Tom Wesselmann, Sunset Nude with Big Palm Tree (2004), via Art Observed

Mitchell-Innes and Nash has opened its doors on a broad, yet impressive career retrospective of the work of Tom Wesselmann, the iconic pop painter whose renditions of mass commodities, American landscapes and the human form defined him as one of the most original voices coming out of the Post-War landscape.  Perhaps best known for his large, shaped canvases depicting lipstick-clad mouths breathing out cigarette smoke, Wesselmann’s interests in painterly technique and the American subject were constantly evolving over the course of his career, even as some of his formal containers and pictorial content remained the same.

Tom Wesselmann, Interior #2 (1964), via Art Observed

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Luc Tuymans, Murky Water (2015), via Art Observed

Luc Tuymans works at the tenuous grasp of the image on reality, exploiting momentary glimmers, flashes of light, and seconds of spatial repose, all executed through his signature, muted color palette in an attempt to delve even deeper into the slight seconds that constitute his subject matter.  Here, at his new show with David Zwirner, the artist has turned towards themes of decay and isolation, lending his already staid pieces an increased degree of melancholy. (more…)

The Knoedler Gallery forgery scandal made it to 60 Minutes this week, exploring the case and its cast of characters through the perspective of historian Jack Flam.  Flam was asked to identify a Motherwell Elegy, and found that the artist’s signature appeared as if it had been copied meticulously from other works, and later discovered evidence of orbital sander use on the canvas, which was often used to age canvases.   (more…)

Simon de Pury is interviewed on Charlie Rose this week, as he releases his memoirs, reflects on the course of his career, and his views on buying work.  “I’ve seen people who are brilliant business people, but when they buy art, they only want to buy bargains,” he says.  “But no great collection was built on bargains.” (more…)

The Louvre has invited artist JR to install one of his signature works on the surface of its iconic glass pyramid, obscuring its surface to mirror the palatial architecture behind it.  The installation is part of the artist’s recently opened retrospective at the museum, Contemporary art – JR at the Louvre. (more…)

A version of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe will travel from London’s Cortauld Institute to Hull for a show at the Ferens gallery, thanks to a £9.4m grant from the British government.  The project will also help fund renovations and improvements to the institution’s galleries.   (more…)

The Guardian takes a tour of the soon to open Tate Modern expansion, with high praise for its spacious design, management of exhibition areas, and views.  “We realized we were getting vulnerable in terms of what we could do on this site,” says director Nicholas Serota, explaining the £260m expansion, which has been in the works since the mid-2000s. “There were some substantial buildings arriving, so we would soon have a lot of neighbors who would oppose us doing anything of any scale.” (more…)

Philip Guston, Untitled (1958), via Art Observed

In one of the season’s more historically resonant offerings, Hauser and Wirth has opened its 18^th Street Gallery to a rare exhibition of Philip Guston’s 1950’s abstractions, collected as a presentation of his impressive output as a member of the New York School. Exploring the artist’s varied investigations of the canvas and mark in tandem, the show presents Guston’s work as a fascinating historical progression towards his more honed, expressive figuration of the late 1960’s and onward.

Philip Guston, Painter, 1957-1967 (Installation View), via Art Observed

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The Marciano Art Foundation has announced that its private Los Angeles museum is set to open its doors sometime early next year, housed in a converted masonic temple.  Philipp Kaiser, who curated the Swiss Pavilion at next year’s Biennale, will organize the first show in the space. (more…)

Protesters occupied Brazilian government buildings this week, rallying against Acting President Michel Temer’s decision to ax the nation’s culture ministry.  Temer took power this past week after previous president Dilma Rousseff was forced out of office. (more…)

Dozens of protesters have been appearing at Creative Time’s current Fly by Night project, asserting that the pigeons used to perform artist Duke Riley’s piece are unwilling participants, even though experts have inspected the piece and approved.  Mixing art and animals is a very risky business,” says Rita McMahon of Upper West Side’s Wild Bird Fund, “but I was very impressed.”  (more…)

Joan Punyet Miró, the grandson of Joan Miró, is auctioning off a seleciton of the painter’s work to help the Red Cross address the current refugee crisis in Europe.  “I consider myself as the torch-bearer for his wishes and try to do what he would do if he was still alive,” he says.  “Miró was a man who endured many hardships throughout his life. He went hungry, and lived in exile through the Spanish Civil War.”    (more…)

Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in the New York Times this week, as he prepares his summer installation at the Palace of Versailles.  “At Versailles, people tend to think only about King Louis XIV, but it is actually the ground from which our modern idea of democracy grew — ideas of unity, freedom of speech, freedom of thinking,” he says. (more…)

Artist Grayson Perry has created new work inspired by his interactions with the world of high finance, an immense phallus decorated with bank notes and the picture of George Osborne.  “It is stating the bleeding obvious but that’s kind of what needs stating,” he says.  “For all the obfuscating around it – the claims that their behavior is just rational thinking – the bleeding obvious is that most of the bankers, particularly at the top, are men and they are just as subject to the animal spirit as anybody else.” (more…)

Isa Genzken, Mach Dich hübsch! (Installation View), via Art Observed

Isa Genzken is one of Germany’s most notable contemporary artists. Born in 1948, her work spans sculpture, installation, film, photography, collage, and painting, and she has continued to drive the German arts community forward with an inventive approach to digital media and created computer-designed sculptures that dates to the 1970’s.  Drawing on influences of American minimalism and conceptual art, alongside pop art, Genzken’s ready-mades and mannequin-based works also enter into conversation with Dadaist and Surrealist influences. (more…)

Malaysian businessman Jho Low, currently under FBI investigation for business dealings related to the controversial 1Malaysia Development Bhd. fund, has sold one of his trophy artworks, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Dustheads. The purchase set the sales record for the artist’s work several years ago, but was sold for a loss at $35 million in what some believe is an effort to liquidate purchases made with the funds in question. (more…)

David Zwirner will represent the estate of Josef Albers, the New York Times reports.  “He’s really one of the few artists of the 20th century whose life and work span both halves of the century, connecting the idealism of the German Bauhaus in Europe with postwar America,” said David Leiber, one of the gallery’s directors. (more…)

Phillips is claiming to have set a record for the highest price paid for a Latin American artist’s work, after selling a Diego Rivera piece for $15.7 million in a private transaction.  “This is, by my estimation, the best easel painting in private hands outside of Mexico, a celebration of indigenous culture,” said August Uribe, Phillips’s deputy chairman of the Americas. “Rivera made a purposeful break from European modernism to create a national identity through the visual arts.” (more…)

Friedrich Kunath, My Loneliness Shines (Installation View) all photos via Daphné Mookherjee for Art Observed

This past month, VNH Gallery opened German artist Friedrich Kunath‘s first solo exhibition in France.  Titled My Loneliness Shines, the artist’s new paintings, drawings, and neons contributed to an installation specially conceived for the space, exploring themes of melancholy, existentialism, loneliness and romance. Blending cultural codes and histories of composition, while mixing various narrative worlds and historical epochs with pop forms and kitsch, the show further cemented Kunath’s already unique approach towards free-ranging inventiveness.

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Lucas Blalock, An Other Shadow (2014-2016), via Art Observed

Artist Lucas Blalock’s Low Comedy is currently on view at Ramiken Crucible on the Lower East Side, weaving digital and traditional photography into a hybridized form to create surreal and often comedic images and prints.

Lucas Blalock, Low Comedy (Installation View), via Ramiken Crucible (more…)

Ai Weiwei has spoken out on the current refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, calling out the UN Decision to return refugees to Turkey instead of providing them homes.  “It is not legal or moral, it is shameful and it is not a solution. It will cause problems later,” he says. (more…)

A group of 59 Renaissance sculptures, originally thought lost in a Berlin fire, have been rediscovered in the archive of Moscow’s Pushkin Museum.  “Most of the sculptures were damaged, some are even in fragments,” says Neville Rowley, curator of Italian Renaissance art at the Bode Museum. “They can’t currently be shown because of the state they are in. But there are plans to exhibit the sculptures at the Pushkin Museum after they’ve been restored.” (more…)

Following in the footsteps of MoMA and the Met, The Brooklyn Museum has announced a round of employee buyouts to address possible budget issues.  “The cost of running the museum has substantially grown over the past few years,” says Anne Pasternak. “The museum is therefore being proactive.” (more…)

Richard Tuttle, Red Dots, Deep Maroon Over Green (1986), via Art Observed

If there’s one thing to be said for Richard Tuttle’s work, there’s at least 26.  That’s the argument Pace Gallery is making with its newest exhibition of the artist’s work, which compiles 26 works from his 50-year career into a single gallery show, offering a unique opportunity to re-evaluate both Tuttle’s continuous and consistent output alongside his focused approach to art-making. (more…)