Christie’s has announced another major work for its May Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale in New York, Cy Twombly’s Leda and the Swan, which carries an estimate of $35 million to $55 million, and could conceivably break the artist’s auction record of $70.5 million.  “Given its tremendous importance within the context of both Twombly’s oeuvre and the canon of postwar art, we are honored to have the opportunity to offer this work to the market after nearly 30 clandestine years,” says Koji Inoue, the International Director for the auction house’s contemporary department. (more…)

Artist Robert Morris is profiled in the New York Times this month, as the artist prepares a show of new work at Castelli Gallery in New York.  The artist reflects on the course of his career, and what might constitute his “late style.”  “Edward Said thought he saw some old artists letting go and daring to do what they would not have when younger,” he says.  “Who can say? But I don’t think I see art differently now than I did years ago. As for insights into the human condition, I think I am the same pessimist I always was.” (more…)

Danish collective Superflex has been tapped for as the next artist for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall commission project, set to be unveiled in October.  The collective has worked at a unique juncture of modern culture, politics and surrealist interruptions of spatial logic.   (more…)

Luc Tuymans, K (2017), via David Zwirner

Continuing the globe-hopping market events of March this year, collectors, galleries and artists will touch down in Hong Kong for the fifth edition of Art Basel’s fair event in the city, bringing 242 galleries from 34 countries around the globe to the annual sales event.  Marking a strong focus on Asian galleries and artists this year (at least half of the exhibiting galleries are based on the continent), the fair may trace a shift away from globalized networks and towards strengthening national and regional markets.

Vanderlei Lopes, EEDDM II, via Athena Contemporanea (more…)

London’s National Gallery was evacuated this past week, after the a man attacked a Thomas Gainsborough painting with a screwdriver.  “The damage is limited to two long scratches which have penetrated the paint layers but not the supporting canvas,” a spokeswoman for the gallery said. “The painting was removed from display and examined by the gallery’s conservators, who are now assessing next steps.” (more…)

Vanity Fair has a lengthy piece on the story behind the departure of Thomas Campbell from The Met, documenting the frequent internal conflicts and changes in focus that ultimately compounded the struggles the museum has faced in recent years, and ultimately contributed to Campbell’s departure.  Of particular note is the case of the Leonard Lauder collection, and the agreements made between the museum and Lauder in order to secure the works.  “It’s one thing to accept such a collection. It’s another thing to accept that you’re going to have to increase the space of exhibition, given such treasures,” says Robert Storr, a professor at the Yale School of Art and former MoMA Curator.  “What makes a vital collection over long periods of time is not to have chapels to particular art, much less particular collections.” (more…)

The Financial Times has a piece on Chinese collector Yan Lugen, documenting his ongoing support of Chinese contemporary art, including funds for the country’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, and his occasionally controversial position among the country’s arts communities.  “He’s very charming, engaging — but frankly, he doesn’t really seem to know what he’s doing,” the article quotes from one Hong Kong adviser. (more…)

Commemorating the anniversary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, the institution has partnered with Google to create a three-dimensional tour of the museum that presents information on the works stolen and the history of the theft.   (more…)

Raul de Nieves, via Art Observed

It’s been a long time coming for this year’s Whitney Biennial, an exhibition that has sat on pause for several years as the institution prepared for its move downtown, and got comfortable in its new space in the Meatpacking District.  Opening its first Biennial since 2014, the stage has been set for a particularly timely moment of reflection on both America and its art communities at a time when the national identity has rarely been so fiercely contested and examined.

Ajay Kurian, Childermass (2017), via Art Observed

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Wolfgang Tillmans, paper drop (star) (2006) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

For the past several years, Wolfgang Tillmans has worked at the forefront of contemporary artistic practice, moving relentlessly through a series of photography projects, videos, performances and other modes of operation that have established his work as a fitting reflection of modernity, exploring both cultural and natural phenomena as inextricably linked.  For his new exhibition at the Tate Modern, Tillmans continues his movement forward, using his work over the past decade as context to explore the world around us today.

