A strong market season for Pablo Picasso continues this spring in New York, as the painter’s Le Repos, a portrait of Marie-Theres Walter, heads to Sotheby’s this May with a $25 million estimate. “It’s as pure as you’ll get,” says Simon Shaw of the auction house’s Impressionist and Modern department. “Picasso is just utterly infatuated with her.” (more…)
The Shed, a multidisciplinary performing-arts center set to open next year, has announced its first round of commissions for 2019, including projects with Steve McQueen, Gerhard Richter, and a show on the word of Agnes Denes. “If the range of artists you present represents the range of society, then you have a chance,” said Alex Poots, the Shed’s artistic director and CEO. (more…)
Whitney Curator Barbara Haskell gets a profile in the New York Times this week, as she prepares to open a show on the works of painter Grant Wood. “It’s hard to imagine American art without her,” says museum director, Adam D. Weinberg. “Her métier is these great monograph shows.” (more…)
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Multiflavors (1982), via Christie’s
The art world’s market focus has split between London and New York this week, as Armory Week kicks off in New York, and a trio of major contemporary auctions hit the British capital. The week’s sales got its first indicator of health for the Contemporary and Post-War Market as Christie’s capped the first night of sales, closing a 65-lot offering with moderately strong results, ultimately achieving a final tally of £137,989,750 with only five lots going unsold. (more…)
The NYT profiles TEFAF’s efforts to continue expanding beyond its fairs in New York and Maastricht, and its next steps as it pushes beyond easy distinctions over its character and interests. “What we really try to achieve is to become a global brand,” says chairman Nanne Dekking. “But it’s a more complex brand because of the huge diversity of participants. We cannot say that we’re going to be a global brand in Impressionism or a global brand in contemporary art. What we have to establish is that we can become a global brand that people can trust.” (more…)
Hannah Van Bart, The Waiting (2017), via Marianne Boesky
As the winter months draw slowly to a close, and the weather shifts into more temperate conditions, New York City will once again step into its role as a central hub of the contemporary art market, and the global art fair circuit, as a string of fairs and exhibitions open up across the city. Centering around the annual Armory Show Art Fair on the West Side, the scale of the proceedings seem to only get larger each year (so much so that this year mainstay the ADAA Art Show branched out into its own week), yet attention continues to center around a selection of fairs spread across Manhattan.
Nam June Paik, Lion (2005), via Gagosian
Bruce High Quality Foundation, Ways to Die (House of Turds) (2018) via Pippy Houldsworth
The heirs of Piet Mondrian are claiming ownership of four paintings in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld, the New York Times reports. “Museums should have done provenance research on all the paintings in their collection,” says Sally Yerkovich, a professor of museum ethics at Columbia University in New York. “If they have items of unclear provenance, they should publish these gaps.” (more…)
The Polish art world is staging a call for a massive demonstration against fascism, lead by an international exhibition decrying far-right politics. “In the face of increasingly frequent attacks on people with different colors of skin [and] in the context of the brutal contempt demonstrated towards minorities—the National Museum in Krakow has an important mission to fulfill,” the group wrote in an open letter to the director and vice director of the institution. “[You have] a chance to play an important role in educating Polish society,” an open letter reads. (more…)
Artist Pope.L gets a profile in the NYT this week, as he continues to push politically and socially resonant subjects with his work, explored here through his project bottling and reselling water from Flint, Michigan. “I believe there is something aesthetic about being socially engaged, being involved in your community,” he says. “There’s a beauty to making work that interacts with people, and I think there’s a way to describe and talk about it — and to do it well.” (more…)
Downtown gallery Regina Rex has closed its doors, adding another space to the list of dealers abandoning spaces in Manhattan. “It was a great pleasure and privilege to be a part of that community for three years,” the gallery said in a statement. (more…)
Tomas Saraceno at Tanya Bonakdar, via Art Observed
The early weeks of March in New York are notoriously packed with art. There’s the usual string of exhibitions and openings, coupled with the ever-growing number of art fairs taking up space across the city during Armory Art Week. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that the ADAA might look outside this marathon week in hopes of reaching a broader fair-going public. That gambit seems to have paid off this year, as the ADAA Art Show opened its doors at the end of February, setting itself apart from the mass of exhibitors opening their doors in the coming days. (more…)
Wolfgang Tillmans is featured in The Guardian this month, as the artist promotes his new project What Is Different?, which reflects on the current state of the world, and modern political conditions. “We have known for some time that there are people who feel drawn to esoteric conspiracy theories,” he says. “What is new, however, is that hard facts are no longer believed by wide segments of the population. During the past two years, I have come to realize that if 30% of the electorate are resistant to rational argument, we are on a slippery slope.” (more…)
Sophie Kitching, Ausblick (2018), Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen, LL 31012018 (2018), installation view -46,08°, fffriedrich, photo by Robert Schittko
The night sky, with the reflecting light of the full moon or the gloom of the new moon, offers a polarity of attraction and rejection that not only affects natural phenomena like high and low tide but also works as a mirror for the contemplation of basic human dispositions. Gazing into the stars, the astronomical objects or their formal representation, comes from the curiosity to see what lies beneath the surface of things. This ability to go beyond the boundaries of time, space and fiction, and the fascination for the infinity of the outer space has been a constant source of inspiration for artists.
