Andreas Gursky, Pyongyang V via Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

Currently showing at the   Wolfsburg is an exhibition titled “15 Years of Collecting – Against the Grain.” The Museum was launched in 1994 along with the immediacy of its mission to build a permanent collection of highly distinguished works by contemporary artists. The year of starting point of the collection, acquired since the launch of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, is 1968. The museum’s international reputation boasts works of avant-garde, minimalist, late modernist and conceptual artists. In celebration of its 15 anniversary Kunstmuseum is showing key works from its collection curated in an unconventional manner. The exhibit includes works by Bruce Nauman, Elizabeth Peyton, Carl Andre and Damien Hirst among others and closes September 13, 2009.

Damien Hirst, A Hundred Years via Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

Related Links:
15 Years of Collecting: Against the Grain [Kunstmuseum-Wolfsburg]
Fifteen Years of Collecting at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg- Against the Grain [ArtDaily]
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presents 15 Years of Collecting- Against the Grain [Artipedia]
Profile- Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg [Saatchi Gallery]

More text and pictures after the jump… (more…)

via The World’s Best Ever

Steve Powers- a famed graffiti artist known as ESPO, was born and raised in Philadelphia, and had his first museum solo show in Pennsylvania. In 1994 he moved to New York City. A Fulbright Scholar- Steve Powers painted a project similar to love letter in the streets of Dublin and Belfast, now returning to his hometown to conduct a massive graffiti project carrying the same title.  The “Love Letter” is planned to be complete by Labor Day.

A mural from Love Letter Project curated by Steve Powers via Gradient

Related Links:
Steve Powers (Bio) [Deitch Projects]
Love Letter Project [A Love Letter For You]
A Love Letter Project [Design You Trust]
Artists Steven Powers Curated Love Letter Project [Gradient]
Steve Powers Philadelphia Mural Arts Project [Curated]
Steve Powers Love Letters to Philadelphia [The World’s Best Ever]
Love Letter to Philadelphia [The Wall Street Journal]

More text, pictures and interview with Steve Powers after the jump… (more…)

From the Sigmar Polke show, “The Editions,” at  Museum Ludwig.

Through September 27, Cologne will be home to the humor, irreverence, painstaking technique and meticulous renderings of Sigmar Polke’s “Editions.”  Museum Ludwig is showing an exhibition of the collection, donated in large part by Cologne collectors Ulrich Reininghaus and Anna Friebe-Reininghaus in 2008.  Curated by Julia Friedrich, the show also includes rare prints and re-workings.

Related links:
–>
Museum Ludwig
–>
Sigmar Polke – Profile [artfacts]

–>
Sigmar Polke’s “Ohne Titel [Griffelkunst],” part of “The Editions,” at Museum Ludwig.

more images and story after the jump…

(more…)

D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) Paul Gauguin, (1897-98). Via MOMAT

MOMAT, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, is celebrating Paul Gauguin’s masterpiece D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) through September 23rd.  This exhibition brings Gauguin’s celebrated painting to Japan for the first time. In fact, it is only the third occasion that the painting has left the USA since its inclusion in the permanent collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1936.

E haere oe i hia (Where are you going?), Paul Gauguin (1892). Via MOMAT

Related Links:
MOMAT, the National Museum of Modern Art Homepage [MOMAT]
Paul Gauguin, Exhibition Page [MOMAT]
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston [MFA, Boston]
Huge Gauguin masterpiece makes rare visit to Japan [Reuters.com]
Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts Celebrates 10th Anniversary [ArtDaily]

More text and pictures after the jump….

