The New York Times addresses the publication of Thomas Piketty’s critically-lauded book on capital accumulation and income inequality this week, questioning how the work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, can be applied to the art world, where the vast increase in high-figure spending has priced many interested parties out from buying works  “The art market has become an excuse for banking in public,” says dealer Ivor Braka. “People are displaying wealth in the most ostentatious way possible. It’s luxury goods shopping gone wild.” (more…)

Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, the suspected accomplice in the fraudulent art sales made through Knoedler Gallery, has been apprehended in Southern Spain, the Wall Street Journal reports.  Bergantino is expected to appear before a judge this week, who will decide on a potential extradition to the U.S. (more…)

The New York Times speaks with MoMA Director Glenn Lowry this week, evaluating his occasionally disputed decisions at the head of the museum, and the vast increases in attendance that he has seen during his time as museum head.  “Obviously I’m deeply empathetic to the feelings that that has elicited from a community we really care about,” Lowry says. “On the other hand, sometimes you have to make really tough decisions if you think they’re right.”  (more…)

Ross Bleckner, via Art Observed

Painter Ross Bleckner has returned to New York this spring, with an exhibition of new paintings at Mary Boone Gallery, featuring several continuations of past series of works, while branching off in new directions.  It’s been some time since the last solo exhibition of works by Ross Bleckner in New York, nearly four years to be exact, and the artist seems to have been biding his time, putting together a strong selection of works.

Ross Bleckner, ALP30 (2013), via Mary Boone (more…)

Alberto Giacometti, Crowd at Intersection (1965), all images courtesy Gagosian Hong Kong

Gagosian’s Hong Kong gallery space is currently showing the complete suite of lithographs from Alberto Giacometti’s Paris sans fin (Paris without end) series, alongside sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs, and archival material from the late years of the artist’s life.

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Kehinde Wiley, via Art Observed

On Wednesday night, the Brooklyn Museum opened the doors for its annual Gala, bringing together a diverse group of artists, collectors and trustees to honor painter Kehinde Wiley, artist Jenny Holzer, and developer Jane Walentas.

Orly Genger, via Art Observed

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The Museum of Modern Art has announced that it will host the first-ever U.S. museum retrospective of works by Robert Gober.  Titled The Heart Is Not a Metaphor, Mr. Gober’s work will be on view beginning in October.  “Robert is totally involved and approaching himself as if he were one of his subjects,” says Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture. (more…)

Artist Pharrell Williams is continuing his ventures into the art world later this year, curating a show at Emmanuel Perrotin’s Paris space.  The show, titled G I R L after the artist’s hit album, will feature 40 works by 32 artists (half of them women), including Tracey Emin, Alex Katz and Bharti Kher, as well as Daniel Arsham and Gregor Hildebrandt.  The works selected mix images of women and of love, viewed from a variety of angles,” the artist’s team said in a press statement. (more…)

Erwin Wurm, Kiss (Abstract Sculptures) (2013), via Art Observed

Taking up the main room of Lehmann Maupin’s considerable Chelsea gallery, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm is presenting a series of recent sculptural works, continuing the artist’s irreverent and bizarre abstractions of both contemporary materials and the human form.  Short but sweet, Wurm’s show takes on his past approaches to figurative sculpture, and recasts it in an increasingly abstract, yet surprisingly cohesive series of sculptures, using the full body of his work to create new pieces that combine his aesthetic endeavors into more nuanced wholes.

Erwin Wurm, Synthesa (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

Actor Antonio Banderas has been chosen to portray Pablo Picasso in an upcoming film by Carlos Saura.  Banderas will act alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, who will play the artist’s longtime muse, Dora Maar.  “I turned down the chance at one point of playing Mr. Pablo, but the time has come in my life where I understand him better,” says Banderas. “I am nearly at the age he was when those events happened, in 1937, when he was 55 or 56, and I’m getting close.” (more…)

Artist Joan Jonas will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale next year, the New York Times reports.  The pioneering video and performance artist was selected by the State Department’s bureau of educational and cultural affairs, and will create a site-specific work at the U.S. pavilion.   “Joan has been a visionary for such a long time,’’ says Paul C. Ha, the director of the M.I.T. List Visual Arts Center, and commissioner of the exhibition. “Yet she hasn’t had much exposure in Venice.’’ (more…)

Tauba Auerbach is interviewed in the Evening Standard this week, following the opening of her first solo exhibition in London at the ICA.  “I don’t think beauty and complexity are at odds,” she says.  “I feel that I’m more compelled to spend time with objects that I find seductive. I want to examine them and understand them.” (more…)

