The Financial Times profiles the founders of Sprüth Magers this week, as the gallery prepares to open its Los Angeles exhibition space in West Los Angeles.  “Our gallery is a very traditional one,” says Monika Sprüth, discussing their focus on artist development over sales. “We think our job is to serve the artists.  We do sometimes disturb one or other of our male colleagues. They don’t understand how it can work the way we are. They are irritated. Which is nice, to irritate them a little bit.” (more…)

Pablo Picasso, Le violon (Titre attribué : Nature morte) (1914) © Succession Picasso 2015 / photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-Cci, dist. Rmn-Grand Palais / droits réservés

Having pioneered the vivid forms and perspectival innovations of Cubism during the course of his career, pushing that initial formal innovation into the vastly divergent forms, there can be little doubt of Pablo Picasso’s monumental impact on the path of modern art.  This influence sits at the core of Picasso.Mania, a playful yet impressively curated exhibition currently on view at the Grand Palais in Paris.  Pairing works from both before and after the artist’s massively influential impact on the world of 20th Century Art, the exhibition presents a contemporary perspective to the name, the myth, the reputation of the artist. (more…)

The Met has announced a new logo in the run-up to the opening of its exhibition space in the former home of the Whitney Museum, part of an attempt to convey a more open, welcoming institution.   “It’s the right direction,” Daniel Brodsky, the museum’s chairman, said. “It’s a changing institution; the world is changing around us, and I think it’s time for the Met to move forward.” (more…)

Aleksandra Domanovic, Turbo Sculpture, (2010-13), all photos courtesy The Mistake Room

The Mistake Room Los Angeles presents Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue, the second chapter in a series of four exhibitions, featured as part of a long-term research initiative launched by the space. This multiyear project spotlights the experience of millennial generation artists from the Global South who, through a lens of postmemory, explore the media through which the past is transmitted across time and space. The exhibition investigates how traumatic histories play out in the practices of contemporary artists, often whose experience of these histories is indirect—inherited through the images, narratives and objects of preceding generations. Curated by Cesar Garcia and Kris Kuramitsu, A Prologue features video pieces from four artists situated in non-western cultures, chronicling both events, relations and practices not typically included in the art historical canon.    In animating the enduring consequences of colonization, nationalism, ethnic wars, globalization and the legacy of racism, these artists engage in a complex meditation on their cultural heritage and identity politics, and embrace history as a site of reflection and reinvention.

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Artist Tania Bruguera will stage her work Referendum in Union Square this coming March, offering New Yorkers a public forum to voice their opinion on U.S. immigration policy.  “It’s a very personal interaction,” says Sara Reisman, artistic director at the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation “She’s trying to gauge people’s opinions… she’ll probably do some advocating.” (more…)

Art Info takes a cursory look at the immigration process for artists applying to live and work in the United States, and the varying issues that U.S. immigration officials take into account when reading applications.  “The problem is the interpretation of that regulation. The people who are actually looking are not in the arts industry,” notes BoBi Ahn of Warshaw Burstein, LLP.  “So they might apply arbitrary standards.” (more…)

The recently completed Düsseldorf U-Bahn line is set to open this month, featuring intuitively designed installations and design concepts spearheaded by artists and completely devoid of advertisements.  “Normally the construction part happens first and then the artists are commissioned. Here the architects, artists and engineers worked together from the beginning,” says artist Heike Klussmann. (more…)

Initial reports are circulating about a major sale of American Post-War expressionism, after Josh Baer broke news that Willem de Kooning’s Interchange and another work by Jackson Pollock sold to a Midwest Hedge Fund manager (assumed to be Chicago-based Citadel head Kenneth Griffin) in a private transaction for $500 million. (more…)

The Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Swiss Dada, is currently seeking financial support to the tune of $13.1 million to remain open and independent.” It would be good to transform the Cabaret Voltaire into a centre for artists to manage the place and give it a more international dimension,” says director Adrian Notz.  (more…)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been given ownership of architect John Lautner’s masterpiece home above Beverly Hills.  The home’s slanted angles and glass facade is most memorable for its appearance in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, and will be part of an expansion project including an installation by James Turrell.  “For me it ranks as one of the most important houses in all of L.A.,” LACMA head Michael Govan says. “And as one of the most L.A. houses, because of its connection to the view, that long view toward the ocean.” (more…)

Despite initial reports that it had reopened, Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery is still shuttered, awaiting official permission to open its doors.  “Staff are currently working on future programming but will not be able to open doors officially until permission is granted by the appropriate authorities,” says Director William Wells. (more…)

