Finance weekly mainstay Barrons profiles the Lower East Side as an under-the-radar haunt for those seeking fresh artwork by emerging talents or bargain pieces by bigger name artists. Examples are used such as, Invisible-Exports, where “Props for Memory,” a group show featuring Joseph Beuys, provides a Beuys piece which can be bought for just $2,000. At the Stephan Stoyanov gallery, also on the Lower East Side, paintings by Jen Mazza from “The Words” exhibition sell for $3,200 each.

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New York based billionaire investor Ronald Perelman and gallerist Larry Gagosian both filed major lawsuits against each other today in a New York court over a recent set of art transactions conducted between them.  As a reflection of the severity of the circumstances, Gagosian Gallery said in a statement, “The gallery prides itself on its relationships and has never sued a client in its over 30 years of business.”

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Metropolitan Museum director Thomas P. Campbell is reportedly opening a discussion that may allow the public to access the Met on Mondays. The institution decided to close on Mondays in 1971, supposedly to lower costs, and remains closed on the first day of the week, except for holiday Mondays and when hosting previews for members. The increase in tourism to New York City and to the Met itself may be possible reasons for Campbell’s proposal; Met statistics reveal that a “record-breaking” 6.3 million people visited The Met over the past fiscal year, from June 2011 through June 2012.

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 Larry Gagosian’s art gallery empire, due to open an outpost in Rio this month and another at Paris’s Le Bourget airport, will soon exceed The Tate Modern with respect to exhibition space.

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John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Frank Gehry and other notable artists have collaborated with LA-based Gemini G.E.L. gallery to support President Barack Obama in his bid for a second term. The gallery has organized 150 portfolios of limited edition prints and artworks that will be on show to the public starting Sept 13.  In further related, artist Chuck Close,who crafted the large-scale tapestry of Obama that was visible during the Democratic National Convention, may also be lending financial support through sales of more tapestries, ranging in price from $5,000 to $100,000, at a private event at Lever House in New York on Oct 3.

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The Art Basel lineup for this year’s event has been released. A press release sent Monday revealed that 2012’s 11th Edition, to be held at the Miami Beach Convention Center, will showcase 257 prominent art galleries from 31 countries. The art fair, which will run December 6 through 9, will be divided into three “sections”: Art Galleries, the main section, for more well-known organizations to display contemporary art, Ars Nova, for up-and-coming institutions to highlight recently-established artists and Art Positions, for galleries to spotlight a the opus of one particular artist.

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Sotheby’s has taken steps toward increasing its visibility in China by inking an agreement with state-run Beijing GeHua Art Company, which gives Sotheby’s an 80% stake in the organization, in exchange for $1.2 million. The global art dealer may now have the option of trading in mainland China; without a local partner, foreign houses may not conduct business in the country in areas other than Hong Kong.

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Laura Vitale – White Sands (Installation View) (2012), Recess Gallery

For the past two months, multimedia artist Laura Vitale has set up shop at Recess Gallery’s Soho space as part of the gallery’s Session program, an ongoing series of installations that allow the visiting artist to use the space as a blend of exhibition and studio space, blurring lines of presentation, and allowing the artist to explore new grounds in the process of creation and exhibition. (more…)

Music band The Velvet Underground has lost a portion of its case for the rights to an iconic Warhol banana image, featured most notably on the band’s 1967 album, “The Velvet Underground & Nico.” The group had joined forces with Warhol to create many of its designs and reportedly was angered by the Warhol Foundation’s wish for partial rights to this graphic. It filed a suit in January, claiming that the Foundation was violating the band’s rights by potentially allowing use of the picture to other companies.

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A Virginia woman’s flea market find may in fact be a lost Renoir. The image, which is likely to be auctioned off at the Potomack Company on September 29th, named “Paysage Bords de Seine” is in Renoir’s catalogue raisonné and appears to have the artist’s name written on the frame. Although it is unclear how it ended up at this flea market sale, it was allegedly bought by art collectors Herbert and Sadie A. May from the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in 1925.

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Wolfgang Tillmans – Neue Welt, (2012) (Installation View) Kunsthalle Zurich

Wolfgang Tillmans has a long history with Kunsthalle Zurich.  It was at the venue that he had his first institutional exhibition of work in 1995, and to which he now returns with his new series Neue Welt (New World) to christen the gallery’s new premises at the Löwenbräukunst.

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Disturbances in the MOCA’s upper ranks may have caused the museum to shift the date of its second annual Art+ Film gala from 13 November 2012 to a date in the spring of 2013. An e-mail from the institution revealed the change.  Within the past year, at least seven board members are reputed to have left their posts, former director Paul Schimmel was let go, and opinions are said to be divided about the current leadership.

