Ellsworth Kelly, Diptych: Green Blue (2015), via Art Observed

Since the passing of Ellsworth Kelly in December of 2015, the exhibition of the artists’s final works has made for a sort of bittersweet anticipation. The show could be seen as a grand farewell to an artist who changed the landscape of American painting several times over during the course of his career, each time delving deeper into his clean, almost rhythmic approach to the shaped canvas that filled its confines with rich bounties of color.  Presented this month at Matthew Marks, the artist’s last body of work does not disappoint, and the series of pieces, culled from past sketches and concepts or completely new ideas, feels like a fitting look at the furthest points of the artist’s exploration before he laid down his brush for the last time.  (more…)

Arthur Brand, the Dutch private investigator working on locating works from the the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist has stated that he believes some works are in the hands of former IRA members, the Daily Mail reports, and is confident he can bring at least some of the works home. “Former IRA sources have told me or people that I know that there has been talk about these paintings for years within the IRA,” he says.   (more…)

A report by non-profit group Americans for the Arts has figures claiming that the revenue generated nationwide by arts funding sits at $166.3 billion.  “Arts and cultural organizations are valued members of the business community. They employ people locally, purchase goods and services from within the community, are members of their Chambers of Commerce, and promote their regions,” the report reads.   (more…)

The New York Times writes on Jeff Koons’s bouquet of flowers sculpture for Paris, intended as a gift to the city in the wake of terrorist attacks, and on the strings attached to the gift that have complicated its installation process. “They presented this bouquet as a symbolic present to Paris, but then we realized it wasn’t exactly a present, since France had to pay to install it,” says art critic Isabel Pasquier. “Whether you appreciate his art or not, Jeff Koons is a businessman, and we quickly understood that he was offering Paris to himself as a present.” (more…)

Reports on a drop in UK lottery sales bodes poorly for arts funding in the country, as the total sales for the past year drop by £55 million.  “Given the current climate of economic uncertainty and increasing competition from the gambling sector, we expect 2017/18 to be equally, if not more, challenging for the National Lottery,” says Camelot (the UK Lottery operator) Chairman Jo Taylor. (more…)

Documenta is planning a permanent “Documenta Institute” in the city of Kassel, which will serve as a research center and events site.  The site is planned as a way to “keep alive the concept and experience of Documenta in the years between exhibitions,” according to a statement by the city.  (more…)

US scholar Kenneth Wayne is preparing an addition to the Amedeo Modigliani catalogue raisonné.  The work will complement Ambrogio Ceroni’s catalogue raisonné, first published in 1958.  “We plan to publish a supplement to Ceroni by 2020 with around 50 works,” Wayne says.

(more…)

Georg Baselitz, Descente (Exhibition view). All images courtesy the artist and Galerie Thaddeus Ropac

On now through the first of July, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is presenting a body of new works by German artist Georg Baselitz in its spacious Paris Pantin exhibition galleries.  The show, titled Descente, brings together a set of new paintings and works on paper that concern the concept of aging and that of the “late work” in the career and life of an artist. (more…)

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has offered to turn over Jean-Michel Basquiat and Pablo Picasso works given to him by Malaysian financier and art collector Jho Low, works which were believed to be purchased with funds from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).  The account, full of government money, was spent on personal excesses and extravagant gifts. (more…)

Three New York men have been charged with selling counterfeited Damien Hirst dot paintings online for more than $400,000, The Guardian reports. “The art market’s demand for limited editions can lead to fake pieces with little value,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement.  “In this case, the alleged fraud went beyond plain imitation, and the defendants are charged with deceiving a multitude of buyers into purchasing counterfeit art that was falsely passed off as genuine.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper has a piece this week on the network of art storage warehouses and complexes in the U.S. and abroad, charting the map of companies working in the $1 billion industry.  “Until about ten years ago,” says Stephane Custot of London’s Waddington Custot gallery, “Modern and contemporary art collectors were mainly made up of art enthusiasts and amateurs, they had a real passion, spending their money on what they liked; they collected in order to simply enjoy the work in their home environment. Today you have to work with an increasing number of art funds or speculators buying art for investment. Art buying has become accessible to a much larger audience than before and is considered an asset. The result of this is that more work sleeps in warehouses rather than hanging in collectors’ homes.” (more…)

Artist Ei Arakawa has had a work stolen from the Skulptur Project Münster, an LED panel painting that was pried free from its display.  “This is a really interesting ‘performance’ in a way, revealing how vulnerable art in public space can be, and how public space can be violent,” the artist said. “This often happens in the history of Skulptur Projekte.” (more…)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Installation View), via Art Observed

Reflecting on the landmark career and tragically short life of artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Zwirner has opened its first exhibition dedicated to his work.  Zwirner has partnered with Andrea Rosen to jointly represent the artist’s estate worldwide, a move that promises increasingly broad exposure and support for his vision and canon. (more…)

Sotheby’s has tapped Jan Prasens as its new Managing Director of Europe, putting him in charge of the auction house’s operations in the continent, as well as in the Middle East, India and Africa.  “While Jan’s commercial credentials are impeccable, he also commands a deep understanding of our business and clients,” CEO Tad Smith says.  “I am delighted he is taking on this position where I know he will thrive alongside the exceptional team already on the ground there.” (more…)

Roughly $12 million in art was stolen from a Sunnyside storage facility in Queens, the New York Daily News reports, including pieces by Frank Stella and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.  Owner William Pordy discovered that thieves had broken the locks on the door and stolen all 22 works in storage.  “They broke the locks and they stole everything, all my paintings,” Pordy said. “It’s awful.” (more…)

