David Hockney, Woldgate Woods, November 26th (2010), via Art Observed

David Hockney returns to the Pace Gallery this month, showing a selection of new works that once again focus on the artist’s love affair with his Woldgate home, and the continued expansion of his decades of work as a painter into new media forms.  Titled The Arrival of Spring, the work is another entry in the artist’s documentation and depiction of the landscapes of rural Britain. (more…)

Pace Gallery has announced that it will be installing three late Alexander Calder sculptures at the foot of the Seagram Building.  Calder’s work was always intended to be installed in the plaza of the International Style icon, but financial reasons prevented his work from making a permanent home there.  “So in our minds, it’s always been a Calder plaza,” says the artist’s grandson Alexander S.C. Rower, “and it’s always nice to see works back there again.” (more…)

Russian entrepreneur, mathematician, engineer and collector, Inna Bazhenova has purchased the Art Newspaper, with the intent of helping in the development of the site’s online offering.  “The quality of its journalism and scholarship are outstanding and its excellent coverage of international art news is vital in our global environment,” she said in a statement. “I want to reassure you that The Art Newspaper will retain complete editorial independence, now and for as long as I own it. My aim is to invest in it so that it may remain as good as it is today.” (more…)

Fergus McCaffrey, via Art Info

Fergus McCaffrey Gallery has announced new plans to expand its spaces, opening new spaces in St. Barths and Tokyo over the next several years.  “The continuity of artist production in St Barths is compelling,” says McCaffrey. “There is an interesting and very rich history of work being made there; including what might have been Cy Twombly’s last works, Polaroid photographs of flowers in the graveyards in Lorient and St. Jean.” (more…)

Ai Weiwei, Blossom (2014) (Detail) photo by Jan Stürmann, courtesy of FOR-SITE foundation

After much anticipation, Ai Weiwei has opened his new project at Alcatraz, the former island prison in the San Francisco Bay.  The project, which brings seven large-scale installations incorporating photography, installation, sound and video, is a fitting continuation of Ai’s projects examination of incarceration following his own imprisonment in 2011.

Ai Weiwei, Yours Truly (2014) (Detail) photo by Jan Stürmann, courtesy of FOR-SITE foundation

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CNN has published a list detailing some of the best attractions and galleries that the city of Berlin currently has to offer, including KW Institute, Sammlung Boros, and the popular Mobile Kino traveling cinema on its list. (more…)

Justine Kurland, Sincere Auto Care (2014)  via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

The complex landscape of Americana, in all of its grungy glory, has been documented many times, each time with a unique perspective and very often with a driving ethical or social message somewhere just below the surface. But in Sincere Auto Care, photographer Justine Kurland seeks to neutralize the otherwise political or cultural connotations of these semiotics. Instead, she presents the subjects as they are: beautiful but dry, deep but all surface, and, as the title suggests, truly sincere.

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An article in Barron’s this week charts the instability and unpredictability of various materials in contemporary art as a considerable liability towards a work’s valuation and security as an investment.  “A great deal of art being sold today may deteriorate quickly and cause the monetary value to decline – precipitously in some cases,” says Emily MacDonald-Korth, founder of Longevity Art Preservation LLC. (more…)

The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced with four artists – Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell – competing for the £25,000 prize.  The shortlist is notable this year for its strong focus on installation and new media-based works.  “This reflects the mobility of art today, while the prominence of film, performance, and participation reveals an interest in work that adapts according to changing surroundings.” says jury chair and Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis. (more…)

An iconic still life by Vincent Van Gogh, painted only a few years before the end of the artist’s life, is anticipated to sell for $30 to $50 million at Sotheby’s in New York this November, a figure that indicates strong competition for the work.  The piece could very well see fierce bidding to break the artist’s record of $82.5 million, set in 1990.  (more…)

The Telegraph takes a look at the focus on post-war Italian art spanning much of the market in London this, including upcoming auctions focusing on the Arte Povera and related movements, as well as a handful of selling exhibitions.   (more…)

Richard Tuttle is interviewed in the Financial Times this week, in advance of the artist’s new installation commission at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.  “There’s a whole body of my works which starts with the material and then moves to the other sides where the material doesn’t matter,” he writes. (more…)

Walead Beshty, Performances Under Working Conditions (Installation View) via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

Following Petzel Gallery’s open invitation for Walead Beshty to curate its summer group exhibition, the Chelsea space is presenting his first solo show with the gallery, titled Performance Under Working Conditions. Examining modes of work and the kinetic, human element of labor, the exhibition uses minimal, repeated actions to underline the interaction of human and non-human agents.

