An article on Bloomberg.com reports that collector and billionaire Leon Black is in talks to purchase Artspace through Phaidon Press, the publishing company he bought in 2012. Artspace has been in the news recently for its lower-than-expected sales figures, especially compared to its early success in fundraising. Previous reports indicated that the online auction site Auctionata was a prime contender to acquire Artspace but the Bloomberg article suggests that a deal between Black’s Phaidon Press and Artspace could be signed by the end of the week.  (more…)

Giulio Paolini, Autoritratto (Self-Portrait) (1968), Courtesy of Dominique Lévy Gallery and Courtesy Archivio Giulio Paolini, Turin

Hypothesis for an Exhibition, a survey show paying homage to the work of conceptual artist Giulio Paolini is open at Dominique Lévy on Madison Avenue through August 16. In addition to Paolini himself, the exhibition features the work of Richard Aldrich, Harold Ancart, Sebastian Black, Kerstin Brätsch, Guyton/Walker, KAYA, Charles Mayton, Seth Price, Josh Smith, R.H. Quaytman, Antek Walczak and Viola YeÅŸiltaç. Additionally, Studio Manuel Raeder has designed an accompanying publication, which incidentally coincides with London’s Whitechapel Gallery retrospective Giulio Paolini:To Be or Not to Be. (more…)

The L.A. Times reports that LACMA will honor Barbara Kruger and Quentin Tarantino at its annual Art + Film gala in November. The article points out the similarities between Kruger and Tarantino’s work, highlighting their “artistic appetite for wordplay”. The two will follow in the footsteps of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick as well as visual artists such as John Baldessari and David Hockney.  (more…)

As part of new project titled “After Dark”, the Tate Britain will deploy four remote-controlled robots throughout its galleries for five nights beginning September 13th. The public will be able to watch live-stream footage on the Tate’s website as the camera-equipped robots roam the museum’s collection, which includes works by David Hockney, Lucian Freud, and Henry Moore, for five hours each night. Since the robots choose new operators every few minutes, some viewers might get the chance to control the feed and see their favorite artworks in the empty galleries. (more…)

The New York Times reports that Brooklyn Bridge Park will play host to the third annual Photoville, a fair that will present 60 photography exhibitions in repurposed shipping containers. The fair, which goes from September 18th to the 28th, is the brain-child of United Photo Industries, a photography cooperative based in Brooklyn that is known for their installation “The Fence”, which will also be included in the exhibition. In addition to the shows, Photoville will feature talks, panels, and presentations from artists and authors as well as food and drink venues.  (more…)

The New York Times reports that two young German artists have come forward as the perpetrators in the Brooklyn Bridge flag swap. On July 22nd, Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke scaled the Brooklyn Bridge and replaced the traditional American flags atop its towers with white versions of the flag, a switch that prompted embarrassed city officials to reevaluate security on the bridge. The article reports that, although the swap has garnered publicity as a possible anti-American stunt, the two artists intended the white flags to honor the bridge’s history and especially the birthday of its German-born architect, John Roebling.

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Team Gallery is planning to open a space in Los Angeles on September 14th, 2014. The new space, called Team Bungalow, will be the third iteration of the Team Gallery and the first outside of New York City. The gallery will be based in a small bungalow and garage on Windward Avenue in the Venice neighborhood and will be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Team Bungalow’s inaugural show will be called “tl;dr” and feature work by Cory Arcangel.  (more…)

As part of a series called “This much I know”, the Guardian solicited artists Gilbert & George for their life lessons. Among observations on topics that ranged from relationships to religion to politics, the duo, whose latest show at Lehmann Maupin closed on August 8th, made several remarks about art and the art world, including their definition of art as “the friendship that’s formed between the person and the picture – both at the moment of seeing and later on as you remember”.

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An article in the Wall Street Journal profiles Bettina Korek, the founder of For Your Art (FYA), an independent arts organization based in Los Angeles. With FYA, Korek stands at the intersection of the art world and the audience, planning and hosting events featuring artists such as Raymond Pettibon, Barbara Kruger, and John Baldessari that complement L.A.’s current exhibitions. The article reports that, with FYA’s public art events and contacts with institutions such as LACMA and the Hammer Museum, Korek hopes to bring “a new, more democratic patronage” to art. (more…)

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…)