A rendering for Carsten Nicolai’s Alpha Pulse, via Wall Street Journal
Coming hot off the heels of Frieze New York, Art Basel’s growing Hong Kong fair opens this week, shifting the art market’s attention halfway around the globe for the newest entry in the Basel fair franchise as it prepares for its second year. (more…)
A Mondrian held in private hands for over 50 years will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s New York this week, estimated at about $30 million, and anticipated to potentially break the artist’s record at auction. “It’s from what is considered to be Mondrian’s best period, in the 20s,” says Helena Newman, co-head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby’s. “By which time he has developed this very iconic and unique style which is so beautifully epitomised in this work. (more…)
Andy Warhol, Race Riot (1964), via Christie’
With the clamor of Frieze Week subsiding, the last big sales for New York’s spring art calendar are set to take place this week, as the major auction houses gear up for their Contemporary and Post-War Auctions. True to form, the combination of ample buyers and a thriving market has brought forth a series of strong works at all houses, with a number of impressive works on-sale that could challenge some long-held auction records. (more…)
The New York Times takes a look at the lunch habits of various artists in their studios, examining the communal eating time for artists and their assistants, particularly those of Urs Fischer, Cai Guo-Qiang and Marianne Vitale. “What makes me sad,” Fischer says, “is when people have these lunches where they all go out individually, and then have plastic containers of salads, and sit in front of computers.” (more…)
The Guardian profiles downtown art icon Dan Colen, in the run-up to the artist’s retrospective at The Brant Foundation, which opens this week, reappraising the artist’s career in terms of his material and technical concerns. “I’m trying to equalise the world to say there is no high and low,” Colen says. “People have often thought I was fucking with them when really I was just trying to share that sentiment.” (more…)
The Guardian has published a list of the most powerful people in the art world, noting the top “movers and makers” in the current market, among them Jeff Koons, Agnes Gund, Victor Pinchuk, Dasha Zhukova, and Emmanuel Perrotin. (more…)
Nada Entrance, all photos via Patrick Jaojoco for Art Observed
Returning to the southern tip of Manhattan, and the fittingly loose confines of the Basketball City sports complex, the NADA New York fair caused quite a stir this year, bringing a high quality fleet of exhibitors and artists to the space for a free fair that did away with much of the high profile glitz of Frieze up the East River, without sacrificing on quality works. Welcoming a number of small regional galleries alongside a strong count of downtown mainstays, the 80-gallery fair presented a compelling alternative to Frieze’s big ticket names and prices, while keeping a strong focus on size and selection. (more…)
Frieze Art Fair, via Art Observed
Following Thursday’s preview event and Friday’s initial day of public entry, Frieze Art Fair is up and running, opening the doors on a revamped fair that has already drawn considerable praise for its strong, diverse selection of galleries and artists, mounting a combination of impressive works alongside more challenging, unique installations that offer a fitting cross-section of the contemporary field.
William Kentridge at Goodman Gallery, via Art Observed (more…)
Wolfgang Tillmans is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing the expanse of his career, his approach to photography, and his taste for viewing other artist’s work, including that of artists from many centuries earlier. “I’ve always understood looking at other and older art as looking at friends’ work,” Tillmans says. “We’re separated through time, but we’re all dealing with ultimately similar questions.” (more…)
Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon, the iconic sculpture project that places life-size casts of the artist’s body atop various buildings in an area, has been cancelled in Hong Kong following the pullout of sponsor J.P. Morgan. The bank pulled its sponsorship after one of its employees leapt from the top of its office building in the Chinese city. (more…)
In the notoriously opaque art market, the auction house is the only space where the business of buying and selling art has remained relatively transparent and public. As Christie’s and Sotheby’s compete to attract sellers with the most valuable collections, both auction houses are increasingly offering private guaranteed bids, a practice that some worry can distort auction results. (more…)
Robert Longo, Untitled (The Pequod) (2014) all images courtesy Petzel Gallery and Metro Pictures
On view concurrently at Petzel Gallery and Metro Pictures in New York are two exhibitions of works by Brooklyn native painter and sculptor Robert Longo. Gang of Cosmos at Metro Pictures is composed of twelve charcoal drawings of well-known Abstract Expressionist paintings, while Strike the Sun at Petzel Gallery focuses on images of patriotism in America, specifically the U.S. Capitol and the American flag as symbols of both nationalism and protest.
Nate Lowman, This Is Your Brain On Drugs Again, via Art Observed
Nate Lowman’s current solo show is notable in its subtlety. Once a maker of enormous reproductions of vinyl, consumer-grade bullet hole decals and canvases covered with smiley-faces, Lowman’s new work currently on view at Maccarone Gallery takes a different tack entirely. Lightly painted, cut canvases and pixelated cut-outs dot the works, rendering soft, pastel forms that mark a notable break from the often harsh images of urban decay he so often selected as the subject of his past practice.
