The Detroit News reports that Toyota has promised to give $1 million to the Detroit Institute of Art, a donation that will help the Institute towards raising the $100 million it needs to contribute to the city’s grand bargain and avoid the sale of its collection. It is reported that the museum is close to its goal, having already received $80 million in pledges. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal recaps the early days of the trial surrounding the potential dismantling of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the outcome of the hearings last week in Washington, D.C. Despite ample testimony and comment on the state of the museum and its board, the newspaper notes that no one on hand made any statement regarding the future of the art in the museum collection. This point is significant when considering the museum’s mandate, as any attempt to break up the Corcoran collection would fly in the face of its founder’s request for “the perpetual establishment and maintenance of a Public Gallery and Museum.” (more…)
Artist Ryoji Ikeda has unveiled a new public installation in London, titled Spectra, and consisting of a massive column of light shooting up into the night sky next to the Parliament building. The installation is part of a series of works commemorating the beginning of World War I in Britain. “The light spectra throws up into the night sky is a unifying point,” says mayor Boris Johnson. “It echoes how the first world war affected all Londoners, but also how they and the rest of the country came together, standing united during those dark days.”
Artspace, a start-up digital marketplace for contemporary art, is currently involved in acquisition talks with Auctionata, an online auction house. Although Artspace showed early promise by raising upwards of $12 million in funds, this past year has turned out surprisingly anemic sales figures: just $577,000 in total annual sales, according to a leaked chart. In addition, since Artspace creates income from commissions, the actual annual revenue for the site would presumably be only a fraction of this six-figure sales number. (more…)
In a conversation with the Wall Street Journal, art dealer Marian Goodman discusses her new London gallery, set to open October 14th with an show of recent works by Gerhard Richter, whom she represents. The article describes Goodman’s expansion into the area as a “defensive move designed to protect territory she’s staked out over decades” against potential poachers such as David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth, both of which have galleries in the neighborhood. In addition to Richter, this “territory” includes artists such as Steve McQueen, John Baldessari, and William Kentridge, an impressive dossier that is testament to Goodman’s reputation as both a good judge of talent and a loyal agent. (more…)
The New Museum Press Office has announced three new scholarship initiatives designed to promote the study of contemporary art. The new Mellon Grant for Scholarship in Contemporary Art utilizes a $500,000 donation from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the museum’s Research Fellow, a two-year rotating position. In addition, the New Museum will relaunch its publishing partnership with MIT Press with the hope of creating publications that deal with “the making and meaning of art in the twenty-first century” . Finally, the museum also unveiled the MX Curatorial Travel Fund, which consists of over $300,000 meant to encourage research abroad. (more…)
Andy Freeberg, Two Palms (2011) (Mel Mochner, Eizabeth Peyton, Armory Show), all images courtesy Andrea Meislin Gallery
On view at Andrea Meislin Gallery is Andy Freeberg’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, a series of photographic works that mark the continuation of his investigation into the intersections between art, commerce and personality. Entitled Art Fare, Freeberg’s newest show targets the moments of banality inherent in the blue-chip world of major international art fairs.
The court case over payment to three trustees of the Robert Rauschenberg Revocable Trust has been settled this week by a Florida judge, who approved a payment of $24.6 million for “extraordinary services” in preserving the artist’s legacy, much to the disappointment of Rauschenberg’s estate, which is considering its options in the face of the ruling. “We are reviewing our legal options and will pursue the course of action that is in the best interest of the foundation,” says Christopher Rauschenberg, the artist’s son and president of the foundation. (more…)
In a conversation with The Independent, artist Jake Chapman discusses crowdfunding art shows and the more general role of the public in the art world. The conversation was precipitated by the Chapman Brothers‘ unorthodox funding strategy for their upcoming show at the Jerwood gallery: offering tattoos in exchange for donations. One of the leading figures of the Young British Artists, Chapman promotes the need to “defend art from popularity and popularity from art” and maintains that “popular decisions are not always the right decisions”. (more…)
The New Museum has collaborated with Chapman Skateboards to create 150 skateboards inspired by the museum’s architecture. The limited edition skateboard mimics the angular profile and silver facade of the SANAA-designed building. Chapman Skateboards describes the skateboard as “a nod to the ingenuity of skate culture” and “a tribute to the narrow, skated backstreets of the neighborhood the New Museum calls home”. (more…)
John Myatt, the famous forger who spent years behind bars for his fraudulent versions of works by Monet and other artists, is interviewed this week in The Independent, and comments on the state of fraud investigations in the current art landscape. “The art industry has been nodding through paintings with extremely dubious histories,” he says. “It’s been colluding with galleries and auction houses for 50 to 60 years and I know the Police Art & Antiques Unit even went to one museum with evidence of fraud and they weren’t interested – they said they were happy that the contagion [of fakes] had now been removed from their archives.” (more…)
A collection of photographs formerly owned by the late Howard Stein will head to auction later this year at Sotheby’s New York, in what may be one of the largest sales in the medium ever. The presale estimates range from $13 million to $20 million for a group of works that include prints from Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray and Irving Penn. (more…)
Mickalene Thomas, Carla (2014), via Lehmann Maupin
Tête de Femme, a show of new work by artist Mickalene Thomas at Lehmann Maupin, places the exploitation and regulation of the female form at its center, exploring the female figure and visage through eight large-scale portraits. Making use of screen-printing, collage, and candy-colored swatches of fabric, Thomas creates and re-creates the elements of a face in order to deconstruct a coherence presumed and projected into measurements of personhood. Through bold geometric and material choices, Thomas approaches the question of identity as an problem to be solved through a concentrated treatment of each element, much in the same nature of Picasso’s work of the same name.
