‪ ‪T magazine features the art collective Still House, a Red Hook, Brooklyn based art collective that is home to eight artists, a residency program, and a gallery. The group, mostly under 25, is on a gradual rise in profile as seen in the success of the show “Riffraff” at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. [AO Newslink]
‪‬The New York Times surveys the behind-the-scenes legal policies of the art authentication and insurance world, using the Knoedler Gallery’s forgery of Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Koonig, the deterioration of Matisse’s colors, an elbow accident with a private Picasso, and the re-appropriation lawsuit against Richard Prince to examine how to best protect a collection from fraud or damage.
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‪‬In his first interview in 10 years, White Cube founder and renowned art mogul Jay Jopling addresses his ability to walk the line of ‘privilege and populism.’ He explains to the Financial Times: “I always liked to collide the establishment with the avant-garde.”
[AO Newslink]
‪‬Suspected financial turmoil related to illegal endowment raiding begets turnover at MOCA, with the chief operating officer, fundraising director and a trustee chairman leaving the museum within the last three months, each remaining in the posts less than a year. Jeffrey Deitch, MOCA’s director since 2010, is reportedly struggling to fix the endowment issues that ended in 2008. The current fiscal year has a projected deficit until its closing on June 30th. [AO Newslink]
‪‬Sotheby’s had its most second-most profitable year ever in 2011 at $5.8-billion, nearing its own record of $6.2 billion in 2007. They out-profited Christie’s by one tenth of a billion dollars this year, and increased from $4.8 billion in 2010. However, due to European turmoil, the most recent quarter suffered an 11.0% drop in auction-related revenue. [AO Newslink]
The work of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886-1957) is showcased on MoMA‘s second floor through May 14th. The exhibition’s opening on November 13th coincided with Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park, allowing the originally leftist murals to resonate with a contemporary, politicized audience. The murals, which have not been shown since their first presentation 80 years ago, are accompanied by drawings and related archival paraphernalia. A concurrent catalogue with essays by curator Leah Dickerman is also associated.
Diego Rivera, Frozen Assets (1931-1932). All Images Courtesy of MoMA Interactive.
‪‬Simon de Pury is subject of Sucklord doll, as part of Lot 158 at Phillips de Pury’s contemporary auction next week [AO Newslink]
‪‬Santigold painted by Kehinde Wiley for her The Master of My Make-Believe album cover, wearing Alexander Wang. This is Kehinde Wiley’s first female subject, based on Portrait of Sir Banastre Tarleton (1782) by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The album is out May 1st. [AO Newslink]
‪‬Artist Michael Heizer’s 340-ton boulder is the centerpiece for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Levitated Mass” exhibition. It traveled through Ontario California on Thursday in a special truck for the second stop of its 105-mile journey from Riverside to LACMA. Street signs and obstacles were moved for its journey. [AO Newslink]
Next Thursday, Phillips de Pury will auction the Maybach 57 featured in Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Otis video, which was directed by Spike Jonze. The proceeds of the car’s sale (which has been on a genuinely rough ride as depicted in the music video) will go to Save the Children. A charitable donation has been planned since the video’s completion, with the closing caption: “The vehicle used in this video will be offered up for auction. Proceeds will be donated towards the East African drought disaster.” At the time of the video’s release, East Africa was deep in famine, as a result of the worst drought to hit the region in 60 years.
‪‬Britain’s White Cube gallery opened its first branch outside Britain today with a Gilbert and George exhibition in a 557 square-meter space in Hong Kong’s central business district. Hong Kong is the world’s third biggest auction center after New York and London, with China overall accounting for 41.4% ($4.8 billion) of global art sales internationally in 2011. [AO Newslink]
‪‬ Qatar continues to build its international art collection, with Qatari purchases accounting for an estimated 25% of the Middle East’s $11 billion art market. [AO Newslink]
Titian, Diana and Callisto (1556-1559), via BBC
Diana and Callisto by Titian went on display today in Room 1 of The National Gallery in London, completing the paired purchased with Diana and Actaeon after a long-awaited fundraising effort. Noted art patron the Duke of Sutherland attempted to sell the two works to the United Kingdom in 2008 for £100 million, which was reportedly half their total market or potential auction value. British art authorities and museum-goers alike are delighted to have met the price-point, and to maintain the masterpiece for the nation of England.
Titian, Diana and Actaeon (1556-1559), via NPR
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Murakami sculpture at Ego (2011) press conference, via QMA facebook
The Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) presents Murakami – Ego at the Museum of Islamic Art‘s detached Al Riwaq hall in Doha as Japanese artist Takashi Murakami‘s first solo show in the Middle East. Introducing Japanese contemporary art and animation style to a broader audience, the QMA has also published an illustrated catalog on Ego with commentary by Takashi Murakami, curator Massimiliano Gioni, and photo-documentation of the site. For Ego—referencing the retrospective’s psychological emphasis—Murakami designed sculptural pedestals, a 100-meter wall painting, and a digital animated circus tent to double as an indoor cinema. The retrospective features fifteen years’ worth of 60 works, most of which are on loan from both public and private international collections, although some art is new. Viewers entering the hall are greeted by an oversize inflatable self-portrait to personify the explained internal mindset.
