Tauba Auerbach, Quarry, ‘Whitney On-Site: New Commissions, 2010.’ Photograph by Danielle Canter, via The Whitney.

Currently on view at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington streets is Tauba Auerbach‘s Quarry; an installation at the South-end of the High Line, where the Whitney Museum expects to open their downtown branch in 2015.  The exhibit, which runs from July 18 though August 29, 2010, is the second installment of the three-part series ‘Whitney On-Site: New Commissions,’ a project anticipating the start of construction on the museum’s new building, currently scheduled for next Spring.

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Billboard paintings after Dennis Hopper photographs, courtesy of LA Observed.

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Dennis Hopper’s photograph series, 1961 to 2010, courtesy of When You Awake.

‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard,’ a comprehensive survey of artwork by the late cultural icon, is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition explores an interdisciplinary body of creative work produced by actor, director, photographer, painter, sculptor, and conceptual artist Dennis Hopper, over the course of his prolific sixty-year career. More than two hundred objects crafted in a variety of media are on view, including a rare early painting completed in 1955, before to the loss of the artist’s studio and much of his work in the 1961 Bel Air fire. Curated by artist Julian Schnabel, ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’ is the inaugural exhibition of the museum’s new director, former New York gallerist Jeffrey Deitch. Prior to his death in May of this year, from complications related to prostate cancer, Hopper also played a significant role in the organization of the exhibit.

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MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, actress Diane Keaton and Jean Stein at the Opening of ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’ on July 10th, 2010, courtesy of the Huffington Post.

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Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That), Installation view, Regen Projects II, Los Angeles. All images courtesy of Regen Projects.

Currently on view at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, is the group show Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That), curated by artist Walead Beshty. ‘Picture Industry’ refers both to the physical setting and the conceptual pretext within which the show is presented, with Los Angeles as the focus in terms of both place and content. Included in the exhibition are works by Tauba Auerbach, Thomas Barrow, Carol Bove, Troy Brauntuch, Tony Conrad, Abraham Cruzvillegas, De Rijke / De Rooij, Liz Deschenes, Isa Genzken, Wade Guyton, Robert Heinecken, Karen Kilimnik, Imi Knoebel, Michael Krebber, Glenn Ligon, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Albert Oehlen, Manfred Pernice, Seth Price, Richard Prince, Josephine Pryde, R.H. Quaytman, Eileen Quinlan, Miljohn Ruperto, Michael Snow, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Charline Von Heyl, Kelley Walker, James Welling, Christopher Williams & Christopher Wool.

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Lawrence Salander Appears for Sentencing, via New York Post–>

Art dealer Lawrence Salander, 61, was sentenced to 6-18 years in prison on Tuesday for defrauding clients of more than $120 million. Salander, formerly of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, was arrested last March on charges of more than 100 counts of grand larceny and other felony offenses.  He pleaded guilty to 29 of those counts earlier this year, admitting to having engineered an elaborate series of fraudulent investment schemes over the course of more than a decade.  His offenses include selling single works of art to multiple buyers, selling shares of artwork owned outright  by other investors, and leveraging works he had already sold to secure bank loans.

Prior to closing in 2007, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries had been known for their eclectic Old Master and Modern holdings.  Their high-profile clientele included tennis champion John McEnroe and actor Robert De Niro’s late father, Robert De Niro Sr. According to the New York Times, McEnroe had acquired a 50% share of two important Arshile Gorky paintings, titled “Pirate I” and “Pirate II,” in 1994. Salander subsequently sold these paintings in their entirety to another dealer, while simultaneously listing them as security to obtain a loan from Bank of America.  In an effort to constantly expand his business and maintain an ostentatious lifestyle, Salander continued to engage in increasingly audacious personal and professional transactions.

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Hired dancer at exhibit next to piece chosen by curator James Shaeffer
All images by Olivia Loving for ArtObserved unless otherwise noted.

Gallery View

Art Observed was on site July 22^nd for the opening of ‘Young Curators, New Ideas III,’ the new exhibit at P.P.O.W. in Chelsea, Manhattan. As the name suggests, the exhibit focused on eight individual curators and the pieces that they chose. The list of curators is as follows: Andrew Russeth & Liza Buzytsky, Erin Dziedzic, Kate Greenberg & Hilary Schaffner, Stamatina Gregory, Gabriella Hiatt, and James Shaeffer. The gallery was packed, and despite no air-conditioning (handmade fans and cups of water abounded), the elevators constantly opened and closed, shuffling in new visitors. The exhibit will be on show until August 20^th, 2010.

