Georg Baselitz, Glastrinker Beckmann (1981), All images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

The prolific German artist Georg Baselitz is the subject of Skarstedt’s current show with two series of paintings from the 1980’s.  Entitled Drinkers and Orange Eaters, the exhibition is composed of two series that the adept Neo-Expressionist created as a study on representation and pictorial narrative.  Accentuating the gallery’s minimal but elegant townhouse space, these vibrant paintings, emanating from Baselitz’s gestural brushstrokes fervidly reclaim the legacy of oil on canvas. (more…)

Artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin Lertchaiprasert are adding a new infrastructure to the land foundation in Northern Thailand building a new artist residency. This residency will be the first to produce its own energy, and be self-sufficient through community engagement. The first structure that will be built, titled “DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY” will require collaborative effort of participants, including students and multidisciplinary professionals, and will house not only a number of workshops, talks, and performances, but also communal cooking and farming when it is completed.

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Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915), via Sotheby’s

The Impressionist and Modern sale has concluded at Sotheby’s tonight, with 51-lot sale that failed to live up to the auction house’s pre-sale proclamations of a record breaking sale.  The auction brought a final total of £178,590,000, falling just shy of the £186.44 million record for London auctions it was expected to beat. (more…)

Cyprien Gaillard, Where Nature Runs Riot (2015). All Images courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin.

Now through July 18, Sprüth Magers Gallery in Berlin hosts Where Nature Runs Riot, an exhibition of new work by Cyprien Gaillard, combining film, sculpture, and sound to inform and interrupt each other in the three main pieces that comprise the show.  Thematically, Gaillard focuses on the dialogue formed between natural and man-made structures erected at the limits of history and civilization, testing the capacity of sculptural form to illustrate both the esoteric and psychedelic.  References to major figures and tropes from art and musical history reveal the artist’s interest in synthesizing seemingly disparate elements towards a type of aesthetic logic to history and dialogue, an often palimpsestic structure of overlapping layers and interpretations. In this exhibition, Gaillard demonstrates and forges relationships between stillness and movement, natural and man-made form, sound and vision.

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Artist David Shrigley has designed the new mascot for Scottish soccer club Partick Thistle, a disturbingly rendered sun icon with a comically menacing face, a figure that some in the media have called “terrifying.” (more…)

The New York Times notes the increasing popularity of Chinese art on the secondary market, as the Chinese Communist Party increases its efforts to secure and repatriate works that have been looted, taken or sold away from the state in past centuries to the west, including, in some cases, thefts from national museums that target works looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace during  its century raid by British and French troops in the mid 19th century.  “They knew very well what they were after,” said Jean-François Hebert, president of the Château de Fontainebleau, where a number of iconic Chinese gold and bronze works were stolen in 2012. (more…)

A public sculpture by Erwin Wurm, depicting a full-size Mercedes transporter MB100D truck bending slightly up a wall, has been hit with a parking ticket for its placement outside of the German city of Karlsruhe’s Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in a parking restricted zone.  Karlsruhe mayor Frank Mentrup has stated that he will try and fix the ticket, so that the work may remain parked in the space, albeit illegally. (more…)

Claude Monet, Iris Mauves (1914-1917), via Christie’s

The London summer auctions are underway, after Christie’s opening sale this evening at its King Street location, a steady if somewhat relaxed sale that seemed a markedly subdued affair compared to the fireworks the auction house saw last month in New York.  Capping the 52-lot sale with a final tally of £71,461,000, the evening was still a strong entry in the auction house’s recent outings.  Despite lackluster bidding, the sale achieved a remarkably strong sell-through rate, with only 8 works going unsold.  The auction house seemed content to let a number of works go just below estimate, continuing a commitment to a sales-first strategy outgoing president Steven Murphy had outlined late last year. (more…)

Fourteen
watercolor paintings and drawings attributed to dictator Adolf Hitler were sold at auction in Nuremburg this week for $440,000 (about 391,000 euros). The most expensive piece, a watercolor of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, brought over $113,000, selling to an anonymous Chinese buyer.

