Collector Budi Tek’s Yuz Museum in Shanghai is looking to be the first museum of Contemporary Western Art in China, showcasing the flexibility and freedom that privately-owned museums hold as an advantage over government-run institutions. The trend looks to continue, with 400 new private museums already opened in the country this year. (more…)
Laure Prouvost, via The Guardian
Tonight Laure Prouvost was awarded the Turner Prize of £25,000 ($33,850). Prouvost was nominated for her works, Wantee, commissioned with Grizedale Arts, which was shown as part of the Schwitters in Britain exhibition at Tate Britain, and Farfromwords: car mirrors eat raspberries when swimming through the sun, to swallow sweet smells, which was made during her residency in Italy as the recipient of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and which was exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery. Born in Lille, France in 1978, Prouvost has lived in London since she began studying at Central St. Martins arts college. Prouvost is known for films which frequently employ deliberate language misuse, text and image juxtapositions, fast-paced cuts, montage, and which are situated within atmospheric installations. The 2013 Turner Prize exhibition runs until January 5th, 2014 at Ebrington in Derry~Londonderry. (more…)
Pablo Picasso, Tête d’homme, 1969, Acquavella Galleries, Art Basel Miami Beach 2013
As December begins, the art world prepares yet again for the grand spectacle of Art Basel Miami Beach, with its sprawling rows of booths and late-night parties that have defined it as the apex social event of the Art world’s calendar. Over 250 galleries will be at the main fair this year, alongside numerous public exhibitions, talks, performances and more. Art Observed will be on site in pursuit of coverage for the duration of the week.
Marcel Duchamp, 1935/41-1958, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, Art Basel Miami Beach 2013
Another lawsuit has been filed against the now-closed Knoedler Gallery, this time alleging that its dealers willfully sold a Malibu couple a pair of paintings attributed to Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. The federal suit is filed against the Knoedler Gallery, president Ann Freedman, chairman Michael Hammer and worker Jaime Andrade, along with dealer Glafira Rosales, who has just recently agreed to a plea deal in her criminal case. “Defendants showed virtually no interest in the authenticity or origin of the works,” the lawsuit says. (more…)
David Shrigley, Life Model (2012), via Turner Prize
As the 2013 art calendar draws towards its conclusion this December, the annual Turner Prize exhibition has opened its doors, this time in the Northern Irish town of Derry-Londonderry, to four of Great Britain’s most prominent and talented artists: Tino Seghal, David Shrigley, Laure Prouvost and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The annual prize, which will be awarded today, December 2nd, opens to one of its most diverse sets of final entries in past years, spanning a complex body of work that includes performance, choreography, video, sculpture, drawing, and painting among a worldly group of artists that call the UK their home.
Tino Seghal, via Turner Prize (more…)
The Qatar Museums Authority has announced that Sheikha Amna bint Abdulaziz bin Jassim Al-Thani will take the position of Director for the National Museum of Qatar. While an opening date for the new museum has yet to be announced, the museum’s construction is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2014. (more…)
Coinciding with Art Basel, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami will open Tracey Emin’s first American museum show, exhibiting a selection of the artist’s neon works. Confronting spiritual and human concerns, the works offer a strong overview of the artist’s career, even though some may overlook her more religion-focused pieces. “Because sex sells, they actually filter out the ones about love or God,” the artist notes. (more…)
The New York Times has published a profile on Salon 94 owner Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, and her quiet influence on the contemporary art landscape in New York. “The interesting thing about Jeanne is how involved she is in the ‘becoming’ of an artist’s creations,” says artist Terry Adkins. (more…)
Forbes Magazine profiles Guilty, the gargantuan yacht of Dakis Joannou which was commissioned as a collaboration between Jeff Koons and yacht designer Ivana Porfiri. Inspired by the World War I technique of Razzle-Dazzle camouflage painting, the boat is hand-painted, and features a portrait of Iggy Pop on the roof. “The process was extremely complex,” Joannou says. “Ivana sent the design to Jeff, and he did some 3-D designing in his studio. I did not interfere at all.” (more…)
A Dublin man who put his fist through a €10 million painting by Claude Monet has stated in court that the incident was a complete accident. Andrew Shannon was at Dublin’s National Gallery of Ireland last year, when, feeling faint, he fell forward, putting his hand directly through the canvas of Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat, and tearing it. However, other testimony was less forgiving. “It was no accident. I did not believe what he was saying as regards his condition. His whole manner was unconvincing. His behavior didn’t ring true to me,” said Christian Clotworthy, the guard at the museum who detained Mr. Shannon. (more…)
A coalition of the largest creditors in Detroit’s current bankruptcy has made the initial movements in court to push Detroit to sell works from the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The motion formally brings the dispute into court, which has been hinted at for several months. “We recognize that this is a very sensitive issue,” says Derek Donnelly, managing director of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co.. “Whatever process we undertake here, we would hope would create a win-win situation — that ultimately there will be a viable DIA that will survive this process and possibly even thrive. But at the same time there needs to be a construct that addresses the fact that the DIA, or art, is not an essential asset and especially not one that is essential to the delivery of services in the city.” (more…)
Sotheby’s first auction in mainland China closed today with an impressive final sales tally of over $37 million. The final results included a record-setting $14,725,457 final price for Zao Wou-Ki’s 1958 canvas, Abstraction. (more…)
Architect Maya Lin and her husband, art dealer and collector Daniel Wolf, have purchased a former jail house in Yonkers, NY, with the intention of converting it into an arts space. The 10,000 square-foot space will include place for performances, lectures, and exhibitions of the couple’s large collection of works. “The jail offers enormous potential but the breathtaking view of the Palisades from the doorstep of the Hudson inspires a vision as unique and beautiful as the building itself,” Lin says. (more…)
Steven Parrino, Skeletal Implosion, 2001
Dedicated to the movement of abstraction throughout the past decades of art, and equally to the divisive concept of “the end of painting,” The Show is Over is an exhibition presented by Gagosian Gallery in London, combining works from a variety of artists to point to a single thesis: that painting as a medium of expression will never be quite be “over.”
