Now through December 9, Sprüth Magers presents new work by John Baldessari. For his second show at the Los Angeles gallery, this exhibition features 27 works from Baldessari’s new series of large-scale paintings that all center on the ubiquitous Emojis.

COURTYARD BEN I’M AFRAID THERE’S BEEN A SERIOUS ERROR, 2017. All images courtesy Sprüth Magers. (more…)

The New York Times speculates on the broader impacts of Leonardo da Vinci’s astronomical auction record of $450.3 million, examining possible movements its price may cause among the upper echelons of the market, and how sales strategies might change. “It probably wouldn’t have made that much in a 19th-century sale,” says Wendy Goldsmith, an art adviser based in London.  “We’ll probably end up with ‘best of the best’ sales, with complete cross-fertilization.” (more…)

A civil court in Florence this week ruled against a tourist agency, ordering it to remove images of the Michelangelo’s Statue of David because of copyright infringement.  Claiming that Galleria dell’Accademia holds exclusive rights to license and distribute images of the statue.  “Now many other museums who have been victims of the plague of tickets sold at inflated prices can take this path to defeat this scam,” says gallery director Cecilie Hollberg. (more…)

Bloomberg spotlights a new startup, Arthena, this week, which aims to use artificial intelligence to determine changing interests and preferences among art collectors. “Most people in the art world don’t like what we’re doing,” says co-founder Madelaine D’Angelo. “We’re not advocating that art shouldn’t exist for art’s sake, or that people should stop building collections, but we want to make it more widely available as an asset class and investment opportunity.” (more…)

Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York now the archives of the late Sardinian artist Maria Lai. In a statement, Boesky praised Lai’s “uncanny ability to stitch together a kind of universal experience that brings together disparate viewers and inspires both personal and shared responses.” (more…)

The Pentagon has cracked down on Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ art, claiming that all works created while in the notorious prison is the property of the U.S. government. “My clients were told that their art would no longer be processed for release,” says Ramzi Kassem, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law and lawyer who represents three men held at Guantánamo Bay. “And then one of my clients was told that, even if he were ever to be released, that he would not be able to take his art with him, and that it would be incinerated.” (more…)

The Whitney has acquired 32 works from the 2017 edition of the Whitney Biennial, Art News reports, among them Samara Golden’s mirrored installation The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes. “The committees really came together and were extremely generous, as they wanted to mark the occasion of the first biennial in the new building,” says chief curator Scott Rothkopf. “It took a village in a way to acquire so many works, because it wouldn’t be possible with our ordinary budget.” (more…)

John Baldessari is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as he prepares a body of large-scale emoji paintings continuing his conflations of text and image. “The way it started, was when I first saw emojis I thought, ‘How would they look if they were blown up large?’” he says. “Which I did and I liked the way they looked. I said, ‘I’m gonna make some paintings with giant emojis.’ And that’s it.” (more…)

Jake Gyllenhaal is preparing for an untitled Netflix film that will see him play an art critic in Los Angeles, Art News reports. An unnamed source notes the film is a “revealing look at the art market in L.A. that involves billionaire collectors, gallerists, auctions, and sales.” (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, DE-PIXELATION (detail) (Installation View), via Art Observed

Complementing his large-scale sculptural practice and near-constant interrogation of the state of mass media, political power and imagery, Gladstone Gallery is currently presenting a body of works by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn.  Marking a continued investigation of the act of depiction, the strategies of control and dissemination in modern media, and the utility  of horror that often underwrites modern image creation, the artist has created a body of pixelated collages, culling together scenes of modern sectarian violence with a sense of constant instability and unease.  (more…)

Maria Balshaw is profiled in Bloomberg this week, as she continues to push for her new vision for the Tate. “The goal I have for the Tate is one where an artistic vision is held alongside, and absolutely permeates, a sense of our social mission,” she says. (more…)

Kehinde Wiley is featured in the Art Newspaper this week, as he prepares to debut his first feature film in London.  “The work speaks to a society willing to self-destruct instead of seeing itself in a new light. Strangely it’s about Brexit,” he says. (more…)

