Alberto Giacometti, Grand Buste de Diego Avec Bras, executed 1957, cast 1958 (est. £3.5–5 million, bought in), via Sothebys.com

Tuesday evening’s forty-two lot sale of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby’s London brought in £68.8 million (or $111 million) for thirty-two lots sold. The auction house reports being “very pleased” with the total, which is the fourth highest ever in the department at the London location. The featured lot, Picasso’s La Lecture, exceeded its presale estimate after slow, thoughtful bidding by at least seven interested parties that increased in increments of £500,000. It sold to a telephone bidder for £25.2 million against a presale estimate of £12-18 million (estimates do not include the buyers premium, prices realized do). The real surprise, though, came when both Giacometti lots which carried the second and third highest presale estimates failed to sell. Bidding for an oil on canvas portrait of the artist’s brother ended at £2.7 million and a bronze sculpture of the same subject passed at £3.2 million.

The sale room at Sotheby’s London on Tuesday, via Art Observed

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Francesco Vezzoli, Jesus Christ Superstar, Light box (2011). Photo by Sei Eun Lee, Art Observed

Francesco Vezzoli holds his first solo exhibition Sacrilegio in New York at the 21st Street Gagosian Gallery through March 12th. Vezzoli has enlarged several Madonna and Child paintings by 15th and 16th century artists Giovanni Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea Mantegna, and Sandro Botticelli, reinterpreting them within a contemporary context by replacing the virginal faces with supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Tatjana Patitz, Cindy Crawford, Christie Brinkley, Naomi Campbell, and Kim Alexis.

Francesco Vezzoli, Crying portrait of Kim Alexis as a Renaissance Madonna with Holy Child (after Giovanni Bellini) (2010). Via Gagosian Gallery

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Mona Hatoum. Via Art Daily

Palestinian-British artist Mona Hatoum has just been announced the 2011 winner of the Joan Miró Prize. This prestigious €70,000 award is granted biennially, with the ceremony taking place at the Fundació Joan Miró auditorium in Barcelona on April 7 this year, with the artist’s following exhibition taking place there in June 2012. The jury made the decision unanimously, stating that Hatoum “has pioneered in opening up art practices to non-Western realities while showing the connections between Western high culture and transnational political and cultural events. After Hatoum, the art world has become a far more open and less self-centred arena, a process that is still in expansion and consolidation. Hatoum’s commitment to human values of concern to all cultures and societies is similar to Miró’s view of mankind after his experience of three devastating wars,” according to Art Daily.

Andre Ricard, Joan Miró Trophy (2007). Via Fundació Joan Miró

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Mona Hatoum, Current Disturbance (2010) via www.aliraqi.org

Current Disturbance is a singular installation that fills a room at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the third in a series of four displays from the Daskalopoulos Collection in Greece. Using Marcel Duchamp’s infamous “Fountain” as a starting point, “Keeping It Real: An Exhibition in 4 Acts” seeks to explore the line between art and reality and the relationship between the artist and the tactile world.  British – Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum‘s light-filled creation was first shown in 1996 at the Capp Street Project, San Francisco and is now being shown through March as a part of Whitechapel Gallery’s initiative to open private collections for public viewing. The installation is comprised of stacked wire cages, a multiplicity of light bulbs and the amplified sound of the electric currents coursing through the enclosed system. The interminable low buzz emitting from the structure, combined with the arbitrary flickering of light bulbs conveys a certain sense of discomfort and oppression that provides an open-ended commentary much in keeping with Hatoum’s widely political body of work.

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Laurel Nakadate, Exorcism in January (2009). Via New York Times

But, is she exploitative? This has been the defining question of Laurel Nakadate’s roughly decade long, hotly discussed career. Nakadate is primarily known for her infamous early videos in which she invited herself into the homes of the single, middle-aged men that approached her in public, bringing her video camera and a scenario that tested the limits of the new relationship. In one Nakadate plays dead while the men play ‘doctor’ and in another they pretend it’s her birthday, singing and eating cake. Some venture further—one sees Nakadate and the participant play a stripping game, the artist taking off articles of clothing one by one, matched by a man in his 50s, moles covering his back. Nakadate’s work in-variously produces the same chain of reactions from critics: first, is this a safe practice? How did the artist know she would remain safe? The threat of violence is a common concern for the artist, which some argue lessens the effect of her work. After viewing one of Nakadate’s videos for a few minutes, it becomes clear the men she works with are docile. Then, the second question is almost always: is she laughing at them?

