Aurel Schmidt

Downtown for Democracy and OHWOW have teamed up for a new book, The Pocket Guide to Politics. Providing an approachable entry point to politics for the average citizen, last night’s launch party took place in the Standard Hotel’s Boom Boom Room in New York. Aaron Bondaroff of OHWOW welcomed art world figures like Aurel Schmidt, André Saraiva, Terry Richardson, Bill Powers, Dustin Yellin, and Peter Coffin, while Donald Cummings of the Virgins played a piano tune, Kilo Kish rapped on the bar, and Nate Lowman DJed throughout the night.

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‪‬Helsinki city board rejects Guggenheim Museum proposal, which was supported by Mayor Jussi Pajunen, at eight votes to seven, with no reason yet provided

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‪‬Metropolitan Museum of Art to add to wall text of “The Steins Collect” exhibition, explaining Gertrude Stein’s affiliation with Bernard Fäy the “Vichy collaborator and Nazi agent” which may have “contributed to the protection of Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas in France during the war.”

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‪‬Red Dot Art Fair officially cancelled by the venue 82Mercer three days prior to opening due to “labor union disputes”

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‪‬David Hockney technically tops Britain’s annual Giving List (in terms of ratio of worth) by donating £78.1m in paintings and £730,000 in cash to his David Hockney Foundation, 2.3 times his net worth of £34m, while Richard Branson gave the highest numerical amount of £358m

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Paul Cezanne, Jouer de cartes (1892–96). Image courtesy of Christie’s.

Last night’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale at Christie’s began this season’s auctions in New York. Christie’s overall sales totaled $117 million—well over their low estimate of $90.5 million. According to Christie’s, they achieved a sell-through rate of 96% by value and 90% by lot. In a post-auction press conference, Christie’s Head of the Department, Brooke Lampley, said that the results were exactly what they had expected, given that they had tailored their sale to match what the market was looking for.

View of the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale at Christie’s. Photo by Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.

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Jonathan Meese, Mona Lisa (2006-2007). All images via the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

German-born multimedia artist Jonathan Meese is showing a new series of his politically and philosophically radical work at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Seeking “maximum precision” Meese offers a graphically reduced but highly alert perspective; mythology, history, characters, symbols, and figures all exist within an exploded sociological determinism. The artist has been producing these approximately 100 large scale lithographs since 2003, based largely on Meese’s desire to work fast, and display his morbid, melted lexicon quickly.

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‪‬Picasso’s ‘Femme assise dans un fauteuil’ to be auctioned at Sotheby’s tomorrow night for $20–30m involved in lawsuit for more than $7.5m: after paying late owner Theodore J. Forstmann $7.5m in 2009, American International Insurance Co. is suing Acquavella Gallery for physical damage to the painting

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Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1895). Photo by Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.

Today marks the beginning of a two week flurry of art sales in the New York auction houses. This week is focused entirely on Impressionist and Modern Art, with next week centered on Post War and Contemporary Art. Chances are that you have already been bombarded with the numerous and impressive highlights that both houses have to offer, as the many of the lots from both houses are iconic, impressive, and will quite possibly break world records left and right.

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‪‬The 2012 Turner Prize nominees have been announced: Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, Paul Noble, and Elizabeth Price. The £25,000 prize is awarded annually to a British artist under age 50, with the four artists showing at Tate Britain each fall.

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Marlene Dumas, Gravita (2012). All images courtesy of Fondazione Stelline.

This spring at the Fondazione Stelline in Milan, Marlene Dumas celebrates the Christian season’s Resurrection by examining what came before: the crucifixion. Sorte, Dumas’ exhibition, consists of 22 works—15 of them new—plus an additional 15 historical drawings and watercolors. Per the exhibition’s press release, “[Dumas’] Milan exhibition will portray some of the themes most dear to the artist: the crucifixion, famous people linked to dramatic events, and those ‘people in extreme suffering’ who represent the humanity that is the focus of her painting.”

Installation view
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‪‬Kehinde Wiley interviewed on his experiences growing up in LA, finding his father in Nigeria and creating art for more than art’s sake in which “symbols matter”

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‪‬Berlin Gallery Weekend coordinated openings at 51 galleries throughout the German capitol, featuring work by Diane Arbus, Douglas Gordon, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, and Rikrit Tiravanija, among others

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‪‬As MAXXI museum in Rome waits 20 day period for government’s final decision on closure of the museum, the Economist features director of Casoria Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) in Naples burning works in protest of government cuts in arts funding

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‪‬Centre Pompidou plans new international approach, especially targeting Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRIC countries) “with temporary projects in existing venues like museums [and] universities, but why not historical monuments, former industrial facilities or shopping malls?” says museum president Alain Seban

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Averroes (1960), Marquis de Portago (1960). All photographs courtesy L + M Gallery.

15 of Frank Stella‘s important early works are on display in Black Aluminum Copper at L&M Arts in New York City’s upper east side. With a heavy sense of history, the show moves from the stark, post-war attitude of works such as Die Fahne hoch! (‘Raise the flag’) & Arbeit Macht Frei (‘Work Liberates’, the sign hung on the gates at Auschwitz) to the more spacious pre-minimalism of Avicenna or Telluride. These works were completed between 1958–61, the period immediately following Stella’s graduation from Princeton and move to NYC.

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Ron Mueck, Drift (2009). All images via Hauser & Wirth

Sculptor Ron Mueck‘s first show with Hauser & Wirth is on view now at the gallery’s Saville Row location in London. It is the artist’s first major solo exhibition in the city after more than a decade. Mueck is known for his brand of realism that might be considered graphic or grotesque, and habitually works with surprising scale to compound the power of the work. Mueck’s current show includes four sculptures that sharply contrast from each other, but share a poignant sense of the human condition.

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Nate Lowman, Swiss Cheese and The Doors: A One Night Stand (2012). All installation images via Massimo De Carlo and the artist.

Massimo de Carlo is showing 40 new works by NYC-based artist Nate Lowman. The press release states that ‘drawing on histories of collage, appropriation, and assemblage since the 1960s,’ Lowman aims ‘to craft a formal and strategic approach around a personal and cultural identification with images.’ A varied body of works, ranging from alkyd and oil rendered pointilist paintings to the more ‘theatrical’ lighting installations meant to evoke dusk and dawn, Swiss Cheese and the Doors: A One Night Stand is preoccupied with the ‘shift between narrative themes and experiential space.’

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‪‬Artist David Weiss died this morning of cancer at age 66, half of the Fischli/Weiss duo and represented by Matthew Marks Gallery

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‪‬Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture to renovate a 1960s prefab concrete structure with architect Rem Koolhaas for new 5,400 sq meter ‘Garage Gorky Park’ in Moscow, “we have these traces of Russian history as a partner of the art.”

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‪‬Philanthropist Jo Carole Lauder has headed the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE) since 1996, placing artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Louise Bourgeois in American embassies across more than 140 countries, “the art in our embassies program waves a less obvious cultural flag for America,” says the foundation’s president Eden Rafshoon

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‪‬Glenn O’Brien discusses art, music, TV, politics, Andy Warhol and Basquiat in an interview with Open Ceremony; on his show TV PARTY, “I was rebellious but not angry”

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‪‬CNNCTD+ to launch ‘sound graffiti’ project May 1, installing 100 Playbutton MP3 players and headphones throughout Manhattan with participants including Cindy Sherman, James Franco, and Bill Powers

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‪‬New Museum names curators of third Generational Triennial to be held in 2015: Lauren Cornell, Adjunct Curator at New Museum and leaving her seven-year post as Executive Director of Rhizome; and artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin

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