Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti speaks with Art News this week, as he contends with the new landscape of the auction market in the current days and months to come. “2020 was an unusual year: collector demand was resilient, but supply was more difficult [to obtain], with some consignors being concerned by the impact of the pandemic,” he says. “Private sales and guarantees have undoubtedly been a way to reconcile these two diverging trends. There are traditionally fewer guarantees in Asia than in Europe and in America, for various reasons. In any event, the decision to use a guarantee remains case by case, according to each consignor’s risk appetite.” (more…)

Pieter Vermeersch (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on at Galerie Perrotin in Paris, the painter and sculptor Pieter Vermeersch has brought forth an enigmatic and expressive exhibition to mark his sixth solo show with the dealer.  Consisting of a series of conceptual operations, including a series of screenprints on marble slabs, oil paintings on stone, and a range of varied dimensional operations, the show is a striking exploration in scale and shape, material and space through the language of minimalism.

Pieter Vermeersch (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Georg Baselitz has donated six of his paintings from his holdings to The Met.  “He’s very interested in the context that the Met collection can provide,” says director Max Hollein. “I think he was very excited and pleased.” (more…)

A piece in Town and Country this week documents the Frick’s takeover of the Met Breuer building. Director Ian Wardropper says the exhibitions at the newly renovated space will “remind people that the Frick is not just a painting collection.” (more…)

A piece in the collection of Pennsylvania’s Allentown Art Museum has been firmly reattributed as an official Rembrandt.  “It’s very exciting,” says museum VP of curatorial affairs, Elaine Mehalakes. “It was a painting that had been in good standing for three centuries, and this is really a reassertion of the attribution.” (more…)

In a recent public appearance, Ai Weiwei called China “the greatest challenge the West has ever faced,” referring in particular to the current political state of Hong Kong and its relationship to mainland China.   “This is not just a struggle between Hong Kong and China. It is a struggle between freedom and a sectarian state. Hong Kong represents a value we should all protect,” he says. (more…)

Gregory Crewdson, Redemption Center (2018-2019), via Art Observed

On view through this past weekend at Galerie Templon in Paris, Gregory Crewdson’s newest series, An Eclipse of Moths presents a series of sixteen large scale prints that act like portals into desolate American scenes. First released in 2020, a year that will be remembered for the stark political division and a health crisis that ravaged the country, Crewdson’s work here continues his reputation for cinematic visual languages, which he pursues with a large production team. He goes location scouting, and carefully lights his sets and directs actors as if they were in a film. His cohesive choice of four by eight foot prints allows the viewer to step back to grasp a grand scene that must be approached closely in order to take in the meticulous details, of signals and characters that, despite their distance, communicate with each other.
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A piece in the New York Times documents the recent efforts to clean and restore works and spaces in the Louvre while the museum is shuttered under Covid restrictions. “For some projects, the lockdown has allowed us to do in five days what would have previously taken five weeks,” says curator Sébastien Allard. (more…)

Two rare pieces by Arshile Gorky and Wassily Kandinsky from the collection of the same private European owner, not seen publicly since the 1970’s, will debut at Sotheby’s modern and contemporary art evening sale in London on March 25, and are anticipated to reach a shared total of £3.7 million ($5.08 million). (more…)

The Centre Pompidou in Paris will close for renovations in 2023 through 2027. “There were two options,” says French culture minister Roselyne Bachelot. “One involved renovating the center while keeping it open, the other was closing it completely.” Bachelot said that the latter option was ultimately more appealing because “it should be shorter and a little bit less expensive.”  (more…)

Leon Black, chairman of the Museum of Modern Art,  is leaving his role as CEO of Apollo Global Management, after news broke of his payments of over $150 million to the late Jeffrey Epstein. “I have advised the Apollo board that I will retire as C.E.O. on or before my 70th birthday in July and remain as chairman,” he said in a statement. (more…)

