Steve McQueen, Drumroll (Installation View), via MoCA

A retrospective of early works by artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen is currently on view at the MoCA’s Hollywood location at the Pacific Design Center, through September 21.  McQueen has carved out a unique place for himself as both a practicing video artist and filmmaker (with both a Turner Prize and an Oscar to his name) over the past years, and his exhibition at MoCA’s Pacific Design Center offers an introduction to the artist’s early practice. (more…)

The New York Times notes the differing approaches to the internet embraced by local museums, studying the Brooklyn Museum and The Met’s outreach programs and online exhibition supplements in an attempt to understand how modern museums are moving online.  “Most of the people who are interested in art aren’t going to get on a plane and come here,” says Met chief digital officer Sree Sreenivasan. “It would be great if they came. But it’s O.K. if what we’re doing is reaching them in just a digital way.” (more…)

Paige Powell, a former girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, has released a series of polaroids of the young artist near the apex of his creative output, and sat down with Wall Street Journal this week to discuss the artist’s life and work. “He was so young and he was almost at the height of—you know, before he died—acknowledgement in the art world of his talent, his genius,” she says. “He had people coming at him all the time.” (more…)

This is Money, the financial news site for the UK’s Daily Mail, reports that Poly Culture, China’s largest auction house, is a likely candidate to acquire Bohhams. The current controllers, chairman Robert Brooks and collector Evert Louwman, began looking for a buyer earlier this year for the auction house, which is perhaps best-known for its sales of vintage and antique cars.  (more…)

An article in the New York Times explores a corner of the art world that deals in art that is more recognizable than cutting-edge, more pseudo than Surreal. Along with big-ticket names such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, galleries like Castle Fine Art and Martin Lawrence sell original artworks by reformed forgers such as John Myatt that mimic popular and recognizable movements like Impressionism or Abstraction but without the intimidating price-tag. According to the article, these moderately-priced and pleasant-looking pieces are especially attractive to first-time buyers used to buying luxury goods, for whom galleries even go out of their way to create a welcoming environment by staying open later and employing staff that have been known to smile.  (more…)

An article in the New York Times reports that Apple has turned to Picasso for inspiration. As part of Apple Academy, the company’s internal training program, one instructor used Picasso’s lithographic series “The Bull” as an example of the streamlining and simplicity in design for which Apple strives. “The Bull” consists of 11 prints, each of which features a bull that becomes increasingly more abstract and simplified as the series goes on. The article features a side-by-side comparison of “The Bull” with several generations of Apple’s computer mice, illustrating the similarities between Picasso’s and Apple’s approach. (more…)

The Telegraph reports that “Piggyback” (1997), a sculpture by Jake and Dinos Chapman has been removed from the MAXXI contemporary art museum in Rome by Italian officials. The sculpture depicts two nude girls, one straddling the other’s shoulders, and had been flagged by the Italian Observatory on the Rights of a Child as “paedopornographic”. Although MAXXI elected to remove the sculpture from public display, the museum maintained their support of the brothers’ and other artists’ freedom to create controversial art.  (more…)

The Bronx Museum is reportedly in talks with the organizers of next year’s Havana Biennial in Cuba to plan a possible exhibition during the event, which would make it the first major show by a US museum in the country.  The talks are also centered around a possible show of Cuban artists at the New York Museum. (more…)

Home, a new arts center in Manchester, is due to open in Spring 2015 as part of a movement that looks to establish Northern England as a viable contender in a country that places artistic and cultural emphasis on London. £25 million went towards the creation of the center and its multiple art galleries, performing spaces, and restaurants. The city hopes that Home will continue the success of the biennial Manchester International Festival, which has featured work by artists such as Matthew Barney, Steve McQueen, and Marina Abramović. (more…)

Artist Ryan McGinness’s public street sign commission for New York City has seen widespread enthusiasm in the past few days since its initial installation, with most of the first set of signs disappearing within hours.  “When I caught one of the first few disappearing, I was mildly amused,” McGinness says. But when he realized the majority had gone missing, “It felt a little more aggressive. It made me just plain angry.” (more…)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Aujourd’hui, le monde est mort [Lost Human Genetic Archive], Photo: André Morin via Domus

In “Aujourd’hui, le monde est mort [Lost Human Genetic Archive]” on display at Palais de Tokyo, Hiroshi Sugimoto peers through time and presents a world balanced between life and death. Known for his photographic collections Diorama (1976), in which he photographed animal displays in natural history museums, Theaters (1978), long-exposure photographs of old-style American theaters while movies play on the screens, and Seascapes (1980), long-exposure black-and-white photographs of the meeting of sea and sky, Sugimoto explores the passage of time, making it tangible through the era of his subjects and the long exposure times used. (more…)

Ai Weiwei at Brooklyn Museum, via Art Observed

Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei’s 2012 survey exhibition “According to What?” has made its way to the Brooklyn Museum after showings at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. and the Perez Art Museum in Miami. This blockbuster show is the artist’s first major international retrospective, and one which aims to bring together his ideals about life and art, which inescapably lead him to reflect on the nature of contemporary, and especially Chinese, politics. A balance that is often so hard to achieve through aesthetic means, the exhibition reveals Ai’s poignant installation work, which allows the viewer a rare experience into his world. The Brooklyn Museum show is enhanced by two installation pieces completed in 2013: S.A.C.R.E.D., exhibited at the Venice Biennale last year, and Ye Haiyan’s Belongings, a new piece installed specially in New York. (more…)

Joan Mitchell, Cypresses (1975), all images courtesy Cheim & Reid

On view at Cheim & Read in New York is an exhibition composed of seven large-scale canvases by Chicago-born painter Joan Mitchell, presented in collaboration with the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Spanning a long stretch of her career, the works on view were inspired by the form and structure of trees, painted in an expressionistic way, and will remain on view through August 29, 2014.

