Zao Wou-Ki 02-01-65 (1965) Estimate: HK$8-12 million US$1-1.5 million. Price Realized: HK$20,820,000 $2,694,593

Christie’s Hong Kong Spring sale of Contemporary Chinese Art on May 29th, 2010 sold 36 works by artists such as Zao Wou-Ki, Zhan Wang, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Kim Dong Yoo for a combined total of HK$303 million or US$39 million, with important works still fetching prices above their estimated value and all works auctioned were sold. Both Akira Yamaguchi and Ryozo Kato set new artist records for their works with Yamaguchi’s work fetching HK$1,940,000 or US$251,081, and Kato’s work reaching HK$312,500 or US$40,125. Other works that went above the estimate are Andy Warhol‘s portraits of Mao that went for HK$1.5 million dollars above estimates.

According to Art Daily, Eric Chang, International Director of Asia Contemporary Art and Chinese 20th Century, said, “Today’s Evening Sale of Asian Contemporary and Chinese 20th Century Art achieved HK$303.4 million/US$39 million, three times the estimate and a 67% increase from our Spring Evening Sale last year.” Bloomberg reports that the market for Contemporary Asian art is slowly on the rise, although no where near as powerful a force as a few years ago.

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French Kiss, 2009, Mia Westerlund Roosen, Park Avenue Mall. Image by Art Observed.

Mia Westerlund Roosen’s stucco and foam sculptures landscape the Park Avenue Malls between 52nd and 54th Street, New York City.  Presented by the Betty Cunningham Gallery and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the exhibition features new works Juggler, Baritone, and French Kiss.  Sensual lines, soft textures, and elegantly cast shadows juxtaposed with towering buildings, such as the Seagram and the Citigroup headquarters, add a sense of vulnerability and calm to these bustling streets.

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This weekend marks the opening of author, artist, and filmmaker Miranda July‘s sculpture installation of Elven Heavy Things in Union Square Park, New York. Originally shown at the Venice Biennale in 2009, the work consists of eleven fiber-glass and steel lined pieces that invite viewer participation to complete the piece–to stand on pedestals inscribed with phrases like What I Look Like When I’m Lying, The Guiltiest One, and We Don’t Know Each Other We’re Just Hugging for the Picture…, place limbs through holes in the sculptures, and stand beneath headdresses. These actions transform the works from still sculptures into interactive, performance based works. July encourages visitors to photograph themselves posing with the sculptures, and to then upload them to websites, sharing them with friends. July explains that once the photographs are shared, “the audience changes, and the subject clearly becomes the participants, revealing themselves through the work.”

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Justify My Love, Cecily Brown, 2004, oil on linen. Image via CFA, Berlin.

Cecily Brown‘s exhibition at the Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, features large-scale oil paintings on canvas and linen.  Brown camouflages her subjects, often females in torrid positions, within alternately muted and frenzied colors and animated brush strokes.  Her use of blurred lines and monochromatic colors forces the observer to look carefully to discern the action of the painting.  Brown employs figuration and expressionism in this exhibition, which combines lush landscape paintings with motifs of sexuality and attraction.

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Kiki Smith, Pilgrim, 2007-2010, leaded stained glass in steel frames, installation dimensions variable. All installation images courtesy G.R. Christmas courtesy The Pace Gallery.

Currently on view at The Pace Gallery‘s location on 545 W 22nd Street is Kiki Smith: “Lodestar.” A parallel narrative to this exhibition can be found in “Sojourn,” Smith’s concurrent solo show now on view at the Brooklyn Museum (through Sept 12). “Sojourn” marks the artist’s first major museum show in New York since a mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum in 2006. “You have to hit the ground running,” Smith recently told the New York Times, in reference to her process. Ever busy, the artist has also recently been commissioned to design a 16-foot-high window for the Eldridge Street Synagogue in New York’s Lower East Side. The historic landmark is scheduled for completion later this year.

The west coast also welcomes the artist’s presence this year: through August 15, 2010, Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery is showing “Kiki Smith: I Myself Have Seen It,” which explores the role of photography in the development of Smith’s aesthetic. The exhibition will travel to the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in the fall and to the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University in the spring of 2011.

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Chef On Dung Mountain, Nigel Cooke (2010). All Images via Modern Art Gallery

On view at Modern Art Gallery in London through May 29th is “Night Crossing,” a solo exhibition of new work by British artist Nigel Cooke. Renowned for his large scale melancholic works, his newest effort centers around the triptych Departure, which was inspired by Max Beckmann’s triptych of the same title (1933-1935). Also on view are a series of full length portraits, along with several sculptures. This is Cooke’s fourth solo exhibition at Modern Art Gallery.