-46,08°, fffriedrich, installation view
Frankfurt-based project space fffriedrich presents such parallel visual worlds in the exhibition ‘-46,08°’ featuring works by Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen, Sophie Kitching and Anselm Schenkluhn. For all three artists, the moon and the stars function as symbols, become subjects of iconographical experiments or are actively implicated in their creative process. The works on view move between personally and scientifically oriented approaches and explore various craft techniques in their artistic development. Presence and absence, shadow, illusion and dissolution are recurring concepts in their work.
Mexico City powerhouse Kurimanzutto will open a project space in New York, Art News reports. “The opening of our project space in New York marks an essential development for our growing family of artists as a meeting point for their ideas,” Mónica Manzutto says. “With this new project we seek to establish even stronger connections to institutions, artists, and art professionals who have accompanied us across our evolution.” (more…)
As The Met transitions to charging admission fees, the New York Times speaks to a range of artists over its change in policy. “When I lived in New York in the 1980s, economically it was very bad for me. But I would come to the Met all the time and pay a penny,” says Ai Weiwei. “And when I could afford to I paid more. When I was back in China, I would very proudly show them this pay-as-you-wish policy as an example of what was positive about the U.S., that even in this capitalistic society, there was a door, a light.” (more…)
Barbara Gladstone has joined the board of Artists Space, Art News reports. “2018 will be a big year building up to [moving into] the new building,” says executive director and chief curator Jay Sanders. “Barbara comes at the perfect time. Her skill set and expertise in building careers and working with artists is so apropos to some of the things we are doing right now. She has immediately been incredibly helpful.” (more…)
Pablo Picasso, Femme au beÌret et aÌ€ la robe quadrilleÌe (Marie-TheÌreÌ€se Walter) (1937), via Sotheby’s
The first tests of the Impressionist and Modern market for 2018 are now in the books, as Sotheby’s capped a brief but action-packed sale this evening in London, ultimately achieving a final of £118,932,000 despite a handful of unsold works. There was little room for error in the 21-lot sale, which seemed primarily organized around several marquee works and a selection of works that garnered very little interest. (more…)
Pablo Picasso, Mousquetaire et nu assis (1967), via Christies
With a few brief wobbles, the first evening of two weeks of auctions in the British capital has concluded, bringing solid results and a final of £114,103,000 for Christie’s auction house this evening. The sale saw most of its premiere works moving quickly over the course of the evening, with 11 works going unsold, including one of the sale’s lead lots, a Kees van Dongen portrait.
Edgar Degas, Dans les coulisses (1882-1885), via Christies
Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery in The Hague will take Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring off view for two weeks to perform research on it. “The expertise and the scientific equipment are coming from the whole world, converging on this one painting, this one masterpiece,” paintings conservator Abbie Vandivere says. “We’ll see how much information we can gain with the technology at our disposal in a very short period of time — two weeks, working 24 hours a day, day and night.” (more…)
Mafia member turned informant Gaetano Grado has spoken out on the theft of Caravaggio’s Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence, which he says was presented to Gaetano Badalamenti, the head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission known as the Cupola, who then sold the work to a Swiss dealer. (more…)
The Outsider Art Fair is preparing to open up shop in Basel, the New York Times reports. “It’s not going to be a smaller version of Art Basel or something,” Andrew Edlin, the owner of the Outsider Art Fair, says. “You know when you walk in, you’re entering a whole different thing.” (more…)
Pablo Picasso, Femme au beÌret et aÌ€ la robe quadrilleÌe (Marie-TheÌreÌ€se Walter) (1937), via Sotheby’s
Marking the first major test of the secondary market for this 2018, the major auction houses are preparing to open their doors for a series of marquee evening sales in London this coming month. Trying both the Impressionist/Modern and Post-War categories with top selections of works, the sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips will offer a look at just how strong the market is rebounding since a long stretch of inactivity and stagnancy. (more…)
A group of French arts professionals have signed a letter in support of artist Jeff Koons’s gift to the city, Art News reports. “Remember the polemics over the Centre Pompidou, the Louvre Pyramid or the columns of [Daniel] Buren, in keeping with the history of The Burghers of Calais or the Balzac of Rodin?” the op-ed reads. (more…)