Pablo Picasso plays at The Journal Gallery, all images by Stefan Idowu-Bello for ArtObserved

On Saturday night, Art Observed was on site at The Journal Gallery in Williamsburg for a night which began with a poetry reading from New York based poet, Michael David Quattlebaum Jr., (who goes by Mykki Blanco) who read from his debut book ‘From the Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys.’ The poems are a personal retrospective of the author questioning his rebellious youth, which lead to him running away, and eventually finding a spiritual awakening in New York. Mykki Blanco embraced the sweltering city heat by standing bare chested in front of the crowd, wearing only a floral floor length skirt and a complimentary flower behind his ear.

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Dasha Zhukova, partner of über-collector Roman Abramovich, head of Garage Center, Moscow, to launch fashion-art magazine in September called ‘Garage’ [AO Newslink]

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NY Times reports on Doug Aitken’s exploration of alienation in the modern age in new installation “Black Mirror,” featuring Chloë Sevigny [AO Newslink]

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Joe Bradley, Duckling Fantasy (2011) installation view, courtesy Almine Rech.

Joe Bradley’s “Duckling Fantasy” is currently on show at Paris’s Almine Rech Gallery.  The exhibition consists of new, somewhat large-scale paintings from oil, oil sticks and pencils, that continue Bradley’s interest in color and dirt.

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The Economist: Asia accounts for quarter of global auction revenue, “lion’s share is made up of art,” painting is most desirable medium [AO Newslink]

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New York’s Metropolitan Museum announces record attendance (5.6 million), fiscal year includes blockbuster exhibitions “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” and Picasso [AO Newslink]

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Gagosian Gallery now represents critically acclaimed Chinese painter Zeng Fanzhi [AO Newslink]

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Willem de Kooning, via The Pace Gallery.

Midtown New York’s Pace Gallery is hosting its first exhibition of art by Willem de Kooning, of which it gained exclusive representation in the fall. Like much of the late artist’s own work, “The Figure: Movement and Gesture” is focused on and around the human body, as it is translated by different methods and techniques of representation. The show closes on July 29.

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Leigh Morse, director of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, dealer for Robert DeNiro (who testified), to serve prison sentence and pay $1.65 million restitution for fraud [AO Newslink]

Read the article via Bloomberg

Emmanuel Perrotin, dealer of Murakami, Cattelan, on taking risks: “People imagine it must be easy for me now, but every day is more difficult…you’re still only as good as your last show” [AO Newslink]

Read the interview via TheArtNewspaper

This Wednesday, Lucian Freud passed away in his London home at the age of 88. According to Mr. Freud’s dealer, William Acquavella of Acquavella Galleries, Freud suffered a brief illness before his death. Freud’s career is characterized by his thickly-painted portraits of friends and family, which brought forward and repositioned the genre of portraiture in the twentieth century.

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Google Doodle commemorates Alexander Calder’s 113th birthday [AO Newslink]

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Christie’s first-half sales make record-breaking £2 billion ($3.2 billion), 15% increase due to growing international market [AO Newslink]

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André, Love Graffiti: Annabelle (2011).  All images by S. Zabrodski for Art Observed, unless otherwise stated.

MOCA’s exhibition, ‘Art in the Streets’ has proven to be a hugely popular, if not highly contentious, addition to L.A.’s summer arts scene. Located at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo, the massive space includes the work of around 50 artists in a range of media including murals, photography, installations, graffitied vehicles, and re-created cityscapes. The show has come under fire for its glorification of what many perceive as vandalism. Indeed, the area surrounding Geffen Contemporary saw a spike in graffiti following the opening of ‘Art in the Streets’ in mid-April. As with any survey show, there have been many objections relating to both the inclusion and exclusion of certain artists. Even before the opening, MOCA Director, Jeffrey Deitch, drew criticism for the museum’s censorship of Italian street artist Blu’s mural depicting coffins covered with dollar bills. The mural was painted over after Deitch deemed it insensitive given its location near a veteran’s memorial. Both in spite of and because of these debates, the show has sparked a discourse that is significant for both artists and audience- since the show has opened, Banksy, one of the artists included in the exhibit,  has begun sponsoring free admission on Mondays to pull in even more viewers to an already record-breaking show. Bansky is quoted as saying, “I don’t think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it.” The exhibition was slated to travel to the Brooklyn Museum in 2012, but was recently cancelled due to financial constraints.