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Arena #7 (Bears), Mike Kelley, image via the Skarstedt Gallery

Mike Kelley‘s  current exhibition at the Skarstedt Gallery features seven works from his Arena sculpture series.  Using found objects, both handmade and machine fabricated, and stuffed animals, Kelley creates “arenas,” scenes crafted to evoke curiosity from his observers.  Kelley works on the floor, as a playing child might, with afghans and blankets of varying styles and motifs.  Kelley explores the commodification of toys and their relevant emotions, removing them from a typical, nostalgic setting to create arenas that highlight both consumeristic natures and artistic projections.

Arena #10 (Dogs), Mike Kelley, image via the Skarstedt Gallery

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Christian Boltanski’s “No Man’s Land” at Park Avenue Armory. Image by Art Observed.

AO was on site at the Park Avenue Armory’s second annual commission, which is showing until June 13.  This year’s installment features Christian Boltanski, in an ambitious new work that fills the 55,000 square-foot Drill Hall.  It’s called “No Man’s Land,” and it involves clothing, metal cranes, and the amplified sounds of its visitors’ beating hearts.

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Walk-through of Christian Boltanski’s “No Man’s Land” at Park Avenue Armory. Image by Art Observed.

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On May 6, a multidisciplinary art festival dedicated to Marchel Duchamp and the creation of his latest and most mysterious masterpiece Etant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage opened in Chexbres, Switzerland.  The festival is presented by the Association Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and ECAL/University of Art and Design, Lausanne.  The floor will be given to the internationally most renowned Duchamp experts who will speak about the Forestay, the Lavaux-Region, Etant donnés and the reception of Marcel Duchamp by contemporary artists.

Etant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage by Marcel Duchamp via Artdaily

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I Musici, 1595. All images via Scuderie del Quirinale

The Scuderie del Quirinale’s Caravaggio exhibition is one of several special events marking the 400th anniversary of this famous Italian artist’s death. Showcasing many of Caravaggio’s most representative paintings, the exhibition features works from prominent collections worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Staatliche Museum in Berlin, and Italian institutions such as the Uffizi and Borghese Galleries.

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In a recent discussion with writer Jonathan Lethem at Cooper Union, Patti Smith was asked if it was possible for young artists to come to New York City and find the path to stardom that she did.  In response, Smith told the crowd, “New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling.”  On Sunday, May 23, PS1 MoMA opened the third iteration of its quinquennial celebration of emerging artists who live and work in New York – Greater New York – which will run through October 20, 2010. This year’s show features some 68 artists which marks a steep fall from the 160 artists in the 2005 edition, perhaps adding some truth to Smith’s words.

According to the press release, this year’s show – overseen by P.S.1 director Klaus Biesenbach, Museum of Modern Art drawings curator Connie Butler, and P.S.1 curatorial adviser Neville Wakefield – will center “largely on the process of creation and the generative nature of the artist’s studio.” Leading up to the opening of Greater New York, artists including Franklin Evans, Dani Leventhal, and Kalup Linzy utilized PS1 as studio space to create new work on-site.  This sort of artistic production will be ongoing throughout the exhibition in locations like the Boiler Room, where Whitney Biennialist Aki Sasamoto has invited the artist Saul Melman to collaborate. The Bruce High Quality Foundation also engages with this notion with their commission to develop an “art pedestal exchange program,” a seemingly minimal installation that groups beautifully refined new “art pedestals” that will be offered to art schools in exchange for their old worn pedestals. Over the course of the exhibition what began as a pristine white installation will transform into an amalgam of used exhibition furniture.

Conrad Ventur’s “This Is My Life (Shirley Bassey)”

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Free Tiger Returns to the Mountains No.66 (2010) by Zhang Huan, via Pace Gallery

Currently on view at the Pace Gallery in Beijing is an exhibition of recent works by Zhang Huan. Most renowned for his performance artwork, in recent years he has returned to working in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, and large-scale installations. “Free Tiger Returns to the Mountains” includes ash paintings (works made of a mixture of ashes collected from temples and adhesive) and cowhide sculptures. The paintings were created from his imagination instead using a photographic image. They are an expressive recreation of the artist’s idea of wildlife.

