Grand Palais, courtesy FIAC

FIAC, or the 39th International Contemporary Art Fair, will open tomorrow (Thursday) in Paris, with a VIP preview today, with 184 galleries exhibiting at the Grand Palais, and this year utilizing the restored Salon d’Honneur as well, which lies at the center of the structure. As in past years, galleries will exhibit sculpture at the Tuilieries Garden nearby. Approximately 65,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Tuilieries Garden courtesy FIAC (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, Concordia Concordia (2012), installation view. All images courtesy of Gladstone Gallery

Visitors to Gladstone Gallery can re-live the wreckage of the marooned Costa Concordia cruise ship that made headlines in January through the lens of Thomas Hirschhorn’s scrutinizing eye. Concordia, Concordia, on view through October 20th, is the artist’s reproduction of the overturned ship’s casino based on photos and video of the wreckage.

Video of “Concordia, Concordia” on Site at Gladstone Gallery

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Adrian Searle interviews artist Ryan Gander in the first of a series of artist interviews for The Guardian. Gander discusses his new works: a cast sculpture that resembles marble of his daughter’s secret fort, and a carved bureau that is conceptually about collisions between objects. He discusses his approach to making art in general, which relies on careful observation and the acknowledgement that everything is absurd: “It’s just being interested in the world. It’s enjoying keeping your eyes open and your wits about you.” (more…)

Larry Gagosian will partner with the owners of Sant Ambroeus cafe and restaurant, Gherardo Guarducci and Dimitri Paul, to open his new restaurant at 976 Madison Avenue. They have applied for a full liquor license and are reportedly planning a fall 2012 opening. (more…)

Breaking: Several valuable artworks were stolen from the The Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam on October 15th or 16th, including paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Gauguin and Freud. Police said the robbery happened on Monday night or early on Tuesday morning. They are reviewing surveillance video and asking any witnesses to come forward. The museum is showing works from the Triton Foundation in a 20th anniversary celebration. (more…)

Mr. – Give Me Your Wings – Think Different (2012), Courtesy Lehmann Maupin

Japanese artist Mr. has a remarkable ability for blurring the lines of contemporary culture.  Using the forms and imagery of the potent manga, otaku and kawaii subcultures of his homeland, the artist turns the lens towards the Japanese identity, highlighting what these icons say about the national culture.  On now, Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City is presenting a large-scale installation by the artist that incorporates these works into a broad statement on the the emotionally frustrated climate of Japan after a year of economic stagnation and natural disaster. (more…)

Animal rights activists are speaking out against Damien Hirst‘s “In and Out of Love” exhibition at the Tate Modern.
More than 9,000 live butterflies died during five months after living out their lifespan but also at times being  inadvertently stepped on or crushed by visitors. The animal rights groups have also criticized Hirst’s shark preserved in formaldehyde and the severed cow’s head. PETA issued a statement saying that “Damien Hirst’s quest to be edgy is as boring as it is callous”.
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French President Francois Hollande, Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti and Prime Minister Ayrault have declared their opposition to a socialist lawmaker’s proposal of making art subject to the country’s wealth tax. The proposed amendment to the 2013 budget would apply to people with assets above €1.3 million. The wealth tax of 0.25% is levied in addition to income tax. For assets over €3 million, the rate would go up to 0.5%.
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Lynda Benglis sculptures and Hans Hurting paintings at Cheim & Read’s booth at Frieze Masters. All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

Frieze Masters and Frieze London concluded on October 14th, with both fairs reporting solid sales on the high end. This year, there was a distinct focus on curated booths and curatorial projects and less of an overt feeling of commercialization. Frieze Masters in particular focused on serious connoisseurship and an academic approach, both of which translated into a successful fair for dealers.

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Elmgreen & Dragset, The Stag, 2012, courtesy Victoria Miro

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Harvest is a unique twin exhibition divided into two coexisting halves, presented on the upstairs and downstairs of the Victoria Miro gallery in London.

The lower half of the gallery presents a banal, almost “mock tranquillity”, exhibiting sheets of paint that have been carefully peeled from notorious art galleries from all over the world and are named retroactively. The works both pay homage to the galleries’ ability to facilitate the work, yet simultaneously mock the uniformity and pedantic nature of art culture. The installation on this floor plays on the irony of a modern art exhibition space: consistent, precise, conforming; yet the works that lie within are anything but.

To reinforce the subliminal jest upon which Elmgreen & Dragset have built their career, the upstairs of the installation is completely paradoxical to the work from which it ascends. What can only be described as a barn awaits the unaware viewer, the immediate submergence of hay forcing him to interact with the installation.

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Forbes interviews Lisson Gallery‘s Nicholas Logsdail about the gallery, the market and the exhibition in London of new works by Anish Kapoor, marking 30 years of the partnership between the gallery and the artist. He says Kapoor’s work is special because “in very simple terms, his work is profound, beautiful, timeless and outside of politics or national boundaries. It is about the very essence of our being – the body, and the human psyche”. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the rising wealth in Singapore and its interest in arts and culture; a particular example at the Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore. Over 4,200 paintings and sculptures are on view to the public in the hotel. “Moby Dick,” a fiberglass sculpture the hotel commissioned by Frank Stella, hangs in the lobby. The corporate collection includes work by Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Henry Moore. The four Kwee brothers, whose company owns the hotel, are known to be one of Singapore’s wealthiest families. They started by displaying their private collection in the hotel and then went on to commission 350 artworks for the site. (more…)

London auction week ended with a £12.2 million sale at Phillips de Pury & Co., below the total presale estimate of £15m-£22 million. In other news about the auction house, several newspapers also reported that it plans to move its headquarters into 30 Berkeley Square as a tenant to the new owner, Mercury, a Russian luxury goods company which reportedly paid £100m in the sale of the property. Phillips, however, has not issued any statement about the move. (more…)

Image: Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 1994 via Sotheby’s
Estimate: £9,000,000 – 12,000,000
Sold for: £21,321,250

Sotheby’s just concluded its evening Postwar & Contemporary sale in London on October 12th with a sale total of £44,146,350 ($70,793,087),  the highest total of the three auction houses this week.

Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild, 1994 from the collection of Eric Clapton set a record price at £21,321,250 ($34,297,363). Alongside this work, the second cover lot of the sale was Yves Klein’s RE 9-I from the artist’s most sought-after series: the Relief éponge, which sold for  £3,737,250 with premium.

Image: Yves Klein, RE 9-I, 1961 via Sotheby’s
Estimate: £2,000,000 – 3,000,000
Sold for: £3,737,250

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Josef Albers, Color Study for White Line Square, Courtesy The Morgan Library & Museum

Now on view at the Morgan Library & Museum are German-born American artist and educator Josef Albers’ studies and sketches for his most well-known series of work, Homage to the Square. Approximately eighty oil sketches on paper show Albers’ artistic process, thoughts and reasoning behind the iconic paintings.

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Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed

Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.

An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed

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The Wall Street Journal interviews Larry Gagosian as Gagosian Gallery prepares to open a 17,760-square-foot space near Le Bourget airport in northern Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel.  He discusses the gallery’s expansion and the state of the market: “I don’t feel like we’re in a bubble, but the nature of bubbles is that you never see them.” (more…)

Galerie Perrotin and Dominique Levy announced separately that each will open their respective galleries at 909 Madison Avenue in 2013.  Galerie Perrotin has a 10-year lease on 4,300 sq feet of the former Bank of New York building on Madison and 73rd Street. Dominique Levy, co-founder of L&M Arts, will open her own gallery focusing on postwar and contemporary art. Levy said in a press release that her gallery space will occupy the second, third and fourth floors. Other galleries that have recently expanded include Gagosian in a suburb of Paris; Pace, Zwirner and Michael Werner in London and Lehmann Maupin in Hong Kong. (more…)

Image: Sand of the Cosmic Desert in Every Direction, James Rosenquist, 2012. Art © James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Spending much of his career exploring cultural and political themes, James Rosenquist takes an introspective approach in his show Multiverse You Are, I Am at Acquavella Galleries through October 13th.  Deeply affected by the brush fire that destroyed his Florida studio and personal collection in August 2009, the event acts as a catalyst for the exhibition. “There is no geometry in fire, only wildness and no logic,” states Rosenquist, whose works on display reflect a fascination with time, space, and chaos.

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Gerhard Richter (b. 1932), 5 Türen II (5 Doors II) via Christie’s
Sold for: £2,169,250 ($3,466,462)
Estimate: £1,500,000 – £2,000,000 ($2,397,000 – $3,196,000)

Postwar & Contemporary Evening Sale
Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction on October 11th realized a sale total, including buyer’s premium, of  £23,177,900 ($37,158,809) with 47 of 64 lots sold. The Evening Auction featured three artists whose work has not previously been included in an evening sale: Idris Khan, Rebecca Warren and Jonathan Wateridge.  It also included a group of important self-portraits by Martin Kippenberger that include his seminal work on canvas Untitled (from the series Hand-Painted Pictures), twelve self-portraits on paper and his sculpture Immer an der Wand Beißen bei Susan.  Also notable was Gerhard Richter’s 5 Türen II (above), a masterwork from 1967 which has never been at auction or offered privately. 5 Türen II is related in theme to 5 Türen I (1967), which is at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.  The auction also highlighted figurative sculpture from the early 80s onward.

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Image:  Peter Doig, Painting for Wall Painters (Prosperity P.o.S.), 2010-2012, Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery

In the inauguration of Michael Werner Gallery’s new location, an exhibition of new works by Turner Prize nominee and Wolfgang Hahn Prize recipient Peter Doig opened on September 27th (his first solo exhibition in London since 2008) at 22 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair, London.

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Image: Richard Tuttle, Systems, VIII-XII (Installation View), Courtesy Pace Gallery

Richard Tuttle’s series of “Systems” sculptures is an ongoing project, an attempt at expanding the physical scope of Tuttle’s past sculptural works, while striving to maintain a sense of intimacy throughout.  Assembled out of wood, cloth, metal, wool and Styrofoam, Tuttle’s sculptures constantly play with the familiarity of the subject matter, tweaking familiar shapes and textures with flourishes of the surreal to create a startlingly fresh visual language.  (more…)

The Art Institute of Chicago is selling about $100 million of taxable and tax-exempt bonds to meet pension obligations, refinancing its debt and re-examining its capital structure. The Museum, under Morgan Stanley, will issue about $61 million of tax-exempt debt as $40 million of taxable bonds, which will mature from 2013 to 2040. The funds will be used “without limitation” to finance “accelerating funding to the Institute’s unfunded pension-benefit obligations”, said the museum. (more…)

Image: Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 1977
oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 1/8 in
ESTIMATE £2,500,000 – 3,500,000
SOLD AT £2,449,250

Phillips de Pury & Co. realized £12,223,600 ($19,565,094) in its Contemporary Evening sale in London on October 10th, with 24 of 37 lots sold. Notable sales were a Basquiat entitled Big Joy from 1984, sold just above its low estimate at £2,617,250 including premium ($4,189,170), and a Gerhard Richter Abstraktes Bild from 1977, which sold for £2,449,250 ($3,920,269), with a presale estimate of £2,500,000-3,500,000 ($4,001,500 – $5,602,100). (more…)