Bloomberg looks at the movement of Christopher Wool’s Apocalypse Now over the past years, tracing a history of owners that include François Pinault before selling last year for an astounding $26.4 million to a still unknown buyer.  The story is an interesting look at the art market’s occasionally rapid escalations in price due to sudden demand, and the behind the scenes gossip that often accompanies the auction sale of iconic works. (more…)

Roger Hiorns, Untitled (2014), all images courtesy Luhring Augustine

On view at Luhring Augustine is the first New York solo exhibition from London-based artist Roger Hiorns, comprised of a series of varied installations and objects produced in 2013 and 2014. The works will remain on view through October 18th.

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Robert Gober, Untitled (2003-2005), via Art Observed

The long-awaited MoMA retrospective for Robert Gober begins in fitting fashiom. An immense, stripped-bare wall runs the length of the museum’s second floor outcropping, blocking off any view of the expansive installations inside, and capped with a single work near the entrance to the exhibition, the artist’s X-Pipe Playpen.  The viewer never realizes, passing through the exhibition, that at one point they have found themselves on the inside of this imposing structure, staring at the camouflaged wallpaper and sink sculptures that define the artist’s ouvre.  Ominous and surreal, the structure works perfectly in conjunction with the works on view, and offers a concise summary of the exhibition as a whole: a look at the full length of the artist’s prolific career, from his early paintings and sinks to his most demanding, complex environments, constantly examining and readdressing his emotionally potent take on abstraction. (more…)

Jason Rhoades, The Grand Machine/THEAREOLA (2002), via Henry Murpy for Art Observed

On view at David Zwirner in New York is an exhibition of works from Jason Rhoades’s PeaRoeFoam project, which originally debuted at the gallery in 2002.  PeaRoeFoam is considered a key work in Rhoades’ career, but it has not been exhibited comprehensively (including all three parts of the trilogy) until now.

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Marina Abramovic publicly reached out to director Lars Von Trier this week, telling the director that she wishes to work with him on an upcoming project.  “You really bring the actors on the edge of complete nervous breakdowns,” she says. “Because I am a performance artist, I understand very well what you are doing.”  (more…)

Steven Cohen is placing King Oliver, a $30 Million painting by Franz Kline, up for sale this November at Christie’s in New York, Bloomberg reports.  “It’s got scale and bravado,” said Brett Gorvy, Christie’s chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art. “In today’s masterpiece-driven market, this is exactly the type of language that speaks to our global buyers.” (more…)

Robert Wilson, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, via BAM

Shakespeare’s sonnets were never intended as a theatrical work, a set of poems that extend the Bard’s legendary repertoire beyond a cache of plays that already constitutes a sizable portion of the western theatrical canon.  But that doesn’t seem to have stopped Robert Wilson, who has revived Shakespeare’s Iambic Pentameter for his production currently showing at Brooklyn Academy of Music. (more…)

Artist and architect Maya Lin has been awarded the Gish Prize, in recognition of her “outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”  The $300,000 first prize will be given on November 12th at MoMA. (more…)

The Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Studio in Greenwich Village, the arts studio and salon that once served as the original home of the Whitney Museum, has been named a National Treasure by the National Trust, calling it “the cradle of the modern American art movement.” (more…)

The New York Times takes a look inside the Stockholm apartment of artist Carsten Höller, where he breeds and keeps a collection of rare birds.  “They look quite beautiful when they are older,” Höller says. “But in the beginning, they look like aliens.” (more…)

Cory Arcangel, Asshole 2 / Lakes (2014), via Team

Given Cory Arcangel’s past exhibition tendencies, the work on view at the artist’s newest Team Gallery solo exhibition downtown is something of a concise affair.  Gone are the artist’s abstracted consumer objects, video game hacks and gradient paintings, substituted for a series of simple flat-panel televisions, each bearing a pixelated digital image, and offset by a deep red carpeting that runs along the gallery’s floor.  On-screen, the smiling faces of Hilary Clinton (or rather, Hilary Clinton’s book jacket), Jay-Z and P. Diddy, among others, stare out of the viewer, as a delicately waving digital effect below them gives the impression of a liquid reflection. (more…)

Gabriel Orozco, Inner Cut: Black Dagger (2014), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Gabriel Orozco seems to take pleasure in his own elusiveness.  His work is constantly exploring possibilities of space and time, flow and movement as factors just as important to his method of production as the objects themselves.  Simple actions, minimal manipulations and frequently employed found objects flow in and out of view, frequently alternating emphasis with the material remainders of the work’s original origins and uses.