(more…)

–>
Bruce Nauman, Self Portrait as a Fountain (Eleven Color Photographs) Courtesy of Whitney Museum

Investigating photography in the Whitney’s collection, Photoconceptualism 1966-1973 is the last in a three-part series of installments. The recognition of the mediums of video and photography as fit for Conceptual artwork was at its height in the 60s and 70s. Works are being shown on the mezzanine level of the Whitney Museum in a small one room gallery. Some of the artists presented are Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mel Bochner and Michael Heizer. The show will be over September 20, 2009

–>
Edward Ruscha, Universal Studios, Universal City (Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles) courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art

Related Links:
–>
Photoconceptualism 1966-1973 [Whitney Museum]
–>
Photoconceptualism 1966-1973 [DLK Collection]
–>
Now at the Whitney: Photoconceptualism, 1966-1973 [Fanzine]

More text and pictures after the jump… (more…)

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

The Ego and The Id, Franz West via Gagosian

At 20ft high, The Ego and the Id is the newest and largest aluminum sculpture ever created by internationally acclaimed Austrian Artist Franz West.  The Public Art Fund, New York’s leading presenter of artists’ projects, new commissions, and exhibitions in public spaces, have brought West’s enormous, brightly coloured loops to the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park located at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street.

This seems to be a very fitting project for West as he once famously stated in an interview with Robert Fleck, “Best of all I like art in the streets; it doesn’t demand that you make a special journey to see it, it’s simply there. You don’t even have to look at it – that is probably the ideal art.”

Related Links:
Public Art Fund [PublicArtFund.org]
Franz West: The Ego and The Id [Gagosian]
Franz West The Ego and The Id [Public Art Fund]
Art Steps Outside [NewYorkTimes]
Sculpture that asks you to spell [NewYorkTimes]
The Ego and The Id, Franz West’s New Public Art [NYCLOVESNYC]

(more…)

Her Daddy’s Money and Her Momma’s Good Looks, Rosson Crow (2009). Via Honor Fraser

The summer show ‘Bitch Is The New Black’ at Honor Fraser, Los Angeles will continue until August 29th. Curated by a former editor at ArtReview, Emma Gray, the exhibition showcases the work of 14 local female artists.

Thematically, the exhibition was inspired by the Anne Sexton poem, “Consorting with Angels”. The title comes from an altogether different source; a snippet of dialogue broadcast on Saturday Night Live during the 2008 Presidential Election. During the aforementioned sketch, Tina Fey celebrated the idea of a woman president as a “bitch” by reasoning that “bitches get things done“.

Untitled, Catherine Opie (1993). Via Honor Fraser

RELATED LINKS:
Honor Fraser Homepage [HonorFraser.com]
‘Bitch Is The New Black’ exhibition page [HonorFraser.com]
Consorting with Angels by Anne Sexton [Google Books]
Art Review: “The New Black” at Honor Fraser [Los Angeles Times]

More text and images after the jump….
(more…)

A glimpse of the Sol LeWitt mural, ‘Swirls and Whirls,’ being constructed in the Columbus Circle subway station, via NY Times

A mural designed for the Columbus Circle subway station in New York by Sol LeWitt in 2007, just before his death, is nearly complete [NY Times]

In related, Turner Prize winner Richard Long designs the cover for the London Tube Map [FAD]
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid has seen visitor numbers quadruple since the opening of its Henri Matisse exhibit [Art Daily]
Following the success of earlier Beyond Limits exhibitions, Sotheby’s announces its fourth contemporary sculpture exhibit at Chatsworth including works by Henry Moore, Marc Quinn, Zhan Wang, among others [Auction Publicity]

Jeff Koons via the Telegraph UK

Jeff Koons sits for lunch with the Financial Times and discusses his love of inflatables and how the custody battle for his son has affected his work [Financial Times]
MoMA’s PS1 in Queens will soon reprise its Greater New York exhibit, which will be its 3rd [LindsayPollack]
On Miuccia Prada and her still to be built €25 million, 20,500 square meter Prada Foundation in a south Milan industrial complex [ArtNewspaper]
Sotheby’s CEO William Ruprecht sells 5% of his equity holdings; he retains a 1% stake in the company [Barron’s via Art Market Monitor]

