The Tate Modern’s massive retrospective for British artist Damien Hirst has helped propel the Museum’s attendance to record numbers. Tate Modern saw over 463,000 visitors pass through the exhibition, contributing to the 5.3 million total visitors last year, and also announced the opening of their new extension, The Tanks.  Alex Beard, Tate’s deputy director, said: “It has been an extraordinary year at Tate Modern, opening the Tanks, the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works, alongside an outstanding exhibition programme which has undoubtedly fuelled the increase in visitors.” (more…)

Art Fag City has compiled a list of new additions to the annual Armory Show, and another of previous guests not attending this year.  A number of major galleries will not be attending this year, including Zach Feuer, Paul Kasmin, Greene Naftali, and Andrew Kreps Gallery. (more…)

Henri Matisse’s Le Jardin, which has been missing for over 20 years and is currently valued at $1 million, has been recovered from a dealer in Essex. The oil painting was stolen from Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art in 1987, and its journey from Stockholm to Essex remains somewhat of a mystery.  “Stolen artworks that are recognisable change hands often so there is no knowing where it has been in the intervening two decades.”  Says Christopher A. Marinello, executive director and general counsel at the Art Loss Register (more…)

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #467. All images courtesy Galerie Marian Goodman.

Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris is hosting an exhibition of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings and other work, through January 26th. LeWitt, credited as the father of conceptual minimalism, has been widely exhibited internationally since 1965. The work of this American-born artist encompasses a variety of mediums and styles. Pyramides is a series of wall drawings conceived between the years of 1985-1994. Four floor-to ceiling geometric shapes etched directly onto the walls of the gallery represent some of LeWitt’s most recognizable and iconic work.

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Ferdinand Hodler, The Dents du Midi from Champéry (1916) Courtesy Neue Gallery

Over the course of his lifetime, Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler moved among a variety of subjects and approaches, from audacious works of symbolism, to sweeping landscapes, to a vigorous body of portraiture.  This expansive oeuvre is currently on view at New York City’s Neue Gallery in “View to Infinity,” showcasing the diversity and unique perspectives running through Hodler’s work.  The show is presented in conjunction with the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, where it will show from January 27 to May 26, 2013

Ferdinand Hodler, Two Women in Flowers (1901-1902) Courtesy Neue Gallery

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Reflecting the ongoing prominence of American postwar art on the global market, Andy Warhol was recently determined to be the highest selling artist at auction for 2012.  With sales topping $380.3 million last year, Warhol has supplanted Chinese painter Zhang Daqian at the top of the list.  German painter Gerhard Richter was also named the highest selling living artist.  “The market is selective and concentrated on works by certain artists. The instant recognizability of masterpieces by Warhol and Richter makes them well suited to performing well.” Says Jonathan P. Binstock, senior adviser at Citi Private Bank Art Advisory & Finance. (more…)

The New York City Ballet has announced the inaugural year of Art Series, a collaborative program that commissions contemporary artists to create works inspired by the company’s repertoire.  For its first year, NYCB has partnered with Brooklyn street-art collective FAILE, who will produce a series of limited-edition works for Art Series performances this spring. (more…)

Longstanding New York arts institution The Kitchen is still recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy last November.  While the space was able to reopen by the end of November, the organization is still scrambling to cover the losses suffered during the storm, including damages to speakers, lighting fixtures, electronics, and the theatre stage.    (more…)

German fashion and art photographer Juergen Teller recently sat down with The Guardian to discuss his career, his life in Germany and the United Kingdom, and his upcoming retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London.  “You feel like he’s capturing the speed of life and the speed of light,” says frequent collaborator Charlotte Rampling. “I think he brings out a particular side of people and that’s what photography is to me. However he gets there doesn’t really matter technically, but what he sees is the Juergen Teller view on something.”    (more…)

Art-world power couple Tim Noble and Sue Webster have ended their marriage after four years.  The couple wed in 2008, having been together as a couple for 20 years, but decided to separate this year after coming to the realization that they both valued their art over their marriage.  “It’s almost like we shouldn’t have got married,” said Noble. (more…)

In the last several months, the heirs of Pablo Picasso have taken steps to consolidate the process for authenticating the late artist’s works, creating a family board responsible for authenticating all Picasso works moving forward.  “People have been asking why they have to go to two places just to have a work authenticated. That is why we took the decision of sending that letter to the art world. The family board is the only authority—it’s quite clear”  says Picasso’s son Bernard. (more…)

Contemporary artists are once again exploring the medium of wallpaper, hearkening back to the wall-based works of Andy Warhol and Sol LeWitt in the 1960’s.  Using new developments in digital printing and , many artists are using the classic decorative material to move beyond the canvas and explore new modes of exhibition and presentation in their works.  “Artists are becoming more interested in that line between what’s art and what’s part of your everyday life, and wallpaper becomes this weird fuzzy space—is it art, or is it decoration?” Says 29-year-old Brooklyn artist Gregg Louis. (more…)

With prices for copper more than quadrupling in the last decade, sculptors are thinking twice before using bronze in their works, instead looking to cheaper materials and more economically sound production techniques in an effort to cut costs.  Foundries are also feeling an impact on their bottom line as their customers explore other options in the U.S. and abroad.

