Tobias Meyer Opens the Sale, via Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed

“So, the market is alive, right?”  This was the closing statement from Sotheby’s auctioneer Tobias Meyer last night at the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale. The sale totaled $290 million – the second highest ever achieved at Sotheby’s for an Impressionist and Modern Art Sale, and its fourth consecutive Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art that had a sell-through rate of 80%.

Pablo Picasso, Tête de Femme (1935), via Sotheby’s (more…)

The Marina Abramovic Institute has announced its latest project; a 24-hour reading of the 2004 fantasy novel The City of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moers, set for November 23rd at the Basilica Hudson.  This is Abramovic’s second entry in her marathon reading series, after an 8-hour reading of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris.  “The Basilica has a very dramatic and industrial atmosphere that calls for one-of-a-kind and extreme events like this marathon reading,” Basilica Hudson creative director Melissa Auf der Maur said. “Marina and her team dreamed up this event, and naturally we opened our doors to them.” (more…)

A new spread in Harper’s Bazaar features the animated cast of artist Takashi Murakami’s film Jellyfish Eyes, as well as the artist himself, spending time around Los Angeles.  The set of photos includes the monsters walking dogs, eating at In N’ Out Burger, and eating ice cream, all with model Angela Lindvall.  “I’ve always really loved Murakami’s optimism,” says Harper’s Executive Director Laura Brown. (more…)

Kara Walker, Negress (Installation View), Courtesy Camden Arts Center

Currently on display in all three gallery spaces of Camden Arts Centre in London is a new exhibition  of works by American artist Kara Walker, which directly confront racial and gender tensions through familiar characters found in American culture, pop culture, and history.

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Alberto Giacometti, Diego En Chemise Écossaise (1954), Via Christie’s

Last night, Christie’s held their annual fall Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, on the tail of their “A Dialogue through Art: Works From the Jan Krugier Collection.” The sale realized a total of $144 million, with 76% sold by lot and 65% of the works sold by value. According to Christie’s Head of Department, Brooke Lampley, there was a “great depth of bidding,” with a strong focus on the Asian market. Christie’s attributed this to their current and continued reach in Chinese markets, particularly in Hong Kong. There was competitive interest displayed in mid market pricing – for works of art priced at $5 million and below.

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Mike Kelley. Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991/1999), © Estate of Mike Kelley. Images courtesy of Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography Joshua White JWPictures.com

It’s hard to decide just where to begin with the monumental Mike Kelley retrospective currently on view at MoMA Ps1.  The blockbuster exhibition takes up all four floors of the museum, and spans his full career, from his early video and performance work through to some of the last installations and pieces he made before he tragically took his own life in 2012 at the age of 58.  All of his immediately recognizable works are on view, including Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, his Kandor series (recreating the miniature home city of the Superman mythology), and his sprawling masterwork, Day is Done from 2005-2006, all brilliant entries in Kelley’s signature inquiries into the American mythos.

Mike Kelley, Mike Kelley as The Banana Man (1981), © Estate of Mike Kelley Photo: Jim McHugh (more…)

Pablo PIcasso, Tête de Femme (1935), via Sotheby’s

The fall New York auction season is set to commence this evening with Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, followed by Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale on Wednesday evening.  The following is a preview of sales of the week.

Fernand Léger, Élément Méchanique (1920), via Sotheby’s (more…)

Intense protest over the installation of Adel Abdemessed’s Zinedine Zidane sculpture in Doha, Qatar, has resulted in the removal of the piece from public exhibition, due to its “anti-Islam idolization.”  The piece, titled Coup de Tete, was installed at the beginning of October, caused such a public outcry among conservative citizens and politicians that it was removed less than a month later. (more…)

Artist Ai Weiwei has announced plans for a show of work at the former prison island Alcatraz in the San Francisco bay.  Weiwei is currently working on obtaining approval from the National Park Service, and if approved, would look to open the show in February of next year.  Little other information has been released. (more…)

Marc Chagall, Time is a River without Banks (1930-39), via The Jewish Museum

A new exhibition entitled “Chagall: Love, War, and Exile” is currently on view at The Jewish Museum in New York, reviewing the part of Marc Chagall’s career during the rise of European fascism in the 1930s through 1948 while he was living in Paris and New York. The exhibition includes 31 paintings and 22 works on paper.

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Vanity Fair Magazine has unveiled an expansive survey of the world’s greatest living artists, with Gerhard Richter topping the list, and followed by Jasper Johns and Richard Serra.  The voting panel included a number of recognized artists, including Marina Abramović, Carl Andre, John Baldessari, and Fernando Botero. (more…)

A collection of 1,500 works, valued at over $1.3 Million, has been seized by the German Customs Agency in Munich after a raid on the son of an elderly Nazi associate.  The works, which include pieces by Max Beckman, Picasso and Matisse, were looted from Jewish owners in the years before and during World War II, with the intent of building an enormous museum for them in Austria.  “We went into the apartment expecting to find a few thousand undeclared euros, maybe a black bank account,” says one Customs spokesman. “But we were stunned with what we found. From floor to ceiling, from bedroom to bathroom, were piles and piles of old food in tins and old noodles. Behind it all these pictures worth tens, hundreds of millions of euros.” (more…)

Christopher Wool, Untitled (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

The work of artist Christopher Wool is nothing if not immediate.  Huge, stencil-cut prints, slurred spray-paint scribbling reminiscent of graffiti, and enormous splashes of paint litter the artist’s canvases and rice paper compositions, all charged with a gritty, urban freneticism that informed Wool’s early years in New York’s supercharged downtown punk scene during the 1970’s.  It’s this energy that ultimately becomes the focus of the Guggenheim’s current retrospective of the artist’s work, just recently opened at the uptown museum.

