The New York Times interviews Marcel Dzama this week, in the wake of the artist’s opening at David Zwirner, alongside his collaborators Kim Gordon and Tim Kingsbury (of Arcade Fire).  The trio worked together on Dzama’s newest film Une danse des bouffons (A jester’s dance), a fantastic film incorporating numerous Dadaist and Surrealist references into a work inspired by the affair between Marcel Duchamp and sculptor Maria Martins.  “It’s amazing how many things you can do when you’re just pretending,” says Gordon. (more…)

Dia Art Foundation has announced Jessica Morgan (curator of international art at London’s Tate Modern) will take over for Philippe Vergne as director of the New York arts organization.  Morgan has a challenging road ahead of her, including stalled plans for Dia to build a new museum for its collection between Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, and will seek to negotiate the demands of such a space with the foundation’s longstanding commitment to living artists.  “It has to be a relationship that’s relevant to the current moment,” she says. “It can’t rest on a notion of its past.” (more…)

Sprüth Magers Gallery has purchased a 14,000 square foot building in West Hollywood this week, signaling the gallery’s intent to open a new exhibition space in Los Angeles, directly across the street from LACMA.  “It’s an artist’s city,” says Philomene Magers.  “It’s the cultural and intellectual climate of the city that really excites us. And while we already have collectors in the region, we are hoping to meet many more.” (more…)

Pawel Althamer, The Secret of the Phaistos Disc (Installation View), all images courtesy Deste Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse of Hydra

On view at the Deste Foundation’s exhibition space, the Slaughterhouse of Hydra, is an experimental blend of contemporary sculpture and performance, as designed by Polish artist Pawel Althamer. The interactive project explores the nature of family relationships, and their role in making up the broader structural arrangements and familial relations that often drive global social interactions.

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The Telegraph profiles Christie’s upcoming London sale of works from the Essl Collection, Austria’s largest private collection of contemporary works.  The sale, featuring pieces by Gerhard Richter, Paul McCarthy, Louise Bourgeois, and Alighiero Boetti, is estimated to bring in up to £60 million next month, making it the most valuable sale of a single collection in auction history.   (more…)

Kader Attia, Repair, Culture’s Agency (2014), via Art Observed

In light of its subject matter, the New Museum wastes no time in describing the challenges ahead of Here and Elsewhere, its current exhibition focusing on contemporary Arabic and Middle Eastern art.  Taking its title from the 1976 Jean-Luc Godard documentary of the same name, the museum effectively poses the same questions that plagued Godard’s quasi-documentary on the Palestinian army.  Faced with an inability to complete his statement on the complex social issues and the subsequent defeat of Palestine in the Six Days War, Godard instead sought a middle ground between the embattled nation and his French homeland.  The film is spiked with cinema verité segments, abstract performance and experimental camerawork that ultimately places a considerable distance between the film and any sense of cohesive, authoritative statement. (more…)

Larry Gagosian is expanding beyond his art empire, collaborating with world-renowned sushi chef Masa Takayama to open Kappo Masa, a new sushi restaurant below the gallerist’s 980 Madison location.   “It’s a different kind of partnership than what I’m used to,” Gagosian says. “I don’t have partners in business. But this is Masa’s vision and Masa’s talent. My job is to listen and learn.” (more…)

Bloomberg looks into the ambitious effort behind the sale of the Bunny Mellon art collection, which will include a private sale of works through Sotheby’s, among them a pair of Mark Rothko works valued at over $250 million together.  Of particular note is No. 20 (Yellow Expanse), a striking 1953 work.  “Unquestionably, it is the jewel in the crown,” said David Anfam, author of “Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas,” the artist’s catalogue raisonne,. “Unlike its companion at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, it’s not labored. In terms of its size there is nothing to compare it with since this is the only ‘classic’ Rothko, as opposed to the Seagram and Harvard murals, of such epic dimensions.” (more…)

BBC 4 has launched a series of new station identifiers, created by British artists.  The short clips include work by 2013 Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost, 2014 Turner Prize nominee James Richards, film-maker John Smith, and Sebastian Buerkner, and follow a perceived attempt at the BBC to embrace more arts-minded programming and content. (more…)

Art Basel has unveiled its exhibitor list for the 2014 edition of its Miami Beach fair, which will run December 4th through the 7th.  The fair is also launching a new exhibition section titled SURVEY, which will feature art historical projects and special exhibitions. (more…)

Russ & Daughters, one of New York’s premier Kosher delis and cafes, has announced plans to open a new location inside The Jewish Museum on the Upper East Side.  “The minute I came here, I said we had to do this,” says museum director Claudia Gould, who took over at the museum in 2011. “They’re really hip, and we want to try to make Jewish hip. We feel like the brands align. It took about a year to get it going.” She said the lower level space is being gutted and rebuilt for the cafe.” (more…)