Only the Lonely, Installation view. Via P.S. 1

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Pablo Picasso, La Lecture, 1932 (est. £12–18 million), via Sothebys.com

February’s round of major art auctions begins in London next week with Impressionist & Modern sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.  On Tuesday evening Sotheby’s will offer forty-two lots estimated to bring between £55-79 million. Sotheby’s will also hold a 60-lot sale of Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary works titled “Looking Closely: A Private Collection” on Thursday, February 10th that is expected to fetch up to £54 million.  All the works in that sale are from the collection of George Kostalitz, a Geneva-based collector who died last year. Christie’s forty-six lot evening sale on Wednesday is estimated to bring £54-80 million and, as was the case last year, will be immediately followed by a thirty-one lot auction of Surrealist works estimated to fetch an additional £19-28 million. While it is uncertain whether these auctions will produce a buzz-worthy sale on par with last year’s £65 million paid for Giacometti’s L’Homme Qui Marche I, both houses are offering a number of strong works led by canvases by Picasso and Gauguin.

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Alberto Giacometti, Diego, 1958 (est. £3–5 million), via Sothebys.com

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Ai Weiwei So Sorry Exhibition Poster. Via Aiweiweifilm.

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY, a documentary to be released in spring of 2011, portrays a close-up of the internationally renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei.  Alison Klayman, Beijing based journalist and filmmaker, provides viewers an insight of contemporary China by focusing on the artist’s artistic process and constant public confrontations with the Chinese government.

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Agathe Snow, Arc de Triomphe (2010). Via Deutsche Guggenheim

Through All Access World, Agathe Snow invites her audience to make historical monuments their own. All Access World represents a fictional company that shrinks the Berlin Wall, the Eiffel Tower, and other such structures, down to a human scale. Its goal is to promote “a more democratic approach to monument ownership and distribution.” Snow’s gallery space at Deutsche Guggenheim is full of interactive sculptures that dissect the importance of monuments and their locations.

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Installation view of Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures at The Museum of Modern Art, 2010.

Currently on view at the MoMA is a tightly curated sampling of Warhol’s Screen Tests, shot between 1964 and 1966, as well as his films: Kiss, Sleep, Empire, Eat, and Blow Job. The show was conceived of in 2003 by MoMA curator Mary Lea Bandy and was exhibited as Andy Warhol: Screen Tests. After moving to Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art in 2004, the show traveled internationally for five years as facilitated by PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach.  All films have been transferred to video for the installation but there is still something archival—“filmic,” as Bisenbach says—about the footage.

Andy Warhol. Screen Test: Edie Sedgwick (1965). 16mm film (black and white, silent). 4 min. at 16fps. © 2010 The Andy Warhol Museum

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Home Now. All photos via A Love Letter For You, 2010

Steve Powers, the Philadelphian street artist—a.k.a. ESPO—has released a trailer for his upcoming documentary on a 50 mural public art project, A Love Letter For You. Art Observed interviewed the artist in August, when the action took place.

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Tony Cragg at the private view of Figure out/figure in at Le Louvre in Paris, all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

Currently on view at the Louvre in Paris are a group of sculptures by leading British contemporary artist Tony Cragg. The works are displayed as a counterpoint to the retrospective of Bavarian-born Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. Cragg’s sculptures are exhibited in the Cour Marly and the Cour Puget. A featured work of the exhibition is Versus (2010), a work especially commissioned to be displayed under I.M. Pei’s pyramid. The work will be stationed there for one year.

Dealer Thaddaeus Ropac with Elbow (2008)

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Screen shot, Palace of Versailles, via Google Art Project

Over 1,000 works from 17 museums are now available to view online in high-resolution, thanks to today’s launch of Google Art Project. Founded and headed by Amit Sood, the new site combines several Google applications to provide virtual tours similar to Google Street View, with a zoom-in feature and information on each work. Most noted is the the project’s use of gigapixel resolution—7 billion pixels—rendering a virtual view magnified greater than the naked eye could achieve; at this stage the extra gigapixel technology has only been employed on one work per musuem.

