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Jenny Saville, Red Stare Head 1 (2011). Oil on canvas.  10 5/16 x 86 5/8 inches. © Jenny Saville. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Mike Bruce.

Her first exhibition in New York City since 2003, Jenny Saville‘s Continuum is on now at the Madison Avenue Gagosian Gallery. Writes Saville, “[Flesh] is all things. Ugly, beautiful, repulsive, compelling, anxious, neurotic, dead, alive.” In the multicolored paintings of the Stare series, the body and face are disturbingly laid open. The artist depicts flesh in all forms and colors, often grotesque, as seen in several mother and child paintings, which are also heavily influenced by Biblical imagery.

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‪‬Chuck Close, Sam Francis Foundation, the estate of Robert Graham, and Laddie John Dill sue Sotheby’s and Christie’s over adherence to California Resale Royalties Act [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Nan Goldin shoots “beautiful and raw” photos for new Jimmy Choo ad campaign [AO Newslink]

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Sotheby’s Take Home a Nude annual auction. All photos on site for Art Observed by Nicholas Wirth.

Monday night on the seventh floor of Sotheby’s, art enthusiasts took in a variety of works—many of them nudes or variations thereof—at the 20th annual Take Home a Nude benefit by the New York Academy of Art. A 6 o’clock cocktail hour loosened up bidders for the concurrent silent auction, closing at 8:30 with a live auction, followed by dinner downstairs at 9:00. The night honored artist Jenny Saville and critic John Richardson, with artists Jeff Koons (in attendance further down town at the National Arts Awards) and Nan Goldin up for bid at the live auction, while artist Dustin Yellin—whose work caught the eye of Mary-Kate Olsen—fetched the highest bid at the silent auction at $9,500. However, Alyssa Monk’s Soft went to live auction after fierce bidding during the silent auction, fetching a final $12,000, and the evening’s overall highest piece was Joseph Kosuth‘s ‘Texts (Waiting for-) for Nothing’, Samuel Beckett, in play, 2011 at $37,500.

Work by Dustin Yellin

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Andy Warhol, Blue Liz as Cleopatra (1962)

An assembly of prints from 1962 and 1963, Andy Warhol‘s series of recently deceased movie star and social activist Elizabeth Taylor—the exhibition appropriately titled Liz—is currently on view at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. An iconic figure of Pop Art, Warhol reintroduced figurative imagery into the 1960s art scene, otherwise dominated by an aesthetic ideal of abstract expressionism. As seen in the Liz series and the rest of his early portraiture, Warhol re-appropriated images from the media, mechanically multiplying them via silkscreen.

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Jenny Holzer accepts the Outstanding Contributions to the Arts Award.  All photos on site for Art Observed by Nicholas Wirth.

Americans for the Arts held their 2011 National Arts Awards at the grand Cipriani 42nd Street venue on Monday night, honoring “artists and art leaders who exhibit exemplary national leadership and whose work demonstrates extraordinary artistic achievement.” Awards were bestowed upon artists Frank Stella and Jenny Holzer, as well as Beverley Taylor Sorenson, President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, Gabourey Sidibe, and Wells Fargo & Company.  The annual gala dinner named Sol Lewitt the featured artist, showcasing his work throughout the space, while guests such as Richard Phillips, Will Cotton, and Jeff Koons mingled in black-tie.

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‪‬Guggenheim teams up with Vermont-based paint company to introduce 2 lines of house paints based on the colors of classic paintings this fall [AO Newslink]

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‪‬New Van Gogh biography proposes the artist died of murder, not suicide [AO Newslink]

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‪The Guardian interviews Jeff Koons regarding custody of his son and other topics “Family life is the most important thing to me” [AO Newslink]

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Gerhard Richter, Kerze (Candle), 1982 (est. $9.3-13.9 million, realized $16.5 million). All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art sale on Friday evening in London ended the week’s auction blitz with a bang. The sale followed Phillips and Sotheby’s auctions in the same category that both failed to beat low presale estimates. The Christie’s sale was comprised of 47 lots that brought in $60 million, just shy of the $62 million high estimate. Top honors went to the evening’s cover lot- Gerhard Richter‘s Kerze – which was expected to bring in as much as $13.9 million. The artist made headlines earlier this month when he characterized the art market as “impossible to understand” and “daft” during the press launch of his retrospective currently on view at Tate Modern. If anything, his comments seemed to have whet the already healthy appetite for his work, as Kerze sold for $16.5 million and set a record for the artist at auction. The candle paintings, in which the artist depicts lighted candles in his signature photorealistic style, are the most sought after works in the painter’s oeuvre.