Christopher Wool, Minor Mishap (2001), © Christopher Wool, Courtesy The Guggenheim Museum (more…)

96 Cheyne Walk, the former East End London home of painter James Whistler, has been placed up for sale, with an asking price of £30 million.  The artist lived there for just over 10 years, from 1867 to 1878m during which time he created his most iconic work, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, affectionately referred to as Whistler’s Mother.  Other residents of the Chelsea street have included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Eliot, Henry James, former British prime minister David Lloyd-George, Laurence Olivier and the musician Mick Jagger. (more…)

Writer Alain de Botton has contributed an essay to the Wall Street Journal, challenging the age-old questions of why art should matter to the average person.  Illustrating the art work as a moment of reflection and repose, de Botton reviews works by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pieter de Hooch, Diego Velazquez and more, examining the benefits and impressions a single work of art can make in the viewer’s perception of the world. (more…)

Mike Bouchet, Nothing is Everything 3 Times (Positive) (2013), via the Marlborough Chelsea

Mike Bouchet explores the adage, “You are what you eat,” if what is ingested contains zero-calories, in his new exhibition Flood at the newly renovated Marlborough Chelsea Gallery. The exhibition casts a mirror on to how our society digests all that it can from the media, regardless of nutritional content or health benefits.  Through Bouchet’s critical stance, everything ingested is about as substantial as Bouchet’s own blend of diet soda.

Bodybuilders in a pool of Diet Cola, by Mike Bouchet at Hotel Americano, via Ben Richards for Art Observed

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Ahead of an upcoming show at Tate Britain, featuring a group of five British painters under fifty, Chris Ofili and Simon Ling sat down with the Financial Times to discuss their personal styles, the act of painting, and their inspirations from the streets of London.  “Well, this is about the city’s lack of aspiration.”  Says Ling during the interview, considering a fragmented canvas. “The lack of planning and failure, where the city is almost like a tectonic construction, a weird jumble.” (more…)

The Smithsonian Institution has tallied a total cost of $2.8 million caused by the government shut down this past month, including all gift shop and cafeteria revenues the museum normally takes in.  The museum was also forced to conclude a number of loans prematurely, including the rarely exhibited codexes of Leonardo Da Vinci.   (more…)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Hustlers (Installation View), courtesy Philip-Lorca diCorcia and David Zwirner Gallery

One of the most influential photographers working today, Philip-Lorca diCorcia is known for creating images which blur the line between documentary photography and theatrically-staged scenes. Hustlers, on display now through November 2 at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York, presents photographs diCorcia made between 1990 and 1992, during the beginning of his engagement with street photography. For a fee roughly equivalent to what they would receive for sexual services, DiCorcia’s photographs feature the male prostitutes he approached in Los Angeles.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Champagne, 19 Years Old, from California, $20 (1990-1992), courtesy Philip-Lorca diCorcia and David Zwirner Gallery

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Paul Thek. All images courtesy the Pace Gallery.

The work of American artist Paul Thek will be exhibited at the Pace Gallery in London through November 9. Thek was a conceptual artist and hugely underappreciated at the time of his death in 1988. Trained as a painter at the Pratt Institute and Cooper Union School of Art, Thek is considered one of the most significant figures of the 1960s art scene in New York. He transitioned to working with sculpture after his formal training, and is most well known for his Technological Reliquaries installations that feature wax-made meat and human body parts. Though he died at age 55 under celebrated, the work of Paul Thek has been growing in significance and continues to influence a range of artist as diverse as Mike Kelley and Damian Hirst.

Exhibition View.

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A recent investigation into the collection of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has uncovered 139 works looted during World War II.  The results of a 4-year study, the works have been placed on a website, inviting prior owners to make claims on the return of the work, including pieces by Matisse and Isaac Israels.  “We know that there were doubtful transactions concerning works acquired before 1940, after Kristallnacht,” said Siebe Weide of the Dutch Museum Association. (more…)

The Skarstedt Gallery is expanding in New York, opening a new gallery space in the former headquarters of Christie’s Haunch of Venison Gallery at 550 West 21^st Street.  Haunch of Venison had closed its doors in March of 2013. (more…)

Mayfair restaurant Sketch has invited artist David Shrigley to redesign its exhibition space and menu, following in the footsteps of Martin Creed, who redesigned the space in 2012.  Working on the aesthetic appearance of the space, Shrigley will also collaborate with the restaurant’s kitchen, creating a series of menu items heavily inspired by his art.  The restaurant will close at the end of the year for the renovations, opening again in February of 2014. (more…)

The upcoming show on the work of Vincent Van Gogh, held next year at London’s National Gallery, will reunite two of the surviving versions of the artist’s iconic Sunflowers.  Painted in 1888, one of the canvases is on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, while the other was purchased by the National Gallery in 1924.  “It will deepen every visitor’s appreciation of the artist,” said  Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery. (more…)