagosian Gallery in London, combining works from a variety of artists to point to a single thesis: that painting as a medium of expression will never be quite be “over.”

Richard Prince, “Untitled,” 2012

(more…)

Robert Indiana, The American Gas Works (1962), Courtesy of The Whitney Museum of American Art

Robert Indiana‘s lasting fame in the canon of American post-war modernism will forever belong to his iconic LOVE sculpture—that immediately recognizable logo of stacked letters animated by it’s slanting O, which graces merchandise as ubiquitous as the US postage stamp. This beautifully simple graphic, originally conceived as a design for a Christmas Card for MoMA, has in fact so eclipsed Indiana’s expansive career that his name has become synonymous with its text. And yet this fall’s large retrospective at the Whitney, Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE, plumbs the depths of his oeuvre to present an artist far more complex than those four well-worn letters. Curated by Barbara Haskell, the exhibit presents paintings and sculptures by the pop artist that highlight Indiana’s sociopolitical conscience as boldly as their hard-edged execution, and traces his developing formal vocabulary of language and abstraction, from biting political commentary, to personal biography, to literary allusion, Indian’s broad selection of works on view dispel any notion of the artist as one-hit-wonder.  This exhibit demonstrates the thematic expanse Indiana pursues “beyond Love”, including American identity, the American Dream, and the politics of race and sexuality. Rife with literary references to American authors and indebted to artistic predecessors such as Charles Demuth, the textual program is often as radical as his post-painterly abstraction.

Robert Indiana, LOVE (1961), Courtesy of The Whitney Museum of American Art (more…)

Over 40 years, Herbert and Dorothy Vogel built up a collection of some of the most significant contemporary artworks of the post-war contemporary era, paid for on meager working class salaries as a postal worker and librarian.  By the time of Herbert’s death last year, the couple had amassed a collection well over 4,000 works, half of which they set about donating to 50 institutions in each of the fifty states.  A new film by director Megumi Sasaki, titled Herb and Dorothy 50×50, will be released soon, the second film to focus on the story of the couple’s love for art, and the process of donation to museums across the country. (more…)

Gursky Sells at Sotheby’s, via Sotheby’s

The final auction hammers have fallen for the first half of 2013, concluding June’s London auction weeks. While the results of this week’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s were solid, final sales events before the summer break showed a marked tapering off in both sales prices and quantities. With the bountiful auctions, events and fairs, including the $1.1 billion New York auctions, Frieze New York, Art Basel Hong Kong, and the Venice Biennale with its record 86,000 attendance count.

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Isabel Rawsthorne (1966) via Sotheby’s (more…)

The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns, (Installation View) © Felix Clay 2013. Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery

Taking a diverse look at Marcel Duchamp’s influence on artists around the globe, the Barbican in London is currently presenting The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns, following the artist’s influence on several modern masters in the fields of composition, choreography and the visual arts. Featuring around 90 works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, as well as choreographic work by Merce Cunningham and works by John Cage, the show takes great pleasure in crossing the disciplines of art, dance and music to reflect the multi-faceted work of these artists.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1950 replica of 1917 original) Photo Felix Clay 2013, Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery. (more…)

Glenstone, a private museum established by industrialist Mitchell P. Rales and his wife Emily in Potomac, Maryland, is planning a major expansion to its exhibition spaces.  Costing $125 Million, the new galleries will offer more public access to what National Gallery director Earl A. Powell III calls “one of the most important collections of postwar art.” (more…)

Jackson Pollock’s No. 19, 1948 will be on the auction block at Christie’s next month, part of the auction house’s May 15th sale of  Contemporary and Post-War Art in New York.  A classic “drip-painting” by the artist, the work last sold at auction for $2.4 million in 1993, and is estimated to sell between $25 and $35 million.  “You can see the circular movement of Pollock’s hand,” Said Worldwide Post-War and Contemporary Art Chairman Brett Gorvy said. “It’s one of those paintings you get lost in.” (more…)

Outside the Park Ave Armory for the ADAA Art Show

With another hectic Armory Week comes another edition of the Art Dealers Association of America’s Art Show, open at the Park Avenue Armory.  Now in its 25th edition, The Art Show is the nation’s longest continually running art fair, offering viewers a smaller, more scaled back experience in contrast with The Armory Show held out on New York’s Hell’s Kitchen Piers.  The show’s more focused collection of 72 leading dealers and galleries allow viewers a slightly less overwhelming experience moving from booth to booth, and also provide slightly more space for the work to breath.

Damien Hirst at Van de Weghe (more…)