Martin Creed is interviewed in the NYT this week, as he opens his retrospective at the Park Avenue Armory. “I feel bad to say I’m an artist, because I don’t really know what art is,” Creed says. “I would say I’m a person who tries to do things and work in a field that is commonly known as art. I try and do things because I find life is difficult and I want to make it better. More bearable.” (more…)
Sotheby’s has added a $40 million Amedeo Modigliani to its upcoming Impressionist and Modern sale this month in London. The work is a portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne, the artist’s lover during his last years, who committed suicide after his death. (more…)
A visitor to the SFMoMA this week tripped and fell into a an Andy Warhol Triple Elvis, resulting in the painting’s removal from the gallery for inspection and repairs. The damage reported to the painting was noted as “minimal,” by conservators. (more…)
Lehmann Maupin is planning to open a new Chelsea exhibition space on 10th and 24th, Artforum reports, a three-floor, 8,500 square foot space designed by Peter Marino. “West 24th Street will be the primary location of our business,” founder David Maupin says. “Chelsea remains an important hub of the New York contemporary art scene. We represent a growing roster of renowned international artists, and it is important for us to be able to offer additional exhibition options and exposure within the area.” (more…)
Wolfgang Tillmans is interviewed in the Financial Times this week, as he continues his campaign against the pending Brexit vote. “I see myself as a product of the European postwar history of reconciliation, peace and exchange,” he writes. (more…)
Kenny Schachter is quoted in The Telegraph this week, claiming extensive corruption, money laundering and insider trading among the higher ends of the art market. “Any time a lot of money crops up, hideous behavior follows too,” he says. (more…)
Paris’s current flooding has led to the evacuation of artworks from the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay, the WSJ reports. The Seine has already crested at over 15 feet above its normal level, and water levels are not expected to recede until after the weekend. (more…)
Over the past decade, the FBI has recovered more than 2,650 missing pieces of art or historical artifacts, according to an NBC Washington report, which also reviews the complex network of intermediaries that often move the work around the globe. “There is a vast network of middlemen, international brokers and looters,” Investigator Martin Licciardo said. (more…)
Vito Acconci is profiled in the New York Times this week, as he prepares a career retrospective at MoMA PS1. “I hated the word artist,” he says. “To me, even in the years when I was showing things in galleries, it seemed to me that I didn’t really have anything to do with art. The word itself sounded, and still sounds to me, like ‘high art,’ and that was never what I saw myself doing.” (more…)
Artist duo Gilbert & George have announced plans to open a gallery in London’s East End, The Guardian reports. The Spitalfields space is touted as “a non-profit foundation for contemporary art that operates purely for the public benefit with the aim to promote the education of the public in the arts by exhibiting contemporary art in its exhibition spaces, benefiting both the local community as well as the wider community attracting visitors from other locations.” (more…)
Dominique Lévy is expanding into the ground floor of her current location at 909 Madison Ave, filling up the space formerly occupied by Galerie Perrotin, which is moving to a new, unannounced location. “It gives us even more flexibility,” Lévy says, “and allows us to expand our passion for sculpture.” (more…)
William Eggleston is now represented by David Zwirner, the New York Times reports, ending a five-year partnership with Gagosian Gallery. “Eggleston is really a living legend of American art,” Zwirner says. “And it’s important for us — and for the artist — that he is contextualized as an artist and not just as a photographer.” (more…)
The Financial Times examines the “wow” factor, that has come to define the Tate Modern’s programming in the past decades, going deep into the museum’s curatorial focus and exploratory, often sensational exhibition plans to understand the museum’s impact on curatorial and exhibition practice in that time frame. “Tate Modern’s thematic displays not only revolutionized how museums tell — or don’t — the history of art; they also promoted a reversal of power between artist and curator,” author Jackie Wullschlager writes. “Chronological arrangements more or less protect art from curatorial interference. Thematic ones put a curator’s theoretical agenda first, prejudging and predetermining our responses, and selecting work by content or ideology rather than quality. (more…)
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 19 (1921), via Art Observed
The Guggenheim Museum has opened its doors on an expansive exhibition of work by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, exploring the Bauhaus member’s impressive contributions to the development of 20th Century Modernism. Combining his explorations in sculpture, painting, film, photography and even installation, the exhibition places the artist’s enthusiasm for technological progress into conversation with the present day. (more…)
Tracey Emin, Resting, 2015 gouache on paper 8.78 x 11.89 inches Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.
Stone Love defines a definitive next step for Tracey Emin, the already prolific artist whose now-three-decade long career has delivered a particular example of artistic sincerity and introspection throughout a wide range of artistic forms and formats. Constantly returning to her own ambitious urge for self-discovery and contemplation, Emin’s body of work translates pristine and emphatic human instincts through her own intuitive lens. Referring to the first sentence in David Bowie’s 1972 song Soul Love, the exhibition considers alternate possibilities for love—arguably the most complex yet by far the most undertaken subject in art and literature.
Tracey Emin, Another way to Think of You, 2015 embroidered calico 89.76 x 90.94 inches Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.
Tracey Emin, You were here like the ground underneath my feet, 2016 acrylic on canvas 60.24 x 83.86 inches Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.
As the news in the run-up to this exhibition often dwelled on, Emin recently married a stone near her coastal studio (a scene depicted in one of her pieces), which she sees as a permanent object that will serve as a source of eternal fortitude. “Being in love with a stone is monumental”, Emin has said, walking through the exhibition of her signature neon texts, gouache on paper drawings and bronze sculptures, as well as some embroidery. Stone renders a land of possibilities where loving singlehandedly nourishes its subject, unrestrained by societal or physical norms for desire. As much as humanistic and philosophical, Emin’s narrative for the exhibition conveys her personal journey and her current emotional map as an artist and human being.
