With the announcement of Sotheby’s and Christie’s summer Impressionist and Modernist sales this month, analysts are noting that both auction houses have featured top lots from the collection of the Nahmad family, showing the family’s trademark approach of purchasing art in great quantity and reselling when the time is right. “It was once said that the Nahmads propped up this market with their buying when times were tough; now they appear to be propping it up with their selling.” Writes The Telegraph’s Colin Gleadell. (more…)

Plans have been set in place to move Oslo’s Edvard Munch museum to the city’s waterfront, which had previously been delayed for several years to due location and funding considerations.  The new, glass-lined building, titled Lambda, is projected to open in 2018, designed by Spanish firm Herreros Arquitectos.  The decision  “shows that even the starkest political opponents can put aside their differences for the common good”, said city commissioner for culture and industry Hallstein Bjercke. (more…)

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013) All photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Otherwise Occupied is an exhibition of Palestinian artists organized by al Hoash, a Palestinian art organization based in Jerusalem, as part of the 55^th International Art Exhibition at Venice Biennale 2013. The show is one of 48 Collateral Events hosted around the city. The exhibition features the work of two prominent, internationally renowned artists: Bashir Makhoul and Aissa Deebi. Makhoul is the head of the Winchester School of Art, England, while Deebi is a founding member of ArteEast, a Brooklyn-based organization that supports Middle Eastern art and culture. Both have exhibited work at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Manhattan, and mainly work with photography. In the past, both have addressed the themes of diaspora, exile and, more broadly, Palestinian politics, unsurprising given that both artists were born inside the 1948 borders of Palestine, and have since immigrated to become citizens of other states. Currently, they are working in the globalized art world, exemplified by Massimiliano Gioni’s Central Pavilion, The Encyclopedic Palace. Nevertheless, the artists still consider themselves Palestinian, underlining the complex political identities of modernity Gioni expressed in his press conference.

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013)

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Damien Hirst, Death or Glory (2001)

In conjunction with the events and exhibitions of the 55th Venice Biennale this summer, Le Stanze del Vetro (“Rooms for Glass”), the joint project by La Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Siftung, is currently presenting Fragile?, an exhibition dedicated to the presence and use of glass in contemporary art.  Perhaps one of the more interesting conceits for a Biennale exhibition, the show on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore looks at glass as an aesthetic and and figurative medium in current practice, featuring works by Ai Weiwei, Marcel Duchamp, Pipliotti Rist, Joseph Beuys, and many more.

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101 Spring Street, the New York Residence of artist Donald Judd, opened its schedule today for small public tours, offering visitors a firsthand look at the artist’s distinct views on design, lifestyle, and creativity, through his meticulous and elegantly simple renovation of the former industrial space.  “I’ve never built anything on new land,” Judd once wrote. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal has published a thorough profile on MoMA’s recently hired curator of photography, Quentin Bajac.  Recruited last year, Bajac is the first non-American to be named to the post, and brings a diversified view into the art form that often incorporates fields like astronomy.  “Photography has established a fruitful dialogue with other media,” he said. “With film, with architecture, with sculpture. What I’m really interested in is this dialogue with other techniques.” (more…)

British artist David Shrigley has chosen an unlikely subject for his sculptural commission outside the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich: Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee, Bubbles.  Standing near a fan monument to Jackson, Shrigley’s sculpture will aim to bring attention to Bubbles’s currently unfunded care in Florida. “Michael Jackson’s will made no provision for the care of Bubbles, yet the Estate of Michael Jackson still claims ownership of him. It costs $20,000 US a year to care for each of the 30 apes at the sanctuary and whilst some Michael Jackson fans have donated money to the cause there is still a massive shortfall in funding. Apes live almost as long as humans, so the cost of lifetime care for the apes will run into many millions.”  The press release on the website claims. (more…)