The Starns Brothers’ cover for the fifth anniversary of T Magazine, via NY Times

T Magazine celebrates its fifth anniversary with specially designed covers by Mike and Doug Starns, Jeff Koons, Francesco Vezzoli, Jenny Holzer, and Frank Gehry [NYTimes T Magazine]
Christie’s abandons its plan to establish an art-investment fund and a lending division [Bloomberg]
In related, Leibovitz creditor Goldman Sachs has stepped in to help negotiate the photographer’s financial troubles with Art Capital Group [Artforum]
The recession in the art world has not stopped bartering of valuable works between contemporaries [TimesUK]

Creative Time’s short shorts for sale at Creative Time

Creative Time is selling limited edition short shorts, and the campy video is here [CreativeTime via Artnet on Twitter]
On collecting phenomenon Herb and Dorthy Vogel’s gift of 50 works to 50 US States [Wall Street Journal]
Interpol allows online access to its 34,000 work database of stolen art [ArtDaily]
In related, roughly 1,000 Alberto Giacometti counterfeit sculptures seized in Germany [GlobeandMail]

Dasha Zhukova via Style.com

Dasha Zhukova, rumored pregnant with 2008 top collector Roman Abramovich’s child, as new editor of Pop magazine has a Damien Hirst work on the cover [NYMag]
Russian oligarchs invest enough money in the Constructivist and Suprematist art of the beginning of 20th century to provoke forgeries, more than half of items bought of these movements are reported to be inauthentic [The Independent]
In related, as Princeton Architectural Press claims to have discovered Frida Kahlo’s lost archive, scholars involved with the artist’s work refute the possibility of it being authentic [GuardianUK]
A new high intensity x-ray developed by Cornell University has already revealed a lost NC Wyeth illustration [ArtInfo]

Stephen Power’s Hold My Own Iverson’s Arm

2007 Fulbright Scholar Stephen Powers, known as ESPO, is completing his Love Letter project, comprised of murals by multiple artists stretching across his home town of Philadelphia that can be seen from one train [A Love Letter For You]
Shepard Fairey calls his decision to graffiti-proof the brick walls of his studio personal preference and rebutts claims of hypocrisy [Street Level] and separately he is to unveil a large scale mural produced by the gallery Country Club at Art Basel Miami Beach [ArtDaily]
Are Museums crossing the line by granting curatorship to corporations? [The New York Times]

Terence Koh’s window display at Opening Ceremony which reads “The Whole Family” via this hearts on fire

Terence Koh sends a very Terence Koh letter regarding his latest project with Opening Ceremony, a window installation [Hint]
On the relatively accessible yet potentially financially rewarding decision to invest in the works of MA students [The Guardian]
The Bortolami Gallery building is up for sale at $6.1 million by collector Adam Lindemann as Stefania Bortolami prepares to move to another location in Chelsea [Lindsay Pollack]
Matthew Barney and Bjork buy a four bedroom townhouse in Brooklyn Heights listed for $4.2 million [NYMag]

A painting from the Glenn Brown retrospective, currently hosted by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is showing paintings by Glenn Brown, in a new exhibition that runs through October 4.  The retrospective, organized in collaboration with Tate Liverpool, is the largest showing of the artist’s work to date, with over sixty paintings on exhibition.  The show, full of works that combines history and science fiction, is curated by Francesco Bonami and Laurence Sillars.

Related links:
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

A painting from the Glenn Brown retrospective, currently hosted by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

More information and images after the jump.

(more…)

Ai Weiwei, “Table with Three Legs” (table from the late Ming or early Qing Dynasty), at Mori Art Museum

Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum is currently showing the one of the largest solo shows ever by Ai Weiwei.  The exhibition reveals the artist’s range of genre, featuring 26 works of sculpture, photography, video, and installation that at turns treasures and condemns Chinese history.  Six included pieces were finished specifically for the show, which runs through November 8, 2009.

Related links:
Mori Art Museum
eye for an ai [scene & herd]
Who is Ai Weiwei? [ArtInfo]
Escape from Propaganda [The Japan Times]
Chinese Artist Says He Was Barred From Rights Advocate’s Trial [The New York Times]
According to What? by Ai Weiwei, Tokyo [Wallpaper]

Ai Weiwei, “Snake Ceiling” (backpacks), at Mori Art Museum. Via ArtInfo.

more images and story after the jump…

(more…)

Installation view of “The Audio Show,” on at Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York. Via Time Out New York.