Documenta CEO Annette Kulenkampff is leaving her post with the institution, following an edition of the event that ran a major deficit of upwards of €5 million. “We overshot the budget because of circumstances that were unknown to us beforehand,” Kulenkampff has said of the situation. “That is bad, it shouldn’t have happened, and we must carry the responsibility for that.” (more…)

Trevor Paglen is profiled in The Guardian this week, as he continues his work spotlighting surveillance systems and information network. “I am not a journalist or an academic,” he says, “I don’t feel it incumbent on me to make sense of everything. What I am saying is, ‘This is an image of something in our world’. You might think you know what it is, but I am going to tell you something different.” (more…)

The Venice Biennale has set a new attendance record of 615,000 visitors, up almost a quarter from 500,000 two years ago.  The show’s popularity is attributed to “a growing desire to personally and directly discover the vitality of art in relation to the daily bombardment of sounds and images to which the world is subjected,” according to Biennale President Paolo Baratta. (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art and the Neue Galerie in New York have jointly acquired a 1907 self-portrait by Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Art News reports, marking a continued critical evaluation of the artist’s work. “She’s certainly one of the most important woman artists of the early 20th century, and a really important figure in that beginning moment of German Expressionism,” says Ann Temkin, chief curator of MoMA’s painting and sculpture department. (more…)

The Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson is relocating to the Marais neighborhood of Paris, and has appointed François Hébel as its director, the Art Newspaper reports. “For 15 years, the foundation has been referencing, organising, researching and scanning all kinds of documentation on Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck,” Hébel says. (more…)

Dealer Emmanuel Perrotin is profiled in Forbes this month, exploring the dealer’s recent move downtown, and his vision for his gallery. “It can be complicated and dangerous to work with a young artist. You can be very surprised by the evolution of their work. After a promising studio visit, the artist can offer disappointing pieces for the show,” he says. “You have to be very organized early on to avoid this kind of surprise and be ready to refuse a show.” (more…)

Artist Mel Chin is preparing an augmented reality project for Times Square, which will illustrate the potential impacts of climate change on one of the city’s most recognizable areas. “We’re working on a mass phenomenon, extending from 45th to 47th streets in the air, that can convey the gravity of what we have before us,” he said. (more…)

The grave of Walburga “Wally” Neuzil, Egon Schiele’s young muse, has been found in Croatia, the Art Newspaper reports, and will be commemorated by a monument. “It’s an interesting monumental project for the European identity,” says researcher Robert Holzbauer. (more…)

Christie’s will offer the first set of works from the collection of David Rockefeller next year in a standalone sale.  The offerings include Fillette aÌ€ la corbeille fleurie (1905), a Rose Period Picasso estimated at $70 million, and Matisse’s Odalisque couchée aux magnolias (1923), which is already estimated to break the artist’s auction record of $41 million.  (more…)

The Art Market Monitor has a strong analysis around the sale of da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, exploring the motivations of its seller, Dmitry Rybolovlev, and the strategies Christie’s used to attract its buyer, including the inclusion of the Andy Warhol piece, and the spectacle drummed up around the sale by near constant lines to see the painting. “Among the smart moves Christie’s made was bringing the work to San Francisco where there were lines around the block to see it,” Marion Maneker writes. “More importantly, Christie’s got calls from major Silicon Valley figures who had previously been tough to contact. (For those wondering who bought it, there’s a greater chance it went to someone with crazy tech money than someone in Asia).” (more…)

A missing piece of Rene Magritte’s The Enchanted Pose has been found underneath another of the artist’s works, Reuters reports. Pieces of the artist’s painting were painted over by Magritte to create other works, leaving the location of its pieces a longstanding mystery. (more…)

The NYT reports on the recent gift of $80 to the Met, noting that the donation may signal a new level of stability for the museum after several years of financial and institutional turbulence. We’ve made really good progress,” says Daniel H. Weiss, the Met’s president and chief executive. (more…)