In a single week, Christie’s has sold over $1 billion in art, a daunting feat that signals a new level for the global market perhaps never seen before.  “It’s a spectacle of excess at the highest level,” says Abigail Asher of Guggenheim Asher Associates Inc. “The last few years have been building up to this moment. A new class of buyer has entered the market and they’re prepared to pay staggering sums for trophy pictures.”   (more…)

Francis Bacon, Seated Woman (1961), via Phillips

The Phillips Contemporary Evening sale has concluded, bringing to a close a week full of fireworks and smashed records with a relatively lackluster sales event that saw several impressive sales, countered by a number of less than exceptional performances.  Of the sale’s 71 lots, 14 went unsold, and few others managed to surpass high estimates, bringing the final sales tally to a respectable $97,100,000.   (more…)

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. III Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black (1929), via Art Observed

The auction week has come and gone, and Christie’s has closed out a major week for both its Impressionist/Modern and Contemporary Departments, as the combined sales of its three Evening events this week have collectively brought in well over a billion dollars in sales.  This Evening, the Impressionist and Modern Evening sale added an exclamation point to the proceedings, bringing in a final tally of $202,608,000 that saw a major new record for Piet Mondrian. (more…)

Golden Lion for Best Pavilion amongst Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas, When counting loses its sense (2015), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

In 1915, during the clashes of WWI, the Ottoman Empire set out on a path of systemic destruction of its Armenian subjects, massacring male Armenians or forcing them into conscripted labor, while leading women, children and the infirm on arduous death marches off into the Syrian desert.  The brutal and politically contentious genocide killed, on estimate, up to 1.5 million citizens, and stands as one of the Twentieth Century’s most horrific episodes of war.  Even so, the political body of Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the term genocide in relation to these war crimes, and the historical scars of the killings run through the distributed population of the Armenian diaspora worldwide. (more…)

Lucian Freud, Benefits Supervisor Resting (1994), via Art Observed

Christie’s has concluded the first days of Frieze week in style tonight, continuing its impressive performance over the course of the Contemporary Auction week with a strong sale tallying $658,532,000.  Selling 72 of the 85 lots offered, the sale saw several major records fall during the course of the evening, signaling the intense enthusiasm for the contemporary market both in the U.S. and abroad. (more…)

Two of the most valuable works from the Cornelius Gurlitt collection, Woman with a Fan, (1923) by Henri Matisse, and Two Riders on a Beach (1901) by Max Liebermann, will be returned to the families of their original owners.  “Thankfully Gurlitt liked our Liebermann and kept it prized on his wall,” says Mr. Matteis, the lawyer representing David Toren, heir to the Liebermann work. (more…)

Painter Zeng Fanzhi is the subject of a video profile on Nowness this week, shot in Paris and exploring his work and stance towards creating.  “An artist should follow his heart, create, then keep moving,” he says.  “If you keep repeating yourself than that’s a waste of the artistic life.” (more…)

The Shortlist for the 2015 Turner Prize has been announced, featuring a diverse body of artists and practices that diverges wildly from last year’s heavily video and film-centric affair.  The 2015 Prize exhibition will be staged this year at the Tramway arts venue in Glasgow.  The Turner Prize, a £25,000 award, is Britain’s most prominent recognition in the arts, and this year will go to either London artist Bonnie Camplin, German-born artist Nicole Wermers, London-based arts collective Assemble (which adopted an abandoned housing estate and converted it into a new community space), or artist Janice Kerbel.  Working in a wide variety of media, social practice and community milieu factor heavily into the pieces on view this year.

The Turner Prize exhibition will open this October in Glasgow. (more…)

W Magazine takes a look inside the home of Frieze director Victoria Siddall and her partner, gallerist François Chantala this week, just in time for the opening of the organization’s New York edition.  “Our work and social lives are totally continuous and intertwined,”Siddall says.  “But when we’re in the same city, it means that at least we get to see each other in the evenings. The art lot always knows how to put on a great party.” (more…)

The New York Times visits Michael Heizer at his Nevada ranch and studio, and explores his ongoing project City.  “It epitomizes a fusion of ancient and modern forms,” Heizer says.  “It’s huge in size, but antimonumental in its relentless horizontality and its sinuous, continuous curves. It’s also unphotographable and impossible to capture in its totality. It has to be experienced in time and space — over time, and distance.” (more…)

Artist and dealer Dorothee Fischer, who headed the Konrad Fischer gallery in Düsseldorf, and advocated for artists like Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, and Blinky Palermo, has passed away at the age of 78.  Fischer’s tireless, focused work in conceptual and minimal art built a dedicated group of artists around her, and she in turn built an impressive collection of 250 works, alongside her gallery archives, both of which were purchased by the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen for over $1 million.   (more…)