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Paul Cézanne’s Vue sur L’Estaque et le Château d’If has been placed under export bar in the United Kingdom this week in an attempt to keep the work in the nation.  “I hope that the temporary export bar I have put in place will result in a UK buyer coming forward and that the painting will soon be back on the walls of one of our great public collections,” says minister of culture Ed Vaizey. (more…)

The Guggenheim has selected the design for its proposed Helsinki location, a series of interlocking pavilions unified by a single tower, designed by Moreau Kusunoki Architectes.  “Our approach was to try to make a building that is closely linked with the city, with the way people use it,” says architect Nicolas Moreau, who runs the firm with his wife Hiroko Kusunoki. (more…)

The New Museum has appointed Lauren Cornell, who recently co-curated the 2015 Triennial alongside artist Ryan Trecartin, as Curator and Associate Director, Technology Initiatives.  “Through her work at the New Museum and at Rhizome first, Lauren Cornell has been tracking the influence of technology on art and culture at large,” says Massimiliano Gioni, the Museum’s Artistic Director.  “In her new position, she will help the Museum take an even more active role in engaging with the present and the future.”  (more…)

A maintenance worker in Madison, CT has accidentally destroyed a bench created by New York City-based sculptor Jim Osman, valued at $10,000.  The work, which Art Observed previously stumbled upon during Bushwick Open Studios last year, was on view for the town’s Sculpture Mile contemporary art show, was taken apart and disposed of after the maintenance worker assumed it had been “left by skateboarders.”  “It’s kind of a big letdown,” Osman says. (more…)

The once rigid boundaries between commercial galleries and museum exhibitors are quickly diminishing today, The New York Times notes, as top galleries turn towards high profile museum curators to create historically and culturally resonant shows.  “I think galleries do it for prestige,” says John Elderfield, a former MoMA curator who has done independent work for Gagosian.  “It burnishes their image.  Of course, when one gallery does it, another one wants to do it.” (more…)

David Salle, Yellow Fellow (2015), via Art Observed

Painter David Salle is currently presenting a new body of work at Skarstedt’s Chelsea outpost, returning to his previous Product Paintings series in a set of vividly rendered prints and paintings that seem to address not only the artwork as object and commodity, but also that relation to the Post-War canon. (more…)

As London auction houses prepare for this week’s Impressionist and Modern sales, Bloomberg recaps the battles between giants Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and the aggressive stance on auction guarantees that have helped to define the massive prices achieved in recent sales.  “Our profit margin is good,” says Christie’s recently appointed CEO Patricia Barbizet. “Guarantees are risk management and offer an assurance to the seller.” (more…)

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is finally leaving its Greenwich Village headquarters, and moving uptown to a former brewery on 126th Street in Harlem.  “In other cities people travel to see art,” Brown says.  “I’m not so far from the Upper East Side.” (more…)

Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing some of his large-scale and ongoing projects, including his work on the ballet adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer work Tree of Codes in Manchester.  “On stage will be a mirror, and it will reflect the room. It’s a stretch to say that it puts the audience on the stage,” says Eliasson.  “However, they will be conscious of being visible there. But anyway, let’s see how it works.” (more…)

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915), via Sotheby’s

Following the big ticket sales in Art Basel this past week, the art market’s focus will shift to London this week, where a pair of major Impressionist and Modern Evening sales will launch the last two weeks of market activity before the summer months and their lull of activity.  Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s will face off again following last month’s monumental sales results in New York, with a number of extremely impressive works offered, often with equally impressive price tags. (more…)

Takashi Murakami is the subject of the most recent “Lunch with the FT” Interview this week, joining a writer from the newspaper for lunch at the Kaikai Kiki Co. studios outside Tokyo, and discussing his role in a generation of artists investigating capitalism and its intertwined relationship with fine art, including his relationship to otaku subcultures.  “People say, ‘Oh, Takashi steals from our culture.’ But wait a minute. Our culture means my culture, too, right?” (more…)

Former MIT Lecturer and filmmaker Joseph Gibbons is the subject of a Washington Post profile this week, as the performer and artist awaits sentencing for a bank robbery he committed on New Year’s Eve last year.  “You never can tell if the character he is playing is actually him or a work of fiction,” says Vincent Grenier, a filmmaker and professor at Binghamton University. “For him, it’s been a fertile arena to play in the boundary between reality and fantasy.” (more…)

Sotheby’s is looking to break the record for the most expensive art auction in London this week, with an Impressionist and modern sale expected to top £203 million.  “The forthcoming sale offers a rich range of highly desirable works, including those that rank among the finest by Manet, Degas, Klimt, Malevich, Gauguin and Miro,” says Helena Newman, global go-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art department. (more…)

Anish Kapoor’s Dirty Corner, the central installation at the artist’s recently opening Versailles Palace commission, has been vandalized with spray paint.  The work has already commanded harsh criticism for its subject matter and relationship to French history.  “It was lightly sprayed with paint,” says the estate management.  “The work is being cleaned.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper profiles the work of Zlot Buell, the art consulting firm that has earned a reputation for discretely advising tech entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley wealth in the contemporary art market, and notes the commonly assumed myth that tech collectors are interested in digital art.  “They look at a screen all day long; they don’t need to look at another,” Ms Zlot says. (more…)