Acne Studios has rolled out a new line produced in conjunction with artist Jack Pierson, a series of leather pouches embossed with texts from the artist’s “Caught in the Rain Broken in the Stardust” series from 1994.   (more…)

Maya Lin is among the list of Presidential Medal of Freedom award recipients this year, the last series of awards given by President Barack Obama.  “The Presidential Medal of Freedom is not just our nation’s highest civilian honor – it’s a tribute to the idea that all of us, no matter where we come from, have the opportunity to change this country for the better,” the President said.  “From scientists, philanthropists, and public servants to activists, athletes, and artists, these 21 individuals have helped push America forward, inspiring millions of people around the world along the way.” (more…)

Art Production Fund executive director Casey Fremont will take over full management of the non-profit, Art News reports.  “After 16 years APF is thriving because of the talent, dedication, and support of many wonderful artists, patrons, and an enthusiastic public,” said foundersYvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen in a statement.  “We are thrilled to hand the reins to Casey to guide its next chapter.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports on Bjarne Melgaard’s recent customs problems in Norway, after a series of the artist’s works were held by the government as “not art.”  “We’ve been struggling with this problem for three months now,” says Gard Eiklid of Oslo gallery Rod Bianco. “It’s been an absurd fight where we had to ‘prove’ that Melgaard’s paintings are art.” (more…)

The Guardian looks back at the surrealist dinner parties hosted by Salvador Dali, which featured complex arrangements of foods and architecture.  “My edible, intestinal and digestive representations at this period assumed and increasingly insistent character,” he once wrote.  “I wanted to eat everything, and I planned the building of a large table made entirely of hard-boiled egg so that it could be eaten.” (more…)

The Park Avenue Armory has announced its 2017, including a rendition of Hansel and Gretel by Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Ai Weiwei, which will dwell on “the meaning of publicly shared space in the era of surveillance.”   (more…)

Andy Warhol’s original Factory location, in a rented firehouse at 159 East 87th Street, has sold for $9.98 million.  The seller of the property is Guy Wildenstein, the embattled French art dealer. (more…)

The court case between Alec Baldwin and Mary Boone drags on this week, after Baldwin filed a new request for New York State Supreme Court to punish Boone over the sale of an allegedly deceptive Ross Bleckner work.  “Dismissing [his] demand for punitive damages, and allowing defendants to pay nothing but compensatory damages (essentially a refund), would be akin to asking a bank robber to simply return the money if caught; it would tell New York’s art dealers that fraud pays,” the filing states. (more…)

Louise Bourgeois, My Blue Sky (1989-2003), via Hauser & Wirth

During the last decade of her life, Louise Bourgeois began immersing herself in the techniques of soft-ground etching, rendering delicate lines and twisting, nuanced forms on a series of copper plates before transferring the images to paper.  Combining a number of the artist’s long-running pictorial interests in conjunction with her often inventive approach to both her tools and her own personal history, the works stand as a striking, yet subdued, re-interpretation of her own practice, branching out into new modes of practice in her final years.

Louise Bourgeois, Turning Inwards (Installation View), via Hauser & Wirth

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Steven Parrino, Untitled (1991), all images courtesy Patrick Seguin

On-view through November 26^th, 2016, Galerie Patrick Seguin presents Olympia, in collaboration with New York-based gallery and bookstore Karma, one in a series of annual shows hosted by the gallery, entitled Carte Blanche, in which international galleries are invited to organize and curate exhibitions at the Paris space.  Drawing on a wide range of artists’ works on paper, the show features pieces by Wade Guyton, Sigmar Polke, Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso, and more. (more…)

Carmen Herrera, Green and Orange (1958), via Art Observed

Taking over the top floor of the Whitney this fall is Lines of Sight, an exhibition delving into the first thirty years of Cuban-born artist Carmen Herrera’s unique investigations into the color field, minimalist abstraction, and the practice of painting.  On view through 2017, it provides a fitting context for the artist’s ongoing body of work, which now reaches into its seventh decade. (more…)

GCC, Positive Pathways (+) Version II (2016), All images © GCC; Courtesy of the artists and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY Photo: Adam Reich

GCC, an art collective tapping on cultural and social implications of change in the Arab Gulf Region, last exhibited in New York in 2014, when MoMA PS1 opened the group’s first American solo exhibition, Achievements in Retrospective, followed by their inclusion in the New Museum exhibition Here and Elsewhere.  The collective, comprised of eight artist-“delegates,” all born or raised in the region, returns to the city for Positive Pathways (+) at Mitchell-Innes & Nash this month, presenting the show’s eponymous sculpture, originally exhibited at the DIS-curated Berlin Biennale this summer, alongside a group of sculptural reliefs created using Thermoforming techniques. (more…)

