Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

One may recall the final room of The Whitney’s sprawling retrospective of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama last year, stacked floor to ceiling with bold, brightly colored canvases.  Flourishing tentacles, patterns of eyes and teeth, cartoonish faces and swirling animalistic forms dominated the work, all delivered with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that made them hard to ignore.

Yayoi Kusama, My Heart (2013), via David Zwirner (more…)

Yayoi Kusama, INFINITY NETS [FBB] (2013), via Victoria Miro

Victoria Miro Gallery is currently opening its new Mayfair gallery with an exhibition of works by Yayoi Kusama‘s newest series of White Infinity Nets, intricate canvases covered almost entirely with white paint over a wash of black and grey.

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Korean artist Do Ho Suh has been named Wall Street Journal’s Art Innovator of 2013, recognized for his challenging explorations of space and material.  The artist is interviewed in the magazine this week, talking about his recent work with graphite rubbings.  “Rubbing is a different interpretation of space. It’s quite sensuous—very physical and quite sexual,” says Suh. “You have to very carefully caress the surface and try to understand what’s there.” (more…)

The founders of the Dia Art Foundation have filed a lawsuit against the organization, as well as auction house Sotheby’s, in order to keep the arts organization from selling parts of its collection this month.  The sales, set to take place this week in New York, include works by Barnett Newman, Cy Twombly and John Chamberlain, and are contested by the founders’s claims that the works were intended to remain publicly accessible.  “Dia’s proposed auction of the subject works would remove the works from public access and viewing in direct contravention of Dia’s entire intent and purpose and of plaintiffs’ arrangements and understandings with Dia,” founders Fariha and Heiner Friedrichs say in the complaint. (more…)

Artists Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson have launched their collaborative Moon project, an online platform where users are allowed to browse a rotating orb, gradually covering it with their own art drawings.  “By connecting in spaces for imagination – by determining what to share and how to share it – we can create a greater outcome,”  the site reads.   (more…)

Cornell University in Ithaca has announced that it will return a vast collection of cuneiform tablets to the country of Iraq, in what is already being called one of the largest antiquities returns by an American University ever.  The tablets are suspected to have been looted during the 1991 Gulf War.  “We’re not accusing anyone of a crime, but we believe they should be returned,” says Assistant U.S. Atty. Miro Lovric. (more…)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Mr. Briggs (2008), via David Zwirner

“People thought they could have anything.  And then it just blew up in their faces.”  So says photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia in the press release for his show of works from the East of Eden series at David Zwirner, an ongoing series of photographs documenting what the artist calls the “collapse of everything.”

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, East of Eden (Installation View), via David Zwirner (more…)

The hotly contested painting Red, Black, and Silver has been authenticated as the final painting from artist Jackson Pollock, given to his mistress shortly before his death in 1956.  The painting had long believed to have been a Pollock, but was blocked from authentication by Pollock’s wife, Lee Krasner, who held a personal vendetta against his mistress, Ruth Kligman.  That changes today, now that authorities have found strands of Pollock’s hair in the canvas, as well as sand unique to the beaches around his East Hamptons home.  “The world was flat. Now it is round. It’s Galileo. Science can now be used to authenticate the art.  We are [tracing] the painting back to where it was executed. It’s very CSI.”  Says artist and Kligman estate trustee Jonathan Cramer.      (more…)

The story behind the collection of Nazi-looted artworks discovered in a Munich flat this week has taken a new twist, with the discovery that the works had toured the U.S. after World War II, the Wall Street Journal reports.  Part of the collection of Nazi propaganda director Hildebrand Gurlitt traveled to the United States as part of a larger show in 1956, reports illustrate, showing the increasingly difficult challenges of locating the artworks’ original owners. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports on MoMA’s efforts to move beyond a brick and mortar museum space, detailing its hiring of Paola Antonelli for the newly created position of Director of Research and Development, a post focused on revolutionizing the museum space through technological advances.  Antonelli’s work is seeing its first fruits with the launch of Design and Violence an online exhibition intended to spark discussion and discourse on various art objects and projects.  “This is truly the new aspect, the fact that it’s a two-way conversation,” Antonelli says. “It’s a departure point.” (more…)

Tobias Meyer Opens the Sale, via Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed

“So, the market is alive, right?”  This was the closing statement from Sotheby’s auctioneer Tobias Meyer last night at the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale. The sale totaled $290 million – the second highest ever achieved at Sotheby’s for an Impressionist and Modern Art Sale, and its fourth consecutive Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art that had a sell-through rate of 80%.

Pablo Picasso, Tête de Femme (1935), via Sotheby’s (more…)

The Marina Abramovic Institute has announced its latest project; a 24-hour reading of the 2004 fantasy novel The City of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moers, set for November 23rd at the Basilica Hudson.  This is Abramovic’s second entry in her marathon reading series, after an 8-hour reading of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris.  “The Basilica has a very dramatic and industrial atmosphere that calls for one-of-a-kind and extreme events like this marathon reading,” Basilica Hudson creative director Melissa Auf der Maur said. “Marina and her team dreamed up this event, and naturally we opened our doors to them.” (more…)

A new spread in Harper’s Bazaar features the animated cast of artist Takashi Murakami’s film Jellyfish Eyes, as well as the artist himself, spending time around Los Angeles.  The set of photos includes the monsters walking dogs, eating at In N’ Out Burger, and eating ice cream, all with model Angela Lindvall.  “I’ve always really loved Murakami’s optimism,” says Harper’s Executive Director Laura Brown. (more…)

Kara Walker, Negress (Installation View), Courtesy Camden Arts Center

Currently on display in all three gallery spaces of Camden Arts Centre in London is a new exhibition  of works by American artist Kara Walker, which directly confront racial and gender tensions through familiar characters found in American culture, pop culture, and history.