Nate Lowman, Rave the Painforest (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)
Hammer Projects: Andra Ursuta (Installation View), all images courtesy Hammer Museum
On view currently at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is an exhibition of the latest body of work from Andra Ursuta, inspired by the artist’s fear and obsession with death. The show is Ursuta’s first solo exhibition in a United States museum, and will remain on view through May 25th.
Sturtevant, the appropriation artist who worked at making manual repetitions and recreations of iconic artists and young upstarts alike, has died. Reports claim that the artist, who won the Golden Lion at the 54th annual Venice Biennale, was 84 years old, but as much information about the artist remains unknown, this is not certain. Sturtevant will be the subject of an upcoming career retrospective this November at MoMA. “Her various catalytic conversions prove that art can be (at its best?) an impetus for action—aesthetic, cerebral, insurrectionary ,” said writer Bruce Hainley. (more…)
Peggy Guggenheim’s descendants are suing the Guggenheim foundation, arguing that the foundation failed to honor Guggenheim’s last wishes that her art collection be maintained in its entirety in her Venetian palazzo by the Guggenheim foundation.
The foundation allegedly removed half of the works from her collection and replaced them with works donated by Rudolph and Hannelore Schulhof. The Schulhofs’ names are displayed next to Guggenheim’s on the museum’s entrance. The Guggenheim family is also accusing the foundation of desecrating her grave by throwing parties in the palazzo’s garden where her remains are interred. Betsy Ennis of the foundation counters that, “The foundation’s efforts have only honored, preserved and enhanced the memory and reputation of Peggy Guggenheim.” (more…)
Pablo Picasso, Le Sauvetage (1932), Via Sotheby’s
The Modern and Impressionist evening sales in New York have closed, following two nights of sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s that failed to achieve the same exceptional sales figures that have marked previous auctions, while still finding buyers for most of the works on sale. (more…)
Bill Viola, Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) (2005) all images courtesy Grand Palais
On view at the Grand Palais in Paris is a group of works by celebrated American video artist Bill Viola, ranging in date from 1977 to the present day, making it the largest retrospective the artist has ever shown during his long and productive career.
Joel Kyack, Clever Formal Gestures ≠Something to Say, via Francois Ghebaly
As the month of May begins in earnest, another edition of Frieze Art Fair’s New York edition prepares to open its doors on Randall’s Island this week, bringing its familiar bounty of events, talks, special programs, competing events and a number of high-profile auctions and openings across Manhattan.
Yayoi Kusama, INFINITY-NETS [AOQBZ], via David Zwirner (more…)
The Table Before Dinner, via Art Observed
The Domino Factory was aglow Tuesday evening, as Creative Time took over the space for its annual spring gala, this year held in honor of artist Kara Walker, who is preparing to open her site-specific work A Subtlety at the space later this week. True to form, the gala prominently spotlighted Ms. Walker’s monumental white sculpture, which nearly took up its own place of honor at the end of the dining tables set up in the space. Light streaming in from the long runs of windows on either side of the room gave the statue a pale, golden glow, and served to give a beautiful aura surrounding the guests. (more…)
Austrian painter Maria Lassnig has passed away at the age of 94.
Born in 1919, Lassnig’s career spanned over 50 years, and her work traces a long and intricate relationship with the history of painting and abstraction, moving from her abstract experessionist works in the 1950’s to her pioneering style of vivid color and dramatic self-portraiture, often utilizing visceral body positions and frank, revealing depictions of herself. “Her art meant everything to her and she sacrificed herself, family, relationships… she an extremely focused and extreme personality that way,” dealer Iwan Wirth told ArtInfo. “She was very headstrong, very critical of photography, fighting photography her whole life and she had no mercy when it came other painters.”
Cornelius Gurlitt passed away on Tuesday in his Munich apartment at the age of 81. Mr. Gurlitt made art news headlines last fall when German authorities revealed that the son of a Nazi-era Art Dealer had been hoarding roughly 1,300 works by European Modern Masters in his apartment as well as in storage. In his will Mr. Gurlitt named the Kunstmuseum Bern the sole heir to his collection. However, questions still remain concerning the fate of the artwork. Prior to his death Mr. Gurlitt reached a deal with German authorities that research into the provenance of his collection would continue after his death, leaving the works subject to restitution claims. According to Winfried Bausback, Bavaria’s justice minister, “The agreement Mr. Gurlitt reached with German authorities carries over to whoever inherits the collection, including the museum.” (more…)
Portrait of Dirck van Os, a 1658 painting long discredited as a Rembrandt copy, has been returned to public view at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha as an officially authenticated portrait by the Dutch master. “People here sensed the underlying quality,” says Joslyn executive director, Jack Becker, “but you need the scholarly community to rehabilitate a picture like this.” (more…)
The 2014 Turner Prize shortlist has been announced, including the artists Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell, all of whom are noted as working in “non-traditional media.” “The four shortlisted artists share a strong international presence and an ability to adapt, restage and reinterpret their own and others’ works, very often working in a collaborative social contexts,” says Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis. (more…)