Steven Shearer opening at the Brant Foundation. All photos by Nadia Palon for Art Observed

On November 13th, a survey of work from Canadian artist, Steven Shearer, opened at the Brant Foundation.  Set on Peter Brant’s estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, the vibrant opening welcomed art enthusiasts for the second of the Foundation’s bi-annual exhibitions.  Featuring paintings, collages, drawings, and poems set out across multiple rooms, the explored Shearer’s ongoing investigations and depictions of youth culture and alienation. (more…)

Billionaire Len Blavatnik is suing the Wildenstein family over a soured £63 million real estate deal in New York, which he claims resulted in several million dollars in lost business.  “Defendants apparently believe they can do and say anything to suit their purposes,” Blavatnik’s suit states. “This suit seeks to end this heinous practice.” (more…)

The New York Times previews next year’s Whitney Biennial, the first in the museum’s new building, and the fraught political landscape that the show finds itself operating within.  “An election year prompts that questioning,” says Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s chief curator and deputy director for programs. “The discourse turns to who we are as a nation.” (more…)

Sotheby’s CEO Tad Smith is interviewed by CNBC this week, stating that Donald Trump’s election as President will help benefit the art market’s recovery over the next year.  “I think there’s been a fairly good feeling among the art collectors this week,” Smith says. “There’s just a lot of very wealthy people from all types of countries… and they have a lot of capital to deploy.” (more…)

Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum is moving forward with an exhibition of work by Anselm Kiefer, after the artist attempted to shut the show down over its organization without his consent.  “We deeply regret that Mr. Kiefer has not directly participated in the exhibition or came to China again to make this exhibition.” The Central Academy said in a statement.  “As an important art academy and art museum in China, we hope that we will have further cooperation and exchange with Mr. Kiefer in the future.” (more…)

Artist Helen Marten has won the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture in the UK, and has pledged to share the award’s £30,000 purse with her fellow nominees.  “To a certain extent I believe, as I said on stage, in the light of the world’s ever lengthening political shadow, that the art world has a responsibility, if not to suggest a provisional means forward, then at least show an egalitarian platform of democracy,” she said.  “I believe the hierarchical position of art prizes today is, to a certain extent, flawed.” (more…)

A teenager in Iraq is working to create replicas of a series of Assyrian sculptures destroyed by ISIS, creating meticulous replicas in his father’s workshop.  “In Iraq, there are people who are killed because they are sculptors, because they are artists. Continuing to sculpt is a message that we will not be intimidated by those devils,” seventeen year-old Nenous Thabit says.  “My dream is to become a prominent artist in Iraq to make my country proud and show the world that we in Iraq love life and cherish our heritage.” (more…)

Gerhard Richter, A.B. Still (1986), final price: $33,987,500, via Sotheby’s

Concluding the last major week of auction sales before the end of a rollercoaster calendar year, Sotheby’s capped an impressively consistent sale of Post-War and Contemporary artworks last night in New York City, a 64-lot outing that saw the auction house continue to upend expectations in a week that has been defined by unexpected records and several marquee auction records.  The sale reached a final tally of $276,560,750, with 4 of 64 works unsold. (more…)

Fernando Botero is profiled in W Magazine this week, as the artist prepares to release a new book, looking back on his early work and development as an artist.  “When I was very young, like 13 or 14 years old, I was fascinated by the [Alberto] Vargas girls I saw in an Esquire magazine,” he says.  “I did some copies in watercolor. Perhaps they were the first things that I did. Then I discovered real art and forgot about Vargas.” (more…)

Claude Monet, Meule (1891), final price: $81,447,500, via Christie’s

Doubling down on Wednesday night, Phillips and Christie’s went back to back on a marathon pair of auctions, Phillips with its 20th Century Sale and Christie’s with its Impressionist and Modern sale, that pushed the fall auction week to near completion with surprisingly potent results, including a new auction record for both Claude Monet and Wassily Kandinsky.   (more…)

The Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale next year will feature works by Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi, and Adelita Husni-Bey, curated by Cecelia Alemani.  “These three artists were born in Italy between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, and came onto the domestic and international scene at the brink of the new century, each at their own level of fame: from Husni-Bey’s promising young talent, to Cuoghi’s more mature oeuvre,” Alemani says.  “While their art and their languages are global, their work is still closely tied to Italian culture.” (more…)

MoMA has revealed itself as the buyer of the seminal László Moholy-Nagy work EM 1 (Telephone Picture), which sold Monday at Sotheby’s.  “We have long aspired to add the third of Moholy’s Telephone Pictures to the two we have owned for many years,” says director Glenn Lowry. This acquisition allows us to present Moholy’s radical experiment in its full glory, and to tell the complete story of this remarkable moment in the history of the avant-garde.” (more…)