The Marina Abramovic Institute has reached its target goal of $600,000 on the Kickstarter online funding platform, with two days left before the campaign closes. The funds will go to cover the design process for the museum, before it moves into its construction phase. In total, the project is anticipated to cost a total of $20 million. (more…)
After several months of deliberation, Berlin officials have announced a new plan for a $174 million museum to house the city’s extensive 20th century art collection. Located in Potsdamer Platz, the new museum will boast an area of about 9,900 square meters (106,563 square feet), and could open as soon as 2022 if work starts immediately. It now falls to the German government to approve these plans. “With a new building, the Nationalgalerie collection could at last be exhibited permanently on a big scale.” German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said in a statement. (more…)
The New York Times reports on the impacts of a globalized art market, and the near constant travel to China, Southeast Asia, Europe and elsewhere to cater to any number of growing markets. With the massive increase in art fairs from 4 major events during the 1970’s to today’s 180 fairs worldwide, gallerists are feeling the pressure to be everywhere at once, a feeling that many feel detracts from the act of buying or selling works of art. “Fairs are beneath the dignity of art,” says Arne Glimcher of Pace. “To stand there in a booth and hawk your wares — it is just not how you sell art.” (more…)
David Hockney, The Jugglers, June 24th 2012 (detail), (2012), © David Hockney, Via Hockney Pictures and Pace Gallery
The Jugglers, June 24th 2012 (2012), the U.S. premiere of artist David Hockney’s first video installation, presents a panorama of bright color and whirling objects, tinged with mordant humor. In a darkened room on the second floor of the Whitney, the viewer will find a bare theater with a single long bench and eighteen screens arranged in a grid. The screens switch on to reveal a composition of red and blue horizontal blocks almost as flat as Hockney’s early acrylics. Also bearing similarities to his Polaroid collages, Hockney has chosen to create a fractured composition using video to achieve the same effect by combining feeds from eighteen different cameras mounted in his Yorkshire studio on a sunny day. The light is even and saturates the space, permitting no highlights or shadows, and without figures, the red and blue studio looks relatively seamless on the screen. (more…)
Artist and dealer Margaret Lee is interviewed this week in New York Times Magazine, discussing her busy schedule as an artist, owner of the 47 Canal gallery, and the solitary studio assistant for Cindy Sherman. “It was good for me to see that you can be this amazing artist and not be an ego-driven, horrible monster,” she says. (more…)
This fall Ovation, the arts-themed cable network, will debut James Franco Presents, a series focused on the artistic works and interests of actor and artist James Franco. The series will give viewers “an unprecedented look at the fascinating projects and real life adventures of James Franco.” The network said in a statement. “From his gallery exhibits to his students’ films, the innovative series will also provide an exclusive opportunity to hear Mr. Franco’s point of view on his most-personal passion projects, most of which have not been seen by the public.” (more…)
Harlem’s Studio Museum has announced its 2013-2014 artists in residence. The museum selected sculptor Kevin Beasley, chalk artist and conceptualist Bethany Collins and installation artist Abigail Deville. Each artist will receive $20,000 as part of their fellowship, an additional $1,000 for art materials, and studio space on the museum’s third floor for a full 12 months, culminating in a group show at the end of their stay. (more…)
Roy Lichtenstein, Woman Drying Her Hair (1980), Courtesy Gagosian Paris
On view at Gagosian Paris is an exhibition exploring the work of Roy Lichtenstein, who remained the motifs and stylistic tropes of Expressionism motifs using his signature primary colors and flat geometry, a style he had slowly developed and refined during the 1960’s and early 1970’s.
A work by artist Jan Schoonhoven, stolen from the Bommel van Dam Museum in Venlo several months ago, has turned up at Sotheby’s, stopping the sale after a Dutch fence confessed to police that he had tried to sell the work. The 1969 work had already achieved a sale price of €214,000, sold under a different name and turned 90 degrees in the catalog. The auction house acknowledged that it had already been investigating the work after buyers became suspicious. (more…)
Jeffrey Deitch will once again exhibit in New York, the New York Times reports. The current curator of MOCA has announced a soon to open show at Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea, focusing on the intersections of graffiti and calligraphies in contemporary art. Opening September 5th, Calligraffiti: 1984-2013 will feature work from over 50 artists, including Basquiat, Haring, Shirin Neshat, an eL Seed. ”Graffiti has become an important part of the imagery that has defined the Arab Spring.” Deitch writes in the catalog. “Today new communications platforms like Instagram and YouTube have given street art a new resonance.” (more…)
Damien Hirst’s Science Gallery and Studios has selected a design for construction, a 9,000 square meter space in Stroud, England that will make it the largest art production site in the world. Designed by Bath-based firm Designscape, Science will feature numerous studios, spaces, and a formaldehyde room for Hirst’s famous preserved works. The building is also distinguished by its shifting, colorful facade. “The aim was to produce a wall that was intriguingly blue from one direction and green from the other,” says Designscape. “If you stand halfway down the elevation, you are not quite sure whether the building is blue or green.” (more…)
Hyperallergic has posted a thorough exploration of the debate surrounding the brutalist architecture and Picasso murals currently at risk of demolition at Oslo’s Regjeringskvartalet government center, badly damaged in a 2011 car-bomb attack. Tracing the history of the design, the works, and the debate surrounding their preservation or destruction, the article places brutalism at the center of the debate, noting the continued destruction of many of its architectural masterworks based on their purported unattractiveness. Joern Holme, the head of the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, echoes this statement, saying: “We can’t demolish the best of a cultural era just because we find it ugly today.” (more…)
