Francis Bacon, Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer (1967), via Christie’s
Another auction come and gone for Christie’s tonight in London, and another set of strong results, as the auction house capped a 76 lot sale to the tune of £95,646,500, meeting expectations, and setting several records for non-blue chip artists along the way, with 10 lots going unsold, including a string of Gerhard Richter works that may signal a downturn in the artist’s market popularity. Read More »
| Comments Off on AO Auction Recap – London: Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale, June 30th, 2015 | | 
Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2010), via Phillips
Sales have concluded at tonight’s Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sale at Phillips Auction House in London, capping a strong outing by the company that saw 10 of the 53 lots going unsold. With somewhat sluggish proceedings and a few surprises, the auction seems to be something of a stumble in Phillips’ attempts to challenge the larger auction houses this week.
Sigmar Polke, Carnival (1979), via Phillips Read More »
| Comments Off on AO Auction Recap – London: Phillips Contemporary Evening Sale, June 29th, 2015 | |
Yves Klein, Peinture de feu couleur sans titre (FC 27) (1962), via Christie’s
Following strong but subdued outings last week during the London summer sales, attention turns to the Contemporary market in the UK, as a trio of sales this week will usher in the summer months. The sales start tomorrow, spanning three nights in the British capital, and drawing the first half of the year’s major sales to a close.
Andy Warhol, One Dollar Bill (1962), via Sotheby’s Read More »
| Comments Off on AO Auction Preview – London: Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sales, June 29th – July 1st, 2015 | |
Serpentine Pavilion, via Serpentine Galleries
The Serpentine Pavilion, the annual summer architecture project hosted by Serpentine Galleries, has opened in London, a swirling series of multicolored chambers and hallways by Spanish architecture firm SelgasCano (the first commission from a Spanish firm) resting on the lawn outside of the museum galleries. Read More »
| Comments Off on London – Opening of Serpentine’s Summer Pavilion at Hyde Park, On View Through October 18th, 2015 | |
Huma Bhabha at Salon 94 (Installation View)
Huma Bhabha’s new body of work is currently on view at both Lower East Side locations of Salon 94, showing the Pakistani-born and New York-based artist resuming her sculpture focused multi-media practice, pulling from vast inspirational sources, with her third exhibition at the gallery. Spanning over centuries, religions, cultures and disciplines; Bhabha’s influences generate works of art that are hybrids of various methodologies. Not dictated by historical or cultural hierarchy, threads Bhabha weaves into her practice articulate on set modes of history writing, problematizing its embedded dynamics. Dystopian or utopian depending on viewers’ perception, Bhabha’s assemblies – most notably her robust sculptures – revoke remnants of a somber future that draws nourishment from its past. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – Huma Bhabha at Salon 94 Bowery and Salon 94 Freemans Through June 28th, 2015 | |
Rob Pruitt, Esprit de Corps (Hokuskai’s Great Wave) (2015), via Art Observed
Rob Pruitt turned 50 this year, and marked the occasion with the opening of this summer’s bi-annual artist retrospective at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, the sprawling complex owned by magazine mogul Peter Brant, just across the street from his family home. The show, taking its suburban locales and high art context as a point of departure, is a remarkable distillation of Pruitt’s practice over the last decades, and welcomes a renewed perspective on the artist’s own personal history in relation to his work. Read More »
| Comments Off on Greenwich, CT – Rob Pruitt: “50th Birthday Bash” at The Brant Foundation Through September, 2015 | |
Bruce Nauman, Pencil lift / Mr. Rogers (2013), all photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Bruce Nauman presented a major solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, his first in France in the last 15 years. Imagined for the bright and airy building designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the show features a selection of large-scale works, exploring the complex relationship between time, body, voice and surroundings.
The highly influential American-born artist established his studio in New Mexico in the late 1970s. The experience of his workspace has been a subject matter for a number of his works ranging from installation, performance, video, sound and sculpture. The broad array of media in Nauman’s Å“uvre is masterfully presented in this exhibition which brings in resonance iconic works from the 70s, 80s and 90s along with very recent productions, in an ongoing dialogue between reality and its representation, performance and its documentation, repetition and memory.
| Comments Off on Paris — Bruce Nauman at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain on view through June 21, 2015 | |
Georg Baselitz, Glastrinker Beckmann (1981), All images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.
The prolific German artist Georg Baselitz is the subject of Skarstedt’s current show with two series of paintings from the 1980’s. Entitled Drinkers and Orange Eaters, the exhibition is composed of two series that the adept Neo-Expressionist created as a study on representation and pictorial narrative. Accentuating the gallery’s minimal but elegant townhouse space, these vibrant paintings, emanating from Baselitz’s gestural brushstrokes fervidly reclaim the legacy of oil on canvas. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – Georg Baselitz: “Drinkers and Orange Eaters” at Skarstedt Through June 27th, 2015 | |
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915), via Sotheby’s
The Impressionist and Modern sale has concluded at Sotheby’s tonight, with 51-lot sale that failed to live up to the auction house’s pre-sale proclamations of a record breaking sale. The auction brought a final total of £178,590,000, falling just shy of the £186.44 million record for London auctions it was expected to beat. Read More »
| Comments Off on AO Auction Recap – London: Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale, June 24th, 2015 | |
Claude Monet, Iris Mauves (1914-1917), via Christie’s
The London summer auctions are underway, after Christie’s opening sale this evening at its King Street location, a steady if somewhat relaxed sale that seemed a markedly subdued affair compared to the fireworks the auction house saw last month in New York. Capping the 52-lot sale with a final tally of £71,461,000, the evening was still a strong entry in the auction house’s recent outings. Despite lackluster bidding, the sale achieved a remarkably strong sell-through rate, with only 8 works going unsold. The auction house seemed content to let a number of works go just below estimate, continuing a commitment to a sales-first strategy outgoing president Steven Murphy had outlined late last year. Read More »
| Comments Off on AO Auction Recap – London: Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale, June 23rd, 2015 | |
