Talk with Ryan Trecartin “the most consequential artist to have emerged since the 1980s” Thursday, August 25th at MoCA NOMI [AO Newslink]

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New Film on Anselm Kiefer premiers at the Film Forum in New York [AO Newslink]

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Nicolas Poussin, Seven Sacraments: Confirmation, ‘Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters’ (1637-1640), all images via Dulwich Picture Gallery

Dulwich Picture Gallery in London exhibits the recently deceased American contemporary artist Edwin Parker “Cy” Twombly  (April 1928-July 2011) with 17th century classical French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) in an exploration of the Arcadian style. The exhibition opened on June 29th, just 6 days before Twombly’s death on July 5th, 2011, and will run through September 25th, and is exhibited alongside Tacita Dean‘s Film “Edward Parker”.

Cy Twombly, Quattro Stagioni: Inverno, ‘Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters’ (1993-5)

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AO was on site Saturday, August 6th for the opening of James Franco‘s new project at Terence Koh‘s Asia Song Society. The exhibition features installations of three films: “Three’s Company: The Drama,”  a reconsideration of the popular television show (previously shown at Sundance), “Road Trip,” in which Franco reads excepts from Rob Lowe’s autobiography West Wing aloud as he visits notable land art sites in the United States, and “High/Low, Rob Lowe”installed on fifty monitors and showing footage recorded by the artist/actor/student, etc., moving throughout his daily life.  Despite the rain, the opening was well attended, with appearances by PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach, artist Laurel Nakadate and, of course, James Franco himself.

James Franco: High Low/Rob Lowe at ASS – Asia Song Society from Art Observed on Vimeo.

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Installation view of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Caro on the Roof”, 2011. All images via The Metropolitan Museum

Currently on view at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art is “Caro on the Roof”, an installation featuring selected works of renowned British sculptor, Anthony Caro (b.1924). The installation culls together five large scale steel sculptures spanning the artist’s sixty year career, and will be open until October 30th, 2011. The Met’s roof has in the past shown work by Jeff Koons and Doug and Mike Starn, whose popular Big Bambú installation is currently showing at the Venice Biennale.

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Robert Longo, The Haunting (2005), all images via Kunsthalle Weishaupt

On display at Kunsthalle Weishaupt through September 25 is Robert Longo’s first solo exhibition in a German museum since 2005. Covering two floors, the exhibition presents over forty drawings from the museum’s collection — including pieces from his Magellan series — as well as works from Longo’s estate. Longo is known primarily for his drawings and sculpture, though he also works in film. More recently, Longo has been working with charcoal to make photorealistic drawings of images taken from the media which highlight such themes as environmental disaster, violence, and kitsch – a cynical look at modern American life.

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Gregory Crewdson, Railway Children, ‘Beneath the Roses’ (2003-2007), all images courtesy C/O Berlin

Gregory Crewdson‘s solo exhibition In a Lonely Place, which opened at C/O Berlin on July 1st, encompasses 3 separate series separated into different rooms: Fireflies (1996), Beneath the Roses (2003-2007) and his most recent work Sanctuary (2009-2010).  The artist is known for his large-format photos, often depicting empty, stagnant, desolate landscapes with solitary, introspective characters. Extreme detail and sheer size make the viewing experience nearly simulate the real setting in reproduction.

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James Turrell, Aloka’s Flower (2009), photo by Florian Holzherr, via Garage Center.

American artist James Turrell’s first exhibition in Russia is a retrospective at Moscow’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. The exhibition consists of works that span Turrell’s long career, from early pieces to a site-specific piece, ‘Purusa.’  The exhibition is curated by the former director of the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Richard Andrews.

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Takashi Murakami and Christie’s to hold major auction in New York to benefit Japan relief efforts [AO Newslink]

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Gagosian Gallery announces ‘Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011,’ to be shown at all 11 galleries worldwide, simultaneously [AO Newslink]

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Charles Ledray, Bone Rocker (1995), with Robert Gober, Untitled (1984-88) (left) and Luc Tuymans, Plates (2011), right. All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.

David Zwirner‘s summer exhibition, The House Without the Door, makes a curatorial departure from Emily Dickinson’s poem of a similar name. The works center around themes of interiority and domesticity, alluding to both the poet’s reclusive personality and her writing’s exploration of issues stemming from such a lifestyle, which moved past memories and objects towards intense introspection and deep-seated feelings of anxiety and trauma.

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WORKac selected to design Roman Abramovich’s New Holland Island, an art destination in St. Petersburg, Russia [AO Newslink]

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Kalup Linzy at Lehmann Maupin, “the show’s unlikeliest darling, a black Southern-inflected, gender-bending, genre-defying video-and-performance artist” [AO Newslink]

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All images on site at NADA Hudson 2011. Courtesy of Ian Hassett for Art Observed.