A trio of sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman are set to be installed at Hampstead Heath in London.  The rudimentary sculptures of a group of dinosaurs, titled The good the bad and the ugly, were previously installed at the Gherkin building.  Installed next month, they will constitute the largest piece of public art the park has seen since 2005, when Giancario Neri’s The Writer was placed on view.   (more…)

The shortlist for the BP Portrait Award has been announced, featuring works by Thomas Ganter, Richard Twose, and David Jon Kassman.  The nominees will be on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery from  June 26th to September 21st, with the winner announced just before the exhibition opens on June 24th. (more…)

Scottish-born painter Alan Davie passed away last week at the age of 93.  Davie’s expressionistic, abstract canvases earned him considerable attention during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and was considered as a major influence on the work of David Hockney.  The artist’s work is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Tate Britain.  “It’s an urge, an intensity, a kind of sexual need,” Mr. Davie said recently in an interview with The Telegraph. “I don’t practice painting or drawing as an art, in the sense of artifice, of making an imitation of something. It’s something I do from an inner compulsion, that has to come out.” (more…)

Ali Banisadr, Ran (2014), all images courtesy Sperone Westwater

Currently on view at Sperone Westwater in New York is an exhibition of new works by Iranian painter Ali Banisadr.  Entitled Motherboard, the exhibition is Banisadr’s first solo show at at the gallery, and will remain on view through April 19, 2014.

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Michael Majerus, your bad taste (2002), via Matthew Marks

Spread over Matthew Marks Gallery’s spaces on 502, 522 and West 22nd Street is an exhibition of works by late Berlin-based artist Michael Majerus.  Presenting over twenty-five paintings and multimedia installations, the show is the most comprehensive of Majerus’s work in the United States as well as the first staged in the country since his life was cut short at the age of 35 by a plane crash in 2002.

Michael Majerus, pornography needs you (2001), via Matthew Marks

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Jordan Wolfson, (Female Figure) (2014), via Art Observed

How does memory function in the 21st century?  How does nostalgia?  These are questions bound up in the work of Jordan Wolfson, on view now at David Zwirner.  Spread along a series of assemblages, video, and the artist’s notoriously eerie animatronic robot, the show is a striking step for the artist, showing his unique approach to art-making in an ever-stronger expressive capacity.

Jordan Wolfson, Raspberry Poseur (2012), via David Zwirner (more…)

In a recent investor presentation, Daniel Loeb outlined his five point plan for bringing Sotheby’s back to profitability, pushing his case for allowing Third Point a more vocal position in the company’s proceedings.  Loeb’s plan includes action points on curated auctions and private sales, attacks on the company’s planning on its S|2 Gallery, and inquiries into how to utilize the auction spaces during downtime.   (more…)

The City of Detroit is nearing a pension cuts deal which may allow the Detroit Institute of Arts to spin off from city ownership, provided state funding, foundation contributions and Detroit Institute of Arts fund-raising would provide $816 million to reduce potential cuts to city pensions.  The city is sell engaged with talks with representatives from the city’s largest pension funds. (more…)

Following a steady stream of artists moving upstate, David Hammons has purchased warehouse space in Yonkers with the intent to turn the space into a gallery for showing new work.  The news comes after architect and artist Maya Lin purchased space in the town late last year.  “Now others in the art world want to join the transformation taking place in Yonkers,” Mayor Mike Spano said. (more…)

Richard Deacon, Struck Dumb (1998), all images courtesy Tate Britain

Tate Britain is currently presenting an exhibition from Turner Prize-winning sculptor Richard Deacon, primarily composed of large works in wood, contorted steel, and highly glazed ceramics that explores the artist’s ongoing interest in the conflation of industrial, sculptural and art historical influences. The exhibition was curated by Clarrie Wallis, Curator of Modern & Contemporary British Art along with Sofia Karamani, Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art, and is on view through April 27th.

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Jeff Koons’s colorful 2009 Popeye sculpture, never before seen publicly, nor offered at auction, will stand as one of the centerpieces at Sotheby’s May 14th auction in New York, estimated to sell at $25 million.  “The history of Pop Art begins and ends with Popeye,” says Alex Rotter, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Contemporary Art Department.  “From his first representations by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the 1960s, to the present three-dimensional crescendo by Jeff Koons a half century later, this ultimate American hero and self-made man has remained a true icon of both art history and popular culture.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on a tax loophole regarding several states where art purchases can be awarded tax-free status if the newly gotten works are first lent to an art museum.  The tax loophole explains why Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, the most expensive work ever sold at auction, was first exhibited at the Portland Art Museum after its record-setting purchase last year.  “It is an amazing opportunity for these smaller cities to show these works,” says Mack McFarland of the Pacific Northwest College of Art. “But one does have to wonder, doing a cost-benefit analysis on a more global scale, whether or not the tax break for these wealthy collectors is worth it.” (more…)