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Gilbert and George, Buses (2009). Via The Independent

“They made themselves,” Gilbert and George reassure of the 564 postcard works that comprise the Urethra Series, only 155 of which are currently on view at White Cube, Mason’s Yard in London. Since their first exhibition of postcard works in 1972, Gilbert and George have continued methodically collecting postcards, phone box cards, fliers and other ephemeral, everyday modes of communication—two collections of which make up the Urethra Series. The Urethra Postcard Pictures represent 30 odd years of English visual culture, with images of Parliament and St. Paul’s Cathedral shown alongside S+M adverts and other such handouts that litter London’s phone boxes.

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Gilbert & George, with installation behind. Via SlamXHype

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Another view of the main lobby, A Scott Campbell “tropical fantasy” (represented by the Miami based OHWOW Gallery) is the top center work

Art Observed was on site at the Soho Beach House Miami during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach for a tour of the 150 work art collection assembled for the private club and hotel.    Keeping a close connection with the artistic community has been an important part of the strategy for the Soho house brand, which has multiple locations in England as well as in New York and newly in Los Angeles, Berlin and Miami Beach.   This week marked the first Art Basel Miami Beach for the location and it hit the ground running,  hosting some important events such as dinners for White Cube and Victoria Miro galleries and a W Magazine event.

A John Baldessari on the left and a Friends With You on the right, in a hallway on the main floor

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“For the Love of God” 2007, platinum diamond and human teeth. Image via White Cube Gallery, Beyond Belief exhibition.

“For the Love of God,” Damien Hirst‘s globally recognized piece in which he encrusted a circa-1800 AD skull with 8,601 diamonds (including a £4 million pear-shaped pink diamond embedded in the forehead), is now on display through May 1, 2011 in the Palazzo Vecchio – the massive Renaissance fortification and historic seat of the Florentine government.  The 2007 work, an iconic symbol of the last art boom, has not been displayed publicly in recent years.

The Pallazzo Vecchio, the current home of Damien Hirst’s diamond skull.  Image via Turismo Intoscana.

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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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Installation View via Artdaily.org

Currently on view at White Cube Gallery, 25-26 Mason’s Yard, is the exhibition of new works by a renowned German artist Franz Ackermann, titled Wait. It is Ackermann’s third exhibition at the White Cube, this time including not only his signature large-format canvasses on display on the lower level, but also an newer installation occupying the ground floor of the gallery.

The installation, which consists of artwork produced in the variety of media, centers around the painting titled ‘Citizen,” depicting a disproportional goggled face of a military pilot.   Among other components of the installation is a spinning wall-mounted painting, with seven deadly sins written on its frame, a video and chunks of raw wood randomly placed on the floor of the gallery.

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