Robert Longo, Bullet Hole in Window (Detail), All Images courtesy Galerie Thaddeus Ropac

Now through May 22nd, 2016, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris is hosting Luminous Discontent, an exhibition of new work by American artist Robert Longo. Spanning three floors of the gallery’s Marais exhibition space, Longo is presenting a series of large-scale charcoal drawings and sculpture, constructed by the artist specifically for this space. This new work follows from Longo’s production of large-scale monochromatic, photorealist compositions, engaging with historical and political themes in new ways. (more…)

Elmgreen & Dragset, Van Gogh’s Ear (2016), Courtesy of the artists and K11 Art Foundation, Galerie Perrotin, Galleria Massimo de Carlo and Victoria Miro  Gallery Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY

This month, the Public Art Fund unveiled Van Gogh’s Ear, the organization’s ambitious collaboration with artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset.  Presented to the public on a fittingly drizzly wet April morning (considering the sculpture’s subject matter), the completely drained pool recalls those of 1950’s Los Angeles.   The impressive 354-inch high sculpture, designed and crafted by the duo in the form of an ear, makes explicit reference to Van Gogh, whose dismembered ear has been the subject of various speculations in art history, stands on the hectic corner of 5th avenue, showing off its intricately detailed aqua blue interior, stainless steel ladder, glowing lights and accompanying diving board.  (more…)

The New York Times interviews Adam Lindemann after the past week’s auctions, where he sold the record-setting Jean-Michel Basquiat lot at Christie’s, and explores the collector’s perspectives on bidding and winning lots.  “The question is, do you want to be the lead in a smaller movie,” he says, likening sales to acting, “or do you want to be in a film with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio?  If you know that you can deliver, you do the smaller movie, where you’re the lead and the movie is about you.” (more…)

Collector Steve Tisch is the subject of a New York Times profile, as the movie producer and Loews stakeholder offers the paper a tour of the small-scale museum he built to show his collection.  “The building is dramatic,” he says, “but it’s not pretentious and it’s not overwhelming.  I’m not Charles Foster Kane, and this isn’t Xanadu. Nobody took away my sled.” (more…)

The New Yorker looks at the recent wave of major museum expansions and construction, and notes the trend towards decreasing space for physical art, while spaces for performance, film screenings and talks have expanded.  The article notes Tate Modern director Frances Morris’s vision of the modern museum moving “from being a museum that people come to and look at, spend time in, to a museum that opens its doors to collaboration, conversation, and participation.” (more…)

Cheyenne Westphal, one of Sotheby’s top sellers and a “secret weapon” according to Harper’s Bazaar, will leave the auction house to chair Phillips.  “We are delighted that Cheyenne has agreed to join Phillips,” says current chair and CEO Edward Dolman. (more…)

Daniel Buren has installed a massive striped work on the outer facade of Paris’s Fondation Luis Vuitton, using his signature style to emphasize Frank Gehry’s unique architecture.  (more…)

Tom Sachs, Waiting Arbor (2014), via Art Observed

For the first time in the museum’s history, an artist other than Isamu Noguchi will present work for the Noguchi Museum, as Tom Sachs brings his Tea Ceremony installation to the museum for its 30th Anniversary.  Sachs, who previously worked on other sprawling, conceptually-unified installation projects like Space Program 2.0: MARS, and Hello Kitty Nativity, here turns his interests towards chanoyu, the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.  Complete with a tea house, tools, and a garden, the exhibit features all the pieces necessary for the ceremony, each time realized through Sachs’s unique formal perspective.  Among the items incorporated within the installation include a bronze bonsai tree made by wielding together over 3,600 individual parts, a full koi pond complete with living orange and gray fish, wooden and metal gates, a full tea house, and many other structures made of everyday objects.

Tom Sachs, Pond Berm (2016), via Art Observed

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David Hammons, Untitled (2014), via Art Observed

When it was announced that Mnuchin Gallery would host an exhibition of artist David Hammons’s work this year, anticipation was understandably high.  The reclusive artist’s work is rarely given this expansive stage for historical examination and the contextual impact of his work.  Spread out across the gallery’s two-floor townhouse exhibition space, Five Decades examines just that, Hammons’s expansive and formally elusive career working at a unique juncture of the avant-garde. (more…)

Jessi Reaves, Muscle Chair (Laying down to talk) (2016), via Art Observed

Artist Jessi Reaves takes Bridget Donahue Gallery into the summer months with her show of new work, transposing the styles and forms of high design into the framework of fine art, and examining the interplay of languages that results.  Having opened in early April, the exhibition, comprised of vividly executed furniture, shelving and cabinets, “suitable for use,” as the press release states, sees Reaves pushing her chosen forms towards new territories, substituting hard angles and flat planes for loping, curving lines, or inverting the often concealed material elements of each form. (more…)

