The New York Times notes the challenging path ahead for Berlin’s proposed modern art museum in the Kulturforum neighborhood, where years of negative feedback and divergent plans have made the area highly contentious.  “For 30 years in Berlin, this place has been discussed only with bitterness and anger and aggression,” says Manfred Kühne, head of urban development and planning in the city’s Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment. (more…)

John Singer Sargent, The Fountain (1907), All images via Michael Ziga for Art Observed

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition of celebrated American painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925),  Portraits of Artists and Friends, presents a collection of artists, writers, actors, and musicians, colleagues and friends of the painters, that offered Sargent the freedom to create more radical and dynamic works than those made for paying clients.  The sitters are often candidly depicted in the act of painting or lounging where others pose comfortably for Sargent. (more…)

Sofia Leiby, An excuse is a polite rejection (after JW) (2014), via Anonymous Gallery

There’s a telling line in the press release for The Negative Hand, a presentation of new works at Mexico City’s Anonymous Gallery, reflecting on the cave paintings as Lascaux: “by defining themselves, artists often define the systems around them as well, and inversely, by defining the systems around them, artist begin to define themselves.”  It’s an open-ended prompt, but one that feels particularly resonant in 2015: embracing the aesthetic fusions and detritus of modernity as equally worthy of examination and re-creation as any singular subject. (more…)

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum is Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks, the first major exhibition of the writings and sketches from Jean-Michel-Basquiat’s’ rarely seen personal archives. Without a doubt one of the most influential artists of 1980’s Neo-Expressionism, Basquiat worked with music, poetry, and  graffiti before finally arriving at painting. Tagging the walls of downtown New York, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz presented socially conscious graffiti under the tag name SAMO.  Straying from the visual attributes of popular graffiti, these tags were often full of sayings, quotes and poems in plain script that replaced graffiti’s showmanship with intellectual thought.  Navigating viewers into the personal thoughts of Basquiat with two video documentations and many rarely seen paintings,The Unknown Notebooks is a satisfying mixture of both seeing and reading.

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Basquiat’s cultural plurality and vivid paintings begin with the socially investigative phrases, symbols and thoughts on these carefully curated pages.  Each of the 160 pages in the exhibition hold a single composition, with blank pages framing the words to a strong effect.  Intent on speaking with political and socio-economic strength, corporate symbols, quotations, crowns, skeletons and teepees hang above words, and at the end of sentences, altering these everyday phrases, while visual techniques, suggesting dichotomies in familiar linguistic comprehension, open more room for unique interpretation.

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Accompanying the notebooks are a series of paintings that possess a freedom and fearlessness directly related to the artist’s graffiti background.  Words fill the canvas from top to bottom, transforming text into texture and letters back into gestural marks.  Acting as much as a carrier of language as a layer of paint, Basquiat’s words successfully  imported graffiti’s aesthetic energy and social awareness into the white cubes of the art world. The anonymous foundations of his early craft embrace this energetic freedom, vandalism, and self-expression that have come to define youth culture. A contributing figure in the impact of the practice in contemporary art proper, Basquiat’s dedicated approach to symbols and lettering transform this anonymous art form into a new format inside his burgeoning artistic repertoire. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

The Unknown Notebooks reveals  the underlying elements that made expression a larger concern for Basquiat than fitting into the previously determined aesthetic standards of high art. The primitive and socially aware foundations that have defined his work, and kept its impact almost thirty years later are here at Brooklyn Museum in an almost elemental form, on display through August 23rd.

— R.Williams

Read more:
“Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” at Brooklyn Museum [Exhibition Site]
“Review: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Unknown Notebooks’ at the Brooklyn Museum” [New York Times]
“‘Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks’ Gives a Window Into Basquiat’s Mind At Its Most Relaxed” [Forbes]

Tiger Tiger at Salon 94 (Installation View)

Tiger Tiger is the current summer group exhibition at Salon 94 Bowery, on view through August 21, 2015.  The fittingly titled show brings together fifteen artists, whose works explore the ease of tropical landscapes, and the seemingly perfect equilibrium of wild life. Works boasting ample color spectrums speak to simple yet ecstatic rhythms of island life, while elsewhere a distinctive composition of flush tropical wilderness wins out.  Distinctively foreign to New Yorkers, elements from these tropical destinations blossom into depictions of dazzling animals, plants or landscapes, contrasting the city’s heavily industrialized and overpopulated dynamic just outside the gallery space. (more…)

(starting September 5) will display art in six underground chambers that were once used to store explosives and ammunition. Solo projects will be set up in the Magazine, which are former storerooms that are turning into exhibition spaces. “There’s something about the commandeering of military spaces for art, they just lend themselves to that. We keep joking: ‘Make art, not war’”, said Antony Zito of 4heads, a non-profit artists group that coordinates the fair.

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The US has returned a $15 million Pablo Picasso to France, which was stolen over a decade ago before being seized late last year from a New Jersey airport.  “There’s a tremendous feeling of accomplishment when we return a piece of art like this,” says Sarah Saldaña, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (more…)

The Knockdown Center, located on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, has opened a month-long exhibition which invites viewers to pilot drones around its gallery, which has forty-foot high ceilings.  The drones can fly in between the artworks, while a flat screen TV plays what is captured by the drones-cams. Fascinated with humans’ connection to this piece of technology, the curator of the show, Vanessa Thill says “ drones have a really weird presence. They seem emotional.”

