‪‬X-Ray techniques identify likely Van Gogh painting of wrestlers beneath ‘Still Life with Meadows and Roses,’ which was previously unauthenticated, now hanging at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands [AO Newslink]
‪‬BMW Guggenheim Lab changes plans on six year tour to not include Berlin district of Kreuzberg due to anti-gentrification protests [AO Newslink]
All photos on site for Art Observed by Rachel Willis.
Gagosian Gallery recently debuted a new body of work by German born artist Georg Baselitz. The show is comprised of ten pieces—nine oil paintings and one bronze sculpture—all standing at least nine feet in height and displaying images of abstracted human figures. Baselitz’s work has long been known for its aesthetic expression and the paintings in this show are no exception with their vibrant colors and painterly brushstrokes.
Installation view. All images via Honor Fraser Gallery
In her second solo exhibition with Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles-based artist Rosson Crow explores memory, history, and the visual cues of U.S. national identity in a series of large-scale works on canvas. Playing on terms that suggest a raucous commotion, as well as a classic American boosterism, Ballyhoo Hullabaloo Haboob depicts moments of tragedy and triumph in the long 20th century.
‪Chairwoman of Galeries Lafayette Ginette Heilbronn Moulin accuses the dynastic Parisian art dealing Wildenstein family of withholding information about Claude Monet’s Torrent de la Creuse (1889), missing since its confiscation by the Nazis during World War II. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York currently possesses an allegedly near-identical copy to the lost work. [AO Newslink]
‪‬Sotheby’s to sell some 50 works owned by the late Theodore J. Forstmann in New York throughout May, valued at $75 million and including pieces by Picasso, Miró, Lichtenstein, and Soutine [AO Newslink]
Martin Creed, Work No. 890, DON’T WORRY (2008). Image courtesy of the Tate Liverpool.
Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed brings seven new works to the Tate Liverpool this spring as part of their ARTIST ROOMS collection, in conjunction with the National Galleries of Scotland. Creed’s works range in media from paintings to a neon installation; “Refreshing, unexpected and humorous, Creed’s work challenges our preconceptions and rearranges the rules of conceptual art,” reads the exhibition’s press release.
‪‬James Murdoch chooses to leave the board at Sotheby’s in May, opting to “focus on his core responsibilities at News Corps” [AO Newslink]
All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.
Lisa Cooley‘s new Lower East Side space opened Friday night, March 16, 2012 at 107 Suffolk St after four years on Orchard Street. The inaugural show is titled Today—after the Frank O’Hara poem at the top of the press release—and promotes a participatory and communal feeling as Cooley’s full roster of artists is on display in the 4,800 sq ft, one story space. Guests were invited to sign a white canvas ‘guestbook,’ adding an additional dimension to the exchange between artist and participant. The exhibition features works from Michael Bauer, Alice Channer, Andy Coolquitt, Cynthia Daignault, Josh Faught, Frank Haines, Alex Olson, John Pestoni, Alan Reid, Erin Shirreff and J. Parker Valentine, and runs through March 25th.
Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration (1967). Images via Tate Modern.
Currently on view at the Tate Modern is the first major retrospective of Yayoi Kusama’s work in the UK. Covering a practice that has spanned nearly six decades, the fourteen-room exhibition reveals the wide range of the artist’s explorations into media and mediation. Including early manipulated photographs, soft sculptures, and immersive installations, as well as more recent paintings and sculptural works, the Tate’s retrospective moves viewers through one of the most individual and idiosyncratic practices to emerge from the 1960s New York art scene.
James Shaeffer at Reference Art from Richmond, Virginia. All photos on site for Art Observed by Elene Damenia.
The second iteration of the Dependent Art Fair took place on the Saturday afternoon of Armory week, alongside several satellite fairs—including the Independent Art Fair. Dependent organizer Rose Marcus gathered 20 galleries in the Lower East Side Comfort Inn hotel, offering the two night stay for a fair fee of $400. The DIY, tongue-in-cheek fair is geared toward community and dialogue amongst its participating galleries and artists, seeking a sort of humorous—yet rigorous—elegance, leaving the intense marketing focus of other fairs to the back seat. Up and down the six occupied floors (floors 3–8, with a smoking deck on 6), visitors squeezed through the hallways and into the individual hotel rooms to see a variety of contemporary painting, sculpture, video, and installations, including a bed-ridden mini Kawasaki motorcycle at Reference Art, or made-to-order rum-fruit smoothies at Roberto Paradise.
Street View of Miss You at Prism, West Hollywood. All images via Os Gemeos.