Dealer Matthew Marks is currently selling his West Village apartment, built in 1830 by painter Abraham Rattner.  The building boasts impressive renovations, all made since the building was purchased in 1997.  “At home, we like to move the furniture around, repaint and change the art frequently, but after 16 years, we’ve tried all the combinations and it’s time to move on.”  Marks said. (more…)

Richard Serra’s Shift, a series of zigzagging wall structures built along the changing elevations of the field it moves through, has been designated as a cultural heritage site in North Toronto.  Voted through by the township council of King City, Ontario, the work was the subject of fierce and ongoing debate, finally pushed through by a group of concerned citizens called “Friends of Shift.”  “It is especially gratifying that it was the result of the initiative of a group of private citizens who care about art.”  Mr. Serra commented. (more…)

Tino Sehgal with his Golden Lion for best artist at the Venice Biennale, via The Guardian

At a press conference this morning, the officials for the 55th Venice Biennale announced the winners of this year’s event’s Golden Lion awards.  British artist Tino Seghal took home the Best Artist in the International Exhibition award for his bizarre, kinetic performance piece at The Encyclopedic Palace, while first-time Biennale attendee Angola was given the award for best national participation.  A full account of awards is listed below:

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Ai Weiwei, S.A.C.R.E.D. (Installation View inside steel diorama) (2013)

Since his 2011 detention for alleged tax evasion by the Chinese government, artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei has taken the world by storm, with exhibitions and retrospectives around the world, alongside documentary profiles, constant press coverage, and a notably enigmatic heavy metal album.  His ubiquity in the artworld, set in contrast to his physical restriction from leaving China, is clear, and consistent at the 55th Venice Biennale, where the artist is holding two separate solo installations.

Ai Weiwei, S.A.C.R.E.D. (Installation View) (2013)

Ai Weiwei, Straight (Installation View) (2008-2012) (more…)

Mika Rottenberg, Still from Sneeze (2008), via Magasin 3

Sneeze to Squeeze is the first solo exhibition of work by New York-based video artist Mika Rottenberg in Sweden. Exploring the themes of labor, production and contemporary body-image, this major exhibition captures the spirit of the artist’s broad range of filmic work, while also offering a thorough, studied look at her work in installation and photography.

Mika Rottenberg, Still from Squeeze (2010), via Magasin 3 (more…)

The British Council, which is overseeing Jeremy Deller’s Great Britain pavilion at the Venice Biennale, has removed a banner from the exhibition, which reads “Prince Harry Kills Me,” after concerns that the message may provoke attacks on British troops in the Middle East.  “We asked Jeremy to reconsider the banner and poster … on the grounds that it could potentially be misconstrued in environments where the British army is currently deployed and perceived to be disrespectful of those who had lost their lives,” a British Council spokesman said. (more…)

Marc Quinn, Breath (2013)

Time and again, Artist Marc Quinn has defined himself as an artist of grand statements.  Utilizing imagery and materials from his surroundings, often cast on symbolically enormous scale, the artist has created a body of work that digs at the complex interrelations of art and science, life and meaning, process and creation.  The act of viewing seems central to Quinn’s body of work, collected for a major solo exhibition in Venice this summer, and running concurrently with the Venice Biennale at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.  Scale and image converge to create a striking and powerful impression of the human condition for viewers who find themselves in front of his work.

Marc Quinn, Self (2011)

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Richard Serra, Double Rift #9 (2013), ©Richard Serra Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian Beverly Hills through June 1 is Richard Serra’s Double Rifts series. Known for his immense sculptures, Double Rifts showcases a selection of recent drawings that are clearly related to, yet remarkably independent from Serra’s sculptural practice, welcoming new insights into the artist’s creative worldview.

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Outside the 55th Venice Biennale

The press preview for the 55th edition of the Venice Biennale, the international art world’s largest stage, kicked off this week, sprawling across the narrow alleyways and watery causeways of the Italian city.  Art Observed was on site to cover the opening ceremonies, and has this selection of pictures documenting the first day of the fair.