Mickalene Thomas, Tête de Femme (Installation View), via Lehmann Maupin (more…)
Gilbert & George, The World of Gilbert and George (still) (1981), all images courtesy Lehmann Maupin
On view at Lehmann Maupin New York is a group of films and “Living Sculptures” by the 1986 Turner Prize winners Gilbert & George. The exhibition is the artists’ fifth show with Lehmann Maupin, and represents a transitional link between their early pieces and their later, better known large-scale works.
Interior designer William Pearce created a living room inspired by and centered around Francis Bacon’s “Triptych 1974-77” for his client’s Atlanta apartment. Everything from the drapes to the carpet to the cadenza was either designed or chosen with the paintings in mind. Pearce sourced materials from around the world to create a worthy home for the triptych, which sold for $46.1 million at a 2008 auction to an anonymous buyer. (more…)
In the midst of a recent “boom” in art funds, The Art Newspaper looks back at André Level’s La Peau de l’Ours, a fund founded in 1904 that purchased works like Picasso’s Les Bateleurs and successfully sold them at markedly higher prices. The fund was inspired by the 1903 Salon D’Automne, which greatly inspired Level. “I had seen there the canvases that seemed to me, without the slightest doubt, the authentic art of our time and the near future,” he wrote. “I believed in it; I had faith.” (more…)
Christie’s will auction Manet’s iconic Le Printemps (1881) this fall at its Impressionist and Modern sale in New York, the New York Times announced today. The 1881 portrait has remained in the same family for over a century, and is estimated at $25 to $35 million. “We’ve given museums advance notice,” says Impressionist and Modern Director Adrien Meyer. (more…)
An article in the Wall Street Journal takes a closer look at how auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s vigorously recruit new collectors. Seeking fortunes large enough to sustain multi-million dollar sales, these auction houses keep a close eye on a new crop of billionaires that has been springing up over the past few years in areas like the Balkans and Central Asia. The courting ritual employed by the houses includes children’s parties, personalized tours, VIP passes, and, in one case, a hand-crafted needle-point pillow. (more…)
A Bloomberg article investigates the lack of transparency in online auctions. The impetus for the report is a recent Paddle8 online auction, which featured 20 works of money-themed art, including a piece by Andy Warhol. After the auction was over and 65 percent of the lots were left unsold, Paddle8 pulled the estimates and bids from the website, opening up the possibility to put the artworks into another auction with no record of their failure to sell. This opacity has become common as more websites and auction houses engage in online auctions, a possible indication that these progressive methods are less than successful. (more…)
Former Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have announced that they will be suing the Russian government on the grounds that their prosecution violated international standards for civil rights. The lawsuit will look for €120,000 each in compensation, as well as €10,000 to cover court fees. (more…)
“Born in the Bronx”, Installation View. All photos Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.
Now through August 1, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is presenting a trio of diverse works by Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, a video piece by the gallerist himself, and an exhibit of Afrika Bambaataa’s record collection surveying of the roots of hip-hop in the Bronx. The exhibits speak to the process of emptying shelves and opening closets, placing the material details that one collects over a lifetime on view. In equal measure, the works illustrate a history, at once intimately personal and indicative of the larger movement of time and material legacy.
Kazimir Malevich, Self Portrait (1908-1910), State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
In 1915, Kazimir Malevich first exhibited his Black Square, a simple, powerful statement on the possibilities for painting in the face of contemporaries still bound up in the exploration of figurative painting and impressionist tropes. The piece marked a bounding leap forward for modernist practice, or rather, a point of entry in its own right to the early concepts of abstraction.
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting (with Black Trapezium and Red Square) (1915), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (more…)
The North Devon District Council has approved Damien Hirst‘s plan to build an entire town in the area. Known as the South Extension, the development will include shops, offices, a school, and over 750 residential homes. While the plan’s supporters point to the construction opportunities the development will bring to the area, critics are more focused on the longterm repercussions, expressing concern over the future town’s effect of the environment and calling it “an unemployment black spot”. (more…)
Filmmaker Harun Farocki has died at 70. Born in German-annexed Czechoslovakia, Farocki attended the German Academy of Film and Television in Berlin before getting kicked out in 1968 and pursuing an artistic career creating politically-charged experimental films. Called the “best-known unknown filmmaker in Germany”, Farocki operated outside the New German Cinema movement that featured contemporaries such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog. Represented by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Farocki exhibited an installation of his work “Images of War (At a Distance)” at the MoMA in 2011. (more…)