The Michigan county of Oakland, one of three that approved property tax increases to help bankroll the Detroit Institute of the Arts operating budget last year, has unanimously approved a resolution stating that any attempt to sell works from the DIA Collection to benefit the city’s creditors would “terminate any obligation” of the county to continue support. Oakland, along with Wayne and Macomb counties, is projected to contribute $250 million to the museum over 10years, and stated that it “continues to believe that the museum and its collections are important, irreplaceable and indivisible parts of the cultural fiber of the state and region.” (more…)
Part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, artist Marcel Dzama is preparing to premiere a new film at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. The film is part of a series of works exploring the wide-ranging impact of filmmaker David Cronenberg, and his particular school of thought and practice. Dzama’s film, A Jester’s Dance, features a newly awakened awakened Maria Martins (played by Kim Gordon and Hannelore Knuts), and her attempts to rescue her lover, Marcel Duchamp, from a fate reciting chess moves to an unseen game. (more…)
New arrests are expected in the ongoing investigation into the Knoedler Gallery, the New York Times reports. The news comes after the indictment of dealer Glafira Rosales, in which the prosecuting attorney, Jason P. Hernandez, stated that he was contemplating further arrests. The news comes after the announcement that Mr. Pei-Shen Qian, the artist who created these works, has left the country for China. Both the prosecutor and defense attorney in the trial have also forecasted that the case will be resolved soon. (more…)
British architect Norman Foster has resigned from the proposed expansion of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, a projected $670 million project that had seen numerous delays over disputes and arguments between officials and preservationists. “Foster & Partners took this action because the museum, for the last three years, has not involved us in the development of the project, which was being carried out by others.” Foster’s firm said in a statement. (more…)
Gary Hume, Blackbird (1998), all images courtesy Tate Britain
The Tate Britain is currently presenting an exhibition of works by British painter Gary Hume, created throughout his career. On display are 24 recent paintings, rare works never before seen in the UK, as well some of his most well-known pieces, offering a pointed view of his minimalist style and challenging aesthetic practice.
Urban fashion company Supreme has just unveiled its Fall lookbook, which has partnered with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat to include a number of graphics and images from the paintings of late artist. In one photo, a model sports a red denim jacket, with Basquiat’s famous Cassius Clay figure. Other pieces feature Basquiat’s signature textual juxtapositions and images. (more…)
Europe’s Manifesta Art Biennial has named the Berlin-based Kasper Konig as its curator for next year’s edition of the fair, which opens next June in St. Petersburg. Konig’s active role in defending artistic statements in the face of conservative criticism in Germany will make for an interesting counterpoint to Russia’s current political climate, where Putin has just passed the Homosexuality Propaganda law. “Contemporary art and exhibits from the State Hermitage should dance side by side.” Konig said in a statement. (more…)
John Baldessari, Dwarf and Rhinoceros (With Large Black Shape). 1987.
California-based artist John Baldessari is showing at the Marian Goodman gallery in New York through August 23. Installation Works: 1987-1989 is a retrospective of a key moment in Baldessari’s career. The work presented in this exhibition speaks to a new architectural sensibility that intervenes in the play of chance encounter and appropriation of circumstance that characterizes Baldessari’s work. The influence of frame and angle over the visual subject appears as a significant theme in this collection. Installation Works is a resistance to frame and demarcated space. The selected work on view at the Marian Goodman gallery offers the opportunity to engage in questions of form, shape, and “the hierarchy of vision” that Baldessari’s work references (Press Release, Marian Goodman Gallery).
Installation View. All images courtesy The Marian Goodman Gallery.
The Apology Line, a confessional telephone art project that enabled callers to phone in and confess their misgivings and misdeeds, has been revived in New York City. Originally created by artist Allan Bridge, the project fell silent after Bridge was killed in a boating accident. But recently, posters have reappeared across the city, thanks to the efforts of an anonymous Brooklyn artist. “A voice inside of me said there’s no reason that the line had to die just because Allan died,” the unknown artist said in an interview with the NY Times. “It’s an outlet, and some people need that outlet.” (more…)
In an unprecedented move, the final tally of Christie’s Detroit Institute of Arts appraisal later this fall will offer a rare look into the true market value of a major museum’s art collection. Expected to reach into the billions, the valuation of the museum’s collection will add a new sense of urgency to the current budgetary crisis in Detroit, and its effects on DIA. “This is like the weighing of souls,” says Maxwell Anderson, director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “This is biblical stuff, not the approximations that insurance companies look for. It’s extremely problematic for all museums, because it alters the public’s perception of artworks from being ciphers of public heritage of transcendent value, to objects for sale to pay other people’s debts.” (more…)
The restoration of artist William Morris’s home in London has uncovered a full wall, Pre-Raphaelite mural, believed to have been painted by Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, Ford Madox Brown and Morris himself. The work was discovered under layers of paint, completely unbeknownst to those working on redeveloping the house. “In the morning we had one and a half murky figures, in the evening we had an entire wall covered in a pre-Raphaelite painting of international importance,” property manager James Breslin. (more…)
A budding artist residency program at Mount Tremper in the Catskills is featured in the Wall Street Journal this week, profiling the 6-year old program as it caps off its season with a barbecue celebration and performance by the Brooklyn-based Catch Performance Series. “We’re sleeping all over the place,” says Catch artist Andrew Dinwiddie. “There are bedrooms in the farm house, a room in the dance barn, a loft in the studio, two Airstream trailers.” (more…)
