New shoes from artist Takashi Murakami and Vans hit stores this weekend, a collaboration that sees the artist’s signature flowers and skulls adorning the skateboard shoe company’s iconic slip-ons. The collaboration also features a number of limited-edition skateboard decks and t-shirts. (more…)
Artist Cady Noland has repudiated another one of her past works this month, sabotaging a $1.4 million sale for Log Cabin Blank with Screw Eyes and Cafe Door, a work which she denounced after learning of the new owner’s plans to restore the piece’s rotted wood. “Noland angrily denounced the restoration of the artwork without her knowledge and approval,” a complaint collector Scott Mueller filed in New York Federal Court this Monday. “She further stated that any effort to display or sell the sculpture must include notice that the piece was remade without the artist’s consent, that it now consists of unoriginal materials, and that she does not approve of the work.” (more…)
Collector Bert Kreuk has won his lawsuit with Danh Vo, forcing the artist the create a room-sized installation work, after the artist delivered a much smaller-sized work. Kreuk will pay the artist $350,000 for the piece, but Vo must deliver the piece by a set date. If not, will be fined $10,000 for each day after he fails to produce the work. (more…)
An outcry by Irish cultural and business elite has led to a postponed Old Masters sale at Christie’s, which was planning to sell a selection of works taken from a crumbling home outside of Dublin. An initial offer by a group of donors to purchase the pieces led to a hold on the sale, which included works by Rubens and Francesco Guardi. (more…)
Richard Dorment, the head arts critic at The Telegraph who is retiring after serving at the position for over 30 years, has an article in the newspaper this week, reviewing the changes in contemporary art since he began writing, and his thoughts on writers unwilling to accept the new in the world of art. “Had the same critics been writing about film, sport, or the stock market they’d have been rumbled in a week,” he notes. (more…)
The Guardian looks back at the final degree shows for a number of prominent British artists, including David Shrigley, Gillian Wearing and Tracey Emin, including humorous anecdotes and reflections from the artists on their future careers. “I remember saying, if I have one exhibition when I leave I will be happy,” Wearing says. “That’s all I expected.” (more…)
The New York Times looks at the contemporary performance art scene in Belgrade, Serbia, where a group of young artists are continuing the city’s rich history in the medium, centered around the Galerija 12 Hub. “The way they work with the artists, how they present the artists and how they think about the common good of the independent sphere is what I think makes a huge difference between the Hub and other spaces,” says choreographer Acin Thelander. (more…)
Artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin Lertchaiprasert are adding a new infrastructure to the land foundation in Northern Thailand building a new artist residency. This residency will be the first to produce its own energy, and be self-sufficient through community engagement. The first structure that will be built, titled “DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY” will require collaborative effort of participants, including students and multidisciplinary professionals, and will house not only a number of workshops, talks, and performances, but also communal cooking and farming when it is completed.
Artist David Shrigley has designed the new mascot for Scottish soccer club Partick Thistle, a disturbingly rendered sun icon with a comically menacing face, a figure that some in the media have called “terrifying.” (more…)
The New York Times notes the increasing popularity of Chinese art on the secondary market, as the Chinese Communist Party increases its efforts to secure and repatriate works that have been looted, taken or sold away from the state in past centuries to the west, including, in some cases, thefts from national museums that target works looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace during its century raid by British and French troops in the mid 19th century. “They knew very well what they were after,” said Jean-François Hebert, president of the Château de Fontainebleau, where a number of iconic Chinese gold and bronze works were stolen in 2012. (more…)
A public sculpture by Erwin Wurm, depicting a full-size Mercedes transporter MB100D truck bending slightly up a wall, has been hit with a parking ticket for its placement outside of the German city of Karlsruhe’s Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in a parking restricted zone. Karlsruhe mayor Frank Mentrup has stated that he will try and fix the ticket, so that the work may remain parked in the space, albeit illegally. (more…)
Fourteen
watercolor paintings and drawings attributed to dictator Adolf Hitler were sold at auction in Nuremburg this week for $440,000 (about 391,000 euros). The most expensive piece, a watercolor of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, brought over $113,000, selling to an anonymous Chinese buyer.