Tracey Emin: Stone Love Installation view, Lehmann Maupin, Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.
Emin, stripping the restraints and impositions of physical love between two parties, approaches the phenomenon as an endeavor and, to some degree, a duty, waiting to be fulfilled. Loving to love, as its own virtue, celebrated by David Bowie, leads Emin’s work towards an elimination of a desired object of affection. Yet at the same time, the stone, appears in its original definition, as well as allegorizing transcendence beyond what is tactile and mundane.
Tracey Emin: Stone Love Installation view, Lehmann Maupin Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.
Reading Just Let Me Love You in Emin’s own handwriting, the namesake neon piece is in conversation with bronze sculpture of an abstracted female figure, with her vulva facing the artist’s declaration of unrequited love, as if building an ephemeral bound between words and images both catering to her acclimation to an inner journey rather than an externalized ideal. Channeling one of her most iconic works, Everyone I’ve Slept With (1963-95), the show also includes a series of embroidered illustrations of female forms, which Emin appliqués mostly based on photographs of her nude self in various positions. Tying the meticulous process of knitting with equally determined efforts invested in carnal infatuation and self-awareness, these large scale calicos deepen the dialogue around the mediative and eventually fruitful state of embarking on a journey—be it embroidering or falling in love.
Tracey Emin: Stone Love is on view at Lehmann Maupin through June 18, 2016.
Tracey Emin during the walkthrough of her exhibiton Stone Love at Lehmann Maupin, Photo: Osman Can Yerebakan
— O.C. Yerebakan
Related Links:
Lehmann Maupin [Exhibition Page]
W Magazine [Tracey Emin Talks Her Past and Marrying a Stone (Literally)]
Tony Cragg, Hardliner (2013), via Thaddaeus Ropac
British sculptor Tony Cragg has brought a series of 25 new sculptural works to Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Pantin Gallery, showcasing the artist’s impressive range of skills in steel, bronze, wood, fiberglass, and even stone. The show, which capitalizes on his major exhibition at St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum, underscores Cragg’s relentless material and sculptural explorations, and offers a continuation of more recent work to counterpoint the more historical thread found in the Russian exhibition. (more…)
The Senate Finance Committee has sent its investigation findings in its review of a group of private art museums to the IRS this week, noting a number of practices that raise issues over the use of these museums as tax havens rather than public services. “Despite the good work that is being done by many private museums, I remain concerned that this area of our tax code is ripe for exploitation,” says Senator Orrin Hatch. (more…)
Lia Gangitano, the founder of seminal downtown space Participant Inc, is interviewed in the New York Times this week, as she discusses her drive to foster an arts community independent of the city’s commercial gallery scene. “It’s very much a labor of love — and a vow of poverty,” she says. “I have a lot of teaching jobs.” (more…)
The New York Times is discontinuing its ArtsBeat blog, announcing its decision in a lighthearted post on its site. “The features that made the blog such an appealing alternative to our traditional publishing tools — agility, the ability to embed digital content and a chance to use a livelier voice — have largely been absorbed into the rest of our work,” Daniel McDermon writes. (more…)
Anton Kern Gallery is leaving its Chelsea location for Midtown, where it will open shop on 55th Street. The gallery’s current home had been sold in 2014 to the development group DDG for more than $24 million. (more…)
Gert & Uwe Tobias. Untitled (2016) via CFA Berlin
Now through June 11, CFA Berlin presents a series of new work from Gert & Uwe Tobias, drawing from a rich tapestry of visual and historical references, including Dutch florals, contemporary painting and medieval art forms, where surrealism meets prehistory. The twin brothers, born in Brasov, Romania and now working in Cologne, center their work in large part on their Romanian heritage, weaving together this legacy with graphic design, and modern abstraction. Horror and the grotesque are frequent themes of the brothers’ work, revealing an easy linked forged between the hybrid forms found in Surrealism and those featured in myth and legend. (more…)
Anish Kapoor, She Wolf (2016), via Art Observed
Currently at Gladstone Gallery’s Chelsea locations, artist Anish Kapoor has brought a selection of recent works for Today You Will Be in Paradise, an exhibition that showcases the artist’s particular application of sculptural language towards revealing inquiries of perception, memory, and the body itself. Exercising his practice across a broad framework of wall-mounted and free-standing arrangements of visceral, often hyper-realistic pieces, Kapoor’s pieces turn extremely personal moments into opportunities to explore broad human themes.
Anish Kapoor, Three Internal Objects (2013-2015), via Art Observed
The Art Newspaper reviews artists’ oppositions to an EU exit for the UK, speaking with Tacita Dean about recent work inspired by the referendum vote. “I am making the largest blackboard drawing I have ever embarked upon,” Dean says. “It is based on The Tempest and is 32-foot long. As I often write on the boards things that come into my head as I draw, I’ve been extremely conscious of Brexit since beginning work on it. The Tempest is a manufactured storm, as is this EU Referendum, but unlike Prospero, [David] Cameron cannot control it and Caliban is loose on the island.” (more…)
The New York Times looks at a series of buildings making space for artist studios in Manhattan’s increasingly priced-out neighborhoods, speaking with a number of the artists working in them. “I spent my whole career moving north,” says Fred Brathwaite, the famous graffiti artist and filmmaker. “In the ’80s, it was the Lower East Side, then Midtown in the ’90s. Now, I’m back home, in the kind of space I never thought I’d find.” (more…)