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Artist Danh Vo has left Bortolozzi Gallery in the midst of appeals for his case against collector Bert Kreuk.  As a result, Vo has appointed a new lawyer in his case, Maarten Haak, who replaces Gert-Jan Van den Bergh.  “In the appeal case the interests of the artist and his [former] gallery may be different,” Haak says. “This was a pressing reason for Van den Bergh to withdraw from representing both parties in the appeal.” (more…)

Artist Cai Guo-Qiang has initiated an ambitious new fireworks performance in Quanzhou, China.  Titled Sky Ladder, the work features a climbing line of flames towards the moon.  “It carries affection for my hometown, my relatives and my friends,” the artist says. “For me, this not only means a return but also the start of a new journey.” (more…)

Christie’s has announced plans to auction the collection of Arthur and Anita Kahn this fall, a series of 400 works that are valued collectively at $50 million, including 80 works by Alexander Calder, a friend of the family.  “For years and years, I went by [their] apartment and I never knew what was up there, and when I learned, it was, ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ ” said Paul R. Provost, deputy chairman of Christie’s Americas. (more…)

W Magazine takes an inside look at Havana’s vibrant arts scene, as diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States get underway. “Everything is very slow here,” says artist Adonis Flores. “It’s very difficult for artists to get materials. And life, in general, is hard.” (more…)

Forcefield, Meerk Puffy Autumn Shroud (2002), via Art Observed

Over the past half century, American art has distinguished itself as much for its formal heroes (Pollock, de Kooning, Judd, etc.) as its outliers, artists working along distinct threads of the abject, pop culture and mass production who challenged the more refined and neatly conceptualized exercises of the 20th Century avant-garde.  This separate thread of American art, running from 1960’s comic-book art through the punk and funk movements of the 1970’s and onwards through the chaotic energies of turn of the century performance and video are the subject of What Nerve!, a documentation of the American underground at Matthew Marks. (more…)

The New York Times looks at the operations of The Poly Culture Group, a state-backed Chinese conglomerate that runs the world’s third largest auction house, and holds an indelible sway over the nation’s contemporary art market.  “Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s reputation in mainland China is relatively new, and they haven’t had the time to properly root themselves,” says Anders Petterson, the managing director of ArtTactic. “So when market confidence is weakening, the newcomers are likely to be more exposed than the key domestic players.” (more…)

The Stony Island Arts Bank, a 70,000-square-foot renovation in Chicago by Theaster Gates, will open October 3, coinciding with the beginning of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.  “This is a new kind of cultural amenity, a new kind of institution—a hybrid gallery, media archive and library, and community center,” Gates says. “It is an institution of and for the South Side—a repository for African American culture and history, a laboratory for the next generation of black artists and culture-interested people; a platform to showcase future leaders—be they painters, educators, scholars, or curators.” (more…)

Artist Anish Kapoor is threatening legal action against a Chinese artist who erected what seems to be a blatant copy of his iconic work Cloud Gate (affectionately nicknamed “The Bean” by residents of Chicago) in the city of Karamay.  “I feel I must take this to the highest level and pursue those responsible in the courts. I hope that the Mayor of Chicago will join me in this action,” Kapoor says.  “The Chinese authorities must act to stop this kind of infringement and allow the full enforcement of copyright.” (more…)

Former Guggenheim Director Thomas Krens is reportedly planning a new for-profit museum in North Adams, MA.  The proposed 160,000 square foot museum would bring a second major museum to the home of MassMOCA.  “The idea of spending a little more time in the Berkshires was attractive to me,” he says. (more…)

The Guggenheim has made two new appointments to its staff in a continuation of its commitment to Chinese contemporary art.  Hou Hanru, the artistic director of MAXXI, the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome, will become a consulting curator, while Xiaoyu Weng, the founding director of the Kadist Art Foundation’s Asia programs, will become associate curator of Chinese art. (more…)

The Knoedler Gallery and former director Ann Freedman have reportedly settled three of ten lawsuits brought against them for selling fraudulent works attributed to abstract-expressionist masters.  “We continue to vigorously defend the remaining litigation,” says Charles Schmerler of Norton Rose Fulbright, who represents Knoedler. (more…)

Antony Gormley will finally debut his Event Horizon in Hong Kong, one year after the suicide of a J.P. Morgan trader delayed the installation of the work. The sculpture will launch this November. (more…)

A Venice court has rejected a fast-track request by the Icelandic Art Center (IAC) to speed up its case against the city’s closing of its Biennale installation by Christoph Büchel.  “Continuing our appeal would therefore only address the matter of possible compensation for damages due in relation to the shutting down of the pavilion and would not be useful in helping us achieve our primary goal: re-opening the mosque project for the remainder of the Biennale,” the original statement filed in court reads. (more…)

Gallerist Paula Cooper is featured in Interview Magazine this month, reflecting on her dynamic impact on the New York art world, and her early days running her gallery.  “I once had an incident with an artist who had become quite well-known,” she says. “He started to bring his lawyer into negotiations because he thought I was too innocent and open. I said, “If I have to work any other way, if I have to be suspicious and bring a lawyer in all of the time, then I don’t want to work that way.” (more…)

A report by CNN points to a thriving arts culture in Singapore following increases in government funding to arts and heritage organizations.  “Unlike Hong Kong, Singapore has a more diverse population. There’s the influence of Malay, Indian arts, old Asian roots and connections. Yet, we also have a Western, cosmopolitan outlook that is reflected in the range of arts we fund,”  says Paul Tan, Deputy CEO of the National Arts Council. (more…)

The Knossos Museum in Greece is currently under investigation for tax fraud after reports that the museum was not issuing receipts to visitors at its gift shop.  “We await a report from the tax authorities before launching immediate disciplinary action,” Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis said in a statement. (more…)