New York’s Friedrich Petzel Gallery is hosting “The Audio Show” for two more days. The gallery’s rooms are empty save a speaker mounted in each corner.  These play seven hours of audio, comprised of submissions from Marilyn Minter, John Miller, Jesse Bransford, and more, interspersed with a single reconstructed episode of Walter Benjamin’s 1930s radio play, “Aufklärng für Kinder (Enlightenment for Children).” The schedule of audio is the same every day, but for the last hour of the afternoon, in which patron’s requested clips from the exhibition are replayed.

Related links:
Friedrich Petzel Gallery – “The Audio Show”
“Audio Show at Friedrich Petzel Gallery – Art review – [Time Out New York]

more images and story after the jump…
(more…)

Wolfgang Tillmans, ‘Anders Pulling Splinter from his Foot.’ 2004. Via Design Boom.

Currently on exhibit at Schaulager in Basel are approximately 200 paintings and sculptures dating from the 15oo’s to the present, taken from the collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel.   Alongside the works are thirty pieces from the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation and several works from private collections. Schaulager is meant to function as a kind of new form of art institution, “one that is neither museum nor traditional repository,”  but a “viewing warehouse,” with optimal climatic conditions where art can be simultaneously stored, preserved and viewed all at once.  Curated by Theodora Vischer, the current exhibit juxtaposes old and new artworks and was carefully selected and arranged.  The installation was “not produced based on the model of a classical museum hanging.  Rather, the result was a different, new narrative, or better: an essay of pictures.  It evolved, image by image, by means of diverse and unexpected relationships and numerous dialogues that ensued between the works, until finally the essay ‘Holbein to Tillmans’ took shape.”

Rodney Graham’s, ‘Allegory of Folly: Study for an Equestrian Monument in the Form of a Wind Vane,’ from 2005 alludes to an earlier work; ‘Praise of Folly,’ by Erasmus of Rotterdam, which was illustrated by Hans Holbein the Younger, a German artist from the 16th Century. Via DesignBoom.

Related Links:
Holbien to Tillmans [Schaulager]
Video of Holbein to Tillmans Exhibition. [Schaulager]
Holbein to Tillmans at Schaulager, Basel [Vernissage TV]
Holbein to Tillmans Exhibition at Schaulager [Design Boom]
Holbein to Tillmans- Prominentt Guests from the Kunstmuseum Basel [The ArtNetwork]

(more…)

Agathe Snow, Wish upon a Star detail via The Fireplace Project

Currently showing in The Fireplace Project in East Hampton, New York, is an exhibition by Agathe Snow.  Works exhibited are made from recycled materials that went into Agathe Snow’s show at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City in Queens last year. The installations are great in size, yet light to the eye- almost childish in their appearance of clean forms and bold color combinations; they play with conventions of contemporary art but do not defy them in establishing a language of their own.  The show of Agathe Snow’s works runs through August 23, 2009.

Related Links:
Agathe Snow “Terrestrial Forms” [The Fireplace Project]
Layout 1 [The Fireplace Project]
The Fireplace Project [Artfacts]
Wrap Artist/Agathe Snow [The Moment – NYTimes]
Agathe Snow “Terrestrial Forms” at The Fireplace Project [Slamxhype]

Agathe Snow, “Terrestrial Forms” an installation view via The Fireplace Project

More text, pictures and an interview with Edsel Williams after the jump…

(more…)

Untitled #153, Cindy Sherman (1985). Via Skarstedt Gallery

The current group show at Skarstedt Gallery on E79th Street in New York exhibits the efforts of nine artists to tackle a genre that is of great importance in the canon of Art History: the Self-Portrait.  Once a tool for self-promotion and notoriety, the staff at the Skarstedt Gallery recognize the self-portrait as “a conceptual apparatus of history and are at the disposal of anyone who employs it.” In this instance, the Gallery presents the viewer with the self-fashioned images of Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Rudolf Stingel, John Coplands, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Robert Mapplethorpe, Yasumasa Morimura, and Albert Oehlen within the framework of four iconographical themes: Glory, Desire, The Masquerade and Fading.