Swoon, Ice Queen (2011)

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Thomas Struth, Pantheon, Rome (1990), via Whitechapel Gallery.

London’s Whitechapel Gallery is showing a survey of German photographer Thomas Struth’s photographs, spanning over thirty years – 1978-2010.  The exhibition consists of early black and white photos to more recent, large-scale photos, over seventy in total.  Struth is undoubtedly one the most important photographers of the past forty years, and this exhibition shows the artist’s talent for highlighting our global interconnectedness through themes like technology, religion, and art itself.

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Glenn Brown, Layered Portrait (After Rembrandt) 7 (2008), via Gagosian Gallery

On display through July 23^rd 2011 at Genevas’s Gagosian Gallery, are etchings by the artist Glenn Brown.  Known for his appropriation of images, here Brown employs portraits by Lucien Freud, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Urs Graf. By first digitally altering the source images and then layering his reworked interpretations, Brown creates composite paintings which serve as the basis for his etchings.

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Dan Colen, Disappearing Act (2011) via Carlson Gallery

New York based artists Dan Colen is currently showing a small but wide-ranging collection of work at the intimate Carlson Gallery. ‘Come Out Come Out Wherever you Are!’  is a multifaceted selection of the artists’ sculptural and photographic work and dedicated to Dash Snow, who died from a heroin overdose in 2009. Exhibited in two conjoining rooms inside a tower block right at the heart of the city, the show’s designation as remembrance of a friend lost injects the work with a poignant endurance. The show also features work by Hanna Liden, a friend and collaborator who is also known as part of the definable group of New York based artists that have been active in the city for the past few years. The show is listed as focusing on the following themes: Religion, Kids Stuff (Death Stuff), Idols and Assholes, Bullshit Magic, Death Stuff (Kids Stuff), Heroin, Erstwhile Boners and/or a Nostalgic Fisting and Re-intarnation.

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Two 17th-century paintings by Nicholas Poussin were reportedly vandalized yesterday in the National Gallery in London.  A 57-year-old man, presumably French, sprayed Poussin’s 1634 “The Adoration of the Golden Calf” with a canister of red paint and according to a by-stander, he “seemed proud of what he had done” and made no attempt to escape the scene.

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Tobias Wong with his glass chairs (2002). Image courtesy NYT.

Last year, New York lost one of its most cherished up-and-coming artists and designers, Tobias Wong. Only 35 at the time of his death, Wong was known as a provocateur, his practice most often described as “paraconceptual” and “postinteresting.” A year after his death, he is remembered in an intimate exhibition at SFMOMA. Curated by Henry Urbach, the exhibition highlights some of Wong’s poignant works, and mark the loss of a unique voice.

Accompanying the exhibition is a touching podcast featuring interviews with Wong’s classmates, collaborators, and his fiancé Tim Dubitsky. Among those included in the podcast are Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA, Henry Irbach; Pablo Griff, who worked with Wong in the early 1990s; Paola Antonelli, Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA New York; Amilia Bauer, Wong’s studio-mate at the Cooper Union; Philip Wood, founder and creative director of online retail space CITIZEN: Citizen; and Beijing-based writer, curator, artist Aric Cheng.

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Jay Jopling’s White Cube, purveyor of art by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Chapman Bros., to open first overseas branch in Hong Kong, shortly after Larry Gagosian [AO Newslink]

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Alice Neel, Ned McCabe (1964), all images via Victoria Miro Gallery

The Victoria Miro Gallery has staged an intimate selection of portraits by Alice Neel, focusing on her work with male subjects. Titled “Men Only”, the show highlights Neel’s relationship with the different men who posed for her over the years. Some are close friends, others are blood relatives, some were strangers that caught her eye, but each portrait gives a glimpse into the personality of the sitter.

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