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The “Andy Monument,” formerly located in New York City’s Union Square, began its journey on Tuesday to its next stop, the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum. The artwork, made by Rob Pruitt and commissioned by the Public Arts Fund had been positioned in front of a former Warhol studio location.

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Street artist Shepard Fairey has been fined $25,000 and ordered to serve two years of probation by a New York court after being found guilty in his longstanding battle with Associated Press. Fairey was accused of infringing copywright laws by using a 2006 AP photograph to create his signature “Hope” Obama poster. In 2009, Fairey admitted that he had “destroy[ed] documents and submitt[ed] false images” and in February this year entered a guilty plea to one instance of “criminal contempt.”

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Top bosses from rival houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s may soon be joining forces in a “super-dealer” partnership. Stephane C. Connery, former worldwide director of Private sales at Sotheby’s, and Thomas Seydoux, erstwhile chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s, are likely to be partners in a firm Connery, Pissarro, Seydoux, and would ostensibly bring a wealth of connections in the art world to the organization, which would be based in Paris and New York.

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Bruce Nauman, Days (2009) (Installation View)

At Bruce Nauman‘s “Days” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, a voice recites the days of the week, moving at its own pace, order and cadence along the seven item list, repeating it ad infinitum.  It is joined by thirteen other voices doing the same, each one listing the days in their own unique rhythm and order, creating a cacophony of human sound, calling to attention our own treatments of time, and gently playing with the concepts of relative values.

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The Tacheles arts squat, a former hotspot for creatives in Berlin, has been closed by city police. The former warehouse, located in the city’s former Eastern district, became a well known hub for members of the arts scene after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Its owner, HSN Nordbank, decided to demolish the site as it was hindering the progress of area development. The building, covering 1,250 square meters, had previously served as a shopping center, a corporation headquarters and a Nazi Party office.

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Scottish painter Peter Doig speaks about his life in Trinidad as he prepares for his upcoming exhibition, New Works at Michael Werner Gallery in London, opening  this September 27th. Doig, who moved to the Caribbean island ten years ago, discusses his “hoarding” of images, and how this enables him to combine mental pictures in his work. The Scottish artists works have sold for up to £6 million, making him at one time the most expensive living painter in Europe.

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Ilfracombe, North Devon could soon be featuring a bronze Damien Hirst statue on its pier, after county council members approved the potential addition. Hirst offered a 20-year loan of the bronze work, entitled Verity, to the small town. If the executive council approves the move, the town is expected to receive the piece in October.

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Amsterdam art museums the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk are expected to reopen to the public in the coming months, after several years of renovations. The Rijksmuseum, which houses a large collection of “Golden Age” pieces by Dutch masters such as Rembrandt, has announced that it will be accessible again on April 13, 2013 following a closure of ten years. The Stedelijk, whose focus veers towards more modern and contemporary art, has been shut for eight years, and has set a re-opening date of September 23, 2012.

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British band Florence and the Machine will headline the second Art + Film Gala hosted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a stark contrast from last year’s choice of Stevie Wonder. The annual event, to be co-chaired by Leonardi Di Caprio and museum trustee Eva Chow on October 27, was conceived by the Museum to raise the profile of film and raised $3 million in 2011.

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Andy Warhol – Marlon (1966) to be auctioned November 14, 2012 by Christie’s in New York City

Representatives at The Andy Warhol Foundation for Arts have announced today that the organization will donate or sell its remaining collection of works by Andy Warhol over the coming years and will become solely a funding source for non-profit arts groups. Although the Foundation does not reputedly possess “big-name” paintings by the artist, such as the instantly recognizable Campbell’s Soup Cans (1966), it holds a selection of previously unseen pieces, like a Jacqueline Kennedy collage from the 1960s. The sales are expected to bring in about $100 million, and will be conducted with Christie’s auction house.

Andy Warhol – Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), MoMA

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Artists Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe will transform Chelsea’s Marlborough Gallery into a “junkyard fantasy” as part of their latest project, which hosts a grimy subterranean world with elements of sci-fi and squalor, described by Freeman as the debris after “some horrible event had happened and everyone had to evacuate.” Since their breakout work, Hello Meth Lab In The Sun, in 2008, (beginning in Marfa, reiterated in Art Basel Miami and Deitch projects in New York) shows of varying edginess have followed. “Shadow Pool: A Natural History of the San San International,” held at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, was the pair’s most recent solo venture.

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Paul McCarthy – Dirty Dotty, Yellow (1995), Hauser and Wirth, Zurich

Currently on view at Hauser and Wirth Zurich is a selection of 60 photographs from PROPO, the ongoing project of American multi-media artist Paul McCarthy.  Examining the ongoing process of work, documentation and presentation constantly at play in an artist’s career, the PROPO photographs present a new facet to McCarthy’s already diverse body of work.

Paul McCarthy – Daddies Ketchup (1995), Hauser and Wirth, Zurich

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