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Alberto Giacometti, Diego En Chemise Écossaise (1954), Via Christie’s

Last night, Christie’s held their annual fall Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, on the tail of their “A Dialogue through Art: Works From the Jan Krugier Collection.” The sale realized a total of $144 million, with 76% sold by lot and 65% of the works sold by value. According to Christie’s Head of Department, Brooke Lampley, there was a “great depth of bidding,” with a strong focus on the Asian market. Christie’s attributed this to their current and continued reach in Chinese markets, particularly in Hong Kong. There was competitive interest displayed in mid market pricing – for works of art priced at $5 million and below.

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Mike Kelley. Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991/1999), © Estate of Mike Kelley. Images courtesy of Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography Joshua White JWPictures.com

It’s hard to decide just where to begin with the monumental Mike Kelley retrospective currently on view at MoMA Ps1.  The blockbuster exhibition takes up all four floors of the museum, and spans his full career, from his early video and performance work through to some of the last installations and pieces he made before he tragically took his own life in 2012 at the age of 58.  All of his immediately recognizable works are on view, including Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, his Kandor series (recreating the miniature home city of the Superman mythology), and his sprawling masterwork, Day is Done from 2005-2006, all brilliant entries in Kelley’s signature inquiries into the American mythos.

Mike Kelley, Mike Kelley as The Banana Man (1981), © Estate of Mike Kelley Photo: Jim McHugh (more…)

Pablo PIcasso, Tête de Femme (1935), via Sotheby’s

The fall New York auction season is set to commence this evening with Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, followed by Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale on Wednesday evening.  The following is a preview of sales of the week.

Fernand Léger, Élément Méchanique (1920), via Sotheby’s (more…)

Intense protest over the installation of Adel Abdemessed’s Zinedine Zidane sculpture in Doha, Qatar, has resulted in the removal of the piece from public exhibition, due to its “anti-Islam idolization.”  The piece, titled Coup de Tete, was installed at the beginning of October, caused such a public outcry among conservative citizens and politicians that it was removed less than a month later. (more…)

Artist Ai Weiwei has announced plans for a show of work at the former prison island Alcatraz in the San Francisco bay.  Weiwei is currently working on obtaining approval from the National Park Service, and if approved, would look to open the show in February of next year.  Little other information has been released. (more…)

Marc Chagall, Time is a River without Banks (1930-39), via The Jewish Museum

A new exhibition entitled “Chagall: Love, War, and Exile” is currently on view at The Jewish Museum in New York, reviewing the part of Marc Chagall’s career during the rise of European fascism in the 1930s through 1948 while he was living in Paris and New York. The exhibition includes 31 paintings and 22 works on paper.

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Vanity Fair Magazine has unveiled an expansive survey of the world’s greatest living artists, with Gerhard Richter topping the list, and followed by Jasper Johns and Richard Serra.  The voting panel included a number of recognized artists, including Marina Abramović, Carl Andre, John Baldessari, and Fernando Botero. (more…)

A collection of 1,500 works, valued at over $1.3 Million, has been seized by the German Customs Agency in Munich after a raid on the son of an elderly Nazi associate.  The works, which include pieces by Max Beckman, Picasso and Matisse, were looted from Jewish owners in the years before and during World War II, with the intent of building an enormous museum for them in Austria.  “We went into the apartment expecting to find a few thousand undeclared euros, maybe a black bank account,” says one Customs spokesman. “But we were stunned with what we found. From floor to ceiling, from bedroom to bathroom, were piles and piles of old food in tins and old noodles. Behind it all these pictures worth tens, hundreds of millions of euros.” (more…)

Christopher Wool, Untitled (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

The work of artist Christopher Wool is nothing if not immediate.  Huge, stencil-cut prints, slurred spray-paint scribbling reminiscent of graffiti, and enormous splashes of paint litter the artist’s canvases and rice paper compositions, all charged with a gritty, urban freneticism that informed Wool’s early years in New York’s supercharged downtown punk scene during the 1970’s.  It’s this energy that ultimately becomes the focus of the Guggenheim’s current retrospective of the artist’s work, just recently opened at the uptown museum.

Christopher Wool, Minor Mishap (2001), © Christopher Wool, Courtesy The Guggenheim Museum (more…)

96 Cheyne Walk, the former East End London home of painter James Whistler, has been placed up for sale, with an asking price of £30 million.  The artist lived there for just over 10 years, from 1867 to 1878m during which time he created his most iconic work, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, affectionately referred to as Whistler’s Mother.  Other residents of the Chelsea street have included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Eliot, Henry James, former British prime minister David Lloyd-George, Laurence Olivier and the musician Mick Jagger. (more…)