A piece in The Guardian this week profiles the experiences of the Impressionist Masters in London, and the artist’s lasting impact on the city’s history of art. The work profiles a range of artist’s engagements with the city’s landscapes and iconic structures, from Alfred Sisley to Claude Monet. (more…)
An article in Garage Magazine this month looks at the plight of a Caravaggio stolen from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily, and the likelihood that it is now in the hands of the Mafia. “The important thing is to get it back, out of principle, and these guys—by forgetting their buddies in prison whose conditions I was first told the mafia capo types wanted to improve— think they can now do it,” write Charley Hill, who is investigating the work. (more…)
Stanley Whitney, Drawings (Installation View), via Art Observed
Lisson Gallery’s second New York location kicked off the fall art season this past week with a striking exhibition of drawings and small-scale works by Stanley Whitney, a charged entry in the season’s landscape of exhibitions that rings a powerful chord against the backdrop of the U.S.’s turbulent and increasingly violent, racially-tinged struggles. Spread across the walls of the gallery’s small project space, the show is an impressive entry in the artist’s oeuvre, combining his energetic, colorful sensibilities with a more cutting socio-political and critical lens, one that brings his work into tight focus against the backdrop of current events. (more…)
Outside the Grand Palais, all photos via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed
As Wednesday evening drags into the late night in Paris, the first day of FIAC has concluded, bringing with it a steady stream of sales and projects that once again places the French art fair at the center of the fall exhibition calendar. The city’s marquee art fair, FIAC opened to strong praise from its attendees, and a number of show-stopping works, arranged under the equally striking architecture of the Grand Palais.
FIAC, via Art Observed
The Guardian has a piece this week on the mysterious orb held by Christ in the Leonardo da Vinci painting currently on view at Christie’s. “Solid glass or crystal, whether shaped like an orb or a lens, produces magnified, inverted, and reversed images,” historian Walter Isaacson says of the image. “Instead, Leonardo painted the orb as if it were a hollow glass bubble that does not refract or distort the light passing through it.” (more…)
In an extremely rare occurrence, two works by Florine Stettheimer have changed hands this year, with one going into the collection of the Whitney Museum, and one going onto the open market. Stettheimer rarely sold or gave her works away, making one’s appearance, let alone two in the same year, a momentous event. (more…)
French-Algerian artist Kader Attia has been named winner of the 2017 Joan Miró Prize. “Attia’s passionate engagement with current affairs and with the shared fate of humanity [which] has close links to Joan Miró’s involvement in the critical episodes that marked his generation, while Attia’s unique take on complex, often traumatic, human relationships across cultures resonates with Miró’s universal aspirations,” the award’s jury said in a statement. (more…)
Beatrix Ruf, former head of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum is stepping down over accusations of a conflict of interest regarding the director’s work as an independent art advisor, as well as the terms of recent donations of art to the institution. “I value the interests of this outstanding institution, and place the interests of the Stedelijk first, above my own, individual concerns. In light of that, I feel that this is an appropriate moment for me to step down. I wish the museum every success in the future because that is what the Stedelijk, its exceptionally dedicated staff, visitors, and supporters, wholeheartedly deserve,” Ruf said in a statement. (more…)
Artist Doug Aitken has received the inaugural $100,000 Frontier Art Prize, which “recognizes artistic expression to critically question the way we live and think, now and in the future, at the creative crossroads of art and science; and biology, ecology, chemistry, architecture, food, communications, transportation, medicine, biotechnology, design, space exploration, artificial intelligence and physics,” according to presenters Le Laboratoire and the VIA Art Fund. “As an artist and filmmaker Doug Aitken epitomizes the radical, pioneering spirit that we hope to celebrate with this award,” says Bridgitt Evans, the VIA Art Fund president and founder. “Doug’s ambitious artistic endeavors encourage us to imagine the future while simultaneously slowing us down to critically rethink our present.” (more…)
Pieter Schoolwerth, Privacy Settings #3 (2017), via Miguel Abreu
Returning to the French capital for another year of exhibitions inside the iconic expanses of the Grand Palais, the Foire International Art Contemporain, or FIAC, opens its doors today in Paris. The fair, which has operated for over 44 years in the city, has undergone several facelifts over the course of its lifetime, with its most recent editions courting a healthy mix of contemporary and modern works alongside more classical and historical modes, making it one of the world’s more ambitiously curated programs.