Paul Cézanne’s Vue sur L’Estaque et le Château d’If has been placed under export bar in the United Kingdom this week in an attempt to keep the work in the nation. “I hope that the temporary export bar I have put in place will result in a UK buyer coming forward and that the painting will soon be back on the walls of one of our great public collections,” says minister of culture Ed Vaizey. (more…)
The Guggenheim has selected the design for its proposed Helsinki location, a series of interlocking pavilions unified by a single tower, designed by Moreau Kusunoki Architectes. “Our approach was to try to make a building that is closely linked with the city, with the way people use it,” says architect Nicolas Moreau, who runs the firm with his wife Hiroko Kusunoki. (more…)
The New Museum has appointed Lauren Cornell, who recently co-curated the 2015 Triennial alongside artist Ryan Trecartin, as Curator and Associate Director, Technology Initiatives. “Through her work at the New Museum and at Rhizome first, Lauren Cornell has been tracking the influence of technology on art and culture at large,” says Massimiliano Gioni, the Museum’s Artistic Director. “In her new position, she will help the Museum take an even more active role in engaging with the present and the future.” (more…)
A maintenance worker in Madison, CT has accidentally destroyed a bench created by New York City-based sculptor Jim Osman, valued at $10,000. The work, which Art Observed previously stumbled upon during Bushwick Open Studios last year, was on view for the town’s Sculpture Mile contemporary art show, was taken apart and disposed of after the maintenance worker assumed it had been “left by skateboarders.” “It’s kind of a big letdown,” Osman says. (more…)
The once rigid boundaries between commercial galleries and museum exhibitors are quickly diminishing today, The New York Times notes, as top galleries turn towards high profile museum curators to create historically and culturally resonant shows. “I think galleries do it for prestige,” says John Elderfield, a former MoMA curator who has done independent work for Gagosian. “It burnishes their image. Of course, when one gallery does it, another one wants to do it.” (more…)
As London auction houses prepare for this week’s Impressionist and Modern sales, Bloomberg recaps the battles between giants Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and the aggressive stance on auction guarantees that have helped to define the massive prices achieved in recent sales. “Our profit margin is good,” says Christie’s recently appointed CEO Patricia Barbizet. “Guarantees are risk management and offer an assurance to the seller.” (more…)
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is finally leaving its Greenwich Village headquarters, and moving uptown to a former brewery on 126th Street in Harlem. “In other cities people travel to see art,” Brown says. “I’m not so far from the Upper East Side.” (more…)
Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing some of his large-scale and ongoing projects, including his work on the ballet adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer work Tree of Codes in Manchester. “On stage will be a mirror, and it will reflect the room. It’s a stretch to say that it puts the audience on the stage,” says Eliasson. “However, they will be conscious of being visible there. But anyway, let’s see how it works.” (more…)
Takashi Murakami is the subject of the most recent “Lunch with the FT” Interview this week, joining a writer from the newspaper for lunch at the Kaikai Kiki Co. studios outside Tokyo, and discussing his role in a generation of artists investigating capitalism and its intertwined relationship with fine art, including his relationship to otaku subcultures. “People say, ‘Oh, Takashi steals from our culture.’ But wait a minute. Our culture means my culture, too, right?” (more…)
Former MIT Lecturer and filmmaker Joseph Gibbons is the subject of a Washington Post profile this week, as the performer and artist awaits sentencing for a bank robbery he committed on New Year’s Eve last year. “You never can tell if the character he is playing is actually him or a work of fiction,” says Vincent Grenier, a filmmaker and professor at Binghamton University. “For him, it’s been a fertile arena to play in the boundary between reality and fantasy.” (more…)
Sotheby’s is looking to break the record for the most expensive art auction in London this week, with an Impressionist and modern sale expected to top £203 million. “The forthcoming sale offers a rich range of highly desirable works, including those that rank among the finest by Manet, Degas, Klimt, Malevich, Gauguin and Miro,” says Helena Newman, global go-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art department. (more…)