Screen shot, max zoom of Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (1533), via Google Art Project

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George Condo, Homeless Harlequins (2004). Via New Museum

Over eighty paintings and sculptures fill two floors of the New Museum with a survey of George Condo’s work from the past thirty years, the opening drawing celebrities like Marc Jacobs and Kanye West, for whom Condo recently painted an album cover. The characters in Condo’s portraits maintain a human quality despite their oversized ears and exaggerated expressions. He attributes his ability to draw up absurd yet empathetic portraits to his mimicry of classic techniques—careful color choice, appropriate brush strokes. Through his impeccable technique, he has gained a follower: Eneas Capalbo is marking his tenth year of copying Condo’s work. His exhibit, a token of how much he admires the artist’s work, opened at the Half Gallery the same day as Condo’s.

Installation view. Via New York Times

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Richard Phillips in front of Most Wanted, via Telegraph

Richard Phillips is blowing up pop art onto two-meter canvases full of celebrity in his new exhibition Most Wanted, on now at White Cube through March 5. In a saturated, Technicolor hyperrealist style, complete with Richard Bernstein-esque neon outlines, Phillips has painted in oil ten current pop-culture icons: Chace Crawford, Kristen Stewart, Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Momsen, Dakota Fanning, Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, and Robert Pattinson.

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Egyptian special forces on Monday secured the main floor inside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Via NY Times

The National Egyptian Museum is currently guarded by tanks, having been looted Friday night. Dr. Zahi Hawass, Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities—and a member of the current administration—claims over 1,000 protesters stole from the gift shop, with ten making it into the galleries and smashing glass vitrines and antique statues, including one of King Tutankhamen, as well as beheading two mummies. Wafaa El-Saddik, former director of the Egyptian Museum (until just a month ago), believes the museum’s own guards did the looting, who are hugely underpaid despite El-Saddik’s previous efforts.

Next door, buildings of the National Democratic Party and the Press Club were in flames over the weekend; efforts lacked to save the structures, though the museum was kept safe. In Tahrir Square—Arabic for Liberation—protesters scorn current leader Hosni Mubarak with chants and clever graffiti and signs, speaking English in an appeal to the West.

Protestor, with National Egyptian Museum in the background, via Economist

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Alfred Gilbert, Jubilee Memorial to Queen Victoria (1887). Via The Guardian

It is understandable that critics are particularly divided in their reviews of Modern British Sculpture, at the Royal Academy of Arts through April 7. It attempts to question “What is British, what is modern and what is sculpture” ranging as far and wide as the African and Asian colonial influences of 20th century British sculptors, to the transitions between figurative and abstraction, to the work of Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. The show runs the gamut of well-known names but has fun throwing in the odd obscurity, like Alfred Gilbert’s Jubilee Memorial to Queen Victoria, a baroque piece by a classic British artist that is decidedly out of context in this exhibition. More familiar are Anthony Caro, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, who are newly contextualized in this first exhibition in 30 years to focus on 20th century British sculpture—its origins, evolution, and impact.

Damien Hirst, Let’s Eat Outdoors Today (1990). Via The Guardian

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Christian Marclay, The Clock (still), 2010. Via River00000

Debuting at White Cube this past October (and already covered by AO), Christian Marclay‘s The Clock has been warmly accepted in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery, with several 24-hour screenings throughout the exhibition, through February 19th. Splicing together a day’s worth of found film, the artist and six assistants spent two years on the project, drawing from classics like “Great Expectations” and “Mary Poppins,” to more recent films like “Tomb Raider.” Every single clip makes reference to the time—moving in realtime—with clocks synced to the actual time of New York (or wherever it’s showing). The highly acclaimed work is to be included in the British Art Show 7, a group exhibition ran only every five years, touring to the Hayward Gallery, Tramway-Glasgow, and Plymouth Art Centre later this year.

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Joe Bradley, Struth (2010). Via Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

American artist Joe Bradley is showing his work simultaneously at two New York Galleries: Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Canada Gallery on the Lower East Side. Each gallery exhibits works by the artist in a completely different style. For his first show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Bradley shows large colorful abstract paintings made with oil sticks instead of paint brushes. The canvases are full of the artist’s footprints, dirt, dust, references to comic book characters, and abstract expressionist and primitivist symbolism. At Canada, his longtime art gallery, he gives viewers large black and white silkscreens of male silhouettes.

