Vandals have once again defaced Anish Kapoor’s Dirty Corner sculpture at Versailles, this time covering it in anti-semitic graffiti.  The artist has expressed some desire to leave the graffiti, emphasizing the state of religious and cultural intolerance in France, and “to turn what I hoped always was an act of affirmation as a work of art into something else, into a kind of lament to a state of intolerance,” he said.  (more…)

Frank Stella is the subject of a New York Times profile this week, as the artist prepares to open his career retrospective at The Whitney later this fall, and notes his increasing focus on sculpture as he ages.  “It’s all about your body balance. I would fall over now trying to paint.” (more…)

Hans Ulrich Obrist has been awarded with the 2015 International Folkwang Prize awarded by the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany.  Obrist had previously organized his lauded 12 Rooms project at the museum in 2012. (more…)

Doris Salcedo, From Unland series (Installation View), all photos via Osman Yerebakan for Art Observed

Visiting the Doris Salcedo retrospective currently on view at the Guggenheim through October 12th, attendees may experience a peculiar bitterness, stemming from poignance of Salcedo’s historically expansive and emotionally profound body of work.  Everyday commodities, from shoes to chairs, play a key role in Salcedo’s spacious installations covering multiple floors of the museum’s Tower Galleries. With their visually mute yet bleak façades, mundane objects assembled in distinct orchestrations venture into profound narratives, reflecting Salcedo’s meticulous study on consequences of political turmoil in her country and around the globe, often exploring the tragic, human cost of political turbulence, revolt and oppression.

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Agnes Martin, Happy Holiday (1999)

The Tate Modern is currently hosting the first retrospective of Agnes Martin in twenty years on view through October 11th. The exhibition, planned to visit the Guggenheim in 2016, spans the versatile and extensive career of the artist, who remained loyal to her distinct pattern over many decades, while discovering and inventing new paths within a deliberately spare vocabulary.  (more…)

Haegue Yang, Sellim (2009), via Art Observed

Currently on view at MoMA through April of next year, Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection offers a carefully balanced rumination on the processes and practices that have defined the past three decades of contemporary art. Looking back at a diverse series of explorations into the political, visual and spatial interests of artists and their recent practices, the show is a remarkably broad rumination on contemporary art today, one that feels particularly strong during the summer gallery lull in New York. (more…)

Jackson Pollock, Portrait and a Dream (1953), courtesy Tate Liverpool

Jackson’s Pollock’s early black paint pours return from a 30 year exhibition hiatus this summer at Tate Liverpool, showcasing some of the largest works that were created between 1951 and 1953 in this approach.  While often lacking the vibrant color that often defined the artist’s work in the “pour” technique, these works reflect a refinement of much of Pollock’s previous innovation.  Many of the artist’s works in this exhibition have never been seen in the United Kingdom, and demonstrate major significance in identifying Pollock’s stylistic shifts during the later years of his career. (more…)

Joseph Cornell, Palace (1943), Courtesy Royal Academy

Despite his adventurous stylistic innovations, roving tastes and depth of vision, Joseph Cornell rarely left New York State.  The American artist lived much of his life as a textile worker, as well as other odd jobs, while caring for his family in a Flushing, Queens home, while spending his free time creating his massively influential “shadow boxes,” assemblages, films and collaged objects, a body of work that won him praise from Marcel Duchamp, and would go on to influence a range of artists, from the abstract expressionists through to conceptual practices today. (more…)

Over $500 million in art from the Alfred Taubman estate will go on sale at Sotheby’s this fall, Bloomberg reports, including a special “Masterworks” sale that will include classic pieces by Picasso and de Kooning.  “He was a self-made man and his collection was put together with his own eye,” says Simon Shaw, co-head of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Department. “While he is a very well-known figure, he is not known as a collector. It will be a surprise for people.” (more…)

John Baldessari and Meredith Monk will receive National Medals of Arts at the White House this week, celebrating their contributions to contemporary practice.  The awards ceremony will take place September 10th. (more…)

Olafur Eliasson has successfully crowdsourced a new installment of his Little Sun project, an affordable, solar-powered mobile phone charger that will be available in several African nations.  “Every time we were in sub-Saharan Africa people would say the Little Sun is amazing but a mobile phone charger would be much better,” Eliasson said. (more…)

The BBC notes that only 3% of the UK’s £3.5 billion collection of work remains on public view.  “Public bodies and local authorities should make an effort to display more of their art for people to enjoy, and they also need to take a good, hard look at their art portfolio and think about what does and does not need to be retained,” says Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the Taxpayers Alliance. (more…)