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Rêvolutions (2015), French Pavilion, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Running concurrently with the Central Pavilion’s curated exhibition, the respective National Pavilions on view at the Giardini and Arsenale are one of Venice’s defining aspects.  Featuring important solo exhibitions for both emerging and career artists, carefully-curated group shows and special projects, each pavilion’s focus allows the international perspective of the Biennale to truly take shape. (more…)

Christopher Wool, Riot (1990), via Sotheby’s

Another night come and gone in New York, and another impressive evening auction in the books as Sotheby’s concludes its Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sale this Tuesday night with a final tally of $379,676,000, failing to top Christie’s impressive auction from one night prior despite some impressive sales records of its own.  The 65-lot sale saw 8 of the works go unsold, for a final sell-through rate of 87.7%, a hard figure considering last evening’s single unsold lot out of 35. (more…)

Bloomberg takes a look at the vast number of fairs and auctions taking place this month, and the growing move by these sellers to diversify as the art fair model matures.  “The best collectors don’t just buy contemporary art,” said Michael Plummer, whose New York-based consultancy Artvest Partners owns the Spring Masters fair. “They might have Renaissance painting and antiquities and modern art.” (more…)

The endlessly prolific Hans Ulrich Obrist has a new book out this week, titled Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects, tracing a series of the artist’s ongoing conversations with artists and designers over the course of his career, including pieces with David Hockney and Marina Abramovic. (more…)

An article in The Guardian looks at the current art community in Los Angeles, and asks if perhaps the Californian metropolis now offers better opportunities for artists than New York City’s vaunted art scene.  There’s a lot of people helping each other out here,” says artist David Flores. “And there’s a lot more room to play with, more elbow room.”  (more…)

French art dealer Olivier Thomas is under investigation after Catherine Hutin-Blay, the step-daughter of Pablo Picasso, filed charges accusing him of allegedly stealing artworks he was meant to be transporting and storing for her.   (more…)

Leo Fitzpatrick, the former star of Larry Clark’s film Kids, and longtime director of the Nate Lowman project space Home Alone 2, will join Marlborough Chelsea as a gallery director.  “I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish with Home Alone over those three years, but generally it was me taking art on the subway, trying to put on these shows,” Fitzpatrick says. “I’m really excited about having help, and people to bounce ideas off of. We can really do big things. If I was able to do so much with so little, imagine what I can do here.” (more…)

London’s Royal Academy of Art has unveiled a £50 million expansion plan that will link the institution’s two buildings in the British capital’s Mayfair district.  “You will be able to go from an exhibition in Burlington House to a lecture in Burlington Gardens through the vaults of the building,” says Sir David Chipperfield, who designed the project.  “You will see the cast corridors, you will see where the schools have been all this time. It’s a small amount of architecture for a profound result.” (more…)

Richard Tuttle, Aspect XII (2015), via Pace

As the New York art world returns home following the Biennale previews last week, the first days of the Frieze Art Fair are set to get underway.  Opening its doors to VIPs this Wednesday, May 13th, the fair brings a number of events, openings and exhibitions along with it, marking the last major fair week in the U.S. for several months, and penultimate major fair week internationally before the slow summer months. (more…)

Pablo Picasso, Les Femmes D’Alger (1955), via Art Observed

The crown for the most expensive artwork at auction has returned to the master, as Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes D’Alger lived up to its lofty expectations at auction this evening, as Christie’s “Looking Forward to the Past” exhibition kicked off Frieze Week (and a week of Contemporary Sales in New York) in grand style, tallying a massive $705,858,000 for a 35-lot offering that saw numerous records fall by the wayside, and only one lot going unsold, on the way to Picasso’s triumphant evening. (more…)

Cecily Brown is profiled in New York Magazine this week, as the artist opens an exhibition of new work at Maccarone Gallery in the West Village, smaller works that mark a shift in her career after ending her relationship with Gagosian Gallery.  “People would see them and say, ‘Are they studies for the big ones?’” Brown says.  “I joked that the big ones had become studies for the small ones. The big ones seemed very fast and loose, and the small ones were very neurotic. There was a while I called them ‘The Neurotic Paintings.’ They were so intense, very painterly, the paint got thicker. You have to believe the viewer has a more intimate relationship because you have to get up close.” (more…)

David Hockney is the subject of an interview in The Guardian this week, revisiting his life among movie stars and artists during the 1960’s, contrasted with his intense work ethic.  “I thought I was a hedonist at the time, but when I look back I was always working,” he says.  “I am always working. I work every day. I never give parties; I never gave them.” (more…)

Adding an additional facet to his collaboration with Barney’s, Alex Katz has created a 60-foot mural of Yvonne Force Villareal, Doreen Remen and Casey Fremont of the Art Production Fund, his wife, Ada, and longtime muse Elizabeth McAvoy for exhibition in the store’s front windows.  “I’ve been involved in fashion for quite some time and it seems natural to me,” Katz says.  “Art is supposed to be eternal and fashion is always moving, but I’ve learned that art moves just like fashion.” (more…)