Marguerite Humeau, Jonny’s Child (OH7B) (2014), via Clearing
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige have been awarded the 2017 edition of the Prix Marcel Duchamp, leaving them with an award of €35,000. The pair’s work seeks to explore the portrayal and understanding of Lebanon as shaped by the Western media. They have recently shown in the Athens half of Documenta 14. (more…)
An auction to benefit the victims of London’s Grenfell Tower fire has raised over £1.9 million, the BBC reports. The benefits from the sale, which included works by Wolfgang Tillmans and Tracey Emin will be distributed to Grenfell families by North Kensington-based charity the Rugby Portobello Trust. (more…)
The New York Times spotlights painters Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, the artists selected to paint the official portraits of President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama, respectively. Each artist’s work is highlighted in the piece, exploring the evolution of both the painters’ craft and history of the Presidential Portrait. (more…)
Trevor Paglen, A Study of Invisible Images (Installation View), via Art Observed
Drawing on the increasingly complex relationship between human relations, technological ascendency and the exercise of power that ultimately serves as a negotiating space between these two forces, Trevor Paglen’s work has repeatedly explored how the modern computer processor is ever more embroiled in the fabric of human decision-making and world-building. Having traveled the globe, and even fired a satellite into space to look down on it from outside its atmospheric confines, Paglen’s work delves into the physical architectures, and often otherworldly effects that the modern state of surveillance and speed renders on human understandings of time, space, and even our own perceptions of identity or self.
Design group Atelier Van Lieshout’s Domestikator sculpture, originally deemed too lewd for an installation outside the Louvre, will go on view outside the Centre Pompidou.“To have this major piece in front of the Pompidou is a victory,” says Julien Lombrail, director of the London-based gallery Carpenters Workshop, which represents the artists. “It’s an incredible moment for Paris and the public when we have so many issues surrounding art and censorship. It’s important for us to engage for the future.” (more…)
A piece in the New York Times notes the growing stature of the London Contemporary Art auctions each October, and the challenges of two sets of major auctions each fall focusing on marquee works between New York and London. “There’s a volume issue,” says advisor Anthony McNerney of this month’s sales in the British capital. “A lot of collectors were feeling ‘art blind.’ ” (more…)
Fernand Léger’s Contraste de formes, a work which has never been auctioned, will go on sale at Christie’s next month in New York, carrying with it an estimate of $65 million. The price would set a new record for the artist. “Executed just months before the First World War, Contraste de formes, with its groundbreaking abstract conception and its thrillingly preserved physical state, is without question a major work of Modern Art,” says Conor Jordan, deputy chairman of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s. (more…)
Claes Oldenburg is profiled in the New York Times this week, as he reflects on his career and his first bodies of work. “I felt like the Ab Ex painters weren’t saying very much, and I wanted work that would say something, be messy, be a little mysterious,” he says. “Nineteen fifty-nine was the turning point. I was painting these brushy paintings — figurative — and then, thankfully, it all just fell apart.” (more…)
The Met has issued a statement in protest against the U.S.’s decision to pull out of Unesco, claiming the decision will have disastrous effects on the country. “President Trump’s decision to withdraw from UNESCO undermines the historic role of the United States as a leader in this effort and weakens our position as a strong advocate for cultural preservation,” the statement reads. (more…)
Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky set fire to an entrance of Bank of France in Paris over the weekend, continuing a series of confrontational performances that have seen him imprisoned multiple times in Russia. Pavlensky was quickly detained by French police. (more…)
Ai Weiwei’s landmark public art project Good Fences Make Good Neighbors has opened in New York, with massive fence sculptures erected across New York. “New York is a city I spent 10 years in,” Ai says of his history with the city. “I was quite hesitant [to do a project here] because I love [New York] so much, it’s not easy for me to just put a simple sculpture in the city … I had to do something to pay back my respect, my love.” (more…)
Alex Katz has provided the illustration for the 50th anniversary issue of New York Magazine, drawing a series of subway riders in a stripped down approach. “Alex Katz made drawings of people on the subway in the 1940s when he was a student on his way to Cooper Union,” says Magazine photography director Jody Quon. “We wanted to see if he would revisit the experience of doing the subway drawings.” (more…)
Citing an “anti-Israel bias,” the United States will withdraw from Unesco, the United Nations cultural organization, the New York Times reports. “Universality is critical to Unesco’s mission to strengthen international peace and security in the face of hatred and violence, to defend human rights and dignity,” says Unesco director Irina Bokova. (more…)
The Guggenheim Bilbao has embarked on a series of projects celebrating its 20th anniversary, including a massive lighting installation outside the museum by artist group 59 Productions. “We are very proud and lucky to have a building that is a masterpiece,” says director, Juan Ignacio Vidarte. (more…)