Tate Liverpool has announced plans to open an exhibition focusing on the work of Andy Warhol this November, the first major solo exhibition of the artist’s work in Northern England.  The expansive exhibition will include over 100 works from the artist’s career, and will also include a recreation of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. (more…)

A masterwork piece by Joseph Turner, depicting a view of the city of Rome from Mount Aventine, will go on sale at Sotheby’s in London this December.  The piece, estimated to sell for £20 million, has remained in the same family for nearly two hundred years, and was only sold once before, setting a then-record auction price of £6,000.  “This painting, which is nearly 200 years old, looks today as if it has come straight from the easel of the artist; never relined and never subject to restoration, the picture retains the freshness of the moment it was painted: the hairs from Turner’s brush, the drips of liquid paint which have run down the edge of the canvas, and every scrape of his palette knife have been preserved in incredible detail,” says Sotheby’s Old Masters head Alex Bell. (more…)

The Financial Times profiles the long-awaited opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, the Frank Gehry-designed museum housing the renowned design house’s immense art collection.  The article includes a number of notes from LVMH head Bernard Arnault on the Fondation’s approach to collection.  “When we buy something it has to meet two conditions,” he says. “One is that I have to like it, the other is that Suzanne Page (the Fondation curator) should consider it something worth exhibiting in the Fondation Louis Vuitton.  The Fondation’s collection focuses on the link between contemporary artists and the second part of the last century. So you see the evolution.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles curator Okwui Enwezor this week, the head of next year’s Venice Biennale, tracing his early move from Nigeria to New York City, and his monumental impact on the global state of contemporary art today.  “The art world was very Eurocentric and very westerncentric, and it needed strong curators to change it,” says Els van der Plas, the general director of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet.  “Enwezor positioned several projects in a very strong way, which gave a different view of the world and different views on the history of post-colonialism, of what Africa contributed to the world’s development and of how different countries in Africa are positioned in the world debate.” (more…)

Jean-Luc Martinez, director of The Louvre, is in The Art Newspaper this week, discussing his ambitious plans to renovate and “revolutionize” the centuries old museum.  Martinez’s plans involve rehanging, relighting and relabeling most of the works in the museum galleries, and is the beginning of what the director sees as a “complete makeover” of the museum. (more…)

A new participatory work by Rikrit Tiravanija has been installed at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul.  The work, titled Demo Station No. 5, is an open stage installed inside the museum, allowing for performances, relaxation and iteration between guests, artists and members of the institution. “I want people to move around like they are in their daily life. Part of my interest is always to break down the distance between what we think of as art or high art and what we do in our daily life,” Tiravanija says. (more…)

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red (1937-42) © 2014 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/p HCR International

Running in tandem with the Turner Contemporary in Margate’s expansive Piet Mondrian retrospective, the Tate Liverpool is currently exhibiting an immersive exhibition focusing on the Dutch artist’s creative process and physical locales. (more…)

Artist Grayson Perry has designed a special holiday home in Essex, part of a special commission by Living Architecture, and developed in collaboration with the FAT architectural firm.  Appropriately titled A House for Essex, the home boasts a golden copper alloy roof, and a secret narrative incorporated into the space by Perry, focused around an imagined previous inhabitant.   (more…)

Wassily Kandinsky, Group with Crinolines (1909), via Art Observed

On view at the Guggenheim New York is an exhibition of early works by the pioneering Russian modernist Wassily Kandinsky, made between the years of 1901 and 1911, during the time he and his partner Gabriele Münter traveled extensively throughout Europe, Tunisia, and Russia.  The works, featuring a blend of Kandinsky’s developing lyrical style and his more early, studied figurative pieces and landscapes offer a strong look at an oft-overlooked part of the artist’s career.

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Pierre Hyghe is profiled in the New York Times this week, previewing the artist’s long awaited retrospective at LACMA, and noting the demanding focus Huyghe’s work often requires of curators, in particular his pieces incorporating live animals and actors.  “We have meetings just to talk about the living elements, which isn’t something that usually happens to you as a curator,” says organizer Jarrett Gregory. (more…)

The New York Times spotlights Phillips new flagship location in London, and the auction house’s renewed efforts to challenge the duopoly between Sotheby’s and Christie’s at the highest end of the secondary market.  “It’s a statement of intent,” says Phillips’s new chair Edward Dolman.  “This gives us the best space for viewing contemporary art in London. It’s potentially a game changer.” (more…)

German investigators have announced that they have found a landscape by Claude Monet hidden inside the suitcase of Cornelius Gurlitt, adding yet another work to the considerable selection of works he had stored away in his Munich apartment.  Gurlitt had apparently tried to bring the work with him when he left for the hospital, which scholars are estimating was painted around 1864. (more…)

A trailer has been released for the film Mr. Turner, an upcoming biopic that centers around the life and work of Joseph Mallrond Turner.  The film is directed by respected British filmmaker Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Naked) and earned lead actor Timothy Spall a Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance.  Mr. Turner opens in the US this month at the Telluride and New York Film Festivals.   (more…)