CNBC takes its turn at an analysis of the struggling market this week, noting the failure in confidence of many top investors and collectors to offer their top works at sale, although Fine Art Group Founder Philip Hoffman sees a change in the future. “There is a huge amount of cash sitting in deposit accounts and there is a lot of interest in finding the right work of art.” (more…)
Spencer Finch will install a miniature redwood forest at MetroTech Commons in Brooklyn, courtesy of the Public Art Fund. “Through both a scientific approach to gathering data—including precise measurements and record keeping—and a poetic sensibility, Finch’s works often inhabit the area between objective investigations of science and the subjectivity of lived experience,” says associate curator Emma Enderby. (more…)
The New York Times has a piece on Sotheby’s recent $89 million profit for the second quarter of 2016, analyzing its approach to the Taubman estate sale and other recent market trends. “Guarantees on masterworks have generally proven to be attritional to earnings, but in the past they did buy market share,” says adviser Neal Meltzer. “Winning the sale of the Taubman collection was vital to maintaining respect for the Sotheby’s brand.” (more…)
Pia Camil, Bust Mask Sulphur (2016), via Art Observed
Taking over the townhouse exhibition space of Blum & Poe on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Pia Camil is currently showing a series of new sculptural works, with show titled Slats, skins and shop fittings. Mining the vocabulary and iconography of commodity production and the performance of capitalism within social interactions or group participation, the exhibition pays express homage to the Copper paintings of Frank Stella, while suspending the post-war master’s work in a broader hierarchy of industrial manufacturing and material sources.
Pia Camil, Slats, skins and shop fittings (Installation View), via Art Observed
Paris’s Fiac fair will feature performance art for the first time this fall, launching a festival of works at the Louvre beginning shortly before the fair and running through its conclusion. “This is an exciting new development as people are not always aware that the Grand Palais and the Palais de la Découverte are part of one and the same architectural ensemble, opening on to each other although access has been closed for decades,” says Jennifer Flay, the director of Fiac. (more…)
Raymond Pettibon, No Title (He is looking…). All images via Sadie Coles.
Now through August 20th a collection of new work by Raymond Pettibon is on view at Sadie Coles HQ in London. Pettibon’s iconographic illustrations of quintessentially American landscapes, objects and attitudes fill the gallery space with motion and color. Snippets of poetic and abstract text overlay the images, lending the exhibition a suggestion of narrative logic. The title of this show, Bakersfield to Barstow to Cucamonga to Hollywood maps a trajectory across California, the site of Pettibon’s emergence as a visual artist in the Los Angeles punk scene of the 1980s.
Installation View.
The themes woven into this exhibition are consistent with many of those addressed by the artist in the past including the macabre and twisted images of the growth of American industry. Pettibon is considered one of the contemporary artists most intimately engaged with depicting and deconstructing the dark side of modern America. From the mechanization of movement to representations of the sublime to the problem of portraiture, this exhibition represents terrain that is at once new and familiar for Pettibon. These works are composed in the familiar stark monochrome and comic book-style cross hatchings of earlier work from the 1980s and also through the layering of gouache, acrylic and collage. The drawings on view here acquaint the viewer with a vision of American that is entirely the artist’s own.
Installation View.
The presence of text in this exhibition offers the seductive promise of legibility. The complexity of Pettibon’s approach to the image of America is obscured further by the words that interact with it. A challenging use of language and textual explanation appears both in the work itself and in their titles. In a series of self-portraits that are reportedly “about self-portraiture rather than being self-portraits,” Pettibon emphasizes the artifice involved in this tradition in exploring the act of posturing and posing. In No Title (Self-portrait with smile), Pettibon is pictured in sunglasses, tugging his face into a smile. The possible meanings of an image are multiplied and complicated by dense paragraphs and floating phrases.
Installation View.
Picturing sweeping landscapes, a melodrama of movement, and the intimacy of a range of encounters, Pettibon’s interrogation of the American landscape zooms in and out, filling the exhibition space with a myriad of lenses. The irony and dark wit long-associated with Pettibon’s work comes through even more clearly in the stark combination of image and text in these new drawings. This exhibition testifies to this artist’s enduringly unique and fascinating angle on the image of America and points to his expansive understanding of the critical and humorous position art can take in the face of social reality.