Miss You, an immersive environment by well-known Brazilian artists Os Gemeos is currently on view at Prism in West Hollywood. Growing up in the megalopolis of São Paulo, the twins Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo were influenced by the vibrant street culture of the city, including its expansive graffiti and mural projects. They continually bring this energy into the gallery, transporting the dynamism of the tropical urban center into the space through their use of saturated hues, bold magical-realist style, and the totality of their vision.
‪‬In anticipation of Damien Hirst’s upcoming Tate retrospective next month, writer Hari Krunzu lobs invectives at the artist in an editorial in the Guardian: “This isn’t just art that exists in the market, or is ‘about’ the market. This is art that is the market – a series of gestures that are made wholly or primarily to capture and embody financial value,” “Don’t just make money, be money: weightless, ubiquitous, infinitely circulating, immortal.” [AO Newslink]
‪‬The Whitney Museum and Centre Pompidou announce promised gift of over 800 American and international artists’ works from collectors Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner, with 500 American works entering the collection of the Whitney, to be exhibited first in 2015, and 300 European and international works going to the Pompidou for a later exhibition [AO Newslink]
Rita Ackermann, Parkoló Baleset 1. – Marfa/Crash (2009) All images courtesy of the Ludwig Museum
Ludwig Museum’s current solo exhibition Bakos. Rita Ackermann, concentrates on works created in the past three years, including a wide variety of drawings, paintings, prints, and videos. The show also features all of what Ackermann produced during her Marfa/Chinati artist-in-residency program in 2010, with the Fire Days (2010) series on public display for the first time. Curated by Kata Oltai, the Bakos is part of series that aims to introduce Hungarian artists (who may or may not actually work in the country) to Hungary.
‪‬Wolfgang Laib to install 12 years worth of bright yellow hazelnut pollen collected in Germany in the MoMA atrium January–February 2013 [AO Newslink]
Dash Snow, Untitled (2001-2009). All images courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin.
Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA) Berlin hosts a selection of original Polaroids and a film from the late Dash Snow, curated by Mary Blair Hansen of the Dash Snow Archive. As infamous as his Polaroids were in art circles and beyond they were only ever exhibited three times in Snow’s life. Most people are familiar with only scanned or C-print editions of the almost 8,000 Polaroids that Snow took. Sensational and yet sensitive, these Polaroids were Snow’s entry point into the art world. On view at CFA are over 400 originals grouped and framed, with certain individual images exhibited alone.
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View of frame to have picture taken with boulder in Bixby Knolls on March 7, 2012. Images on site for Art Observed by Megan Hoetger.
On Saturday, March 10 at approximately 3:00 am the 340-ton granite megalith that will be part of Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass reached its final destination at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Traveling for eleven days in the dead of night through Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Los Angeles Counties, the rock arrived at LACMA to a crowd of a thousand onlookers. The megalith’s final resting place is atop a 465-foot long slot carved into the earth. Viewers will be able to walk down into the slot and underneath the rock, experiencing scale in a way that harkens back to ancient times when massive structures such as Stonehenge, Easter Island, or the Great Pyramids were constructed.
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View of boulder in Exposition Park area on March 9, 2012
Juergen Teller, Cerith (2011)
“Everything is permitted, as long as it is fantastic.” So were the famous words of eccentric Italian designer Carlo Mollino. It was perhaps in that spirit that photographer Juergen Teller entered Mollino’s old residence to photograph a controversial series of provocative photographs featuring model Kristen McMenamy. The photographs, frequently denounced as “pornographic” by critics, juxtapose a fading beauty with the aging home of a long-deceased designer frequently known for his erotic proclivities, bringing to the forefront themes of aging and beauty that make the pieces as compelling as they are edgy.
‪‬Park Avenue Armory new artistic director Alex Poots to possibly commission $1.4 million Paul McCarthy installation, according to “draft programme for 2013 season” [AO Newslink]
‪‬Sotheby’s to auction Andy Warhol’s ‘Double Elvis [Ferus Type]’ for estimated $30–50 million at May Contemporary sale in New York, the work will be on view in LA next week [AO Newslink]
‪‬James Franco and LA MoCA will screen ‘Rebel’ film at “unusual” venue of JF Chen’s furniture boutique, with work shown also by Douglas Gordon, Harmony Korine, Damon McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, Terry Richardson, Ed Ruscha, and Aaron Young [AO Newslink]
Will Ryman, Bird (2012). All images via Paul Kasmin Gallery.
Will Ryman’s Anyone and No One solo show is the artist’s first at Paul Kasmin, and the first for any artist to show simultaneously at both the 10th avenue gallery and the former Bungalow 8 location. Three new site-specific works include a towering labyrinth of 200,000 paintbrushes, and larger than life sculptures of a man and a raven.