Haim Steinbach, Display #28 – Rustic Wall (1991), via Tanya Bonakdar

For more than four decades, artist Haim Steinbach has explored the psychological, aesthetic, and cultural aspects of collecting and arranging found objects, selecting items that range from the obscure to the ordinary, the private to the ethnographic and using them as a meditative element to emphasize notions of circulation and human connection.  For his most recent show at Tanya Bonakdar in New York, a selection of works on view highlights a concentrated three-year period in the artist’s career, and offers a recontextualization of his own historic practice and an occasion for reflection. (more…)

Around 700 artists are being evicted from their studios in Moscow following the announcement of a government renovation plan. “The lease contract drawn up by Moscow city has a clause stipulating that if the buildings are demolished, we cannot demand replacement studios,” says Yuri Kurshakov. “It’s hard to stomach because we’re not just talking about a few studios here, but entire clusters that will disappear.” (more…)

A piece in Town and Country documents the allegations against art advisor Angela Gulbenkian, who is alleged to have swindled dealers out of millions in sales, while spending the money. “I don’t think she was very active in the art market,” says Kenny Schachter. “It would be hard to find people who had dealings with her. She was more of an upstart.” (more…)

Joyce Pensato, Fuggetabout It (Redux) (Installation View), via Petzel

Marking the gallery’s first show of works by Joyce Pensato following the artist’s passage in 2019, Petzel’s current show, Fuggetabout It (Redux) marks a fitting summation and reflection on the work of an artist who long mined the languages of pop culture and mass media to create her supercharged mode of painting and sculpture.   (more…)

The collection of late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee is currently being appraised after his passage last year. “Prices of some of the works have probably surged drastically since Lee purchased them,” says an anonymous source. (more…)

The Prado in Madrid will rehang its collection to focus more on non-Spanish artists and women. “There are artistic phenomena and artists who have been totally excluded until now – not just women but aspects as important as social painting, which hadn’t found a place in the 19th-century collection,” says director Miguel Falomir, “or painting from different parts of the world, such as the Philippines, whose art is finding itself more and more appreciated.” (more…)

A piece in the Architectural Digest this week takes a tour of artist Sarah Sze’s home with her husband, Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, who writes on the experience of viewing their personal art collection during the pandemic. “We learned to look afresh at Rauschenberg’s Hoarfrost—of a man caught in mid-dive, not knowing where he might land or fall;” he writes. (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper asks if Biden’s inauguration will finally galvanize the US art world to take action on climate change. “The arts sector is going to have to contribute and institutions are where you are going to start to see that more,” says Ellen Langan of the New York-based climate change and arts org Art to Zero. (more…)

Alex Ayed, Untitled (Sail XII) (2020), via Balice Hertling

Currently on at Galerie Balice Hertling, although temporarily closed due to Covid-19, artist Alex Ayed has brought together a unique range of works exploring notions of travel, exploration and interconnectivity.  The show, consisting of a series of stretched sail works and a series of sculptural objects, draws on a range of notions regarding the passage of bodies, and the impacts it has on humanity’s conception of the world. (more…)

The sale of a Botticelli estimated at $80 million this month at Sotheby’s has drawn speculation and questions over the attribution and origin of the work, Art Newspaper reports. “It is surprising how often scholars have questioned its attribution to the master,” says author David Alan Brown. (more…)

Critic Antwaun Sargent has joined Gagosian as a Director and Curator, the New York Times reports. “It’s a wonderful platform,” Sargent says. “It’s a place where you come and view art, but it’s also a place where discussion happens.” (more…)

Art Basel has once again been postponed from June to 23 to 26 September as the coronavirus pandemic continues to pose threats this year. “The decision was made after extensive discussions and analysis in consultation with gallerists and collectors, as well as external experts, putting foremost the health and safety of all concerned while aiming to achieve the broadest possible international attendance for the show,” a statement reads. (more…)

John Bock, Ohne Titel (2020), via Anton Kern

Taking on his tenth exhibition with Anton Kern Gallery, German sculptor and performance artist John Bock has turned towards a smaller scale, bringing out a series of 25 new three-dimensional collages that underscore his ongoing interests in the form and representation of performance and performers in modernity.  While constructed out of simple materials, these works contain the entire Bockian universe, twisting a range of signifiers and iconographies into concise statements.   (more…)