Gabriel Orozco, One is Many (2014), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed (more…)

Giuseppe Penone, Albero porta—cedro / Door Tree—Cedar (2012), © Giuseppe Penone. Courtesy Archivio Giuseppe Penone. Photography by Josh White/JWPictures.com

In his current show Ramificazioni del Pensiero / Branches of Thought, on view at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills, Giuseppe Penone continues his exploration into the heart of the natural materials that compose his work. Focusing on the interplay between man and nature, Penone draws human elements out of the wood and marble he sculpts, obviating an undercurrent of commonality between the human figure and the stoic forms of tree and stone. (more…)

Mike Bouchet, Cloud Nymph (reading) (2014), via Peres Projects

The images of Mike Bouchet have long identified with notions of the cinematic.  Whether it’s the artist’s simple paintings executed with his own home-brewed adaptation of Diet Coke, or his ongoing execution of celebrity-inspired jacuzzis, concepts of luxury, commodity and pop culture ideologies find themselves at a bizarre, yet often commanding, intersection.   (more…)

The 2017 edition of Documenta (its 17th total), will share locations between Kassel and Athens, the organization announced today.  The exhibition title Learning from Athens, will look at Greece’s recent financial straits, and its unique position in today’s global affairs.  “What interested me is that Athens is a contemporary metropolitan city of the Mediterranean that is connected to other places across the water,” says Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk.  “I see it as a portal or border or place where people coming from many, many other places can have visibility.” (more…)

Online auction site eBay is attempting a second foray into the world of live online art sales, a second venture outside its upcoming collaboration with Sotheby’s.  The new site is open to a select group of New York art galleries, and allow live bidding on works from around the world. (more…)

Al-Jazeera continues the investigation into the Philippine government’s attempts at reclaiming the trove of works previously owned by the Marcos family, some of which they believe have since been stolen from the family’s homes and are now in private collections.  “We’d like to think that these paintings have been with the Marcoses from the beginning, and we believe that they were purchased using ill-gotten wealth and public funds,” Presidential Commission on Good Government leader Andres Bautista says. (more…)

The New York Times profiles the work of Bernard Arnault in building the Museum for the Fondation Luis Vuitton’s expansive art collection, a massive structure in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne.  “We don’t speak of numbers when we speak of a dream,” he says when asked about the final cost of the building. “Let’s just say it is a very expensive sculpture.” (more…)

Ryan McGinley, YEARBOOK (Installation View)

One of the most prolific contemporary American photographers, Ryan McGinley has continually photographed his subjects inside his Lower East Side studio for over a decade.  Two years after Animals, his series of nude models posing with live animals, the artist is continuing his exploration of the human form, as well as its positioning within a reserved studio setting at Team Gallery, where he has been showing for the last seven years.  YEARBOOK, however, expands on the notion of space beyond simply signifying an architecture for displaying art, embracing an alternative use of the gallery interior. (more…)

Grayson Perry is featured on the front cover of The Guardian Magazine this week, with a full interview that covers the artist’s defiant, shifting public personae, and the early responses of the art world to his pottery.  “Pottery was what sandal-wearing, windchime-lovers did,” he says.  “Art is sensitive to areas of visual culture that haven’t yet been colonized by the art world, and perhaps what they sensed back then was, here was an area that hadn’t been fully explored.” (more…)

Richard Serra has been announced as the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Americans for the Arts organization.  Serra will receive the award on October 20th in New York. (more…)

Nick Cave, Sea Sick (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

Nick Cave and Jack Shainman Gallery have opened a pair of shows this fall, spanning the gallery’s two Chelsea locations on 20th and 24th street locations. Separately titled as Rescue and Made for Whites by Whites, the exhibitions articulate the artist’s familiar thematic concerns, addressing racial impositions and how they are reflected in everyday consumer culture.  Cave delivers the prominent aspects of his practice, such as repurposing of found objects, assemblage of varying textures, and the performance of cultural rituals, with a somewhat stark hand, allowing a fierce critique to emerge from the works themselves. (more…)

Artist Miranda July has designed a special edition handbag, created in collaboration with designer Laurel Consuelo Broughton of Welcome Companions, including remarkably specific titles for each compartment (“Almond in Case of Low Blood Sugar”) as well as a series of cards bearing questions and phrases like “I can’t understand you because my cell phone has a bad connection.”   (more…)

The French Court of Appeal has demanded a â‚¬20 million bail from Guy Wildenstein, over the art dealer’s alleged concealment of over 30 works from his family’s non-profit, reported as “stolen” or “missing” by their original owners. (more…)