Damien Hirst is preparing a new show of his spot paintings at at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. “They are literally going to replace Old Master paintings [at Houghton] and will be displayed like they are Old Master paintings, in a very different way than if it was a classic white cube gallery,” says curator Mario Codognato. (more…)
David Zwirner is profiled in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the dealer celebrates 25 years in business. “If​ ​the​ ​artist​ ​is​ ​not​ ​happy,”​ ​he​ ​says,​ ​“I​ ​am not​ ​doing​ ​my​ ​job.” ​ (more…)
Artist JR is profiled in the Telegraph this week, as the artist’s installation on the border between Mexico and the United States continues to capture visitors’ attention. “I’ve always adapted to architecture, and you see my images taking over buildings and then the buildings almost becoming too small,” he says. “I’m not looking to do the biggest piece ever, it’s really not that.” (more…)
Marfa Contemporary, the Texas town’s prominent contemporary arts center, will shut its doors for good this month. Curator Kate Green is leaving the gallery this year to take up a position as of curator of the El Paso Museum of Art. (more…)
Isa Genzken, Untitled (2017), via Art Observed
For sheer conceptual punch and visual intensity, few works from the career of Isa Genzken carry in the way that her Schauspieler pieces manage. Arrangements of various mannequins, from young children to adult bodies are arranged in the artist’s works from this series, each dressed in various fineries and strange arrays of various clothing. Work tools, ponchos, colorful fabrics and sunglasses adorn her figures, creating various scenes and scenarios that always keep the body and its relationship to the world around it in full view. For her most recent show in Berlin, on view at König Galerie through the end of the weekend, Genzken has presented a selection of works from this series, continuing her razor-sharp investigation of the phenomena of modern reality. (more…)
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Two Times NR 34 (2016), via Thaddaeus Ropac
Launched in conjunction with the artist’s current exhibition at the Tate Modern, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is currently presenting a range of recent works by Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, exploring the artist couple’s continued exploration and investigation of the threads of memory, narration and understanding through myriad approaches to art making. The exhibition presents a collection of three separate series of recent works, each reflecting the artist’s complex relationship with the past, and the notions of personal and collective memory. (more…)
NADA New York has announced its exhibitor list for 2018, featuring 100 galleries from 17 countries at Skylight Clarkson Square. Thirty-three new exhibitors will also join the show. (more…)
Philadelphia’s LaSalle University is deaccessioning 46 artworks from its collection to help cover a $12 million budget shortfall, including pieces by Vuillard and Georges Rouault. “We are doing what we feel is in the best interest of our students,” University spokesperson Janie Lucas says. (more…)
Artist Andrea Fraser has been named chair of the UCLA Department of Art in the university’s School of the Arts and Architecture. The artist has long held a professorship at the university. (more…)
The Met is changing its 50 year policy on free admission, now requiring non-New York residents to pay to access the museum collections. “What we’re trying to do is find the right balance in generating revenue to support this enterprise and admissions income has fallen behind,” says president. “Everybody who benefits from this institution is being asked to contribute to its well-being because we are fundamentally a community resource.” (more…)
Artist Richard Long has received a knighthood for ‘services to art,’ recognizing the artist’s long contributions to his field in the UK. Long’s work mixes performance, land art and traditional sculpture into an experiential and intuitive practice. (more…)
A UK Government-commissioned review examines Britain’s glut of new museums, and notes that the nation should instead focus on funding and support for the ones currently in existence, the Telegraph reports. “It is unlikely that there will be significant additional money available for the sector in the immediate future. The main thrust of our recommendations is, therefore, to ensure that we use existing funding in the best way possible,” researcher Neil Mendoza wrote in his report. (more…)
The Art Newspaper reports on the market for copies of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi after the work became the most expensive work to ever sell at auction. The piece focuses on brothers Semjon, Michael and Eugen Posin, whose Berlin studio turns out meticulous copies of the work for around $12,000. (more…)
General Idea, 1968 General Idea Shaped Ziggurat Painting #1 (1986), via Mitchell-Innes and Nash
Formed in Toronto in 1969 by AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, the artist collective General Idea built its body of work on a strikingly diverse array of themes, constantly revisiting both the field of contemporary art production and the identity politics of the era that ultimately underscores so much of the artist’s act of world-making, critique and expression. No subject was safe from their intuitive and enigmatic lens, from the myth of the artist, the role of mass media, and the relationship between the body and identity, to questions of gender and sexual representation, and perhaps most famously, the HIV/AIDS activism of the 1980’s, a mode of critique that the group were pioneers of during an era of intense repression and governmental silence. Working in a broad range of practices, from paintings to performances, published editions to video, sculpture to installation, the group was almost constantly in a state of reinvention, speaking to the diversity and power of their collective vision. (more…)
Françoise Grossen (Installation View), via Blum & Poe
Delving deep into the early practice and sculptural explorations of artist François Grossen, the New York outpost of Blum & Poe is currently presenting a series of works by the Swiss artist. Including both early sculptural builds and maquettes that trace her evolving interests in the potential for fiber and fabric not only as sculptural material, but equally as carriers of various symbolic and spatial interventions. The, show, on view through January 6th, serves as an expansive introduction to the artist’s work, working through both her hanging pieces and arrangements of rope and fabric on a flat plane. (more…)
Raymond Hains, Sociale Populaire Nationale (1973), via Max Hetzler
Among the flood of works on view this summer at the main pavilions of the Venice Biennale, few artists’ work managed to do as much with as little as the late French artist Raymond Hains. Spread across a single room of the Giardini’s main structure, Hains’s mix of bastardized street posters, peculiar, sculptural arrangements of detritus and cast-off artifacts, and even the occasional poster of his own design, the artists range and insight into the various constructions of identity and cultural iconography in a world of near-constant data overload felt particularly timely.