‪‬Despite pending lawsuit against David and Helly Nahmad to return Modigliani’s Seated Man with a Cane (1918) (alleged stolen from a Paris dealer by Nazis in 1939), the Nahmads’ lawyers now say the International Art Center purchased from Christie’s in 1996, not the Nahmad family, thus the suit is misdirected. [AO Newslink]
Gert and Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2011). All images courtesy of Der Kunstverein.
The entirety of Der Kunstverein is currently inhabited by the dark and fantastical world of brotherly duo Gert and Uwe Tobias. On view until November 18 is their largest installation to date, taking over a total area of 1,300 square meters, spilling from both exhibition areas into the foyer and stairwell. Over time the exhibition will slowly recede to make room for other exhibitions and by the end of the year the work will remain only in the foyer and the stairwell. The Transylvanian born-, Germany-based twin brothers work with a range of forms from works on paper—collages of disjointed figures, eerie watercolors, and drawings created by typewriter strokes—to large scale woodblocks of otherworldly creatures, and abstract assemblage sculptures. Each medium explored is imbued with qualities of the surreal, a dark haze of gloom, and a touch of whimsical humor. Their practice is rooted in the decorative, patterned, and pictorial qualities of Eastern European folk art. Also embedded in their work are allusions to art historical moments such as Constructivism, socialist architecture, and Expressionism.
Dan Flavin, in honor of Harold Joachim in pink, yellow, blue and green fluorescent light 8′ high and wide (1977)
The Morgan Library & Museum is currently exhibiting Dan Flavin: Drawing, a retrospective of the Dan Flavin’s works on paper, from pencil to charcoal to watercolor. Primarily comprised of pieces made by the artist himself and a group from his personal collection, this body of work demonstrates Flavin’s abilities as a draftsman, as well as an installation artist. More than one hundred of Flavin’s own pieces are on view, starting with his abstract expressionist watercolors from the 1950s and ending with pictures of sailboats made with conté crayon in the late 80s and early 90s. Also included in this collection are a series of plans that the artist made in preparation of his renowned fluorescent light installations.
‪‬Mike Kelley project with Artangel and MOCAD ‘Modern Homestead’ public art work to stay in storage in Michigan, while 3 project-based videos will show at Whitney Biennial, which is dedicated to the recently deceased Kelley [AO Newslink]
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All installation views of The Blue Period via Salon 94.
In his installation The Blue Period, artist Jon Kessler creates a space so heavily mediated, under surveillance by almost countless video cameras and televisions arranged, that the act of watching becomes intricately ensnared with the act of participation. Now, for the first time, the well-known installation artist has brought the piece to Salon 94 Bowery for a one month viewing. Obfuscating the line between real and imagined, The Blue Period alters the nature of the gallery experience. Huge walls soaked with blue paint pair up with the images of various rooms, rarely in conjunction with a perceived camera position, beamed in by closed-caption television, and placed alongside manipulated film footage and other imagery. Frequently in motion, the cameras underline the act of viewing in the piece, while also forcing the gallery-goer to evaluate their position in the overall installation.
‪‬Whitney Biennial pranked by Occupy Wall Street Arts & Labor group with demand to end by 2014, and mock email press release and website launched this morning announcing false break with corporate sponsors Sotheby’s and Deutsche Bank [AO Newslink]
Lucian Freud, Reflection (Self-portrait) (1985). All images © The Lucian Freud Archive.
Lucian Freud‘s work spans a seventy year trajectory on view now at the National Portrait Gallery in London in the first ever exhibition to focus solely on the artist’s portraiture, curated in collaboration with Freud over his final years. Born the grandson of Sigmund Freud in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, L. Freud passed away at age 88 last July as perhaps one of the most influential and important artists of his generation. The expansive exhibition includes works from as early as 1940 to the last and unfinished painting Freud was working on, highlighting stylistic developments that occurred over the decades. Freud’s subjects ran the gamut from his family, friends and lovers, to celebrities, criminals and aristocrats.
Dana Schutz, Young Brünnhilde (2011)
With watercolors, colored pencils and crayons, Dana Schutz presents a whimsical and striking interpretation of the opera Götterdämmerung to complete the Gallery Met’s four-part series of exhibitions inspired by Wagner’s Ring cycle, organized by Dodie Kazanjian. While Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (which translates to “The Twilight of the Gods”) is a superpower of an opera—filled with betrayal, loss, and the clash of gods and men—Schutz’s exhibition breathes life and light into the melodrama.
‪The FT interviews Ai Weiwei at home in Beijing, a city he is forbidden from leaving on terms of his detention since tax evasion charges in June. Amidst outdoor security guards and cameras, punning artwork, and his pet cats, alleged political dissident and acclaimed activist Ai Weiwei reflected: “Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don’t have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want – not only you, your whole family and all people like you.” As the artists is not supposed to speak to the media, his wife was afterwards questioned at the police station. [AO Newslink]
‪‬Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum seeks to raise £7.83 million to stop Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus (1868) from being sold to a foreign private collector at £28.35 million. The Ashmolean has until August before the work is required to be sent overseas, but will send the painting on a British tour if they raise the money from philanthropists and foundations. [AO Newslink]