AO Art Observed™

J.M. Turner Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, exhibited 1842 via Tate Britain

This Wednesday The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and The Tate Britain in London agreed to hold the first major exhibition in Russia of works by J.M.W. Turner, the renowned 19th century British painter. The exhibition will be solely financed by the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, who was ranked the 142nd richest man in the world in the 2007 Forbes 400 and who is the largest shareholder (24%) of Arsenal Football Club.

Billionare Takes Tate Works to Moscow [Guardian]
Usmanov Explains Why he Backed Turner Show [Bloomberg]
Turner Exhibition Set to Open in Russia [ArtDaily]
Tate sends Turners to Pushkin [TimesOnlineUK]
Press release from Tate Britain

More info and images after the jump… (more…)

A London building-side JR via Woostercollective

Some large works mark JR’s return to London from NYC (previously covered by AO here) for a solo show at Lazarides [Woostercollective]
The Tate will brand a cruise ship line focused on art [GuardianUK]
Jackie Wullschlager’s biography of Marc Chagall reviewed [The Economist]
Focusing on the sculptures of Pablo Picasso [Wall Street Journal]
Due to gambling regulatory concerns, Lazarides cancels ‘art raffle’ meant to coincide with Frieze [ArtInfo]
Tar magazine (anagram of art) debuts with a cover by Julian Schnabel [Mediabisto]
The Chapman Brothers produce a fuzzy backdrop for Stella McCartney’s spring/summer show in Paris [Independent]

‘I give you all my money 2008′ by Cathy Wilkes, a finalist at 2008′s Turner Prize, via Guardian

The Turner Prize is exhibiting this year’s finalists starting September 30th at the Tate Britain, in London. Founded in London in 1984 to support the development of contemporary artists under 50 years of age, the prize is widely considered one of the art world’s highest honors. This year’s finalists are Runa Islam, Goshka Macuga, Mark Leckey and Cathy Wilkes–the first time in the prize’s history that three of its four nominees are women. The works shown run the gamut from installation art to film.  Past award recipients have included Wolfgang Tillmans, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Steve McQueen.

Turner Prize page at the Tate Britain
A mannequin on a toilet and dry porridge – it’s the Turner Prize [Independent]
The Turner Prize 2008: who cares who wins? [Telegraph]
Turner Prize Nominees Offer Supermarket Checkouts, Broken China [Bloomberg]
Video: Take a tour of the Turner prize 2008 [Guardian]
Turner Prize 2008: Who’s Who [Guardian]
Dummies and china compete for Turner [Financial Times]
Turner fight begins again [Financial Times]
Nurses and Curses: Adrian Searle on this year’s Turner Prize finalists [Guardian]

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Crucifixion (1933) by Francis Bacon, via the Tate Britain

In celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth, the Tate Britain has put together a Francis Bacon retrospective encompassing 71 paintings covering the most important creative periods of the noted 20th century artist. The retrospective is the first in Britain since 1985, before the artist passed away in 1992. Bacon’s work forces the viewer to confront very disturbing, hyperfigurative images of mortality, lust, fear and violence, often incorporated gory, mangled or otherwise distorted depictions of human and animal anatomy. Bacon’s ‘Triptych’ (1976) recently set a record this May when Roman Abramovich (Russian billionaire and owner of Chelsea FC) bought it for $86.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York, earning him the distinction of being the most expensive postwar artist.

Major Celebration Heralding Francis Bacon’s Centenary Opens at Tate Gallery in London [ArtDaily]
Francis Bacon: ‘The man’s a bloody genius’ [Guardian]
Video Commentary from Chris Stephens, co-curator of the exhibition [Tate Britain]
Francis Bacon at the Tate Britain [Times Online]
Bacon’s Darkness in a New Light [Wall Street Journal]
Reviews roundup: Francis Bacon at Tate Britain [Guardian]
London set for Bacon centenary exhibition [AFP]
Bacon Show Has $6 Billion Art, Horror, Corpses [Bloomberg]
Francis Bacon claims his place at the top of the market [Art Newspaper]
Francis Bacon: touching the void, video review of the exhibit [Times Online]

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Triptych, 1976 via Sotheby’s.

Beginning September 11th, Tate Britain will be hosting an exhibition of the work of Francis Bacon (1909-1992) in anticipation of the artist’s upcoming centenary in 2009.  World-renowned for his figure paintings and studies of the human body, the exhibition will contain works of this nature as well as Bacon’s signature landscapes and animal representations. The Tate display will contain about 60 works which will reflect the development and output of Bacon’s career, which began in 1928 after a brief stint as an interior decorator. Although little of his work survived his proclivity to destroy it prior to his notable achievement of the Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion in 1945, he was fittingly recognized as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Today, he is widely acknowledged as one of the most prominent artists of 20th-century art, with works such as his Triptych, 1976 selling for $86 million at auction, which is a record-breaking figure for a post-war work of art.