Raymond Hains, You know nothing Raymond (Installation View), via Max Hetzler
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is now offering a $10 million reward for information that leads to the return of its notorious stolen works, but only through the end of 2017, in hopes that the doubled reward will encourage tips on the missing works. “Right now we’re laser-focused on this deadline,” says museum spokeswoman Kathy Sharpless. “Clearly there’s a sense of urgency on our part. We want our paintings back.” (more…)
Mike Kelley, Kandors 1999-2011 (Installation View), via Art Observed
Considering artist Mike Kelley’s enduring relationship and engagement wiht the landscape of Los Angeles, the return of the artist’s famed Kandors series to Hauser & Wirth in the city’s Arts District feels like something of a victory lap for the artist’s works. The Kandors, which have made their rounds over the past several years, showing in New York, Europe, and elsewhere, represent one of Kelley’s final bodies of work before his untimely passing, and perhaps his most elaborate engagement with the language of pop culture, and the varied convergences of mythology and psychology that so often make up the language of the best American cultural iconographies.
Mike Kelley, Kandors 1999-2011 (Installation View), via Art Observed
Bloomberg does a bit of digging against the claim that the Da Vinci Salvator Mundi portrait was the last of the artist’s works in private hands, finding several corroborating reports that two smaller works remain held privately. “They are both in private hands,” says Martin Kemp, a da Vinci scholar and emeritus research professor of art history at Oxford University in the U.K. “I know both owners.” (more…)
Facing harsh criticism, Düsseldorf Mayor Thomas Geisel has backtracked on the cancellation of a show at city’s Stadtmuseum about Max Stern, a Jewish art gallery owner who fled Nazi Germany in 1938. “It was never my intention to sweep the life and career of Max Stern under the carpet,” Mr. Geisel says. (more…)
Artist Mark Bradford will open Hauser & Wirth’s new gallery space in Hong Kong, the Art Newspaper reports. “Venice created an entirely new and huge wave of interest for one of the most relevant artists of our time, not only from mainland China and Hong Kong but also wider Asia, including Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan,” gallery president Iwan Wirth says. (more…)
The Broad is opening a massive retrospective of the work of Jasper Johns, the first in the U.S. in 20 years, LA Times reports. “We already know that there’s strong buzz for this show,” director Joanne Heyler said. “And it’ll only get stronger as we get closer, as the exhibition approaches. It’s extremely rare to bring a full survey of this artist’s work — so rare that it hasn’t happened in over 50 years in Southern California.” (more…)
Vanity Fair has a piece this week on how institutions in Southern California are planning and adapting to the increasingly frequent wildfires in the hills of the region. “After this, what else is there to burn? It’s demoralizing. I’ve had it with the fires,” says collector Jim Lichtman. (more…)
The Cultural Development Fund of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs has received over $40 million in funds this year, including funding for Mayor DeBlasio’s CreateNYC plan. “Together with our partners in City Council, we’re taking steps to ensure New Yorkers in every corner of the city are able to participate in our unrivaled cultural life,” the Mayor said. “CreateNYC gave New Yorkers the opportunity to speak up and be heard, and now we’re building on our long history of supporting the arts while directing new funding to communities where it can do the most good.” (more…)