Art Observed was on site for the first NADA Hudson, described by its organizers, the New Art Dealers Alliance as “not an art fair, but rather a site-specific project”. The surrounding area has been known as a site to which New York art expatriates flock, with their numbers especially heavy this weekend around the 8,000-square-foot Basilica Hudson, a former foundry and railway wheel factory built in 1884. Hudson itself is a former whaling town, with its access to the Hudson River providing a berth during wartime that was less exposed to raids than coastal towns such as Nantucket and Boston.  As a result, the town has a rich architecture base that is reflective of irregular boosts in industry over its history.  As it has become a destination for food, antiques and second homes, Hudson is an understandable venue for NADA, which has been known to pioneer in its chosen locations (the NADA Miami art fair located in the Deauville Beach Resort, is about 40 blocks north of the main epicenter of activity yet is consistently a must-visit part of the general offering during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach).

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Installation view of New Work, via Stuart Shave/Modern Art

Stuart Shave/Modern Art in London is currently showing an exhibition of new work by Barry Mcgee through August 13. McGee gained notoriety in the mid 1980’s for his work as a graffiti artist in San Francisco, California (produced under the tag “Twist”) and has captured a wide following in major contemporary galleries and museums over the last decade. In the series of untitled sculptural, wood panel and paper works on view at Stuart Shave/Modern Art, McGee attempts to negotiate the social message and aesthetics of street art with the commercial sterility of the gallery space. His geometric forms draw upon a Latin-American mural and decorative arts tradition while also paying tribute to a contemporary legacy of abstraction.

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All photos by L. Streeter for Art Observed.

At six o’clock on Saturday evening, throngs of guests could be seen gathering at the entrance of Robert Wilson’s art compound in Watermill, New York, awaiting entrance to “Voluptuous Panic.” Patrons of the arts gather here once a year to support the foundations ongoing effort to “provide a unique environment for young and emerging artists to explore new ideas and foster their career development” (via Watermillcenter.org).  Artists  from over 30 different countries living at the estate as a part of the Watermill International Summer Program Residency were asked to create installations and performances overlaying the six acre estate. Guests were invited to wander the grounds and woods exploring the various installations. This year, the attending crowd fit right in with the somewhat manic works themselves; the dress code, entitled “Fearless” allowed for a very flamboyant, almost surreal flock of guests.

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The NYTimes on the relationship between the Met Museum and its new acquisition of the Marcel Breuer building, home to the Whitney Museum of Art [AO Newslink]

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Gagosian Gallery quietly releases info on its representation of the visual art of recording legend Bob Dylan [AO Newslink]

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David Dawson, David and Eli in progress, 2004

The relationship between master and apprentice is evident in the works from painter Lucian Freud and his assistant David Dawson now on view at Faurschou Beijing through August 14th. Dawson has worked as Freud’s assistant since 1991 and has been one of the few people allowed to photograph Freud in his studio as he works. The exhibitions pairs Freud’s painting David & Eli, (2003-04) with ten photos taken by Dawson at Freud’s studio between 2004 to 2006.

Installation view of Lucian Freud and David Dawson at Faurschou Beijing

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Banksy iPhone App available for mapping all known Banksy works [AO Newslink]

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Ai Weiwei, Washington Square Park Protest (1988), all photos courtesy of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and Chambers Fine Art, via Asia Society.

Art Observed was on site at the Asia Society’s Ai Weiwei retrospective, which comprises over 200 photographs taken by the artist in some of his most pivotal years. Between 1983 and 1993, Weiwei documented protests of system, political, gender, and artistic. The show is a collection of black and white photographs, numbered simply and elegantly. The titles are Weiwei’s own, scrawled at the bottom of each piece. A visitor follows Weiwei through his life in the East Village. “New York Photographs” chronicles Weiwei’s interest in transformations, as they manifest through the artist’s perspective, and closes August 14.

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Ai Weiwei, Robert Frank & Allen Ginsberg (1989)

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Augmented Reality App replaces billboard ads with art, will feature street artists Ron English, John Fekner, PosterBoy, Doctor D and Ox [AO Newslink]

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All images installation views of Jake or Dinos Chapman at White Cube, 2011. Courtesy Coco Bayley for Art Observed.

Jake and Dinos Chapman – The Chapman Brothers – reinstated themselves in the London art scene last week, across the twoWhite Cube galleries.  Both the Mason’s Yard and Hoxton gallery spaces are used in this double act, double venue exhibition.  The show, Jake or Dinos Chapman, runs from the 15th of July to September 17th and is alarmingly extensive.  The brothers are infamous for their elaborate teasing, deliberate vulgarity, and mocking of aestheticism- this show is no different.  However, for the White Cube exhibition, Jake and Dinos Chapman, who have consistently worked together professionally and are known as a gruesome twosome double act, have this year separated and worked alone.  Using different studio spaces, they have been working independently on the content of this exhibition, only having revealed their pieces to one another a few weeks ago.

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