Tate: Press Release [Tate]
Francis Bacon: behind the myth [Telegraph]
Francis Bacon at Tate Britain: a hidden interest in women [Telegraph]
The power and the passion [Guardian]
Francis Bacon comes to Tate Britain [DigitalArts]

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Dasha Zhukova, via Daylife

Daria “Dasha” Zhukova, daughter of an oligarch, girlfriend of Roman Abramovich, and a symbol of the recent Russian push into contemporary art [NYTimes]
Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner’s photography show at Fuse Gallery in the East Village [Supertouchart]
Both Qatar and Abu Dhabi want Philippe de Montebello, who is leaving the Met, for a directorship [NYsun]
More on the Frank Gehry-designed summer pavillion at Serpentine Gallery in London [NYTimes Tmagazine]
Amidst art-world controversy, Sir Nicholas Serota, Tate’s director of 20 years made “permanent employee” [Independent]

Running in the Tate via Bloomberg

Head’s up to visitors of the Tate Britain: from now until November 16, every thirty seconds from 10am – 6pm, an athlete will make a fast 85 meter dash from one end of Duveen Hall to the other. While running is not normally encouraged at the Tate, this particular athletic display is actually a commissioned artwork entitled Work No. 850 by British artist Martin Creed. Creed has instructed the runners, who he recruited from athletic magazines and are being paid an hourly wage, to “run like their life depended on it.” The artwork is part of an ongoing series of commissioned contemporary sculpture in the Duveen Galleries of Tate Britain, sponsored by Sotheby’s.

Tate Britain [Tate]
Martin Creed [Martin Creed]experience of life. The runners i
Dashing Through the Tate Britain [NY Sun]
Interview with Martin Creed [Bloomberg]
Duveen Commission 2008 [ArtDaily]
An Idea with Legs [Guardian UK]
Sprinting Runners by Martin Creed [Telegraph UK]
View video of the exhibit at Artreview.com

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Snow Scene at Argenteuil 1875 by Claude Monet (1840-1926) via Guardian

On view at Tate Britain: 18 masterpieces recently bequeathed to British National Gallery, including works by Degas, Freud, Monet, worth roughly $200,000,000 [GuardianUK]
The art/fashion, Vuitton/Richard Prince link in London [Bloomberg]
Mutualart.com’s Top Art Exhibitions for 2008 [Businessweek]
French art thief pleads guilty in botched $4.7M masterworks sale, indictment covered by AO here [NYSun] [AO]
2009 Turner Prize judges announced [TheArtNewspaper]
MOMA buys 3 Jasper Johns works for undisclosed sum (note: 2 years ago a Johns sold for $80M) [NYTimes]

A David Hockney via Times Online.

Hockney donates largest piece to the Tate [Daily Telegraph]
France loans to buyers, supports art market, competes with China [Int. Herald Tribune]
Inside Beijing’s Booming Central Academy of Fine Arts [New York Times]
“The Bather,” one of Cézanne’s greatest works [Wall Street Journal]
French film producer/director Claude Berri’s Paris art gallery in Paris designed by Jean Nouvel [ArtInfo]
MOMA lunch announces new IMPei designed Museum of Islamic art [NYMag]

‘The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory,’

J.M.W. Turner, 1806-8, via Tate

Tate sends 100 Turners to Moscow despite frigid diplomatic relations [ArtForum]
Update: French art market eclipsed by China [Financial Times]
Jasper Johns: Most successful artist ever? [New York Sun]
Russian artist Anna Mikhalchuk disapeared in Berlin [Artdaily]
View of Olafur Eliasson sculpture in Munich [contemporist via C-Monster]
Update: Interview of Whitney chief curator on Biennial’s process [Wall Street Journal]
Warhol’s Upper East Side townhouse for $5.99M  [New York Times]

John Baldessari, Carsten Holler, Nathalie Djurberg and Thomas Demand; Prada’s Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada; the curator Germano Celant;Francesco Vezzoli via the New York Times

Miuccia Prada as global patron of the arts [NY Times Magazine]
The expansion of South Korean art galleries in Chelsea [New York Sun]
Update: “Warhol’s Jews” the Sun reviews [New York Sun]
Salander profiled as a martyr of sorts for old masterworks [New York Mag]
On Artist Zhang Huan’s [Men's Vogue]
Hockney donates fifty works to Tate Britain [the Times.UK via ArtForum]
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster chosen for Turbine Hall [Guardian UK]
Sonnabend’s collection to be sold to pay taxes on $400 million estate [Crains]

The Apotheosis of King James I via the Times U.K

Tate seeking £6 million to keep “country’s most significant” Rubens[Times UK]
Monet, Rodin, 30 other works stolen from ‘priceless’ French collection [Bloomberg]
As Indian art gains value, is it a good time buy? [NY Sun]
Chanel commissions Sophie Calle, others for bag inspired installation [The Age Australia]
Fake Picasso prints sold over eBay, arrests made in the U.S. [New York Post]
Update: Is the Whitney Biennial too smart for its own good? [NYMag]
Sischy, Brant formerly of Brant Publications (Art in America), are new editors of European Vanity Fair [Mediaweek]

