The New York Times reports on the growing practice for museums to live-stream and archive lectures online, allowing interested parties to view them around the world. The article also explores MoMA’s recently initiated online tours and courses, and a recent collaboration by the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the TED lectures brand. (more…)
A German student has discovered the composition of Joseph Beuys’s iconic brown-hued paint Braunkreuz (brown cross), the Art Newspaper reports. Beuys used a special rust-proofing agent in his paints, giving them their signature sheen, reports Ole Valler of the Hochschule Rhein-Waal. “This shows his belief in the strong connection between art and everyday life. Materials have a special meaning in Beuys’s work,” says Barbara Strieder, of the Museum Schloss Moyland. (more…)
Douglas Gordon is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as he prepares to exhibit his work at this year’s Sydney Biennial. “The idea of art is to be as free as possible,” he says. “I am the least hippy person. I am an extremely hardcore dogmatic bastard, actually. But I retain the right to do whatever I want.” (more…)
George Condo, Constellation Portrait (2013), via Simon Lee
In the middle of 2013, George Condo fell ill with legionnaire’s disease and triple pneumonia, a combination of illnesses that left the prolific artist at death’s door. Traveling between Berlin, London and New York, the artist’s demanding schedule finally got the best of him, placing him in the hospital for several weeks recovering. It was during this time that Condo painted the works currently on view at Simon Lee gallery, a suite of paintings that see the artist branching ever further into his particular approach to portraiture and abstraction.
George Condo, Headspace (Installation View), via Simon Lee (more…)
Dealer James Fuentes will launch a show next month reflecting on the infamous Real Estate Show held in the Lower East Side in 1980, a seminal exhibition in protest of the city’s dealings with low-income neighborhood residents that ultimately led to the formation of the famous ABC No Rio space. The show will include many artists from the original show, as well as videos and films documenting the event. (more…)
The New Yorker reviews the career of Ryan Trecartin this month, taking a look back at the artist’s series of videos from the past ten years, and examining his depictions of youth culture, internet dialects and his “breaking news about the future.” (more…)
Crain’s Business takes an inside look at the growing trend of high-end pawnshops, accommodating wealthy collectors interested in quickly monetizing their artworks. The growing popularity of personal asset loan companies like Borro has seen more art collectors in particular using the site, like one Marc Kaye, who used the site to get a loan on a $64,000 Picasso drawing during a dry spell. “I was in just a little pinch, and this was an elegant and discreet way to get cash,” he says. (more…)
New research has shown that a set of watercolors by J.M.W. Turner, previously thought to depict the burning of Parliament, are in fact paintings of a fire at the Tower of London. The note was discovered by Matthew Imms, a cataloguer at the Tate. “We could tell that the works were fairly late in Turner’s career so I cast around for other events at that time, and came across various images, popular prints and so on of the Tower of London fire in 1841,” Imms says. “It immediately clicked, because the various uncertain features of the architecture and so on matched quite well.” (more…)
The ongoing dispute between two members of the Cy Twombly Foundation appears to have reached a settlement, the New York Times reports. Twombly Foundation President Nicola Del Roscio and Vice President Julie Sylvester had filed suit accusing fellow director Thomas Saliba and lawyer Ralph Lerner of valuing several Twombly works (held in their own trust) at a highly inflated $1 billion. The settlement terms, while not all stated, involved Salbia and Lerner resigning their positions in the Foundation. (more…)
The investigation into a stolen Gustav Klimt painting nearly 17 years ago has been reopened, with authorities using sophisticated DNA testing technology to try and find a match with evidence found on the work’s frame. Portrait of a Woman was stolen in 1997 from the Ricci-Oddi Gallery in Piacenza, with police unable to find any prior evidence able to track down a suspect. (more…)
The Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that artists Catherine Opie, John Baldessari and Barbara Kruger are all returning to their positions on the museum’s Board of Trustees. The artists had previously left their posts over friction with then-director Jeffrey Deitch’s vision for MOCA. Painter Mark Grotjahn has also been elected to a fourth artist seat on the board, previously occupied by Ed Ruscha. “I’m very excited about the prospects for MOCA with Philippe leading us and I want to be supportive,” John Baldessari said in a statement. (more…)
Doug Wheeler at David Zwirner, via Art Observed
The new installation by Doug Wheeler, currently on view at David Zwirner’s 20th Street gallery, cites itself as an exploration of the horizon, a delicately shifting light installation inside an enormous ellipsoidal room. Painted a harsh white, the floor and ceiling reflect the subtly changing neons running just out of site underneath the floorboards of the work. Comparable to the work of James Turrell, Wheeler’s pieces make much of the illusory capabilities of light acting on space. His 2012 installation at Zwirner, a massively lit wall giving the impression of an infinite color scape in front of the viewer, bears resemblance to a number of Turrell’s infinite lightscapes, allowing the viewer to slowly gain an awareness of their own act of seeing, and the behavior of their eyes in space.