Christie’s Jussi Pylkkanen at the rostrum.

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Yves Klein all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

This year marked the 2nd iteration of the House of the Nobleman, a privately sponsored exhibition which took place at the Boswall House, 15,000sqft  mansion at 2 Cornwall Terrace, overlooking Regent’s Park and the Frieze 2011 Art Fair.  Art Observed was on site for the private viewing.  On view were works by Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Peter Paul Rubens, Edgar Degas, Max Ernst,  Damien Hirst, Marlene Dumas, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Sigmar Polke, Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor, Nick Hornby, Matthew Day Jackson, Cecily Brown, Lucian Freud, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Longo, Alexander Calder, Eugenia Emets, Francesco Clemente, Salvador Dali,  Peter Doig,  Olafur Eliasson, George Condo, Takashi Murakami,  Hiroshi Sugimoto and Gerhard Richter.

Monet, Claude “ Chemin dans le brouillard”, (1879)

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Trailer released for Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen’s latest film, Shame [AO Newslink]

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John Baldessari, Double Feature: Sudden Fear (2011). Via Sprueth Magers.

Eighty-year old John Baldessari opens Berlin’s Sprueth Magers fall season with new works in a show titled Double Feature. Baldessari continues his image appropriation, for which he is well-known, with this series of works giving the audience a complex set of collages to view. Baldessari is a pioneer in hybrid art forms, mixing photographic collages, paint, billboards, and performance, remaining outside the confines of a neat categorization.

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Artist Shepard Fairey designs poster for tomorrow’s Occupation Party protest in Times Square [AO Newslink]

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LA MOCA announces Deborah Harry as headliner for its November 12th gala, which is being developed by Marina Abramovic [AO Newslink]

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Alberto Burri, Combustione Legno, 1957 (est. $1.2-1.9 million, realized $5 million), via Sothebys.com

Sotheby’s London hosted a pair of auctions on Thursday evening that raised a combined total of $62 million. The 20th Century Italian Art sale, comprised of 58 lots, was followed by a 47-lot Contemporary Art sale. The $34 million achieved for the Italian auction was the highest total for an auction in this category, while the Contemporary sale fell just short of its $30 million low estimate. The mixed results suggest that there is money to be spent on the most desirable lots and that buyers are not willing to shell out for anything less. The sales progressed amid demonstrations outside the auction house by protestors of the company’s months-long battle with their art handlers in New York.

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Doug Aitken, Now (2011) at 303 Gallery NY. All photos for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

AO is on site in London for this week’s Frieze Art Fair. With 173 galleries selling an estimated $350 million worth of art, a level of anxiety pervades as the week’s results will be indicative of the overall international contemporary art market. Works like Christian Jankowski’s droll The Finest Art on Water and Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine directly comment on the world economic state, while the overall demeanor remains upbeat, with art world moguls and A-list celebrities enjoying the festivities.

Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine (2011), Thomas Dane Gallery

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‪‬Ai Weiwei shoots Rikers Island photoset for W Magazine remotely via Skype from China [AO Newslink]

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‪‪‬Tracey Emin traces family genealogy in BBC show ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ [AO Newslink]

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‪‬MoMA collaborates with Uniqlo for ‘Message Art Now!’ artist-designed T-shirt series [AO Newslink]

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Ai Weiwei named ‘most powerful’ artist of 2011 according to annual ‘Art Review 100’ [AO Newslink]

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Sarah Jessica Parker, Simone de Pury, Jerry Saltz, Bill Powers and the like returned for the Season 2 opener of Bravo’s Work of Art this evening [AO Newslink]

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Andy Warhol & Jean-Michel Basquiat, Thin Lips, 1984-85 (est. $1.1-1.6 million, bought in), via Phillipsdepury.com

The week’s Contemporary art sales in London got off to a lukewarm start on Wednesday at Phillips de Pury. The evening sale realized $12.9 million against estimates of $15.6-22.7 million, and 12 of the 35 lots offered failed to find buyers. The auction’s featured lot – Jeff Koons‘s rendition of stacked trash cans punctuated by inflatable toys – sold for $3.3 million against a low estimate of $3.1 million (prices realized include the buyer’s premium, estimates do not). A collaborative work by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat that was expected to fetch at least $1.1 million was bought in, as were works by George Condo, Lucio Fontana, Cindy Sherman, and Paula Rego.

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‪‬Tate Collection acquires three new works on first day of Frieze Art Fair 2011 [AO Newslink]

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