Artist and poet John Giorno is profiled in the New York Post this week, as a massive exhibition devoted to his work is set to open across multiple venues in the city, curated by his husband, Ugo Rondinone.  “John has a childlike curiosity,” former REM frontman Michael Stipe says of Giorno. “I love how open he is.” (more…)

Sam Durant is interviewed in the LA Times this week, after signing over the intellectual property rights of his controversial work Scaffold to the Dakota people in Minnesota. “I have no intention of making a representation of that again,” Durant says. “They asked me, ‘How do we know you won’t do this again?’ I said, ‘That makes perfect sense. It’s yours. You decide what happens to it.’” (more…)

Subodh Gupta, Cooking the World (2017), via Art Observed

As Sunday drew to a close in Basel, the flagship Art Basel fair brought its program to its finale at the Messe Basel, capping an unexpectedly vigorous few days of sales and other programs that once again underscored the fair’s exceptional attraction for collectors across Europe, North America, and the rest of the globe.  Capping its five day run on Sunday evening, the week concluded on a high note, with ample sales that focused primarily around the blue-chip highlights of the fair’s lower floor, while sending a strong message on the market’s health more broadly.

Albert Oehlen, Geigenbau (2003), via Art Observed

(more…)

Artist Hermann Nitsch is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as he concludes a controversial performance in Australia.  “I want only to show what is,” he says. “I never was interested to make provocation. I want to show intensity. And let’s say, maybe in intensity is a kind of provocation, but for me [it] always is important to show life and to celebrate life.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on recent controversies in the study of the work of Andrew Wyeth, after researcher Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw published research documenting a series of the artist’s works changing the race of his subjects, or using their bodies as models while often denying them a fully formed sense of identity in his final paintings.  “I think we can find artists to be complicated and frustrating and disappointing in some ways and still love the work,” says Shaw. (more…)

Bicho (maquette) 1960. All images copyright O Mundo de Lygia Clark-Associação
Cultural, Rio de Janeiro. Courtesy of Luhring Augustine, New York and Alison Jacques Gallery, London.

Now through June 17 work by pioneering Brazilian artist Lygia Clark will be on view at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea, in partnership with Alison Jacques Gallery, London. Clark’s early drawings, collages, paintings, as well as her iconic Bicho series will be on view.

Estudo para Plans em superficie Modulada (Study for Planes on a Modulated Surface) 1957.

Lygia Clark, whose work reimagines the relationship between the art object and the audience, is one of the most significant artists of the 20^th century. She is associated with the Brazilian Constructivist movement and the Tropicalia movement. She is a founding member of the neo-Concrete movement, which proposes that art should be subjective and organic. Throughout her career, Clark investigated ways for museumgoers to interact with the art object. Clark’s work suggested a radical approach to painting, in which the pictorial surface was treated as if it were a three-dimensional surface. Clark remained a seminal figure of the international avant-garde throughout her lifetime and impacted future generations of artists with her revolutionary ideas surrounding the body, its presence, and agency.

Estudo para Plans em superficie Modulada (Study for Planes on a Modulated Surface) 1957.

Clark’s early abstract works experiment with modulations of form, color, and plane. They challenge the two dimensional space of the canvas and extend the visual field into the physical realm of the viewer. Her monochromatic works feature interlocking and reflecting geometric shapes, exploring visual relationships and perspectival shifts. Adjacent planes overlap and interrupt each other, demonstrating that contours can express spatial fields as well the void between them. Clark’s work reveals an intensive consideration of line and its properties.

Estudo para Plans em superficie Modulada (Study for Planes on a Modulated Surface) 1952.

In her Estudo para Plans em superficie Modulada (Study for Planes on a Modulated Surface), contours, shading, and line are the strategies the artist employs to investigate the line’s range of expressive possibilities. Challenging the frame of the canvas, these forms portray the surface’s capacity to intervene in physical space. These works stand alone and as a series, elegantly illustrating a kind of choreographed engagement with abstraction. This choreography reappears in Bichos, or critters, in which the viewer must exercise control over her experience of the artwork. The work calls upon the viewer to participate by steering the sculptures through many possible configurations, transforming the static installation into a time-based performance.

Study for Bicho 1960.

Modulated Space by Lygia Clark presents an ample overview of the seminal artist’s illustrations, installations, and experiments with space and line. The exhibition is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery.

-A. Corrigan

Related Links

Exhibition Page [Luhring Augustine]

Jordan Wolfson, (Installation View), all images courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ

On view through June 17th, Jordan Wolfson’s first exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ spans both of the dealer’s London gallery spaces, with his new video work Riverboat song featured at the Kingly Street space, and a group of new sculptural and virtual reality works presented at the nearby Davies Street gallery.  Creating nightmarish scenes which often contain symbols that suggest a perversion or deconstruction of the American Dream, the artist’s work blends fantasy and reality into a chilling combination.

Jordan Wolfson, Still from Riverboat Song (2017)

(more…)

Frank Stella, Alu Tuss Star (2016), via Art Observed

Marianne Boesky Gallery is currently exhibiting new work by artist Frank Stella, debuting seven large-scale sculptures created this year and underscoring the artist’s ongoing engagement with color, shape, and composition. Taking the shape of stars, ribbons, and bowties, these colorful sculptures activate and engage the surrounding space, and draw on an expanded history of Stella’s own formal language to give the works a sense of both vivid engagement with the sculptural language, and with his own creative evolution.

(more…)

An article in Art Newspaper this week traces the remarkable market rise for the Gutai group of Japanese post-war artists in the past years, and its subsequent decline in popularity.  “A big price will always drive the market,” says Grégoire Billault, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s New York. “When people can buy for $200,000 and sell for $2m, it’s irresistible for some of them.  I think it just needs a bit of time. It’s a question of needing a bit of maturity.” (more…)