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Domecke – [Cathedral Corner] (1987) by Gerhard Richter, via Gerhard Richter

Currently showing at the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentia, is an exhibition of works by German artist Gerhard Richter. The exhibit is titled Synopsis, and it includes a variety of works that span four decades. Richter is well-known for his photo-paintings and abstract pieces, both of which are on display. The title Synopsis is fitting; the museum called the exhibit “retrospective” and therefore indicative of Richter’s growth over the years.

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Artist’s Model Posing For ‘The Old Bugler, Among the Fallen, Battle of Beaune-Roland, 1870’ In The Studio Of An Unknown Military Painter, Paris, 1885 by Rodney Graham, via Hauserwirth

Currently showing at the Lisson Gallery in London, England until July 31, 2010, is a solo exhibition of works by Canadian artist Rodney Graham. Graham is well-known for his schooling in the field of conceptual art, which places the idea of a work of art above the importance of its execution. Graham often creates art out of art; one title alludes to a British horror film by the same name. As a whole, Painter, Poet, Lighthouse Keeper is a versatile and creative exhibit: it contains light boxes, paintings, and short films by Graham. The Lisson Gallery is working with MACBA, Barcelona and Hamburger Kunsthalle to host the exhibit.

Lighthouse Keeper with Lighthouse Model (1955 2010) by Rodney Graham, via Lisson Gallery

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Tornado (2000-2010) by Francis Alÿs, via inglebygallery

Currently showing at the Tate Modern in London until September 5, 2010, is a series of works by artist Francis Alÿs. Alÿs is famous for sacrificing his own comfort and health for the sake of art, as he does with his “Tornado” video (2000-10) on display at the Tate. A still of this video serves as the picture on the museum’s banner of the exhibit, entitled Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception. The picture shows a man, bent against the wind and obscured by dust, essaying to reach the center of the storm. This footage was collected over the course of a decade, as Alÿs struggled both to keep his cameras intact (he reportedly lost six) and to capture the sense of “adrenaline” that he craved. While many works are videos, other media are included, such as paintings.

Re-enactments (2000) by Francis Alÿs, via Tate

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J. M. W. Turner, Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino, 1839 (estimate £12-18 million, realized £29,721,250), via Sothebys.com

Master Paintings Week continues in London after a boost from the Christie’s and Sotheby’s Old Master auctions that took place on July 6th and 7th. The Sotheby’s auction earned £53,484,350 against a high estimate of £50.8 million, while the Christie’s sale realized £42.3 million against a pre-sale estimate of £36.9–55.3 million (totals realized include buyer’s premium, estimates do not). More than half of the Sotheby’s earnings came from the sale of a single canvas by J. M. W. Turner, which sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for a staggering £29,721,250. The painting, showing a view of the Italian capital from the Capitoline Hill, has a sterling provenance and equally impressive exhibition history. The sale established a new record for the artist at auction.

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The Education of the Virgin, circa 1617, oil on canvas, which was recently reattributed to Diego Velázquez, at the Yale University Art Gallery. Image courtesy Yale University.–>

Just days after a Caravaggio masterpiece that had been stolen two years ago was recovered in Berlin, Yale University reported today that they have discovered a painting in their museum’s storage which could be attributed to 17th-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. In a statement released from the university, they relate that the discovery was made in the midst of a “multi-year preparation for a major renovation and expansion currently underway.”

In a thorough review of their vast holdings, this unsigned painting seems to have slipped under the radar, having been previously attributed to an “unknown 17th-century Spanish painter.” The work was donated to the Yale University Art Gallery in 1925 by two brothers, wealthy Yale alumni Henry and Raynham Townshend, whose family, from New Haven, had owned it for more than 40 years. At the time of donation, the provenance reports stated that the painting was 300+ years old and in poor condition, but after six years of recent study, the work has now been reattributed to the Spanish master himself, whose Las Meninas (1656) is one of the jewels of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

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Image still from Christies.com video In the Salesroom: Andy Warhol’s Silver Liz, via Christies.com

The results of Christie‘s Post-War and Contemporary Art auction in London last night are a relief after this week’s lackluster Sotheby‘s auction and the let-down at Phillips de Pury & Co. on Thursday. The sale earned £45,640,200 against the pre-sale estimate of £40.9-58.1 million for 63 lots, selling 84% by lot and 85% by value (totals realized include buyer’s premium, estimates do not). The combination of higher-quality works, lower starting prices, and a greater variety of material presented is thought to have contributed to the success of the sale, even amidst a drop in the stock market.