Ai Weiwei gave his first public talk in Berlin last night since 2011, appearing at the Berlin Philharmonic to discuss his work, and his takes on the state of politics in China.  “When you live in a centralized regime, people feel powerless,” he said. “They feel they don’t have the possibility to change things; that is the intention of the regime.” (more…)

Phillips and Ebay have announced a new partnership to improve the auction house’s live online auctions.  The partnership begins with a sale online September 17th.  “We’re excited to partner with such a well-respected international auction house specializing in contemporary art, underscoring our commitment in the art and collectibles space,” says Linda Campbell, divisional merchandise manager for Art & Collectibles at eBay. “Founded over 200 years ago, Phillips is a dynamic auction house that sells some of the world’s most important contemporary works of art, which we’re thrilled to make more accessible to our global eBay community and Phillips clients alike.”  (more…)

Both Sotheby’s and Phillips have announced major steps this to strengthen their respective business plans, with Phillips appointing a new worldwide head of 20th century art, Hugues Joffre, and Sotheby’s announcing its previously reported first office in India.   (more…)

Researchers in Germany have developed an algorithm capable of recreating the style of famous artists, including Van Gogh and Picasso, in under an hour.  “The key finding … is that the representations of content [the foundation image] and style [of specific artworks] in the convolutional neural network are separable,” says lead author Leon Gatys.  “That is, we can manipulate both representations independently to produce new, perceptually meaningful images.” (more…)

Christie’s has announced an ambitious follow-up to its successes earlier this year with another full week of auction sales this November in New York.  At the top of the sales will be an Amedeo Modigliani painting estimated at around $100 million, a price that would easily top the artist’s $70 million record.  “This is quite simply one of the most important paintings I have handled in my long career at Christie’s,” states Jussi Pylkkänen, Christie’s Global President and Chief Auctioneer. “There are a very small number of masterpieces that we dream of handling: this magnificent Modigliani has always been one of them.” (more…)

Cory Arcangel, AUDMCRS (Installation View) all images courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin

On view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is a solo exhibition by American artist Cory Arcangel, a pioneer for a generation of artists devoted to the archaeology, reuse and re-appreication of computer technologies.  Arcangel has built an international reputation for his performances, videos, installations, and computer-generated works, but here turns his attention to more antiquated modes of digital music, tracing the use and dissemination of certain pieces of gear, musical genres and gestures in modern pop and dance music.

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Mona Hatoum, Light Sentence (1992), Courtesy of Centre Pompidou

In her major retrospective exhibition, showcasing thirty-five years of ambitious and uncomfortable works, Beirut-based artist Mona Hatoum traces the scope her creative career, addressing her own political and aesthetic concerns in relation to nationality, identity, and spatial politics.  Drawing inspiration from her Middle Eastern roots and the thematic interests of Surrealism, Minimalism and conceptual art, her exhibition shows over 100 works created from the mid-1970’s to the present day, including performances, installation, video, photography and sculpture. (more…)

Camille Henrot has unveiled a series of drawings inspired by Nicki Minaj, taking scenes and ideas from the artist’s “Anaconda” video and interpreting them into her signature style.  “Nicki Minaj is a feminist icon,” she says.   (more…)

As part of the Florence antiques biennial, Jeff Koons will install his sculpture Pluto and Prosperina in Piazza della Signoria, placing his work face to face with a replica of Michelangelo’s David.  The installation will parallel a similar exhibition at the Galleria dell’Accademia pairing classic sculpture with modern artists. (more…)

With the commencement of the school year, USC’s controversial recent decisions for its MFA Program has resulted in only one student returning for class this fall.  The absent students have garnered the support of the school faculty, which has criticized the USC administration for “shifting resources and focus away from the execution of our core educational mission and towards bloated administrative salaries, lavish infrastructure projects, and a business model of education.” (more…)

Sarah Charlesworth, Stills (1980) (Installation View)

One of the preeminent figures of Pictures Generation, Sarah Charlesworth is the subject of an expansive retrospective at the New Museum, on view through September 20th.  Curated by Massimilano Gioni and Margot Norton, the show spans the broad career of the late artist, tracing her visceral practice, each gallery on the second floor reserved for a different series by the artist. Considered a key member in a group of mostly female artists that dismantled set methods of looking at images while complicating the imposed grammar of photography, Charlesworth delivered an impressive body of work that eventually cemented her as a Conceptualist more than a photographer as she herself underlined occasionally.   (more…)

Sotheby’s is reportedly opening a new office in India, based in Mumbai, and headed up by chairman Edward Gibbs, and regional director of India Priyanka Mathew.  “By opening an office in India, the company will be able to increase the scale and scope of its activities in the country and support a full calendar of events, talks, exhibitions, and charity sales,” the auction house said in a statement. (more…)