Wolfgang Tillmans, (title?) FRAGILE 1983-1989, Arena Homme+, n°44 (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

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Hilton Als is featured in Interview Magazine this month, discussing the Alice Neel survey exhibition he organized at David Zwirner.  “It’s very hard to find artists in the history of western art who don’t make portraiture ideological in some way,” he says.  “I really felt that she worked with people, collaborated with them in ways that I feel I understand. I wanted to talk to her through her work at some point in my life. I didn’t know when that would happen, and I’m grateful to David [Zwirner] for making it possible.” (more…)

President Trump has issued a proposed budget this week which would eliminate funding for the N.E.A. and N.E.H., stoking fears over his administrations attempts to end funding for the arts.  “We are greatly saddened to learn of this proposal for elimination, as N.E.H. has made significant contributions to the public good,” says William D. Adams, chairman of the humanities endowment, in a statement. (more…)

The Art Newspaper puts a spotlight on The Mastaba this week, Christo’s over 40-year ongoing project seeking to build a massive structure made from 410,000 multi-colored aluminum barrels in the desert of the U.A.E.  “My projects are about the real things,” he says, “The real wind. The real wet. The real dry. The real things. Not photographs. I don’t know how to use a computer. Not flat surface. Not propaganda. But the real things.” (more…)

W Magazine interviews Scott Rothkopf, Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks this week, as the curators finally open their iteration of the Whitney Biennial, a show that has earned almost universal praise for its confrontation of social and political conflicts around the nation.  “For those people who expect that this show will be political at the expense of moments of great beauty, they’re going to be surprised,” Rothkopf says. (more…)

Rhizome has announced the artist list for the 2017 edition of its annual Seven on Seven conference, which pairs artists alongside developers and tech innovators to create new projects and programs.  This year, the event will feature net art pioneer Olia Lialina, alongside Constant Dullaart, DIS, and more.  “Every year with Seven on Seven, there’s this tension between having a grouping that stands together as a coherent whole and making sure each pair is right unto itself,” Rhizome artistic director Michael Connor says. (more…)

Kerry James Marshall is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as the artist’s touring retrospective Mastry opens at MoCA in Los Angeles.  “My ambition was never to make a lot of money,” Marshall says. “It wasn’t to travel around the world. I was really just struggling to make the best pictures I could make.” (more…)

Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty has been named a “state work of art” by the Utah House and Senate, “an acknowledgment of the contemporary land art that is so unique in our state,” according to Rep. Becky Edwards, R-North Salt Lake.  The work was honored alongside a series of ancient pieces of rock art spread around the Great Salt Lake area.   (more…)

Artist Julian Opie is profiled in Newsweek this week, as the artist prepares for a major exhibition in China at Shanghai’s new Fosun Foundation exhibition space.    “I’ve thought a bit about locality,” Opie says, “because making a connection with the viewer is key. But if I felt that some element of the work would only be understood by a few, it would seem like a failure to me.” (more…)

The Versailles Palace art exhibitions are shifting focus this summer, following the controversy over Anish Kapoor’s work in 2015.  The organization will now embark on a group show approach opening this fall, and curated by Alfred Pacquement, former director at Paris’s Musee d’Art Moderne. (more…)

Gabriel Orozco, installation view, Kurimanzutto, 2017, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Gabriel Orozco’s new solo presentation takes place in Galeria Kurimanzutto, in San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico DF. The show, which opened last month in conjunction with Zona Maco 2017, sees Orozco exploring a unique two-part exhibition that draws attention to Mexico’s core contemporary culture embedded in the everyday: its Oxxo tiendas, with their cheap consumer goods massively distributed across the country. These retail stores satisfy the daily needs of millions of Mexicans with sodas, snacks, cigarettes, toilet paper, shampoo, condoms, etc… Over the past 40 years, the Oxxo chain, subsidiary of the multinational multi-billion dollar company Femsa, has expanded to over 14,000 locations.

Gabriel Orozco, installation view,  Kurimanzutto, 2017, via Art Observed

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Francis Picabia, The Adoration of the Calf (1941-42), via Art Observed

Taking on the endlessly inventive and ever-shifting formal abilities of artist Francis Picabia, MoMA’s current survey dedicated to the painter (and the first of its kind in the United States) has earned almost ceaseless praise, diving deep into the fluid and challenging series paintings, poems, published works, performances and films of one of French surrealisms landmark voices.  Spread across the gallery’s sixth floor exhibition space, Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction (which closes at the end of the week), serves as both a striking introduction and an impressively deep elaboration on the artist’s body of work.  (more…)

The New York Post reports that while The Met was still struggling with budget issues, it was paying out sizable pay raises and bonuses to its top executives.  The piece cites several examples, including a $300,000 bonus for President Daniel Weiss after being on the job only six months. (more…)

Theaster Gates is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist opens an exhibition of work at the National Gallery of Art in D.C.  “It’s a super-interesting moment to be at the National Gallery, where the question of what it means to be an American, and what kind of American are you, has a new kind of resonance,” he says. (more…)

A.I. Friedman, an 80-year-old art supply store on West 18th Street is the next shop in a wave of art supply stores to go under in the current market situation, as increasingly high numbers of sales move to large retailers like Blick or online sellers like Amazon, and demand also seems to dwindle.  “The average freshman art student at Parsons and Pratt is buying less than they used to,” says Blick CEO Bob Buchsbaum. (more…)