Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam! (1963), via Tate Modern

Blazing a path through the world of contemporary and avant-garde art, Roy Lichtenstein stands as a giant of post-war painting, sculpture and conceptual art.  Celebrating the artist’s position at the vanguard of 20th century art, the Tate Modern is hosting a massive retrospective of the artist’s work, the first of its kind since the artist’s death in 1997.

Roy Lichtenstein, Sea Shore (1964), via The Guardian

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ARTNews sat down with the current head of the Tate Modern, Chris Dercon, to discuss his career, overseeing massive additions to the museum, including its new performance space The Tanks, and his personal philosophy to curating.  “Today, to be really cool and sexy is to be sharing,” he says. “Inclusivity instead of exclusivity. Let the private collectors in the private museums do the exclusivity game.” He said. (more…)

Beginning their eight night run at Tate Modern last night, German electronic museum pioneers Kraftwerk played their debut album Autobahn to a crowd of 1,250 in the museum’s Turbine Hall.  Mirroring their run of shows at New York’s Museum of Modern Art last year, the band will play one of their eight full length albums each night, closing on February 14th with their last album, Tour de France.  “I saw them three-and-a-half years ago at the Manchester Velodrome and now that the whole show is in 3D and with surround sound, it’s incredible. It’s amazing that 40 years into their career, they’re still relevant,” said Andy McCluskey of electronic act Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. (more…)

The Tate Modern has announced that it will screen Roy Lichtenstein’s only film work, titled Three Landscapes, as part of the artist’s upcoming retrospective, opening next month.  Filmed at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, the film was part of an ambitious project for Lichtenstein in the early 1970’s, but was quickly abandoned after the completion of one film.  “When he finished the project, in a way he lost interest. What fascinated him was his painting. It was the first time and the last time he used film.”  Says co-curator Iria Candela. (more…)

This Sunday, the Tate Modern will host an ambitious performance work, organized by artist Suzanne Lacy, in its new performance space, The Tanks.  Welcoming 400 women over 60 who were active in mass political actions of the past 40 years, Silver Action will provide the platform for open, unscripted discussions on aging and political activism.  Visitors will be able to listen into the many conversations concurrently running, and dialogues will also be transcribed online.  “I’m trying to shift the discourse away from one of isolation and increasing frailty: we should see older women as an amazing resource – not just talk about them taking resources.”  The artist says.   (more…)

The repairs and restoration of a Joan Miró painting damaged at the Tate Modern in 2011 has been cited at £203,000.  Painting on White Background for the Cell of a Recluse I was damaged when an unidentified museum visitor leaned against it, placing both hands on the canvas.  The large damage payment by the UK government to the Fundació Joan Miró includes both restoration costs as well as compensation for depreciation of the work’s value. (more…)

The Tate Modern’s massive retrospective for British artist Damien Hirst has helped propel the Museum’s attendance to record numbers. Tate Modern saw over 463,000 visitors pass through the exhibition, contributing to the 5.3 million total visitors last year, and also announced the opening of their new extension, The Tanks.  Alex Beard, Tate’s deputy director, said: “It has been an extraordinary year at Tate Modern, opening the Tanks, the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works, alongside an outstanding exhibition programme which has undoubtedly fuelled the increase in visitors.” (more…)

William Kentridge, Installation View (2012), courtesy The Tate Modern

I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine by William Kentridge, consists of six individual projections juxtaposed against various walls of the Tanks in the Tate Modern. The projections cumulatively comprise a narrative that depicts the story of The Nose (1837), by Nikolai Gogol, whereby a spiteful nose departs itself from its owner’s face, tries to leave the city and is consequently arrested. However despite this, one morning when the owner wakes up, he finds his nose has returned.

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Wlodzimierz Umaniec, also known as Vladimir Umanets, who earlier this year vandalized a Mark Rothko painting at the Tate, has been convicted of the crime and sentenced to two years in prison. He wrote the phrase, “A potential piece of Yellowism”, on the famous Black on Maroon this past October. The charges were for criminal damages of over £5,000 but the prosecution estimates that restoring the painting will cost around £200,000 and take around 20 months. The painting is part of the Four Seasons series that Rothko gifted to the Tate. The painting has been valued between £5 million and £9 million. (more…)

In a replication of their performances at the MoMA in New York this past April, 2012, legendary German electro-pioneers Kraftwerk will perform eight classic albums in chronological order, with “spectacular 3D visualizations and effects” in Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern. At both museums the show was billed as “a chronological exploration of the group’s sonic and visual experiments.” Tate Modern’s title, slightly different than MoMA’s, is KRAFTWERK – THE CATALOGUE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8,  and tickets go on sale December 12th.  (more…)

Roy Lichtenstein, Oh, Jeff… I love you, too… but.., 1964, courtesy Tate Modern

The Tate Modern is holding a retrospective of work by master of Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein, which consists of 127 works and runs through May 2013. The exhibition, the first major one since the artist’s death in 1997,  is said to attract more visitors than Damien Hirst’s 2012 show that brought people from all over the world through the doors of the Tate.