-A. Corrigan
Related Links
Exhibition Page [Sadie Coles HQ]
“California Calling: Raymond Pettibon Embraces Sex, Sports and Surfing” [Wallpaper]
The UK’s economy has seen a £27 billion boost from the arts sector, up a third from more than five years ago. The growth is the biggest surge since 2013. (more…)
Kimberly Drew, social media head at the Met and founder of the Black Contemporary Art blog, has launched a new project, the Black Art Incubator, which provides resources and critical structures for black artists. “Most art institutions are rooted in whiteness, but it’s implied, it’s this normalized thing,” Drew says. “We’re normalizing being rooted in blackness without beating people over the head with it.” (more…)
An 18th-century portrait of the 5th Earl of Carlisle by Sir Joshua Reynolds has been accepted by the British Government in lieu of a £4.7 million inheritance tax bill, the Guardian reports. “A glamorous portrait in oil of the earl and his beloved dog Rover, it is an outstanding example of the type of painting for which Reynolds is most highly acclaimed,” Tate Britain’s director, Alex Farquharson said. “I am delighted that this work will now enter the national collection, the greatest collection of British art in the world.” (more…)
Theaster Gates will curate a new series of performances at the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C., the institution announced today. The performances will combine various disciplines and creative backgrounds onstage to present a complex vision of African and African American cultural history. “We are proud to debut this unique performance series by Theaster Gates, which simultaneously challenges and explores public notions of cultural heritage, personal identity and social justice to create an inclusive and participatory genre of public art,” Director Melissa Chiu said. “As a recent board trustee, Theaster’s voice is integral to shaping the future of the museum, as we look to engage and present more artists whose bodies of work address the key issues of today.” (more…)
The Jewish Museum has launched its first Kickstarter project to fund a show of participatory artworks and projects visitors can use and take home, with a number of artworks and projects available for donors, including a private lunch with Jens Hoffmann and Kelly Taxter, or a Google Hangout with Hans Ulrich Obrist. (more…)
Hyperallergic has published a statement in full from the British activist group Art Not Oil, following the announcement of new BP sponsorship deals with the British Museum, the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery. “We’ve seen public opinion turning against oil sponsorship, with Londoners now opposing BP’s sponsorship of the British Museum by a wide margin,” the group writes. “Two-thirds of the museum’s own staff want the BP relationship to end. By signing up to another five years of BP branding, the managers of these institutions are acting against the interests – and, we believe in most cases, the wishes – of their visitors and staff.” (more…)
Jens Hoffman speaks to the Art Newspaper this week, clarifying his changing role with the Jewish Museum. Hoffman will remain with the museum, but will give up his administrative duties in favor of exhibition planning and writing. “This arrangement allows me to continue working on selected exhibitions and programs at the Jewish Museum over the next couple of years while giving me freedom to pursue projects with other institutions such as Front International,” Hoffmann says. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal writes on the history of The Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT, the first museum in the country founded around a focus on American artists. The institution was founded between 1903 and 1905, with a goal to acquire “original modern oil paintings either by native or foreign artists.” (more…)
I Talk with the Spirits (Installation View), via Art Observed
Spanning both exhibition spaces in its expanded West 24th Street home, Marianne Boesky has opened a new show of works exploring the potency of sculpture and painting, ranging from self-taught artistry through to powerful, yet nuanced meditations on the act of creating as a spiritual force in and of itself. Drawing its title, I Talk with the Spirits, from a piece by the famous jazz saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the show mimics Kirk’s multifarious approach to the creation and execution of his artistic vision, drawing on contemporary modes and materials in conjunction with a deep-rooted, and highly studied perspective on ancient forms and practices. (more…)
The Australian art magazine Vault has censored a painting by Lisa Yuskavage on the cover of its most recent publication, following pressure from its distributors. “They were worried that newsagents that they work with would not want to stock the magazine,” says editor Neha Kale. (more…)
Nan Goldin, Heart-Shaped Bruise, New York City (1980), via Art Observed
Few bodies of work have left an impact on the development of photography in the way that Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency did when it was first presented. The ever-evolving compilation of photographs from Goldin’s life and travels between New York, Boston, Berlin, and elsewhere shows both fragility and joy, lust and love, life and death through a deeply personal focal point, as Goldin placed her own friends and familiars before the camera, and then reflected them back towards themselves during a series of slideshow performances in which she projected the images in a series to gallery audiences.
Peter Doig took the stand for the first time on Monday in the strange court case over a work he claims he never painted. Doig is being sued for $5 million in damages after saying he never painted a work held by former corrections officer Robert Fletcher. Doig’s testimony mostly focused on his technique and approach as a painter, rather than addressing his ties to the work. (more…)
German culture minister Monika Grütters has pledged to reform the German commission in charge of looted art repatriation. “Thirteen years after it was established, it is time to think about the future development of the commission in the interest of improved implementation of the Washington Principles,” Grütters said in a statement. (more…)
Diane Arbus, Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. (1962), via Art Observed
In 1956, Diane Arbus struck off on a path that would redefine the practice of photography in the 20th Century, adopting a wide-ranging yet equally nuanced eye for subjects and situations in the teeming metropolis of post-War New York City and beyond. Culling together a selection of these works, including a wide grouping of previously unseen shots from the artist’s personal archives, the Met Breuer has opened a landmark exhibition documenting the artist’s formative years, titled In The Beginning, and spanning the first seven years of her practice as an artist (1956 to 1962). (more…)
A piece in the New York Review of Books charts the life and practice of Hieronymous Bosch, which corresponds with the landmark exhibition of the artist’s paintings at the Noordbrabants Museum. The article traces the artist’s development of style and identity over the course of his practice, and reflects on the spiritual undertones of his work. (more…)
The New York Times looks at the current health of the market, charting a number of challenges and issues faced by auction houses. “It’s all about supply,” says adviser Wendy Goldsmith. “If you don’t offer $100 million guarantees, you’re not going to get the best things.” She added that demand had also become highly selective: “Things either stagnate, or they sell like hot cakes. There isn’t any middle ground any more.” (more…)
In a piece for The Guardian Grayson Perry and Gillian Wearing visit degree shows at some of London’s art schools, and reflect on the young crop of aspiring artists. “It used to be that each generation had a ‘thing’ that was trendy to do, but I’m struck by how Chelsea students seem to do a bit of everything,” Perry says. “No one seems able to commit to one single form. I guess, because of the internet and their economic situation, it’s about contingency, but it means there’s a non-committal quality to the show. It might be fear, or maybe just be the nature of contemporary culture, where everything’s going on at once, and it does make me wonder about the future.” (more…)
During the quarterly earnings call, Sotheby’s CEO Tad Smith announced that the company would post $89 million in net income for the second quarter of 2016, noting the current turbulence in the art market as ongoing. “There are a number of geopolitical, macroeconomic, commodity pricing, and financial market uncertainties that leave the art market with a paradox,” Smith said. “On the one hand, collectors are still buying top-quality works of art in well-curated sales. On the other hand, consignors who have the luxury of discretion are showing a bit of reluctance to sell their work at this time.” (more…)