Damien Hirst sits down with the BBC this week to discuss his new exhibition in Venice, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, and the story behind the works. “For me the show is about belief, you can believe whatever your want to believe,” he says. “I’ve spent so much time on this that I believe it.” (more…)
Parker Ito is now represented by Team Gallery, Art News reports. The artist had worked independently for several years, showing work recently with Chateau Shatto in Los Angeles, but made the move to Team for his upcoming solo exhibition in New York. “It’s a strange thing to say, but I think that the work is truly visionary,” gallery owner José Freire says. (more…)
London’s National Portrait Gallery has acquired a Sir Thomas Lawrence canvas of the Duke of Wellington, following a £1.3 million fundraising campaign. “This arresting portrait must sit in the national collection and now, following an outpouring of generosity, it will do,” historian Dan Snow says. “The artist has captured the duke’s legendary demeanor. It is as special as a work of art as it is as a primary source.” (more…)
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is the subject of a lengthy profile in the Art Newspaper this week, profiling the work’s origins and the artist’s perspectives on the creation of the canvas. “Guernica, Picasso had taken on the grisaille of mourning and grief, and the peculiarly powerful tenor of Spanish religious ritual,” researcher Gijs van Hensbergen writes. (more…)
Cory Arcangel commemorates Tony Conrad with the launch of a website dedicated to Music and the Mind of the World, a long-running project Conrad took on that involved recording every encounter the artist had with a piano. Arcangel has since digitized and uploaded the artist’s recordings to a website where each recording can be browsed and explored. “Tony once said to me that ‘life is too rich to finish everything,'” Arcangel writes in Art News. For Tony, this was true. Like a smokestack burning off excess fuel—Tony’s former students used to say he had “genius to burn”—he had an army of ideas, some finished, some in progress, some new, some old, all ready to go, on and on, seemingly never ending. (more…)
Las Vegas is inching towards the construction of a major art museum, with space targeted downtown in the city’s Symphony Park, and financial commitments of up to $2 million. The project has long been talked about in the city, with previous attempts failing to reach fruition. (more…)
The Documenta 14 artist list has been published this week on the exhibition website, charting the participating artists in both Kassel and Athens. The exhibition opens this week in Athens, with the Kassel edition set to open its doors in June. (more…)
Tunisia is setting up its a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale next month, the first time since 1958, where it will issue “travel documents” to visitors, turning each holder into an “immigrant” of sorts. “The Tunisian pavilion is forgoing the cloak of nationalism in favor of a more global and humanistic narrative. What is fascinating is that this is the only place and time where people can move freely from nation to nation,” says Lina Lazaar, who curated the project. (more…)
Egypt has begun pushing to continue construction and renovation projects on a number of national museums and institutions, but funding remains challenging, the Art Newspaper reports. “The challenge is to find funding,” says Mahrous Said, director of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. “When we have the funds, we will finish our permanent exhibition within two or three years.” (more…)
U.S. federal court will allow a lawsuit proceed against Germany over a a group of Nazi-looted art works, Reuters reports. “This is a dispute that was already resolved on the merits in Germany, and it doesn’t belong in a U.S. court,” Germany’s attorney, Jonathan Freiman, argued in response. (more…)
Riga, Latvia will get its first contemporary art biennial next year, the Art Newspaper reports, with curator Katerina Gregos helming the artist selection. Gregos previously organized the Belgian pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale. “We have selected a curator who is attuned to the debates around the proliferation of biennial culture, and counteracts this by shaping a model that will take the interests of artists and artistic production as the first priority,” says biennial founder Agniya Mirgorodskaya. (more…)
Hauser & Wirth has announced its representation of artist Lorna Simpson, who leaves Salon 94 to join the gallery. “We are honored and delighted to welcome Lorna Simpson into the gallery’s family,” Hauser & Wirth partner Marc Payot said in a statement. “Her rigor, her passion, and her incredible sensitivity produce not only extraordinary art but also an invitation to engage in a dialogue about identity that we are eager to share.” (more…)
A €700,000 Rodin sculpture has been discovered in a furniture storage unit in Biarritz. The piece, a preparatory work for the artist’s work I am beautiful has caught local auction houses and dealers by surprise. “This is a moment that will remain engraved in my memory and career,” says Patrice Carrère, the auctioneer and head of the Gestas & Carrère auction house, who make the discovery. “My first thought was: ‘No it is not true, it is not possible! The plaster has traces of the master’s fingerprints and nails.” (more…)
Adam Szymczyk, curator for the soon to open Documenta 14, is interviewed in Artforum this month, as he reviews his work for the exhibition, and his views on the current state of world politics and art, framed through the exhibition’s location in Athens. “The other day I was talking to someone about their first visit to Athens, and they said, ‘What amazed me most was the way the ruins of the Parthenon are actually right in the middle of this huge city, that they’re not on the outskirts—the city’s built around this ruin and this rock.'” he says. “It’s a massive fragment, a completely broken thing that constitutes a sort of symbolic beginning, on the rock of the Acropolis, around which the city sprawls.” (more…)
Jack Whitten, Black Monolith X, Birth of Muhammad Ali (2016), images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Artist Jack Whitten has opened an exhibition of new work in New York this spring at Hauser & Wirth, his first show with the gallery since joining its roster last year. Presenting pieces from the last two years of practice, Whitten’s work, on view at the gallery’s temporary 22nd Street location, continues his exploration of the canvas as a site for engagement with the material consistency and visual expressivity of paint in a manner that often eludes easy classification as abstraction or minimalist technique.