The Opening Reception, with Paolo Barata and Massimo Gioni (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Singular Forms (Installation View), courtesy of Mnuchin Gallery

From Sculpture on the Wall at the Barnes Foundation to the Museum of Modern Art’s Chatham Series, the work of artist Ellsworth Kelly is being celebrated across the East Coast this spring. Until June 1, the Mnuchin Gallery in New York will join in on the event, hosting Kelly’s ongoing Singular Forms series, which has spanned most of hist career, from 1966-2009.  A retrospective of Kelly’s emblematic abstract paintings, the show is curated by the artist himself, presenting his personal take on this broad body of work.

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A drawing stored in a locked cupboard at the University of Reading has been rediscovered as an original work by 17th century artist Peter Paul Rubens.  The work, a depiction of Queen Marie de’ Medici of France, was originally thought to have been made by a follower of Rubens, until a conservation effort revealed telltale signs that the work was made by the Renaissance master.  “It was bought as a so-called Rubens, attributed to Rubens,” said Reading professor Anna Gruetzner Robins. “But we didn’t take it seriously.” (more…)

The late Chinese artist Zhang Daiqian saw impressive auction results this week during both Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions of contemporary Asian art in Hong Kong.  Daiqian’s Lotus work, consisting of four painted scrolls more than five feet high, sold for five times its estimate at $10.4 million during Christie’s auction yesterday.  In addition, an auction dedicated solely to works by Daiqian reached $42 Million in sales at Sotheby’s on Monday.  Zhang currently stands as one of the top-selling artists at auction worldwide. (more…)

Noted Max Ernst scholar Werner Spies has been ordered to pay half of the â‚¬652,883 owed to collector Louis Reijtenbagh for the purchase of a falsely attributed work.  This is not the first time Spies has had issues over his authentication; he was fooled by noted forger Wolfgang Beltracchi in 2011 over several works he authenticated as Ernsts. (more…)

A recently completed, ten month study of Jackson Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950, has revealed new insights into the the artist’s work and practice, as well as a number of layers of paint that had been added to the work after Pollock had died.  Evidence points to new areas of paint added by Pollock’s friend and dealer Ben Heller, perhaps in an attempt to improve the presentation of the work.  The restoration, done by the Museum of Modern Art, also uncovered that Pollock had added final elements to the work after he had completed the initial painting, showing that they were not in fact grand exercises of impulsive action, but rather “really carefully conceived compositions.” As conservator James Coddington says, “(he) looked at these paintings with a level of detail that was so great even we can’t understand it.”
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Uriel Landeros, the University of Houston student who spray-painted over Picasso’s Woman in a Red Armchair at Houston’s Menil Collection, has been sentenced to two years behind bars for vandalism.  Landeros was facing up to 10 years in prison for felony vandalism, but pleaded guilty for a reduced sentence.  “We are heartened and grateful that the judicial process has come to completion,” said Menil spokesperson Gretchen Bock Sammons. “As for the Picasso, the restoration is complete and successful and the painting will eventually go on view — as works from the collection do, in rotation.” (more…)

In an effort to increase public engagement with their collections, a number of museums are now offering free, high-quality images of their works for download and open use. In one such example, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has begun allowing visitors to reproduce images of its collection anywhere.“We’re a public institution, and so the art and objects we have are, in a way, everyone’s property.” Says collections director Taco Dibbets. (more…)

Capitalizing on the platform of the Venice Biennale, artist Ai Weiwei has created six dioramas depicting the events of his 81 day detention under the Chinese communist state, which will be on view at Zuecca Project Space, running concurrently with the festival.  The half-scale works were created in Beijing, and secretly transported to Venice, showing the psychological torment of confinement and constant surveillance.  “Can political art still be good art?” Ai says.  “Those questions have been around for too long. People are not used to connecting art to daily struggle, but rather use high aesthetics, or so-called high aesthetics, to try to separate or purify humans’ emotions from the real world.” (more…)