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On May 4, the exhibition titled “Peasant da Vincis” curated by the renowned American-Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang opened in Shanghai. “Peasant da Vincis,”  featuring a combination of inventions by Chinese peasants and works by the artist that explore the subject of human creativity. It is also the inaugural show for Rockbund Art Museum, the first contemporary art museum in the historic riverfront area of Shanghai, known as the Bund. Architect David Chipperfield redesigned the interior to create a contemporary art museum in the historic building that originally housed one of the first museums in China.

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Woman on the Horse, 2006 by Fernando Botero.  All images via Marlborough Gallery unless otherwise noted.
[This work is one of the most imposing sculptures in show, with a total weight of 1,600 pounds.]

Currently on view at Marlborough Gallery, Chelsea, New York is an exhibition of the works by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero.  On display in the gallery are works representing classical subjects such as Leda and the Swan, 2007 and Rape of Europe, 2007. The exhibition is on view until May 29th.

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La femme a l’eventail (Lady with fan), Amedeo Modigliani

During the early hours of the morning on Thursday, May 20, five paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger were stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art (MAM – Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris). CCTV caught a single masked intruder entering the museum by a window, removing the works from their frames and then leaving with the loot, all in under fifteen minutes. The stolen works are Henri Matisse’s La Pastorale, Georges Braque’s L’olivier pres de l’Estaque, Amedeo Modigliani’s Woman with a Fan; Fernand Leger’s Still Life with Chandeliers; and Pablo Picasso’s Le pigeon aux petits-pois (The Pigeon with the Peas) – an ochre and brown Cubist oil painting that is estimated to be worth €23 million alone. Various reports have valued the missing works at anywhere from €100 million to €500 million ($126–635 million) – dealers and officials are currently debating the price of the works that had long been held in the public trust. This morning, embarrassed officials at the City Hall in Paris outlined a number of significant security blunders that made pulling off “one of the biggest thefts in art history” as simple as removing a reinforced window. The City Hall officials, who were officially in charge of the permanent collection, admitted that a partial malfunction of its alarm system had been reported on March 30, at which point it was shutdown without repair. Furthermore, Paris prosecutors confirmed that the entire theft was captured on film, but security guards have told police that they ‘saw nothing’, prompting investigators to believe they had been asleep. Ordering an ‘internal administrative inquiry’, the city’s mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, told the UK’s Daily Mail that ‘all have questions to answer.’

Police officers search for clues on the frames of the stolen paintings outside the Paris Museum of Modern Art yesterday. Image via WSJ

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Seated Harlequin, Pablo Picasso, 1901, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” exhibits 300 pieces from 25 donors, including 34 paintings, 58 drawings, a dozen sculptures and ceramics, and 200 prints, all of which come from the Metropolitan’s own repository.  Nearly every Pablo Picasso that the Met has amassed was used to compile this landmark exhibition, with works displayed dating from 1900 to 1968.  The Met is presenting several hundred works on paper that have never been seen by the public.

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Claude Monet “Le pont japonais”, 1918-24. Oil on canvas, 35 x 39 1/2 inches, (89 x 100 cm). W.1924, MM 5091. Musee Marmatton Monet, Paris. Photo courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Erase from your mind what you knew about waterlilies. Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s location on 522 West 21st Street is Claude Monet: Late Works. Straying from the artist’s better-known pastel-infused palette, the exhibition brings together 27 late canvasses with bold hues and scintillating color combinations. Many of these paintings were never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime, and some remained hidden as recently as the 1950s. Beautifully curated by Monet scholar Paul Hayes Tucker, this exhibition follows in the line of museum-quality shows the Gagosian has mounted in recent years. The gallery’s walls, transformed into elegant lavenders and greys, serve as the perfect backdrop for these exquisitely raw landscapes.

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View of the Exhibition by Franz West, via Almine Rech Gallery

Currently on view at the Almine Rech Gallery in Brussels is Franz West’s “Double Squint” including works by Tamuna Sirbiladze and Rudolf Polanszky. The exhibition features new works by West including painting, papiers mâchés, outdoors pieces as well as joint work with artists Polanszky and Sirbiladze.

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Installation view. All images via Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery

On April 24, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, hosted the opening of the exhibition of the new works by Georg Bazelitz. The show includes a series of Bazelitz’ new monumental sculptures, several paintings, and a number of works on paper that are on display in the gallery’s Drawing Space.