The Centre Pompidou has been shuttered for the past several days, following a walk-out by guards in protest over law changes in France that bill them as civil service employees. “Due to a strike against the implementation of a law aiming to reform the recruitment process of employees, we regret to inform you that the Centre Pompidou will not be open to the public today,” the museum said in a statement on Saturday. (more…)
The New York Times takes a look inside the art classes at San Quentin State Prison, where inmates take advantage of the program to create murals and other projects as they serve out their sentences. “A lot of guys in prison don’t have a sense of self-worth,” says inmate Scott McKinstry. “It helps you grow as a human being to say ‘Hey, I can do something.’” (more…)
The New York Times reports on Thomas Campbell’s departure from The Met, labeling one of the reasons for his departure a gradual erosion of respect for his leadership caused by a series of decisions and internal problems. Listed among them is a relationship between Campbell and a female member of the institution’s digital department, which caused power struggles and resulted in the departure of its chief officer, Erin Coburn, in 2012. (more…)
Christie’s has announced that it will offer a selection of works from the Emily and Jerry Spiegel collection for its May sales in New York. Highlights include a Christopher Wool piece estimated at $20 million. “The Collection of Emily and Jerry Spiegel is one of the great examples of visionary collecting in Post-War America,” says Alex Rotter, the auction house’s Post-War department chair. “They successfully combined threads of Pop, Minimalism and photography with cutting edge contemporary to form a collection that conveyed a deep representation of post-war art.” (more…)
Joe Bradley, Out Joy (2017), via Art Observed
Currently on at Gagosian Beverly Hills, artist Joe Bradley is presenting a body of new works, continuing the artist’s complex and occasionally irreverent visual language through a wide range of formats and materials. Marking the gallery’s most recent entry in its annual Oscars Weekend exhibition series, the exhibition is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery in Los Angeles, a fitting introduction to his work that draws widely from his recent output.
Joe Bradley, Eric’s Hair (Installation View), via Art Observed
James Rosenquist, via Art Observed
James Rosenquist, one of the foremost voices in the landscape of American Pop Art, has passed away at the age of 83 after a long illness. Rosenquist’s work, known for its dizzying movements and explosive combinations of forms, marked him as a stand-out in the Pop discourse, balancing his interest in the language of advertising and marketing with a studied awareness of the art historical. His innovative and often surreal juxtaposition of images pioneered new approaches to his medium during the late 1960’s, and would continue to evolve over the next several decades. (more…)
Ryan McGinley, Dash (Manhattan Bridge) (2000), via Team Gallery
Over nearly two decades, photographer Ryan McGinley has explored the deep emotional character and vivid energy of American youth, capturing its subcultures, heroes and creative communities in moments of joy and exuberance, desire and rebellion. This long engagement with the broad cultural underground of the United States has seen the artist build a striking and diverse oeuvre, one which receives a well-deserved reflection in the artist’s most recent show at Team Gallery, Early, a survey of the artist’s work between 1999 and 2003.
Ryan McGinley, Early (Installation View), via Team Gallery
A ruling by a French court this week has stipulated that artist’s resale rights must be paid by sellers, responding to recent moves by Christie’s asking buyers to pay these fees. “If everyone follows the law and Christie’s decides not to, it obviously gives the company an unfair advantage in attracting collectors,” says Patrick Bongers of Galerie Carré. (more…)
Artists Shen Jingdong and Cao Zhiwen were involved in a confrontation with Beijing police this week, after authorities moved in to demolish their residence and studio. Government officials claimed the building had taken part in illegal construction. (more…)