Artist Ryan McNamara is interviewed in the New York Times this past week, following the opening of the artist’s performance ballet ME3M 4 MIAMI at Art Basel Miami Beach.  “I’ve obviously done a lot of things here, but for me it’s just another context,” McNamara says. “It’s super-specific and super-bizarre. I feel most at home at galleries and museums, but I would get bored if I were only performing there. It’s a different kind of excitement.” (more…)

Takashi Murakami, In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow (Installation View), via Ellen Burke for Art Observed

The recent work of Takashi Murakami is firmly embedded in the critical state of Japan in the 21st Century, a sense of the ecological peril that the country has attempted to deal with since the disasters of Fukushima several months ago.  Taking this cataclysmic event as the jumping-off point for much of his recent work, the artist has taken his signature style, replete with smirking characters, huge swaths of psychedelic color, and the delicate iconography of classical Japanese art, applying it to a new series of works on view through January at Gagosian Gallery’s Chelsea exhibition space. (more…)

The Fondazione Prada has unveileved a new design for its space in Milan, designed by Rem Koolhaas’s architecture firm, OMA.  This will be the second space for the Fondazione, which will continue to operate out of its location in Venice as well. (more…)

A silver plate created by Pablo Picasso, and worth nearly $90,000 was stolen from the Art Miami fair this past week, part of a daring heist that has police still searching for the culprit.  “I’ve been doing art shows all my life,” says David Smith, the owner of the Leslie Smith Gallery and the victim of the theft. “I’ve never, ever had anything stolen.” (more…)

Andrew Shannon, the man who punched an immense hole in the surface of at $10 million Claude Monet landscape at the National Gallery of Dublin, has officially been sentenced to 5 years in prison for his actions.  Shannon is also banned from any art museum for 15 months after his release. (more…)

Noted German dealer Helge Achenbach has been accused of falsifying accounts on artworks and classic cars he purchased on behalf of the Albrecht family, the heirs to the Aldi Grocery Store fortune, including paintings by Picasso and Roy Lichtenstein.  In court documents, Achenbach is accused of claiming a higher price on works purchsed to achieve a higher commission, although he claims he offered a buyback deal on all sales, and that his client’s failure to return any work indicates his innocence.  “Where there has been no damage, there can be no fraud,” he said in a statement through his lawyer. (more…)

Douglas Gordon gives an enigmatic interview in the Art Newspaper this week, as the artist opens his newest commissioned piece at the Park Ave Armory, an immense, flooded space around which pianist Hélène Grimaud performs.  “The whole thing started by accident when I was making a lithographic edition based on the eclipse of the sun in the south of France back in 1999,” says Gordon, “and one of the people involved asked me why I was interested in lunacy. I said, “Well, I like wolves…”. And so we got into this hilarious conversation and she said that I should get Hélène Grimaud involved in my practice because, well, she’s clearly not a lunatic, but she has this condition—synaesthesia—which means that she sees colors when she plays music. And she also loves wolves.” (more…)

Neo Rauch, Heillichtung  (2014), via Art Observed

The newest show of work by Neo Rauch, on view at David Zwirner, is a fitting continuation of the German artist’s take on painting, combining surreal imagery with a vaguely familiar technique recalling the intertwined political and cultural history of his German homeland. (more…)

Sinne Gallery at Untitled Miami, all photos via Art Observed

Set in a strikingly designed beachfront structure, Untitled Miami carries the annual distinction as the best located fair of Miami Art Week. But the fair itself has also built a reputation for its highly selective and carefully arranged list of exhibitors, an approach that has earned it a premier position among the throng of fairs flocking each year to South Beach. (more…)

NADA at the Deauville, all photos by Art Observed

Again located up Collins Ave at the Deauville Beach Resort in North Beach, the New Art Dealers Alliance fair seems perfectly content to let the buyers come to them.  Boasting a tightly curated but welcoming atmosphere for younger artists and smaller galleries, the fair has remained a yearly mainstay in the proceedings of Miami Art Week. (more…)

Andra Ursuta at ICA Miami (Installation View)

For those following the fractious events surrounding the schism between the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami and the newly founded Institute of Contemporary Art this year, one had to wonder what the new space, located in Miami’s Design District, would bring forward for its first Miami Art Week. Without a permanent home, the ICA has taken up residence at the historic Moore Building, where it held its launch party Tuesday night. (more…)

The Guggenheim has released a list of finalists in the competition to design the prospective new Guggenheim in Helsinki, Finland. The final six selections include a variety of designs, including repurposed buildings and a series of pavilion-style structures linked through an interconnected walkway. The design contest “opens extraordinary possibilities for a Guggenheim in Helsinki and asks us to imagine what a museum of the future can be,” according to director Richard Armstrong. (more…)

Over £45 million in art was donated to the British nation in the past year, a new report by the Arts Council England reports, among them a landmark collection of works from the collection of late artist Lucian Freud.   “There is something of special significance in the perception that one great artist has of another,” says Arts Council England chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette of the Freud collection. “It was this group of paintings and drawings, rather than his own works, that Freud chose to surround himself with in his home.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal heads upstate for a tour of artist Richard Prince’s Catskill Mountains home, where the artist has built a studio and a number of immense sculptures and special projects he has never exhibited. “A lot of stuff here I don’t consider art, or at least it didn’t begin as art,” Prince says. “I’m just trying to make something I haven’t seen before. Cool stuff.” (more…)

Steven Murphy, the Christie’s CEO who has presided over the company during its record-setting run of auctions over the last several years, has announced that he will be leaving his position at the end of the year. “We have now successfully concluded an ambitious three year plan and the company is in the strongest leadership position in its history,” Murphy said in a statement. (more…)

A Manhattan court has decided the lawsuit between Larry Gagosian and Ronald Perelman in favor of Gagosian, ruling that Perelman’s lawsuit “does not establish that [Gagosian] exercised control and dominance over [Perelman], who by [his] own description, frequently purchased, sold and exchanged works of art as investments.” (more…)

Art Basel Miami Beach Opens its Doors, all images via Art Observed

The doors have opened for Art Basel Miami Beach 2014, the 12th edition of an art fair that has since become synonymous with big events, bigger celebrities, and even bigger price tags serving as a year’s end bacchanal for the contemporary art market.

Work by Christopher Wool at Helly Nahmad (more…)

The Kunstmuseum Bern has released a full list of the works received from Cornelius Gurlitt, offering the most in-depth look at the collection since it was discovered.  The museum has announced that it will be accepting the collection, but released the full list “in the interests of transparency.” (more…)

The Art Los Angeles Contemporary Fair will open its doors once again in late January, and has released its exhibitor list this week for the sixth edition of the fair.  Attendees among the 60 gallery list include The Hole, CANADA, Standard (Oslo), and Francois Ghebaly. (more…)

The New Yorker released a lengthy profile on curator Hans Ulrich Obrist today, noting the Swiss co-director of The Serpentine’s countless projects and publications, and his deep passion for conversation with the artists he works with.  “For me, there is no difference between talking to him and talking to other artists,” says Philippe Parreno. “I am engaged at the same level.” (more…)

As the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami prepares its launch party tomorrow night at its temporary site in Miami’s Design District, the museum has released its plans for a 37,500-square-foot, privately funded permanent home in the area.  The museum is funded by car dealership billionaires Irma and Norman Braman.  “We love this museum, and we felt it was the right time, and the right place, and with the right museum,” says Ms. Braman, who also serves as co-chairwoman of the city’s museum’s board. (more…)