Catherine Opie is interviewed in the New York Times this week, on the heels of opening a number of shows in both New York and Los Angeles.  “I realized for me that non-space was the subconscious, and for the figure to emerge from it, while kind of having a conversation with Renaissance lighting in painting,” she says of her recent portraits.  “I could create a portrait that has presence as well as functions from a potential dream state in my mind.” (more…)

Photographer Dennis Morris is considering a lawsuit against painter Elizabeth Peyton, who he claims infringed on the copyright for his photographic of the Sex Pistols’ John Lydon in her work John Lydon, Destroyed (1994).  The work was removed from Sotheby’s Contemporary Day Sale on February 11th. (more…)

The National Court of Spain has decided to extradite Jesús Ángel Bergantiños Díaz, one of the dealers fingered in the Knoedler Gallery Art Fraud case.  His brother, José Carlos, is also awaiting a decision on extradition. (more…)

Chris Burden, Buddha’s Fingers (2014-15), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Spanning two uptown locations of Gagosian Gallery is a series of recent works by the late artist Chris Burden, who passed away last year at age of sixty-nine soon after his large scale New Museum retrospective. Burden, who started his career with avant-garde performances that played a significant role in furthering body art on a global scale, alongside his other American peers Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman, then shifted towards idea-based practice later in his career.  Challenging in terms of execution rather than physical fortitude, these projects Burden undertook emphasized a concretized, material practice. (more…)

Diana Thater, Knots and Surfaces (2001), via Art Observed

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has invited Diana Thater to open her first U.S. retrospective, currently on view in the museum campus’s Art of the Americas building, and pulling a focused, yet nuanced exploration of much of Thater’s early work, tracing the intersections of her various aesthetic and conceptual interests as they converge in her environmental installations here. (more…)

Pace Gallery is opening another space in Chelsea, taking over the building at 537 West 24th Street, part of its continued expansion plan that will see a new flagship location open in 2018.  The new space will be inaugurated with a show of work by Tim Hawkinson. (more…)

Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Captain America Drawing in Ten Parts 41.17) (2008–09) (part three), Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio © Mark Grotjahn

After exhibiting this body of work at Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo in 2010, Gagosian Gallery is presenting Mark Grotjahn’s ten part surrealist drawing exercise Untitled (Captain America).  The title of this show is a play on the original comic book series, where Captain America was intended to fight against the Axis Powers during World War II.  Seventy years later, the motif of Captain America is still significant and commonly used as a symbol of fighting for the American Dream.  (more…)

The WSJ again trumpets a cooling art market following last week’s auctions in London, noting a decreased interest in mid-priced lots, and a greater focus on reliable bets.  “It’s a correction we’ve all been waiting for,” says Nazy Vassegh, CEO of London art fair Masterpiece. “There’s been no frenzied bidding in the sales room. The market seems to be highly price sensitive and really selective.” (more…)

Continuing his work around the Syrian refugee crisis, Ai Weiwei has installed 14,000 lifejackets around the columns of Berlin’s Konzerthaus.  The project coincides with the annual Cinema for Peace gala, which was held last evening in the venue.   (more…)

The Museo del Prado in Madrid has cancelled a pair of loans for a retrospective of Hieronymous Bosch, following dissatisfaction with research that claimed the works were not in fact painted by the artist himself.  The museum criticized researchers for basing their decision on “extremely subjective stylistic aspects.”
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Reed Exhibitions France, the company behind both FIAC and Paris Photo, has withdrawn its plans for Los Angeles editions of both fairs, pointing at what it calls an “absence of a mature market.” “We are extremely grateful for the support that we have received since the launch of Paris Photo in Los Angeles, and during the research and development phases of FIAC LA,” the company said in a statement. (more…)

The Art Market Monitor takes an interesting approach in analyzing the auctions of the past few weeks, noting a continued surge in Chinese buyers, and paralleling that with a recent New York Times article charting continued efforts by wealthy Chinese citizens to move their money out of the national currency.  “Individuals can move $50,000 a year across China’s borders,” the article quotes from Keith Bradsher’s original piece. “Companies and sophisticated investors have more freedom to send out money legally for big-ticket purchases and investments.” (more…)

American Airlines, alongside a group of art handling companies, are the subject of a lawsuit by art insurers Lloyd’s of London, following damages to a Lucio Fontana work in transit to the Armory Show in New York last year.  Lloyd’s is seeking $116,000 in damages and legal fees. (more…)