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Having just opened its doors in October, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai is already making big moves as China’s first state-run contemporary art museum.  The 19th century industrial site was converted by the state into a premier public art center, and is currently hosting a massive exhibition in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris to show 119 of the Centre’s works.  “It is a prestige object for the city, to have a museum that, at least in scale, can compete with Tate Modern in London or MoMA in New York,” says Jens Hoffmann, co-curator of the Shanghai Biennale. (more…)

New York art dealers R. Scott Cook and his wife Sousanna A.E. Cook have been ordered to pay $17.96 million in damages to collector George Ball after allegedly fleeing the country with 11 of his works, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse.  Ball claims that the couple had agreed to sell his pieces at Christie’s on his behalf, but instead left the country for France without ever listing the works.

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The daughter of photographer Laurie Simmons and painter Carroll Dunham, writer and actress Lena Dunham has worked her art-world experiences into her work long before her hit television show Girls.  In 2009, Dunham wrote, directed and produced “Delusional Downtown Divas,” a short online miniseries parodying New York City’s arts scene. Released in conjunction with Index Magazine, the show also featured a guest performance by artist Nate Lowman.

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Barnaby Furnas, Jonah in the belly of the Whale (2012) courtesy Marianne Boesky

Visceral and dynamic, the canvases of American graffiti artist and painter Barnaby Furnas ripple with a kinetic energy.  Filling his paintings with evocative imagery, explosive movement and the near-omnipresent splatters of blood that has become one of his calling cards, Furnas has culled a reputation for his unique take on culture and history.

Barnaby Furnas, The Gutter #2 (2012) courtesy Marianne Boesky

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Installation view of Ann Hamilton, “the event of a thread”, all photos by James Ewing and courtesy of The Park Avenue Armory

American artist Ann Hamilton is widely recognized for her large-scale immersive multimedia installations, touching upon themes of collective consciousness, space and labor. Her current installation, “the event of a thread” commissioned by and on view at The Park Avenue Armory in New York, does not fall short. (more…)

Two exhibitions will celebrate the seminal Armory Show of 1913 this year, “The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913”, which opens at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey on the exact day of the centennial anniversary; and “The Armory Show at 100”, at the New York Historical Society in the fall. The original show, organized by Walt Kuhn and Arthur B. Davies, was so shocking to American audiences that “…in Chicago, art students felt so threatened that they burned Brancusi and Matisse in effigy, a scene that a German expressionist might have done justice to – except that there was no German expressionism in the show.” (more…)

Gillian Wearing, Self Portrait at 17 Years Old (2003). All images courtesy Maureen Paley.

On view through January 6^th at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf is a survey of Gillian Wearing’s film and photographs. The 1997 Turner Prize recipient’s work explores the relationship between one’s public and private personas, and the difference between reality and fiction.

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William Kentridge, Installation View (2012), courtesy The Tate Modern

I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine by William Kentridge, consists of six individual projections juxtaposed against various walls of the Tanks in the Tate Modern. The projections cumulatively comprise a narrative that depicts the story of The Nose (1837), by Nikolai Gogol, whereby a spiteful nose departs itself from its owner’s face, tries to leave the city and is consequently arrested. However despite this, one morning when the owner wakes up, he finds his nose has returned.

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A fan clip of M.I.A. performing Paper Planes at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale – click to watch

12/12/12 at 12:00 opened the first-ever Indian Biennial, held in the South Indian city of Kochi, Kerala, 30 kilometers from the historic Muziris islands. Twenty-three of the eighty-two showcased artists in the Biennale are native to the state, with more than forty from India. The remaining artists come from all over the world, including Ai Weiwei (China), Ernesto Neto (Brazil), Cyprien Gaillard (France), and Wangechi Mutu (Kenya) among others. Musician M.I.A., whose family is originally Sri Lankan, inaugurated the showcase with her own Indian performing debut, additionally contributing her own hologram-based artworks to be viewed throughout the exhibitions. Modeled after the Venice Biennale, Kochi-Muziris runs for three months, through March 13th, 2013. (more…)

“Weiwei-isms”, a new book by Ai Weiwei that was published this month by Princeton University Press, provides a look into the Chinese dissident artist’s view on political affairs and human rights issues. “During my detention, they kept asking me: Ai Weiwei, what is the reason you have become like this today? My answer is: First, I refuse to forget. My parents, my family, their whole generation and my generation all paid a great deal in the struggle for freedom of speech. Many people died just because of one sentence or even one word. Somebody has to take responsibility for that.” (from Der Spiegel, Nov. 21, 2011)
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Tracey Emin was granted a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her outstanding contributions to the arts. “I think they pushed me in at the deep end. But I’m absolutely thrilled. It’s been insane trying to keep it a secret but I’m really looking forward to seeing the look on my mum’s face”, Emin said. (more…)