Lichtenstein was born in 1923 and passed away in 1997; he was considered to be the founder of Pop Art along with other preeminent artists such as Andy Warhol. His signature comic-book-inspired works that are brought to life with Ben-Day dots were the beginning of art based on popular culture. Images adopted from the media were rearranged and juxtaposed with unrelated material to relate to contemporary life.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!  (1963), via Tate Modern

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The Met has added a new curator in preparation to temporarily occupy the Whitney’s Breuer building in 2015. Nicolas Cullinan has been appointed as Curator in the modern and contemporary department by Chief Curator Sheena Wagstaff. He is currently the Curator of International Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tate Modern. (more…)

Image: Doug Aitken, Tilda Swinton in The Source, 2012, via Sky Arts Ignition

American artist Doug Aitken has his first public installation in the UK entitled The Source, which asks a variety of leading arts practitioners questions about where their creative ideas come from. Viewers can watch video conversations with artists such as Tilda Swinton, Jack Pierson, Jack White, and Mike Kelley, projected inside a temporary structure on Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock built in collaboration with renowned British architect David Adjaye.

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Tino Sehgal, Installation view, 2012, courtesy Tate Modern

The Turbine hall has been home to the Unilever series and currently welcomes its thirteenth commission in the form of These Associations by Tino Sehgal. Despite Sehgal being the thirteenth artist to exhibit as part of the series, he far from blends into the crowd of his predecessors. Sehgal gives the inaugural ‘Live Art’ performance of Unilever coinciding with the Olympics as part of London 2012.

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Image: The vandalized section of a Mark Rothko Seagram mural painting at The Tate Modern

A Mark Rothko painting was vandalized at the Tate Modern on October 7th, said the museum. The piece in question was a Seagram mural, one of a series of works commissioned by New York’s Four Seasons restaurant in 1958-9; the series was one of Rothko’s most important and meaningful projects.

Image: The painting that was defaced – Mark Rothko, Black on Maroon © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/DACS 1998

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Tate Modern announces that its Damien Hirst retrospective was its most popular exhibition on record, with almost half a million visitors. The show, which closed this month, has proven to be more popular than blockbusters such as Hopper, Gauguin or Rothko.

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The Tate Modern is considering adding a 1.5 ton, 16.5 meter long wind turbine blade, carried to the gallery by Liberate Tate, to its permanent collection. The group, which opposes the Tate’s sponsorship by the oil company BP, renamed the blade “the gift” and installed it in the Tate’s turbine hall last month. The group then wrote to gallery director, Sir Nicholas Serota, “We think that it is a work that will fit elegantly in the Tate collection, a work that celebrates a future that gives rather than takes away, a monument to a world in transition.” Serota has responded that the offer will be discussed with trustees later this month, and until then the turbine will be housed in storage.

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Olafur Eliasson – Little Sun (2012), The Tate Modern

As part of the London 2012 Festival, the Tate Modern is hosting a special exhibition in collaboration with artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen.  Spotlighting the duo’s new creation, Little Sun aims to bring solar-powered lighting to parts of the world with no electricity.

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After 13 successive Turbine Hall annual commissions at the Tate Modern, Unilever has ended their sponsorship of the program causing the institution to seek new sponsorship.  Since 2000, Unilever has sponsored commissions including Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project, 2003-04, Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth, 2007-08, and Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei, 2010-2011. Unilever’s sponsorship deal runs through 2013, after which, they will remain on board as a corporate member. The Tate is now beginning discussions concerning sponsorship from 2014 onward.

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Senior HSBC bank manager Michael Foreman was identified as the man who fell to his death from a Tate Modern balcony last week.

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An unnamed man in a suit plunged 100 feet to his death off the Tate Modern‘s members-only balcony yesterday, leaving hundreds of onlookers shocked.

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Tino Sehgal via The Independent

Anglo-German artist Tino Sehgal opened ‘These Associations’ in the Tate Modern‘s Turbine Hall yesterday. As the 13th Unilever Commission, the performance art installation is the museum’s first live commission. ‘These Associations’ features shifts of around 50 participants at a time, partaking in different games, dances, and social interactions designed by Sehgal.

Turbine Hall, the venue for ‘These Associations’ via BBC News

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Unilever‘s sponsorship of the Tate Modern‘s yearly art installation in the Turbine Hall has expired. The decision for renewal will be put on hold, as the venue is set to close for construction in 2013.

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‬In the midst of a major mid-career retrospective at Tate Modern, Damien Hirst is profiled by Forbes magazine. Considering the boundaries of a contemporary art market, the article suggests “nobody seems to misunderstand his genius more than Damien Hirst himself.”

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