Diane Arbus is profiled in New York Magazine this week, as the Met Breuer opens an impressive exhibition charting her life and development as an artist.  “Once you’ve become an adventurer, because Diane was really an adventure,” a friend says, “you’re geared to adventure, you seek out further adventures, and your life is really based upon them.” (more…)

Claire Fontaine, Caught (2016), via Galerie Neu

Working along a similar thread as Reena Spaulings (a faceless project by several Bernadette Corporation collaborators), the French “artist”/collaborative Claire Fontaine works at the margins of the 20th Century’s most iconic artistic modes: readymades, monochromes, and perhaps more broadly, the studio artist-assistant relationship itself.  Throughout each of its formats, the group delves into the space of production for the artist in modern society, a field plagued by contradictions, imbalances of power, and capitalist tendencies that they seek to outline while operating within them.

Claire Fontaine, May Our Enemies Not Prosper (Installation View), via Galerie Neu

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A pair of artists have begun constructing the oft-debated wall Donald Trump has called for on the Mexico-US border this week, with the intent of sending the bill for their work to Mexico.  “Art has to be present more in these disruptive and contentious moments,” participating artist David Gleeson said. (more…)

Bloomberg reports on the ongoing battle surrounding the inheritance tax lawsuit of the Wildenstein family, as Guy Wildenstein continues to sell off assets to pay off what may be a $500 million tax bill, and seeks to maintain what has been a notoriously private life away from his business.  “My brother and I were clueless,” the article quotes. “My father never spoke of his business. He would not come to ask me for advice to manage his fortune or dispose of his property while he was alive. I knew he had the trusts, but he never informed me of detail.”  (more…)

Central St. Martins Graduate Student Tina Gorjanc has proposed a conceptual range of leather accessories made from the cloned skin of designer Alexander McQueen.  “The Pure Human project was designed as a critical design project that aims to address shortcomings concerning the protection of biological information and move the debate forward using current legal structures,” Gorjanc said. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the ongoing struggle between the García Lorca Foundation and the city of Granada, which the Foundation alleges has not kept promises over programming and direction of the Garcia Lorca Center that has been constructed there. “From the start, there was never an enthusiastic approach to this project from government institutions,” says Laura García Lorca, the foundation head and niece of the famed playwright.  The foundation is withholding a collection of manuscripts and art, valued at over €20 million, until its demands are met. (more…)

A group of British MPs have introduced a bill proposing the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece, a move they claim would serve as a major diplomatic bargaining chip in Brexit negotiations.  “These magnificent artifacts were improperly dragged and sawn off the remains of the Parthenon,” says Liberal Democrats MP Mark Williams.  “This Bill proposes that the Parliament should annul what it did 200 years ago. In 1816 Parliament effectively state-sanctioned the improper acquisition of these impressive and important sculptures from Greece.” (more…)

Metro Pictures has announced that it is now representing Oliver Laric.  Laric has shown widely on the international circuit, and was included in last year’s New Museum Triennial, but has yet to have a solo exhibition in New York.  The news comes just days after Laric’s British gallery, Seventeen, announced plans to expand to New York City.   (more…)

Douglas Gordon is premiering a film in Locarno, Switzerland this month at Concorso Cineasti del presente, a work that focuses on the life of Jonas Mekas, with little information offered on the artist’s approach or strategy.  “Although I do not want to reveal any more about this extraordinary project, I can say that Douglas Gordon offers us a truly sensorial experience, which challenges the concept of seeing, and links the idea of the present with that of memory,” the Concorso artistic director Carlo Chatrian said. (more…)

The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance have launched a new initiative pushing for over 30,000 square feet of artist studios in downtown Brooklyn, in conjunction with a series of affordable housing seminars hosted by the Actors Fund, aiming to help artists in finding and securing affordable housing.   (more…)

Art dealer Olivier Thomas has been indicted following new information in the case surrounding the theft and sale of works from the collection of Catherine Hutin-Blay.  Thomas was arrested after photos of the disputed works were found on his computer, after he denied having ever seen them.  His charges were named as “abuse of trust, fraud, concealment, and laundering,” by Judge Isabelle Rich-Flament in Paris. (more…)

The ongoing divorce proceedings between Palm Beach socialite Gina Disabatino and her husband Frederic Bouin has led to Disabatino demanding that dealers David and Joseph Nahmad be jailed for their failure to appear for depositions in the case.  “There’s no need for them to take David Nahmad or Joe Nahmad’s depositions,” lawyer Aaron Richard Golub said.  “They’re just harassing my clients.”  (more…)

London’s Seventeen Gallery has announced plans to open a location on The Bowery in New York.  The location, 214 Bowery, was previously the home of Chair Factory, and has remained shuttered for over a year.  (more…)

LACMA has acquired a selection of 39 works from the archives of famed L.A. print workshop Gemini G.E.L., including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha and Frank Stella.  “It’s extremely touching to be celebrating 50 years of Gemini after just celebrating LACMA’s 50th, and to receive a group of extraordinary gifts of prints,” LACMA Director Michael Govan says. “LACMA, appropriately, will forever be able to share a broad and deep collection of Gemini prints, made by some of the very best artists of our time.” (more…)