Gustav Klimnt, Beethoven Frieze via secession.at

Klimpt’s historic ‘Beethoven Frieze’ to be reconstructed at Tate Liverpool [NY Times]
Old master stolen by Stasi (East German secret police) valued at $2 million [Bloomberg]
The architectural intelligence of the New Museum [Financial Times]
Update: Goat farm video, other favorites, at Whitney Biennial [Bloomberg]
Brooklyn and Manhattan street art gains fans, collectors [NY Times]
A case against art for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth [Financial Times]
Gagosian’s Uptown Gallery Expands, with a new director (former Picasso biographer) [Art Info]

Anthony D’Offay via MSNBC

The British art dealer Anthony d’Offay has made one of the biggest arts sales in Britain for a reported fifth of their value. 725 works have been sold to the national collection, the Britain’s Tate and Scotland’s National Galleries on Wednesday.
British Art Dealer Anthony d’Offay Sells Major Collection [MSNBC]
More Modern Art for British museums [Telegraph.co.uk]
The Battle between the Tate and the MOMA [Guardian Unlimited]

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Zhang Xiaogang “Big Family” via Artprice

Sotheby’s gears up this year for its February 27th contemporary auction with flag-ship pieces such as Warhol’s 1986 `Three Self- Portraits’ and Bacon’s 1969 painting`Study of Nude With Figure in a Mirror’ as well as a more trendy selection of Chinese contemporary art.

Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s to Offer Three Self Portraits by Andy Warhol [Arts Gallery]
Bacon Nude, Warhol Self-Portraits Star in U.K. Sales [Bloomberg]
London’s Grand Finale [The New York Sun]
Sotheby’s Offers $19 Million of Chinese Contemporary Art [Bloomberg]

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Peter Doig, Ski Jacket 1994 via Tate Britain

The Peter Doig retrospective opens today at the Tate Britain in London. This comprehensive survey chronicles the artist who in 2007 became one of Europe’s most expensive living painters when his work White Canoe sold for £5.7 million at Sotheby’s. His canvases blur the line between abstraction and figuration as he creates images drawn from photographs, newspapers or snapshots.

Peter Doig [Tate Britain]
Record Painter [The Guardian]
Peter Doig’s success [ ArtInfo]
Peter Doig’s exhibition at Tate Britain [The Economist]

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Andy Coolquitt, JSUT, 2007 via Art Review

Galleries worth leaving Chelsea for [Art Review]
Details of 46,000 artworks stolen by Nazis [Bloomberg]
Interview with Armory Show chief Katelijne De Backer [Art Fag City]
Artist Hope Atherton on Peter Doig, soon to open at Tate [Style]
No market for stolen art: art thieves will have difficulty selling loot [NYSun]
Poussin Paintings together again [NYTimes]
Saatchi/HarperCollins join to sponsor a book design competition for Sean Dixon’s debut novel [Londonist]
Top Moscow contemporary art galleries merge [Bloomberg]
The Finnish version of the UK’s Turner prize: More of a marketing tool? [NYSun]

Farhad Moshiri’s gold-leafed toy guns via Portfolio

Dealers and Auction Houses Scour Middle East [Portfolio]
International Buyers Ignore Turmoil and Look to Art [Wall Street Journal]
Louis Vuitton and Richard Prince Collaborative Handbag [NY Sun]
Minimalists Artist, Martin Creed, First at Tate [Guardian]
Diversifying with Art Investment Strategies [Wall Street Journal]

Damien Hirst’s “Mother and Child” via Guardian, Photograph by David Sillitoe

Damien Hirst has donated 4 major artworks worth £15m from his personal collection to The Tate Museums as part of the Tate’s Building the Tate’s Collection campaign. It is the first time Hirst has donated work to a museum. The works are:

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A still from Mark Wallinger’s Sleeper, via artnet.

On December 3rd 2007 Tate Britain awarded Mark Wallinger the 2007 Turner Prize for his video, “Sleeper.” Since 1984, the prize has been awarded annually to a top British Contemporary Art Exhibition of the previous year and is generally regarded as one of the top art honors in Europe. Past winners include Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George and Anish Kapoor. The exhibition is on display through January 18th at Tate Liverpool.

Bloomberg Article
Mark Wallinger [Tate]

More Details on Wallinger after the Jump: (more…)

Photos: Christian Coleman for ArtObserved
“Banksy Does New York,” the first New York gallery show for British-born street-artist Banksy, opened this Sunday, December 2nd, at Vanina Holasek Gallery on West 27th Street.

Just this October more than 50 Banksy works went to auction at Bonhams and Sotheyby’s, both in London. Nearly all the works sold for at least double their top estimate. (more…)