Benjamin Genocchio, the newly minted head of the Armory Show, is interviewed by Art News this week, discussing his views on art fairs, and his vision for the fair moving forward.  “What does it mean to be an art fair in 2016?” Genocchio says. “Don’t you think they’re all so stale? They’re all so stale and there is very little excitement. And I don’t know why that is, but come on, we should be able to make it more exciting.” (more…)

The Smithsonian has announced its reception of an important David Smith sculpture, Agricola IV from 1952, a work from one of the artist’s most renowned series.  “‘Agricola IV’ is a transformative acquisition, one that anchors the story of sculpture in America and shows how Smith changed the arc of visual expression in three -dimensions in the 20th century,” Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, said. (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports on the strange goings-on behind the $37 million sale of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s The Field Next to the Other Road (1981) at Christie’s this year.  The work was sold by Tony Shafrazi, but documents show that he still owned the work two months later, raising speculation that the buyer backed out.  “We can confirm the lot was sold at auction,” said a spokeswoman for Christie’s.

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George Baselitz, Untitled (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Intertwining his own personal artistic process with distinct threads of historical reference, wry humor and disparate aesthetic threads, Georg Baselitz is currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s 980 Madison space for a small exhibition of new works, positioning the artist’s drawings and watercolors as a “visitation,” as the artist terms it, by Japanese ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai.

Georg Baselitz, Visit from Hokuskai (Installation View)

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Current Editor-In-Chief of Artnet News, Benjamin Genocchio, has been announced as the successor to Noah Horowitz at the Armory Show.  “Unfortunately, the price of success is opportunity,” Genocchio says, which first reported the story. “This is an opportunity that was too good to pass up.” (more…)

Joseph Kosuth is interviewed in the WSJ this week, as the artist reflects on his work and his current show at Sean Kelly Gallery.  “If you begin with the presumption that artists work with meaning, not with forms and colors, you get a whole other approach for seeing art,” he says. “The idea was to get rid of the aura around the work of art. It’s a burden, and we don’t need it.” (more…)

A long-standing conflict between the Prado and the Patrimonio Nacional in Madrid over the ownership of some of the Spanish nation’s most impressive holdings, including Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, has been resolved.  “Peace reigns,” says Prado board president José Pedro Pérez-Llorca. “No it’s stronger than that. You can say it’s just like a love affair.” (more…)

New York City Schools’ $23 million plan to boost arts instruction has resulted in 22,000 children being exposed to the arts, the city announced today.  New York’s increased emphasis on arts has placed 2,568 teachers specialized in arts education across its 1,800 public schools.  “It really shows we really brought the arts back in a very serious way,”says Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. (more…)

Artist collaborative Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe have designed a limited edition cover for magazine Man of the World, featuring their signature kaleidoscopic collage work drawing from vintage magazines and publications.  The pair are also featured with an interview in the publication. (more…)

Mark Manders, Room with Unfired Clay Figures (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

There’s a distinct narrative arc running throughout the work of Mark Manders, albeit one that’s noticeably obtuse.  Utilizing familiar materials, forms and techniques throughout his work, the artist transposes materials into a conversation with architectural space and time, often winding explorations of the art historical and explorations of human affect into his enigmatic sculptures and installations.  For the artist’s new exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar, the artist returns to his notion of “self-portrait as building,” weaving his personal histories and aesthetic interests into a sprawling installation and series of sculptures that poses challenging questions on the body, force, and art practice in general.

Mark Manders, Dry Figure on Chair (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed (more…)

Joseph Kosuth, Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology (Installation View), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

A preeminent member of the pioneering group of conceptual practitioners that sought to dissolve art making from declarations of objective emotion or feeling, Joseph Kosuth remains a marker stone for the reach and potential for Conceptual Art, still using his work to scrutinize the limits and definitions of contextual meaning, often removed from primarily aesthetic concerns, at age 70.  Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology strikes the viewer as a large-scale installation orchestrated by Kosuth at Sean Kelly Gallery, where the artist, who splits his time between New York and London, is showing his first exhibition since 2011. (more…)

James Turrell’s Meeting, one of MoMA PS1‘s permanent installations, will reopen this summer, Klaus Biesenbach announced this week.  The reopening after an extensive renovation will ring in the 40th anniversary of the opening of PS1.   (more…)