Online auction houses Paddle 8 and Auctionata are merging to form a single online auction company, the New York Times reports.  “We will be able to pick up an object and sell it quicker than anyone else in the world,” says Auctionata exec Alexander Zacke. (more…)

The Modigliani Sells, via Art Observed

After a long week of sales that has seen both ups and downs for the two main auction houses, Christie’s has concluded its week with a consistently solid Impressionist and Modern sale, with 7 of the 54 lots at auction going unsold for a final tally of $141,532,000.   The auction house saw its momentary stumbles over the course of the sale, with several pieces falling well below estimate, and a few high-profile lots going unsold.  Even so, Christie’s managed to keep the bids moving, and keep works selling, a point that surely is not lost on those watching Sotheby’s occasionally disheartening sale earlier this week. (more…)

The Guardian reports on Yves Klein’s years working as a picture framer in London, and the formative influence this work had on his practice, particularly in his work with pure pigments, gesso and gold leaf.  “To earn my living, I worked illegally for about a year in the Old Brompton Road frame shop of Robert Savage, a friend of my father,” Klein wrote of his time in the shop.  “It was there, assisting in the preparation of size, colors, varnish, of gilt bases, that I became familiar with the material, with handling it ‘in bulk’.” (more…)

The art collection of the former Shah of Iran will travel to Berlin, the first time the collection, which includes masterworks by Joan Miró, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock, among others, is shown outside the country since 1979.  “A collection unique for its composition and history will be shown for says Hermann Parzinger, president of The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which manages most of Berlin’s state museums.

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The Warhol Museum has purchased one of Andy Warhol’s rare Paint by Numbers works, a piece that has long eluded the museum’s collection.  “That was in my top three list, along with a 40 by 40 ‘Marilyn’ and an early comic book painting,” Eric Shiner, the museum’s director, told the NYT. (more…)

An engineer who plummeted through a ceiling at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has won a $7.25 million settlement from the institution.  “It was the most terrifying moment of his life,” attorney Larry Bendesky told CBS Philadelphia. “It’s a more terrifying moment than most of us would ever be able to come to grips with.”  (more…)

The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced for 2016, The Guardian reports, counting Anthea Hamilton, Michael Dean, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde among those who will show at the annual Turner Prize exhibition in competition for the £25,000 prize. (more…)

UCLA is in the late stages of planning for a $31 million expansion to its arts school, funded in large part by dealer Margo Leavin.  “Artists are the backbone of the community, so I wanted it to be something that would have a real impact on that,” Leavin said of her donation. (more…)

The BBC has a profile on Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa, who purchased over $98 million in art this week from both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, including the record-setting Jean-Michel Basquiat.  “Regardless of its condition or sales value, I was driven by the responsibility to acknowledge great art and the need to pass on not only the artwork itself, but also the knowledge of the artist’s culture and his way of life to future generations,” he said of the purchase. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the increased focus on African Contemporary art, including the recently concluded 1:54 Art Fair in New York.  “For years we didn’t have many galleries, but artists were still making work that was brave and experimental—and now everyone can see that,” says Azu Nwagbogu, founder of LagosPhoto in Nigeria. (more…)

Mike Cooter, MacGuffin: some archetypes towards a definition (2016)

Swiss Institute’s Fade In: Int. Art Gallery-Day is a group exhibition featuring an ambitious array of contemporary artists, including Cindy Sherman, Allan McCollum, Christian Marclay, Dora Budor and Jamian Juliano-Villani, interpreting the ubiquitous relationship of moving images to the field of visual art. Comprised mostly of commissioned works, the exhibition transforms the gallery’s spacious interior into a vigorous stage, expanding outwards from the gallery entrance towards a deep corner of the storage room on the lower level. (more…)

Francois Morellet, via Art Newspaper

François Morellet, the pioneering French artist who explored interrelations of optical phenomena, light, space and performance, has passed away at the age of 90.   (more…)

Jeff Koons has unveiled a collaborative technology project with Google, a smart phone case that plays excerpts from Swan Lake, and transmits new graphics to the user’s phone each day.  “I’ve always enjoyed ballet,” Koons says. “I think that dance really captures nature and culture together. You have the biological aspect between people, movement, and bodies, and at the same time you are completely referencing also the classical.” (more…)

Ugo Rondinone has installed a massive, $3.5 million sculptural work in the Nevada desert.  “Seven Magic Mountains elicits continuities and solidarities between the artificial and the natural, between human and nature. What centers this amalgam of contradictions is the spiritual aspiration; one that bruises, elevates and transcends,” said Rondinone.   (more…)