Untitled (Self-Portrait), Martin Kippenberger (1988). Via Skarstedt Gallery

Related Links:
Skarstedt Gallery Homepage [Skarstedt Gallery]
Self-Portraits at the Skarstedt Gallery event page [Skarstedt Gallery]
Self-Portraits, by Ken Johnson [New York Times]

More text and pictures after the jump…..

(more…)

Some of the 40,000 clay figures from Field for the British Isles. Via Torre Abbey

One of the largest Medieval Monasteries in the UK is hosting the most recent addition to Antony Gormley’s Turner-prize-winning  Field series, Field for the British Isles. Earlier works from this series were created and displayed in Mexico, Sweden, London and Porto Velho in the Amazon Basin. The show runs through August 23, 2009. Presently Gormley’s One & Other project is underway on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London.

Related Links:
Torre Abbey Homepage [Torre Abbey]
Field for the British Isles event page [Torre Abbey]
Antony Gormley’s ‘terracotta army’ invades Devon barn [Telegraph.co.uk]
Historic Abbey to show prestigious artwork [BBC Devon]
Field for the British Isles project page [AntonyGormley.com]
Antony Gormley: Field (2004 at Tate Liverpool) [Tate.org.uk]

More text and pictures after the jump…

(more…)

David Byrne at the Roundhouse. Via Creative Review

On view now, David Byrne’s exhibition, “Playing the Building” is open to the public until August 31st. Located in north London, the Roundhouse was originally constructed in 1846 as a steam engine shed. Later on in the 20th century, the structure was converted into a popular arts center that hosted bands like The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. “Playing the Building” was originally commissioned in 2005 by Färgfabriken in Stockholm before moving to New York last summer. Byrne has completely transformed the Roundhouse, so that it is now a playable instrument. Metal beams and pipes make whistling noises, while iron pillars vibrate and rumble when blown.

Related Links:
David Byrne: Playing the Building, London [FT.com]
David Byrne “Playing the Building” [BoingBoing]
David Byrne’s Playing the Building [New Tang Dynasty Television]
David Byrne: Playing the Building [About.com]
London: Playing the Building III [David Byrne’s Journal]
Playing the Building: An Installation by David Byrne [New York Magazine]
David Byrne: Playing the Building [The Art Newspaper]
David Byrne on Playing the Building at the Roundhouse [Telegraph UK]

Playing the Building Via Roundhouselondon Youtube

More text and pictures after the jump…

(more…)

Philip Taaffe, “Unit of Direction No. 2” (2008). Via Gagosian Gallery.

Until August 21st Gagosian Gallery is displaying a small group exhibition of exuberant abstract paintings which celebrate circles, dots and spots at their West 24th Street location. The collection of nine paintings covers work from their most prestigous artists;  included are works by Damien Hirst, Yayoi Kusama, Mike Kelley and Roy Lichenstein.

Related Links:
Ecstatic Abstraction: Press Release [Gagosian Gallery]
Ecstatic Abstraction at Gagosian Gallery [Artnews.org]
(more…)

James Ensor, “Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring” (1891). Via Thirteen.

On view now, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is showcasing approximately 120 works by Belgian avant-garde artist, James Ensor. This exhibition, which focuses on Ensor’s use of satire and carnival scenes, is located on the sixth floor of the museum in The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery.  Following its stay at the MoMA, the exhibition will travel to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris from October 2009 to February 2010.

James Ensor, “The Frightful Musicians” (1891). Via NY Times

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [MoMA]
From Ensor’s Curiosity Shop, Nightmares of Gruesome Beauty [NY Times]
James Ensor Retrospective at MOMA [The New Yorker]
Masked Ball [The Economist]
Teeing Up the Twentieth Century [New York Magazine]
Christ Among Cannibals, Gargoyles Mark Ensor MoMA Show [Bloomberg]
James Ensor at the MoMA [Financial Times]
Unmasking James Ensor [Forbes]
The Uncommited Fantasist [The Wall Street Journal]

(more…)

Detail from Isa Genzken’s “Kinder filmen III” (2005), part of “Sesam, öffne dich!” currently showing at Museum Ludwig.

