Installation shot of Vanessa Beecroft’s “Performance VB70 – VB Marmi” in Milan. All images courtesy Galleria Lia Rumma unless otherwise noted.

In a sprawling gallery space in Milan, women with marbled skin mingle with marble plinths. One hundred and fifty people at a time streamed in to take in the sight of the vivid hues– green onyx, French red ochre, Portuguese pink marble, lapis lazuli, sodalite blue, macaubus light blue, and black Belgian– glowing against a white cube setting. As Roberta Smith said in a 1998 New York Times review of the artist’s work, “It’s art; it’s fashion. It’s good; it’s bad. It’s sexist; it’s not. It’s Vanessa Beecroft‘s performance art.”

Opening in Milan

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Shepard Fairey assaulted in Copenhagen while being called an”Obama illuminati”: “I have a black eye and a bruised rib” [AO Newslink]

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Thief steals $100k KAWS work from Marc Ecko “during business hours” [AO Newslink]

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An analysis of Ai WeiWei’s possibly censored statements to the press [AO Newslink]

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Talk with Ryan Trecartin “the most consequential artist to have emerged since the 1980s” Thursday, August 25th at MoCA NOMI [AO Newslink]

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New Film on Anselm Kiefer premiers at the Film Forum in New York [AO Newslink]

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Takashi Murakami and Christie’s to hold major auction in New York to benefit Japan relief efforts [AO Newslink]

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Gagosian Gallery announces ‘Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011,’ to be shown at all 11 galleries worldwide, simultaneously [AO Newslink]

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WORKac selected to design Roman Abramovich’s New Holland Island, an art destination in St. Petersburg, Russia [AO Newslink]

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Kalup Linzy at Lehmann Maupin, “the show’s unlikeliest darling, a black Southern-inflected, gender-bending, genre-defying video-and-performance artist” [AO Newslink]

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All photos by L. Streeter for Art Observed.

At six o’clock on Saturday evening, throngs of guests could be seen gathering at the entrance of Robert Wilson’s art compound in Watermill, New York, awaiting entrance to “Voluptuous Panic.” Patrons of the arts gather here once a year to support the foundations ongoing effort to “provide a unique environment for young and emerging artists to explore new ideas and foster their career development” (via Watermillcenter.org).  Artists  from over 30 different countries living at the estate as a part of the Watermill International Summer Program Residency were asked to create installations and performances overlaying the six acre estate. Guests were invited to wander the grounds and woods exploring the various installations. This year, the attending crowd fit right in with the somewhat manic works themselves; the dress code, entitled “Fearless” allowed for a very flamboyant, almost surreal flock of guests.

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The NYTimes on the relationship between the Met Museum and its new acquisition of the Marcel Breuer building, home to the Whitney Museum of Art [AO Newslink]

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Gagosian Gallery quietly releases info on its representation of the visual art of recording legend Bob Dylan [AO Newslink]

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Banksy iPhone App available for mapping all known Banksy works [AO Newslink]

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Augmented Reality App replaces billboard ads with art, will feature street artists Ron English, John Fekner, PosterBoy, Doctor D and Ox [AO Newslink]

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Pablo Picasso plays at The Journal Gallery, all images by Stefan Idowu-Bello for ArtObserved

On Saturday night, Art Observed was on site at The Journal Gallery in Williamsburg for a night which began with a poetry reading from New York based poet, Michael David Quattlebaum Jr., (who goes by Mykki Blanco) who read from his debut book ‘From the Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys.’ The poems are a personal retrospective of the author questioning his rebellious youth, which lead to him running away, and eventually finding a spiritual awakening in New York. Mykki Blanco embraced the sweltering city heat by standing bare chested in front of the crowd, wearing only a floral floor length skirt and a complimentary flower behind his ear.

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Dasha Zhukova, partner of über-collector Roman Abramovich, head of Garage Center, Moscow, to launch fashion-art magazine in September called ‘Garage’ [AO Newslink]

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NY Times reports on Doug Aitken’s exploration of alienation in the modern age in new installation “Black Mirror,” featuring Chloë Sevigny [AO Newslink]

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The Economist: Asia accounts for quarter of global auction revenue, “lion’s share is made up of art,” painting is most desirable medium [AO Newslink]

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New York’s Metropolitan Museum announces record attendance (5.6 million), fiscal year includes blockbuster exhibitions “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” and Picasso [AO Newslink]

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Gagosian Gallery now represents critically acclaimed Chinese painter Zeng Fanzhi [AO Newslink]

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Leigh Morse, director of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, dealer for Robert DeNiro (who testified), to serve prison sentence and pay $1.65 million restitution for fraud [AO Newslink]

Read the article via Bloomberg

Emmanuel Perrotin, dealer of Murakami, Cattelan, on taking risks: “People imagine it must be easy for me now, but every day is more difficult…you’re still only as good as your last show” [AO Newslink]

Read the interview via TheArtNewspaper

This Wednesday, Lucian Freud passed away in his London home at the age of 88. According to Mr. Freud’s dealer, William Acquavella of Acquavella Galleries, Freud suffered a brief illness before his death. Freud’s career is characterized by his thickly-painted portraits of friends and family, which brought forward and repositioned the genre of portraiture in the twentieth century.

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