Ai Weiwei is featured on Nowness this week, as he prepares to open a show of new work in Greece, focused around the ongoing refugee crisis. “When you see people arrive, it’s hard to describe that feeling,” he says.  “It’s like you cut your skin and see the blood come out, and you see that the wound will never heal, but there’s no intention to stop it.  The whole situation is so desperate because you don’t see human connections in those events.  It’s completely cut off” (more…)

The MTA is planning to install a series of 12 Chuck Close mosaics around the the 86th and 2nd Ave Subway line, which is currently under construction.  The works will use pieces of tile rather than Close’s often utilized paints, and will consist of works from the span of his career.  “The richness of the city is all the various cultures coming together, and the richness of my art will be to simultaneously let people in on how many ways there are to build an image,” he says. (more…)

Helena Newman has been promoted to Sotheby’s Chairwoman of Europe, adding that prestigious position to her ongoing role as worldwide head of Impressionist and modern art. “I am thrilled to see Helena take on this additional position at the helm of our European organization,” says Maarten ten Holder, Sotheby’s managing director for Europe. “She will bring to the role as chairman not only the experience of 28 highly successful years at Sotheby’s, but also an unparalleled depth of expertise and relationships in the field of Impressionist and modern art, where she has been key, both to our longstanding leadership in the field and to many historic moments and landmark sales.” (more…)

Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli is facing criminal charges in Tehran after being barred from leaving the country for a July 3rd talk at the British Museum.  “As certain elements of the Iranian regime push for closer relations with the West, other forces within the government push back. And often it is the artists, whose work is well known across Iran’s borders, who get caught in the crossfires,” says a source close to the artist. “As Iran tries to open up tourism and business channels to the West, such moves are chilling.”  (more…)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will show a rarely seen Frida Kahlo work, Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States (1932), as part of a show on Mexican Modernism.  The piece will go on view shortly before the November Presidential elections, a subtle comment on Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the Mexico border.   (more…)

Berlin Biennale at the Kunstakademie, all photos via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed

While the DIS-curated Berlin Biennale is spread across a range of exhibitions and venues in the German capital, the beating heart of this year’s show is arguably the Academy of the Arts, a sleek modernist building located adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate and perched over a square heaving with tourist activity and history.  Walking into the foyer of this building, one immediately encounters a series of large, high-resolution photographs depicting warped, fragmented nationalities and identities.  Further upstairs, the cluster of screens, plastic and digital games that have come to define this Biennale buzz take over, creating a clustered, albeit striking experience of the post-digital arts landscape.  The location is densely packed with artists and works whose nationalities and political concerns range from brand-name art projects to a poignantly honest confessional rap about the refugee experience in Berlin.

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An Installation by Puppies Puppies

The 9^th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, curated by DIS (the New York art collective formed by collaborators Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso and David Toro), has long promoted a vision of the future as now.  Steeping their work in the ambitious task of interrogating relationships between the human and the digital, the collective has been turned loose on the prominent art biennial, using their unique brand of commentary on politics, happiness, commercial branding and the paradox of the modern age to frame the show as a brand, a tourist trap, and a materialization of the virtual in tandem. The Present in Drag channels the discomfort and drastic uncertainty that is a product of uncertain links and porous borders established by technological advancement.  Expanding beyond its traditional venue at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, additional sites for this Biennale are scattered throughout the city in various buildings and institutions. Its main point of departure is the Academie der Künst, located off Pariser Platz, and to the tourist mainstay Brandenburg Gate, and moves through the fabric of the city with its humorous, haunting and at times grotesque commentary on contemporary art in the digital age. (more…)

Roy Lichtenstein, Entablature (1975), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed

The Entablatures represent my response to Minimalism and the art of Donald Judd and Kenneth Noland. It’s my way of saying that the Greeks did repeated motifs very early on, and I am showing, in a humorous way, that Minimalism has a long history … It was essentially a way of making a Minimalist painting that has a Classical reference. – Roy Lichtenstein

Sometimes a show strikes a perfect balance between surprise and expectation, even more so when the works selected coincide so effortlessly that the artists seem presented anew. Castelli Gallery’s show, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenneth Noland: A Dialogue, does exactly that.  Taking inspiration from a quote by Roy Lichtenstein on his Entablature paintings, the show examined each artist’s work at the intersections of the architectural and the purely aesthetic, the functional and the pictorial. (more…)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney have announced a joint retrospective of the work of Jasper Johns, set to open in the fall of 2020.  “We thought, ‘What if we created a new model for a retrospective that did not try to survey the artist’s career all in one place in one moment, but that could be shared?’” says Scott Rothkopf, who is curating the Whitney’s portion of the exhibition. (more…)

London dealer Timothy Taylor is opening an exhibition space in Chelsea.  The space, titled 16X34 due to the dimensions of the building, will open this September with a show of work by Luis Barragán.  “New York is the engine of the contemporary art world — it sets the tone for the market in many ways,” Taylor says. (more…)