Indian artist Subodh Gupta is profiled in the Wall Street Journal, as his first major museum retrospective opens at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.  Titled Everything is Insisde, the show is curated by former Venice Biennale director Germano Celant, and includes a number of new works.   “A good artist starts with his roots and uses that cultural identity to say something larger to the international art world,” Mr. Celant said. “But for an artist like Subodh, it’s also important to come back and be seen at home.” (more…)

The Tate Modern has signed a landmark sponsorship deal with the Hyundai Automobile Corporation, an 11-year commitment to commissions for the museum’s Turbine Hall, making it the largest corporate partnership the organization has ever agreed to.  “These commissions have been reflecting major steps, major transformations, major disruptions in the history of contemporary art,” says Tate Modern Director Chris Dercon. “Contemporary art is evolving in a different way than just materials and methods. We are faced with a global world of art.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles Industry City, the business incubator and artist studio space in Sunset Park that played home to Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1 late last year.  Despite its populist appeal, the space has been drawing continued criticism over its rapidly rising rents, which have already pushed out a number of artists from the building.  “Part of why we moved to Industry City was because of the community of artists, of art lovers,” said Krista Saunders, the director of programs and communications at Art Connects New York.  “It’s really beneficial that we are located within an artistic community, and now that this is dissolving, we are considering our options,” Ms. Saunders said. (more…)

The Guardian reports on the rising rent and low return on investment in the rapidly developing London neighborhoods of St. James and Mayfair, and the impacts the growth in high-end construction is having on the long-standing galleries of the area.  The story centers around Cork Street, where a number of storied London galleries are located.  “I am an angry old man,” says gallerist Leslie Waddington of the 80-year old gallery Waddington Custot. “Cork Street has been built up over the years and relies on a mix of different galleries. We are the victims of a kind of commercial fascism, where those making decisions based on profit feel they are unaccountable.” (more…)

With artist Doug Aitken’s The Source series of creative dialogues has opened at Sundance Film Festival, he sat down with New York Times Magazine to discuss the work, his recent Station to Station project, and his ideas of creative immediacy.  “I see it as trying to reduce and reduce and reduce,” he says. “Bringing things back to a candid and immediate conversation between two people. Having something that has very little filtration, that is not reprocessed by a critic and is not repurposed through the filter of cultural history.” (more…)

Georg Baselitz, Ohne Titel – 3.IV.2002 Der Schachspieler im Profil, (2002), via The Albertina

In honor of German-born Georg Baselitz’ 75th birthday, Albertina Gallery, Vienna, Austria, is presenting a cross-section of its broad collection of his work. Baselitz (b. 1938) is of the most easily recognized living modern artists, working as a painter, printmaker, sculptor, and draughtsman. He has had shows at institutions including MoMA, The Guggenheim, The Royal Academy, The Saatchi Gallery, The Gagosian Gallery, and Centre Pompidou.

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 16 April (2006), via The Albertina (more…)

Dana Schutz, Yawn 2 (2012), Courtesy Hepworth Wakefield Gallery

At The Hepworth Wakefield Gallery in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, is the first solo show in the UK for young artist Dana Schutz. Mostly made up of new paintings and drawings, the exhibition includes 20 vibrantly colored works depicting absurd, hypothetical situations.

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Matthew Barney’s latest filmic project, the nearly 6-hour long epic River of Fundament is set to premiere next month at Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Created in collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler,  the work takes its inspiration from Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, paralleling Mailer’s tale of Egyptian mythology with the rise and fall of the American auto industry.   (more…)

Philip Guston, Painter’s Head (1975), Courtesy Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

On view at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is an exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of American painter and printmaker Philip Guston (1913-1980), with a selection of around forty works from the later part of his career.

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An article in The Guardian traces the history of Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings, as two of the original versions of the still life are preparing to go on exhibit at London’s National Gallery.  Originally received quite poorly by the art establishment, the works occasionally caused heavy contention among artists and critics exhibiting alongside “the laughable pot of sunflowers by Mr. Vincent.”  The article also discusses the artist’s long relationship and correspondence with his brother Theo.  “Always continue walking a lot and loving nature,” Van Gogh once said to his brother, “for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.” (more…)

The New York Times publishes a feature on LES Gallery owner Lisa Cooley, as she discusses her work in the New York Art World, the current show on Ileana Sonnabend at MoMA, and her the long history of prominent female art dealers.  “There have always been women dealers,” Cooley says. “It is a profession that has always attracted women. Women have relatively easy access to the field.” (more…)

ArtNet has published its annual list of the Top 10 Highest Selling Artists for 2013, with Andy Warhol once again the top of the list, with a yearly sales tally of $427.1 million, aided considerably by the record sale for the artist’s Silver Car Crash last year for $105 million.  Warhol was followed closely by Pablo Picasso at $422 million.  Also notable is the presence of three Chinese artists in the top ten: Zhang Daqian, Qi Bashi, and Zao Wou-Ki, respectively.   (more…)