Critic Adrian Searle has released his list of 2015’s best shows, topped by the Whitney’s triumphant reopening exhibition America is Hard to See, noting the exhibition’s tasteful use of its museum archives and curatorial muscle.  “There is a lesson here for Tate Britain, which this year lost and gained a director. With its relentless historical timeline, the display of Tate’s permanent collection – and particularly of art since 1900 – is more than hard to see, let alone look at.” he writes. “Much remains in storage. The enormous resources of the gallery’s collection could be used to tell multiple stories, just as the Whitney is now able to do. This was both my museum – and my show – of the year.” (more…)

About 5% of Sotheby’s employees have taken the auction house up on its buyout offer, according to records filed with the SEC Monday, the NYT reports.  The buyout was part of an effort by the company to “achieve both the efficiencies from which our organization would benefit, as well as create enhanced professional development and leadership opportunities for those who will steer Sotheby’s into the future,” according to CEO Tad Smith. (more…)

Rudolf Stingel (Installation View), Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London

Italian artist Rudolf Stingel takes over both of Sadie Coles HQ’s locations in London this month, bringing with him a typically enigmatic body of work that combines the artist’s interests in the role, transformation and translation of the painted image, taken in conjunction with its relation to photographic context, time and the natural world. (more…)

Photographer Mitchel Gray has filed a lawsuit against Jeff Koons in Federal Court this week, alleging that the artist used one of this photographs from a Gordon’s Gin advertisment for the work I Could Go For Something Gordon’s without permission or compensation.  The work would later sell for $2.04 million at Phillips.  “We are aware of the allegations and are confident that Phillips has no liability in this matter,” an auction house spokesperson said. (more…)

Artist Ed Ruscha has donated a collection of 18 new print works to the collection of the Tate Modern, and has promised to continue donating works from new series moving forward. “This is a rare and generous commitment, not to mention a wonderful Christmas present to the whole nation,” says the Tate’s Nicholas Serota. “These works on paper will be a wonderful resource for future exhbitions here in the UK.” (more…)

The Financial Times looks at the increasing number of private, collector-operated museums worldwide, and the appeal for collectors to have dedicated space to show their work. “If I didn’t have the museum, a lot of artists probably wouldn’t be interested [in selling to me]. They wouldn’t give me their best pieces,” says collector Harald Falckenberg. “This way I’m not buying them for myself. I don’t feel I really own them. In any case I have a certain responsibility to Germany.” (more…)

Donald Judd, Untitled (1979), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Over the course of his sculpting career, Cor-ten steel remained a consistent source of inspiration for Donald Judd, its variance in texture, hue and responsiveness to light offering the artist a malleable yet solid framework to continue his investigations in spatial interaction, light and time throughout his pieces.   Taking this material fascination as its starting point, David Zwirner is presenting a series of pieces from across the artist’s career, joined together by his use of Cor-ten, and underscoring the metal’s complementary characteristics when applied towards Judd’s aesthetic project. (more…)

London’s Old Masters auctions marked a continued struggle in the market this week, as Christie’s failed to meet its low estimate of £12.7m, while Sotheby’s just barely met estimate at £8m, with numerous passed lots in both sales. (more…)

Following a string of performances in collaboration with Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö, including one where he watched every film he acted in over the course of his career in succession, actor Shia LeBeouf sits down with The Guardian this week to discuss his vision, and his interest in performance art. “Why does a goat jump?” says LaBeouf. “There’s an animalistic urge to express love that I can’t express in film. I felt limited after coming out of Transformers. Or all the stuff I’d done with Steven Spielberg, not to pooh-pooh those films, but you have no creative control.” (more…)

Thomas J. Lax, an associate curator in the Department of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art, sits down this week with Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, to discuss the impact and influence of artist David Hammons, as well as Finklepearl’s work with the artist on Outside Insight, a show Hammons and Finklepearl organized at the Clocktower Gallery. “I’m not sure what image people have of David, but he’s incredibly hardworking, and he’s a perfectionist; sometimes it seems like he wants to hide the labor,” Finklepearl says. “His process is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite improvisational.” (more…)

The Center for Persecuted Art, an institution focusing on works labeled “degenerate art” by the Nazi Party, among them Emil Nolde and Kurt Schwitters, opened this week inside the Kunstmuseum Solingen. Much of the work still bears markings from Nazi handling, including red marks and tags. (more…)

The New York Times reports on a Caravaggio painting, stolen in 1969, which is back on view as a multi-layer digital copy. Nativity With St. Francis and St. Lawrence was unveiled this weekend in the Palermo oratory it was originally stolen from. The duplication was made primarily using past slide photographs and some plate-glass negatives, making the task all the more impressive. (more…)