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Christie’s has added a new fee to its auction sales this month, a 2% performance fee that rewards sales far exceeding pre-sale estimates.  “The purpose is to incentivize and reward high performance that exceeds consignors’ expectations,” says Christie’s head of communications Paddy Feeny.  (more…)

The Guardian visits Tracey Emin in her Spitalfields studio this week, as the artist prepares for an exhibition of new work next month at White Cube.  “Work is good,” she says.  “If I don’t make things, I become ill and depressed. Painting makes me feel like a better human being. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”  (more…)

Eric Fischl is in the New Yorker this week, taking writer Emma Allen on a tour of the Art Southampton fair in Long Island while he captures photographs for the artist’s newest series of paintings depicting the wealth and society of the world’s most prominent art fairs.  “They’re all art fairs,” he says of his work.  “All people in various relationships to each other or to the art, usually ignoring it, sometimes looking at their phones.” (more…)

Painter Chris Ofili is profiled in the New Yorker this week, in advance of the artist’s upcoming retrospective at the New Museum.  “Painting is a kind of pursuit, a hunt,” he says. “I think it’s more interesting when you can corral your subjects, instead of just going right to them. Enjoy and engage with the process—you want to keep going into the unknown, to the point where you don’t think about how long it’s going to take to get there.” (more…)

Camille Henrot, recipient of last year’s Silver Lion in Venice, has been awarded the 2014 Nam June Paik prize.  The artist was selected from the shortlist exhibition at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, and will receive a $32,o00 prize. (more…)

Tomma Abts, Feke (2013), via Art Observed

Currently on view at David Zwirner’s 519 19th Street Space in New York, Tomma Abts is presenting a body of new paintings and drawings, a new entry in her ongoing practice involving flux, change and construction over the course of the compositional process.  Under formal analysis, Abts’s work is rooted in the history of 20th Century abstraction, colorful shapes and lines converging in a studious and well-executed canvas that exploits its own relations to its surrounding space as much as the picture plane itself, but upon closer inspection, the works on view here often offer a much deeper narrative.   (more…)

Gert & Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2014), all images via Maureen Paley

In their second solo exhibition at Maureen Paley, Gert & Uwe Tobias have brought a new selection of their mesmerizing woodcuts and collages. With a collection of fantastical characters printed on dark backgrounds, the woodcuts exemplify the tension between the fanciful and the terrifying present in fairy tales and folklore.  These passed-down stories, as told in countless variations, have a tone that is at once childlike and unsettling, a contrast that the Tobias brothers exploit in their work. (more…)

Allan McCollum, Collection of Thirty-Six Perfect Couples (2005-2014), via Art Observed

Now on view at Petzel Gallery is a solo exhibition of works by Los Angeles-born, New York-based artist Allan McCollum.  Entitled The Shapes Project, the purpose of the series on view was to design a system that would allow for the production of a single, unique shape for every person in the world, using rapid manufacturing technologies to produce infinite variations of shape and form. This exhibition will be McCollum’s sixth solo exhibition at Petzel.

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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island (1976) (P.054), all images courtesy Victoria Miro

Photographer Francesca Woodman is the subject of an exhibition exploring her broad range of innovative techniques at Victoria Miro this month, focusing on a theme of the zigzag as both a geometric and compositional form.

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Maria Bukhtoyarova is the subject of a profile in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the young collector (just over 30), reviews her already impressive collection of works.  “I got interested in art in the late 2000s when I was working for L’Officiel magazine in Moscow,” she writes.  “In 2009, I went to Venice to visit the Biennale. It was an experience that brought me into the art world. I was fascinated by all the art around me and its power.” (more…)

Bloomberg takes a look this week at the trend towards artists painting luxury automobiles, profiling specially commissioned projects by Frank Stella, Jeff Koons, and others, and investigating the economic versus aesthetic values that the work brings up.  “It’s not a given that because it’s a Calder or a Warhol car it’ll automatically get a huge premium — that has not been proven by the market,” says luxury auto insurance head McKeel Hagerty. “An art car raises more questions about the real value of the car than it answers.” (more…)