A series of sculptures cast from original plasters by Constantin Brancusi have reignited debate over the authenticity of works created after the artist’s death.  Brancusi in New York, currently on view at Paul Kasmin, is showing 5 such works, cast between 1992 and 2010 from the artist’s original casts, and with the permission of the artist’s estate, but some critics are calling foul, saying any work made after the Romanian’s death could only be considered a replica.  “There are always going to be people who say they’re 100% against it. I can only help guide you with what’s fact—I can’t decide somebody else’s morals for them,” says Kasmin. “What we want to come of this is to know that Brancusi, like many other great artists’ estates, is open for business.” (more…)

Artists Barbara Kruger and Sterling Ruby are collaborating with Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Projects to present a pair of performances at a 1,600 seat historic theater built in 1921 at the newly opened Ace Hotel in Los Angeles.  The artists each provided visual concepts for one performance, with Kruger collaborating with Millepied on his piece Reflections, and Ruby working on Murder Ballads by Justin Peck.  The works will be performed on February 20^th, 21^st and 22^nd at the Theatre at Ace Hotel Los Angeles. (more…)

Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States has announced a month-long visual arts festival to take place in April of this year, across 46 venues in New York City.  The ART2 Festival “will consider issues prevalent in today’s patently global art world…with the goal of encouraging intellectual discourse between institutions, artists, scholars, students and the public,” the organization said in a statement. (more…)

Yutaka Sone (Installation View), via David Zwirner

Yutaka Sone’s marble scale-models of some of the world’s most famous island cities are now on display at David Zwirner’s London gallery. The show, entitled Sculpture, includes replica banana trees and three of Sone’s city replicas: Hong Kong Island (Chinese) (1998), Little Manhattan (2007–2009), and Venezia (2013, brought together for the first time. The three marble works span over twenty years of the artist’s practice, and have each taken years of painstaking labor to produce. (more…)

Philippe Vergne, the current director of the Dia Art Foundation has been selected to replace Jeffrey Deitch as the head of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.  Vergne has previously worked on the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and also served briefly as the head of the François Pinault Foundation.  “The most important challenge for the new director,” former director Richard Koshalek says, “is to raise the standard of expectations of the museum within this community and beyond, and that means new, original ideas for the future.” (more…)

Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Sale in London next month will be lead by a 1994 piece by Gerhard Richter, valued at $49 million.  Wand (Wall) sat for many years in the artist’s personal collection, during which time it was exhibited in a number of major exhibitions.  “As its title suggests, Wand (Wall) presents a compelling wall of colour with horizontal bands of cadmium red, blue and magenta that deliberately echo the chromatic intensity of a Mark Rothko,” Sotheby’s notes in its statement. (more…)

Christie’s London art auction next month will see the sale of another iconic Francis Bacon painting, a portrait of the painter’s lover George Dyer, which is estimated to sell for $49 million.  “These sellers understand margins, and the uplift can be colossal,” says dealer Alan Hobart. “The auction houses have the buyers at the top end of the market. It’s globalized money. Bacon is now an auction commodity.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports that two sources close to the record-setting sale of a Francis Bacon triptych last year at Christie’s have said that the work was purchased by Elaine Pascal Wynn, the billionaire ex-wife of casino mogul Steve Wynn.  While her motives are unclear, sources state that she purchased the work through dealer Bill Acquavella, who placed the $127 million bid by phone. (more…)

Josephine Meckseper (Installation View), All images courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery

On view at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York is an exhibition of large-scale vitrines, mirrored wall panels and photographs, all by Josephine Meckseper, and alluding to the rise of the Bauhaus and Deutscher Werkbund in Weimar Germany, and their subsequent destruction by the Nazi regime.

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New York Times Magazine profiles the Retrospective Gallery, which just opened last Saturday in Hudson, N.Y.  The space, founded by dealers Zach Feuer and Joel Mesler, is looking to experiment in the upstate city, trying new events and strategies “outside the pressure cooker,” as Feuer says.   (more…)

Hyperallergic reports on Congress’s 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which was released yesterday with the National Endowment for the Arts seeing a funding amount of $146.02 million, only slightly down from last year’s $146.26 million. The funding amount comes after a fractious several months of negotiations, including a proposed cut of 49% to the NEA by the House last year.  The Arts in Education Program was also rewarded a similar amount of $25 million, which is up from last year’s $24.6 million. (more…)

Sotheby’s London will host the second half of sales from the Krugier Collection this February, following a sale at Christie’s late last year where several of the top lots failed to sell.  The sale next month is noted to include a number of more personal works, and carries of total estimate of $39 million, somewhat more than a third of the $113.7m that Christie’s realized. (more…)