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Tragic Anatomies (1996) by Jake and Dinos Chapman, via Artnet

Renowned advertising tycoon and art collector Charles Saatchi, 67, announced today that he would gift the Saatchi Gallery and over 200 works of art to the nation. Located in the Duke of York Square in Chelsea, the gallery will be renamed the Museum of Contemporary Art London in 2012 once Saatchi retires. The works which will be donated total more than $37.5 million and are situated in a 70,000 square foot gallery, one of the largest spaces in the world. Among the works to be donated  include Tracey Emin‘s “My Bed” (1998), Jake and Dinos Chapman‘s “Tragic Anatomies” (1996), Richard Wilson’s oil room (1987), and Kader Attia‘s “Ghost” (2007).

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Cover of the catalog for last night’s Contemporary Art auction at Phillips de Pury & Co showing Thomas Schutte’s Doppelkopf (1994), via Phillipsdepury.com

Last night’s Contemporary Art auction at Phillips de Pury & Co reinforced uncertainties regarding the present state of the Contemporary Art market, as the sale earned just £3,963,450 against the pre-sale estimate of £6,075,000-8,575,000 (totals realized include buyer’s premium, estimates do not). Of 45 lots offered only 24 found buyers, leaving 47% of the lots unsold. For comparison, last year’s Contemporary Art Auction at Phillips earned £5.1 million.

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Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ (or, The Kiss of Judas) 1573-1602, which was stolen two years ago and was recovered recently by German and Ukranian authorities.

German police announced Monday that a painting by Italian Renaissance master Caravaggio, rumored to be worth $100 million, was recovered after being nabbed from a Ukranian museum two years ago. According to the Associated Press, four suspects (three Ukranian nationals and one Russian) were arrested in Berlin as they attempted to sell the painting. Twenty additional suspects were arrested in the Ukraine in connection with the theft.

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Sotheby’s Evening Contemporary Art Auction in Progress, via Sothebys.com

With the audience being described as “dazed” and “fatigued,” excitement was sparse at yesterday evening’s Contemporary Art auction at Sotheby’s in London. The sale realized a total of £41,091,800, well within the £32-52 million estimate (total realized includes buyer’s premium, estimates do not).  The sale had a sell-through rate of 83% by lot and 87.3% by value, while 45.4% of lots sold above their high estimates.

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Yves Klein, MG 42, 1960 (estimate £200,000-300,000, realized £481,250), via Sothebys.com

The headlining work, Yves Klein’s RE 49, sold for just over £6 million (estimate £4.5-6.5 million) after three minutes of bidding from four interested buyers.  The other Klein canvas for sale yesterday evening, MG 42, realized a price of £481,250, above its pre-sale estimate of £200,000-300,000. Though the works performed reasonably well, there is still concern that the market might be tiring of them. “There are too many Kleins and Fontanas in these auctions,” Dusseldorf-based art adviser Jorg-Michael Bertz said, in conversation with Bloomberg reporter Scott Reyburn. “We need a rest from them.”

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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

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Sigmar Polke in his studio, 2007.  Albrecht Fuchs for The New York Times.

Sigmar Polke, the founder of the Capitalist Realism (Kapitalistischen Realismus) movement in Germany in 1963,  passed away yesterday in Cologne, Germany. Polke was 69, and passed away due to complications of cancer, as his dealer Erhard Klein confirmed. Polke was a painter, photographer, and printmaker who created multi-layered works combining elements from American Pop art, abstraction, parodies of consumer society, and a subversive use of materials. Polke’s experimentation with technology, and his hybridization of artistic influences was highly influential for generations of German artists.

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Blackboard Tableau #1, Vija Celmins, 2007-2010. 3 found tablets, 7 made tablets, wood, paper, string, acrylic, alkyd oil, and pastel. Image via McKee Gallery.

Vija Celmins’ first gallery show in nine years features paintings, prints, and sculptures.  At the core of the exhibition are Celmins’ assemblages of neatly arranged objects that recall an outmoded and cerebral academic youth: globes, maps, tablets, and books, are bronze-cast or painted. Celmins presents 16 such objects, in addition to 4 paintings and 9 new prints.  Her exhibition at the McKee Gallery characteristically combines the personal and terrestrial with the cosmic.

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Louise Bourgeois in her Brooklyn studio in 1992. Photo courtesy The New York Times.