Doug Wheeler, LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW (2013), Photo by Tim Nighswander, Imaging4Art © 2014 Doug Wheeler; courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London (more…)
Artist Richard Prince and photographer Patrick Cariou have reportedly settled their case over Prince’s alleged copyright infringement, The New York Times reports. Prince, who had won a landmark “fair-use” ruling on a majority of the works in question (his Canal Zone series) last year, has settled the case in undisclosed terms, but court documents have indicated that he will not be forced to destroy the works in question. (more…)
Franz Ackermann, Black Hand Monument (2013/14), via White Cube
Known for his chaotic and dense compositions of color and imagery, Franz Ackermann has been depicting utopian realms that have never been and will never be approached. Glorious and pompous in his use of color, Ackermann orchestrates a wide range of materials to create what could be summarized as the heroic underlying of chaos. By combining photographic elements and schematic color arrangements as his primary tool, Ackermann presents an array of topographies of non-existing lands.
Franz Ackermann, 9 X 9 X 9 (Installation View), via White Cube (more…)
Alexandre Singh, The Humans (Still) (2013), via Sprüth Magers
Sprüth Magers London is currently presenting The Humans, an exhibition documenting the creation and the staging process of Alexander Singh’s play of the same name. Commissioned by Witte de With of Rotterdam and Performa 13 of New York, The Humans marks a tour-de-force in Singh’s career as a visual artist. Blending modern theatre with Greek tragedy, performance art and installation; this three-hour play tells the story of two characters–Tophole and Pantalingua– two vagabond spirits that are striving to prevent the creation of the Earth. Believing that the Creator of such an Earth could only be a vain and self-centered maniac, the duo finds themselves amongst Humans with all of their obnoxiousness and mischievousness–among them sculptor Charles Ray.
Alexandre Singh, Vernon Montgomery Spruce (2014), via Sprüth Magers
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the current art market, and analyzes the risks and rewards of investing money in contemporary art. “The new moneyed rich are looking for alternatives to help hedge their bets against any loss in value of their money and the rising risks of concentrating too much of their wealth in stocks,” says Jerry Slusiewicz, president of Pacific Financial Planners. (more…)
The heirs of Peggy Guggenheim have filed a lawsuit against the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, alleging that the foundation has failed to comply with the conditions of her gifts, and has placed her collection in storage to make room for various exhibitions in her Venice estate. “They are totally disrespecting my great grandmother’s legacy… it’s appalling; it’s a big disappointment,” says Sindbad Rumney, the great grandson of Peggy Guggenheim. “Basically… what we’ve [discovered] is that if you have the right amount of money and you have a collection, you can show it at the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice.” (more…)
The recently opened Collier Schorr exhibition at 303 Gallery suggests a fresh dialogue on appropriation, a trend in art that has been associated with photographic work more often than any other medium since the 80s, and is here taken up again by a long-time photographer. Instead of Richard Prince’s infamous rephotographing of Marlboro ads or Jeff Koons’ re-sculpting of the kitsch, though, Schorr’s practice stands closer to the likes of Sherrie Levine or Barbara Kruger, presenting new discussions on feminism, the female body and its place in the contemporary aesthetic discourse.
Collier Schorr, The Bricks (2013), Courtesy of Collier Schorr and 303 Gallery, New York (more…)
Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has won the competition to design the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Hyde Park, set to open June 26th. Radic’s design, resembling a series of large stones and pillars, will be semi-translucent, and will host a number of events and site-specific projects. “Radic is a key protagonist of an amazing architectural explosion in Chile,” the Serpentine said in the statement. “While enigmatically archaic, in the tradition of romantic follies, Radic’s designs for the Pavilion also look excitingly futuristic, appearing like an alien space pod that has come to rest on a Neolithic site.” (more…)
Frank Thiel, Perito Moreno #161 (2012/13), via Sean Kelly Gallery
Nowhere is a Place, currently on view at Sean Kelly Gallery, showcases the latest work of German photographer Frank Thiel. For his fifth solo show with the gallery, Thiel presents a grand departure from his best known subject, the disintegrating architectural landscape of Berlin, instead focusing his lens on the glaciers of the Argentine Patagonia. Traveling to Los Glaciares National Park in 2011 and 2012, Thiel captures the colossal ice fields in vivid high definition, printed on a massive scale meant to match his subject’s monumentality.
Frank Thiel, Perito Moreno #91, (2012/13), via Sean Kelly Gallery (more…)
Richard Tuttle, a work from Looking for the Map, via Art Observed
On view at Pace New York from February 7th through March 15th is an exhibition comprised of drawings and studies artist Richard Tuttle has made to prepare for his large-scale commission at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, opening in October of this year.
The New York Times delves into the work and life of Oscar Murillo, charting the artist’s meteoric rise over the past two years, and his current popularity on the market. “I came to this by simply working,” Murillo says. “It’s the market, and that has nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to keep things normal. I’ve had to live below my means for so long that I’m keeping it that way.” (more…)
The ongoing struggle for control at Sotheby’s has taken a new turn, with the auction house rejecting the board nominations proposed by Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC, and in turn naming Jessica Bibliowicz and Kevin Conroy for board seats. “The composition of your Board is something Sotheby’s takes very seriously, as the experience and expertise of its directors have been and will continue to be important to enabling the Company’s success,” the company said in an open letter to shareholders. (more…)
Ed Ruscha will be featured as part of the High Line Art program’s ongoing commission series this summer, installing his 1977 piece that reads “Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today,” at 10th and West 22nd. “It has an intimate quality and is a piece you can experience by just walking by it,” said Cecilia Alemani, director of High Line Art. The piece will go on view May 6th, and is Ruscha’s first ever public art installation in New York. (more…)