Isa Genzken’s “Sesam, öffne dich!” moves to Museum Ludwig from a show at Whitechapel Gallery which drew over 50,000 visitors. The exhibition features Genzken’s mixed media pieces from as early as 1970, spanning thirty years of her unique fusion of paint, photography, found art, and architectural installation. Co-curated by Kasper König and Nina Gülicher, “Sesam, öffne dich!” closes at Museum Ludwig on November 15.

Further detail from Isa Genzken’s “Kinder filmen III” (2005), at Museum Ludwig.

Related links:
Museum Ludwig – Exhibitions
Isa Genzken – Open Sesame! [Whitechapel Gallery]
Isa Genzken [Re-title]

more images and story after the jump…
(more…)

From “Civilized Guilt,” a recreation of Ernesto Neto’s “Leviathan Thot” currently showing at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes.

Timed to coincide with this year’s Estuaire, Musée des Beaux-Arts is currently hosting a giant work by Ernesto Neto.  “A Culpa civilizada (Civilized Guilt)” is a re-working of his well-known installation piece “Léviathan Thot,” originally shown in 2006 at the Panthéon in Paris during the Autumn Festival.  The installation will be housed in the patio space of the museum, and is curated by Blandine Chavanne and Alice Fleury, director and contemporary art coordinator of the gallery, respectively.  It will close on September 21.

Related links:
Ville de Nantes : Ernesto Neto
Ernesto Neto [artnet]

Ville de Nantes has video of “Civilized Guilt.”

More images and story after the jump…

(more…)

Eli Broad via Los Angeles Times

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad for a while unwilling to shed details on his plan of building a new museum, speaks about its possible location in Beverly Hills and progress [Los Angeles Times]
A portrait and history of art–hotels, some of which today offer accommodations with works by artists such as Damien Hirst or Cy Twombly [Guardian]

Neo Rauch via Incident

Neo Rauch resigns as professor of painting at Leipzig School and is having is first solo show in London as part of “Leipzig week” [Art Review]
“Art in Empty Spaces” a program funded by Arts Council England’s grants, believes art can play a role in economic regeneration, hence helps artists transform vacant spaces into artistic ones [Art Daily]
Highly curated Hong Kong Sotheby’s sales will include works from Contemporary Chinese art, modern Chinese ink paintings and others and are estimated at $100 million [Auction Publicity]

Miuccia Prada and Germano Celant- an Italian curator and the director of her art initiatives via Photobucket

On Miuccia Prada’s significant art patronage, with her Milan Gallery exhibiting works of internationally acclaimed artists and discovering the unknown ones [This is London via Art Market Monitor]
Elizabeth Andrews- a Tate employee has lost her legal battle after having claimed her health has been made poor by the temperature in the gallery [BBC]

Computer rendering of new plan by for Parrish Art Museum via New York Times

In deference to today’s economy, the Parrish Art Museum’s upcoming Southampton home is to be a cheaper architectural alternative [New York Times]
Whitney is the latest major museum affected by recession to lay off staff members [Crain’s New York]
An insight into loaning artwork for exhibitions: the bureaucracy, negotiation and trust that go into the process of enabling art travel [Guardian]
Los Angeles Times publishes an open letter from Martin Scorsese addressing LACMA and their decision to stop the weekend film program- a tradition that goes back 40 years [Los Angeles Times]

Pablo Picasso, Les Deux Femmes Nues via Auction Publicity

A detailed review of Christie’s bi-annual sale to be held in September, including works by Ernst, Picasso, Warhol among others [Auction Publicity]
12 artists’ plans from a pool of over 2,000 proposals will have a chance to be realized in London, the competition is currently down to 59 [Art Daily]
Works by Kandinsky- inspired Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and The Blue Rider in Performance are commissioned by Guggenheim to show during the Vasily Kandinsky exhibit [Guggenheim]