Louise Bourgeois, one of the world’s most celebrated sculptors, passed away today at the age of 98. The news was announced by an Italian foundation preparing an exhibition of the artist’s work in Venice, and was confirmed by Wendy Williams, the managing director of the Louise Bourgeois Studio. The cause of death was heart attack, and occurred at the Beth Israel Medical Center. Bourgeois was a leader of feminist art, and is known most recently for her large-scale metal spider sculptures, as well as psychologically-charged roughly-textured depictions of sex organs.

Bourgeois’s 30-ft spider sculpture outside the Tate Modern in 2007. Photo courtesy the BBC.

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This weekend marks the opening of author, artist, and filmmaker Miranda July‘s sculpture installation of Elven Heavy Things in Union Square Park, New York. Originally shown at the Venice Biennale in 2009, the work consists of eleven fiber-glass and steel lined pieces that invite viewer participation to complete the piece–to stand on pedestals inscribed with phrases like What I Look Like When I’m Lying, The Guiltiest One, and We Don’t Know Each Other We’re Just Hugging for the Picture…, place limbs through holes in the sculptures, and stand beneath headdresses. These actions transform the works from still sculptures into interactive, performance based works. July encourages visitors to photograph themselves posing with the sculptures, and to then upload them to websites, sharing them with friends. July explains that once the photographs are shared, “the audience changes, and the subject clearly becomes the participants, revealing themselves through the work.”

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La femme a l’eventail (Lady with fan), Amedeo Modigliani

During the early hours of the morning on Thursday, May 20, five paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger were stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art (MAM – Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris). CCTV caught a single masked intruder entering the museum by a window, removing the works from their frames and then leaving with the loot, all in under fifteen minutes. The stolen works are Henri Matisse’s La Pastorale, Georges Braque’s L’olivier pres de l’Estaque, Amedeo Modigliani’s Woman with a Fan; Fernand Leger’s Still Life with Chandeliers; and Pablo Picasso’s Le pigeon aux petits-pois (The Pigeon with the Peas) – an ochre and brown Cubist oil painting that is estimated to be worth €23 million alone. Various reports have valued the missing works at anywhere from €100 million to €500 million ($126–635 million) – dealers and officials are currently debating the price of the works that had long been held in the public trust. This morning, embarrassed officials at the City Hall in Paris outlined a number of significant security blunders that made pulling off “one of the biggest thefts in art history” as simple as removing a reinforced window. The City Hall officials, who were officially in charge of the permanent collection, admitted that a partial malfunction of its alarm system had been reported on March 30, at which point it was shutdown without repair. Furthermore, Paris prosecutors confirmed that the entire theft was captured on film, but security guards have told police that they ‘saw nothing’, prompting investigators to believe they had been asleep. Ordering an ‘internal administrative inquiry’, the city’s mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, told the UK’s Daily Mail that ‘all have questions to answer.’

Police officers search for clues on the frames of the stolen paintings outside the Paris Museum of Modern Art yesterday. Image via WSJ

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Seated Harlequin, Pablo Picasso, 1901, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” exhibits 300 pieces from 25 donors, including 34 paintings, 58 drawings, a dozen sculptures and ceramics, and 200 prints, all of which come from the Metropolitan’s own repository.  Nearly every Pablo Picasso that the Met has amassed was used to compile this landmark exhibition, with works displayed dating from 1900 to 1968.  The Met is presenting several hundred works on paper that have never been seen by the public.

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Claude Monet “Le pont japonais”, 1918-24. Oil on canvas, 35 x 39 1/2 inches, (89 x 100 cm). W.1924, MM 5091. Musee Marmatton Monet, Paris. Photo courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Erase from your mind what you knew about waterlilies. Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s location on 522 West 21st Street is Claude Monet: Late Works. Straying from the artist’s better-known pastel-infused palette, the exhibition brings together 27 late canvasses with bold hues and scintillating color combinations. Many of these paintings were never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime, and some remained hidden as recently as the 1950s. Beautifully curated by Monet scholar Paul Hayes Tucker, this exhibition follows in the line of museum-quality shows the Gagosian has mounted in recent years. The gallery’s walls, transformed into elegant lavenders and greys, serve as the perfect backdrop for these exquisitely raw landscapes.

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The Bull, state VII (Le Taureau), Pablo Picasso, December 26th, 1945. Lithograph, Museum of Modern Art, via the MoMA.

“Picasso: Themes and Variations,” at the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street, presents 123 prints from the museum’s collection, representing the major developments in Pablo Picasso’s work and providing insight into decades worth of artistic experimentation.  The exhibition explores the artist’s creative process, following his prints from the early 1900’s Blue and Rose periods through his Cubist discovery.  The collection spans almost 20 themes, including animals, saltimbanques, and mistresses.

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