Richard Prince, “Untitled,” 2012
The global recovery rate for stolen art has been placed at a strikingly low 1.5%, The Art Newspaper reports. Partially caused by the low priority given to such crimes by most police forces, the field is generally led by private companies, which charge a high percentage of the work’s value for recovery, leaving many dreaming of a better system. “There is a certain need for an international database,” says Mark Dalrymple, a loss adjuster at London’s Tyler and Co. (more…)
A once Nazi-looted painting has been returned to its rightful owner, who in turn donated it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The donation is a rare occurrence for looted works, which are often sold to cover inheritance claims. The 17th century Baroque portrait by Bernardo Strozzi was installed Monday on the third floor of LACMA. (more…)
A group of Detroit’s creditors are pushed for an independent valuation of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection, marking a tense escalation between the city and its debt collectors, with the embattled museum caught in the middle. “This motion doesn’t compel a sale,” said Derek Donnelly of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. “It just establishes a communal framework for addressing value maximization of the artwork.” (more…)
The 2014 edition of The Armory Show has announced its Exhibitors List, marking a smaller offering than previous years with 203 galleries on hand for the March art fair. A higher number of international exhibitors will be at the fair next year, with new appearances by notable galleries including Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Almine Rech Gallery and James Cohan Gallery. The fair will also feature a spotlight this year on Chinese artists. (more…)
Leon Black, the head of Apollo Global Management LLC, has been named in the top 10 of Art & Auction magazine’s list of the 10 most powerful art world participants for the first time this year. Black, who purchased Edvard Munch’s The Scream for a record setting $120 million in 2010, joined a list headed by Jeff Koons, whose balloon dog auction this month places him as the highest-selling living artist. Other inclusions include dealers Larry Gagosian and David Zwirner. (more…)
The thieves behind last year’s audacious heist of works from the Kunsthal Rotterdam have been sentenced to six years in prison for their thefts, which included works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin, and which held a total value of over $24 million. The 2012 theft has yet to see the paintings recovered, and officials say that some of the works have been destroyed. (more…)
Aurel Schmidt, Fruits (2013), via Art Observed Staff
Once again turning heads with an evocative, sexually-potent set of works, artist Aurel Schmidt is currently showing a new set of works at a former bodega on Stanton Street on New York’s Lower East Side. Affixing sexual organs and fetishized body parts to drawings of fruits and vegetables.
Outside of 200 Stanton for Aurel Schmidt’s “Fruits”, via Art Observed Staff (more…)
Francesco Vezzoli’s planned installation of an Italian church in the courtyard of MoMA PS1 in New York has been cancelled after Italian authorities intervened to block the artist’s export of the ruins. Vezzoli is now under criminal investigation for the deconstruction of the church, despite the prior blessing of the Mayor of Montegiordano, where the church was located. Vezzoli is searching for a new way to show his work at MoMA, but has yet to fully commit to a new plan. “It’s like love — if this church turns you down, you can’t fall in love again right away,” he said. “My Juliet is being kept captive.” (more…)
Balthus, Untitled (1990 – 2000) ©Harumi Klossowska de Rola. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Inaugurating a new ground-floor gallery at 976 Madison Avenue, Gagosian presents The Last Studies, a never before seen exhibition and the gallery’s first partnering with the Estate of Balthus – on display until December 21.
The recent discovery of what may in fact be the last painting Jackson Pollock created before his untimely death has placed Pollock experts against forensic investigators, with many art historians debating the work’s origins. “I don’t think there’s a Pollock expert in world that would look at that painting and agree it was a Pollock,” says Francis V. O’Connor, a co-editor of the definitive Pollock catalog. (more…)