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A viewer looking at Max Beckmann’s Departure (1932-1933), All Images via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

As much as it was an act of overt political action, the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) in Munich marked a pivotal juncture in German art.  Intended as an outright attack on the careers of artists like Emil Nolde, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Georg Grosz and many more, the original exhibition crammed hundreds of works together for a mocking, derision-filled critique of the perversions and mistakes of the modernist practice.

George Grosz, Portrait of the Writer Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925)

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Liz Cohen, Hood (2006), via Marianne Boesky

The city of Detroit seems to be popping up frequently on the art world radar as of late.  While the ongoing bankruptcy crisis in the Motor City threatens to place the Detroit Institute of Arts’s vast collection on the auction block, a new generation of young artists has swarmed to the midwestern metropolis, lured by cheap rents and a the freedom to explore their work in earnest.  Taking this renewed interest in Detroit as its starting point, Marianne Boesky and Marlborough Chelsea have teamed up on a summer show of works and artifacts exploring the creative and economic history of the embattled powerhouse of American industry.

Another Look at Detroit at Marlborough Chelsea (Installation View), via Marlborough Chelsea (more…)

An article in the New York Times explores the project 89plus, an initiative founded last year by Simon Castets, director of the Swiss Insitute, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, in the hopes of fostering artists born after 1989. 89plus has already attracted over 5,000 interested young artists, including several hundred that have participated in workshops at the Luma Foundation in Zurich, the Serpentine Gallery, and Mexico City’s Museo Jumex, among others. (more…)

An article in the New York Times explores the career of street artist and activist Caledonia Curry, also known as Swoon. With her installation “Submerged Motherlands” at the Brooklyn Museum this summer, Swoon became the first living street artist to be featured in a solo exhibition at the museum. In addition to showing her work in galleries and museums such as MoMA and MoMA PS1, Swoon has also spearheaded the creation of art centers and homes in New Orleans, Pennsylvania, and Haiti. Her unique blend of activism and art has led her friend and fellow artist JR to compare her to Ai Weiwei; the article quotes him as saying ““She has always managed to have some social impact with her work and at the same time stay an artist, not an activist”. (more…)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition in the fall featuring major cubist works, including pieces by artists such as Georges Braque, Fernand Leger, and Pablo Picasso. The 79 artworks that will be exhibited in the show were donated to the Met last springby Leonard Lauder. The show will be the first time that Lauder’s gift, which is valued at over $1 billion, will be exhibited as a whole; it will run from October 20th to February 16th, 2015.

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The Art Newspaper reports that a 38-piece private collection of works by German artist Anselm Kiefer will be given to the Kunsthalle Mannheim on extended loan. The collection is owned by Hans Grothe, a German art collector who made his fortune in construction, and will be on loan to the museum for more than a decade. The article also reports on the statement released by the museum, which highlights the it’s high expectations for the collection. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the controversial decision made by the Delaware Art Museum to put two pieces up for sale. The first is “Milking Time” (1875), a painting by Winslow Homer, will be sold at a Sotheby’s auction this fall or possibly sooner, if the museum can find a private buyer. An Alexander Calder mobile titled “The Black Crescent” will also be put up for sale. In hopes of clearing some of its $19.8 million debt, the museum has already sold a William Holman Hunt canvas this past spring, a decision for which it received censure from other institutions and the Association of American Art Directors.  (more…)

After announcing her retirement as President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Emily Rafferty sat down with the Wall Street Journal for an interview in which she discusses her time at the Met and her future plans. Although Rafferty maintains her decision to retire as President is the right one for both herself and the Met, she also discusses the possibility of a future position in the public eye, saying in the interview “I came to the decision after a lot of thought. I’d like to have another experience in the public sector; I don’t know what it will be yet. My time clock gave me every possible signal”.  (more…)

The Centre Pompidou may be expanding yet again, with plans to open a temporary satellite in the northern town of Maubeuge, close to the Belgian border.  The extension has yet to be confirmed by the Centre Pompidou, but the Art Newspaper reports that Maubeuge mayor Arnaud Decagny has pledged €500,000 for the project annually. (more…)

The Miami Herald reports that, after months of tense relations, staff from the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami have decided to break ties with the city and relocate to Miami’s Design District as the Institute of Contemporary Art. Among the museum’s staff who have elected to move is interim director Alex Gartenfield, whose appointment over the city-approved Babacar M’Bow has been one of several sources of contention between the museum and the city. Whether MoCANoMi’s permanent collection, whose ownership has been hotly contested, will follow the staff to their new location or remain with the city is unclear.  (more…)

Will Cotton, The Deferred Promise of Complete Satisfaction (2014)

On view at Ronchini Gallery in London is the first UK solo exhibition of work by American artist Will Cotton, a new series of large scale oil-on-linen paintings depicting landscapes of sweets, pastries, ice cream, and pinup models.

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