Joe Bradley, Human Forms (2011). Via Canada Gallery

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Wade Gutyon, Installation view (2010), Capitain Petzel. All images via Capitain Petzel, Berlin.

Currently on view at Capitain Petzel in Berlin is the gallery’s first solo show of American artist Wade Guyton.  Having once been quoted by New York Times Magazine as saying “I am too lazy to paint,” Guyton continues to press the boundaries of creating art in a digital age by making heavy use of an Epson ink jet printer.  This installation features 86 pieces of paper displayed under glass in fifteen vitrines.  A continuation of an installation at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany in 2010, Guyton has expanded the project to an entire series of blue-tiled vitrines and works on paper.  Although these papers have the appearance of a handcrafted painting, each underwent a process involving multiple printings and digital additions or “drawings.”

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Martin Creed, Mothers (2010). Via Time Out London

Martin Creed’s Mothers at Hauser & Wirth nearly beats viewers over the head with his exploration of relationships. The centerpiece, a huge sculpture bearing the same title as the exhibition, bears the word “MOTHERS” in neon above the heads of the audience. Creed is also releasing a new single and music video, Thinking/Not Thinking, at this show.

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Tiziano Vecellio (Titian), A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1560 (est. $15-20 million, realized $16.9 million), via Sothebys.com

Sotheby’s 378-lot Old Master Sale in New York today realized a total of $90.6 million and set a record for a Titian painting at auction. The painting generated only one bid from an unidentified European collector and sold for its low estimate of $15 million. Still, the sale broke the previous record for a painting by the artist at auction that was set 20 years ago with the sale of Venus and Adonis for $13.6 million at Christie’s in London. The new record-holding painting is a late work and, according to the auction house’s research, has changed hands only six times since its creation around 1560.

-J. Mizrachi

At Sotheby’s Sale, Titian Draws One Bidder [New York Times]
Titian Painting Fetches Auction Record [ABC News]
Titian’s Madonna Fetches Record $16.9 Million at Sotheby’s Old Master Sale [Bloomberg]

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Still, Waste Land, via Oscar

Documentary films by Vik Muniz and Banksy have both been nominated for an Academy Award in the same category of Best Documentary Feature. Muniz’s stirring Waste Land and Banksy’s clever Exit through the Gift Shop will face off at the Oscars in Hollywood on February 27, with hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco. The question of Banksy’s presence is especially hyped as the artist’s true identity is entirely secretive—as dictated by his edgy work and persona, he appears only in silhouette throughout his own film.

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Still, Exit through the Gift Shop, via Oscar

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Will Ryman, The Roses (2011). All photos via Paul Kasmin Gallery unless otherwise noted.

Along Park Avenue, from 57th to 67th Streets, New Yorkers can enjoy an early spring thanks to Will Ryman‘s steel and fiberglass installation, The Roses. Towering up to 25 feet high, the works brighten up the wintry uptown grayness, breaking down the elitism of gallery-laden art and offering a different experience from each point of view—below, above, in a cab passing by. From a family of artists, and a background in theatre, Ryman capitalizes on the public placement, relying on the viewers to “complete my piece,”according to NY Times. Working with City Hall, the Borough Hall Commissioners Office, and the Park Avenue Sculpture Committee, Ryman had his trash vetoed—matches and a Doritos bag—but a variety of dog-sized bugs survive, as well as 20 scattered rose petals, six of which double as lawn chairs.

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Piotr Uklański, Jupiter Glow (2010). All images via Gagosian Gallery

In his new series on display at the Gagosian Gallery, Discharge!, Piotr Uklański stretches the boundaries of what can be called painting. Rather than add color to a blank canvas, the artist removes color by applying bleach to cotton sheets treated with fiber reactive dyes. This discharge of the bright pigments brings the creative process of painting into question by using an act of removal, rather than addition, to generate images. His method in this series produced vivid images often reminiscent of astronomical photographs in their bursts of color, or cellular patterns in their organic repetition.

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