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Country Life, Jack Pierson (2010) goes under the hammer at White Columns Live Benefit Auction, 2010. All photos by Oskar Proctor for ArtObserved.

The generosity was very evident on Saturday, May 15, when a crowd of artists, collectors and other art-world regulars packed into White Columns‘ West Village headquarters for the not-for-profit’s Annual Benefit Auction. Organized by the gallery to benefit their ongoing mission to support and expose emerging artists, the evening showcased a live auction that included work by long-time supporters of the gallery such as Anne Collier, Peter Doig, Adam McEwen, Rob Pruitt and Rirkrit Tiravanija. The live portion of the sale was complimented by a silent auction of work donated by coveted artists David Byrne, Spencer Sweeney, Andy Coolquitt and Joan Jonas, alongside contributions from newcomers such as Amy Yao and Ned Vena.

The top lots from the evening’s live auction were Peter Doig’s Musicians of the British Empire, a painting dedicated to his long-time friend Billy Childish, which sold for $62,000, and Mary Heilmann’s For Malcolm, another of the night’s music-inspired lots, which earned $22,000. Other highlights in the live sale included Wade Guyton’s Untitled, one of the sale’s lots to incorporate a record sleeve, fetched $9,500 and Anne Collier’s photograph of two copies of Norman Mailer’s book ‘Marilyn’ on her studio floor raised $19,000. The remainder of the evening was given over to the silent auction, during which time attendees can jot their bidder numbers on clipboards next to works. The works that generated the most frenzied competition in this section were the contributions of Andy Coolquit, Shio Kusaka, and Tauba Auerbach. White Columns’ famous xerox prints – 11” x 8 ½” prints produced in signed editions of 50 copies – saw great competition, most notable in this category were Ann Craven’s Heart of Gold, Adam McEwen’s Unisex and Elizabeth Peyton’s Flaubert in Egypt (After Delacroix). Another work to be picked up through the silent auction was Nigel Cooke’s title, (2007-08) which was purchased for $6,800, approximately $4,000 over its estimated retail value.

White Columns Director, Matthew Higgs, commands the impressive sale of Peter Doig’s Musicians of the British Empire, Peter Doig (2010) Retail value: $25,000+ Price Realized: $62,000

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Installation view: Richard Tuttle’s “Village V”. All images courtesy of Tom Powel Imaging for Sperone Westwater Gallery.

Currently on view at Sperone Westwater Gallery through May 22, 2010, is Richard Tuttle‘s “Village V”. The exhibition is composed of 26 drawings and one sculpture against stenciled walls. It seeks to expand the concept of drawing, investigate color and line, question ideas of composition and frame, and merge the mystical with the tangible. The work was one of Tuttle’s six “Villages” shown in “Richard Tuttle: It’s a Room for 3 People” at the Drawing Center in 2005.

Richard Tuttle, “Village V, No. II, 9”, 2004, balsa wood, sawdust, acrylic and graphite on paper, 14 x 16 7/8 inches (35,6 x 42,9 cm)

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The Bull, state VII (Le Taureau), Pablo Picasso, December 26th, 1945. Lithograph, Museum of Modern Art, via the MoMA.

“Picasso: Themes and Variations,” at the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street, presents 123 prints from the museum’s collection, representing the major developments in Pablo Picasso’s work and providing insight into decades worth of artistic experimentation.  The exhibition explores the artist’s creative process, following his prints from the early 1900’s Blue and Rose periods through his Cubist discovery.  The collection spans almost 20 themes, including animals, saltimbanques, and mistresses.

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Roy Lichtenstein, Still Life with Palette, 1972, oil and magna on canvas, 60 x 96 inches. All images courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Recently opened at Gagosian Gallery‘s location on 555 West 24th Street is Roy Lichtenstein: Still Lifes. This exhibition is the first devoted solely to the artist’s still lifes spanning from 1972 to the early 1980s. The show, which brings together 50 works from prominent private collections and museums worldwide, includes still lifes in three media: paintings, sculptures and drawings.

Installation view, Roy Lichtenstein: Still Lifes

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Craneway Event Still (2010) by Tacita Dean, via Frith Street Gallery

Currently on view at London’s Frith Street Gallery is “Craneway Event” by Tacita Dean, a one hour and forty-eight minute film featuring legendary modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) and his dancers rehearsing for an event in a former Ford Assembly plant in Richmond, California. It became Cunningham’s last performance captured on film. He died just a few months later after premiering his last work “Nearly Ninety” on his 90th birthday.

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