A phone camera photo of Ai Weiwei posted on Twitter of police in his hotel’s hallways via Trunc

Ai Weiwei among those experiencing problems with the Chinese authorities for attempting to testify on a trial against a civil rights advocate [The New York Times]
The Independent attributes the recent higher sales of works by Old Masters versus contemporary artists in Christie’s and Sotheby’s to the recession [Independent]

Michael Jackson by Andy Warhol via BBC

Andy Warhol Painting of Michael Jackson commissioned by Times magazine dates back to 1984 and is being auctioned at a starting bid of $800,000 in Vered Gallery in LA [Los Angeles Times]
Mysterious art dealer receives $26.5 million for enabling the transaction of Rothko sale for a self-proclaimed victim of Bernard Madoff’s scheme [Bloomberg]
Yet another Gagosian Gallery will open, this time in Greece, 3 Merlin Street in Athens will now house the gallery with its inaugural show titled “Leaving Paphos Ringed With Waves” [Lindsay Pollock via Culture Monster]

Food Fight staged by Duke Riley on the reflecting pool in Queens on Thursday via The New York Times

“Those About to Die Salute You” an unscripted art event organized by Duke Riley took place in Queens on Thursday night [The New York Times] more here [New York Magazine]
Antony Gormley’s fourth plinth art project had a nude man as a participant, but he was asked to cover up in order to avoid arrest [Guardian]
Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” examined in its sculptural, architectural and historical influences by Spiegelman [The Wall Street Journal]
25 Year old Kate Levant’s art is shown at Zach Feuer Gallery in New York, after Yale dean refuses to showcase her idea of Red cross conducting a Blood Drive inside the gallery space [New York Magazine]

Installation view of “Waste Not” via NY Times

From June 24, 2009 through September 7, 2009 the Museum of Modern Art  displays their “Project 90,” featuring Beijing-native conceptual artist Song Dong. It is a solo exhibition installation entitled, “Waste Not” (or Wu jin qi gong in Chinese). The piece, done in collaboration between Song Dong and his mother, Zhao Xiang Yuan, was initially unveiled at the Beijing Hua Lang in 2005, and has since traveled to Guangzhou Biennale, the Berlin World Culture Pavilion, as well as the New Art Gallery in Walsall England. “Waste Not” is composed of ordinarily used objects collected by his mother over the span of fifty years,  such as pans, plates, buttons, pens, tubes, shirts, buttons, basins, toothpaste and even the original wooden frame of his mother’s home. The moving installation, which occupies 3,000 square feet of the MoMa’s Atrium, is a reconstruction of his parents’ house, which was taken over by Urban Planning in China. Dong’s piece is symbolic of a time when his mother, plagued by poverty, had to abide by the “waste not” dictum as a “prerequisite for survival.”

Projects 90: Song Dong [Museum Of Modern Art]
The Collected Ingredients of Beijing Life [The New York Times]
Song Dong: Between Conservation and Change [Culturebase]
Private Collection [New Yorker]
What a load of quite unmissable rubbish [Telegraph]

(more…)

Yves Klein, “Peinture feu couleur sans titre” (1962). Via Museo D’Arte Moderna Di Lugano.

On view now, the Museo D’Arte Moderna Di Lugano is displaying works by Yves Klein, a prominent artist from the sixties. The exhibit focuses on his collaboration with Rotraut Uecker, both Klein’s wife and an artist who shared his use of imagery and poetics.  This exhibition is curated by Bruno Corà and Daniel Moquay who worked in partnership with the Archives Yves Klein of Paris. Klein’s work will be displayed alongside twenty-two of Rotraut’s metallic sculptures which can be located around the city in parks and squares.

Yves Klein, “Portrait relief d’Arman” (1962). Via Museo D’Arte Moderna Di Lugano.

Related Links:
Museo D’Arte Moderna Di Lugano Exhibition
Yves Klein Archives

(more…)