In a strange turn of events, a stolen Salvador Dalà drawing has been returned to Adam Lindemann’s new Venus Over Manhattan gallery. The gallery was alerted to its return via an email which included an Express Mail tracking number.
Installation view, Rudolf Stingel, Sadie Coles HQ off site, 21 June – 04 July 2012 Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ,
Rudolf Stingel’s new untitled installation
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“What is it about Pablo Picasso that attracts vandals?” The Wall Street Journal asks, while contemplating the artistic and social relevance of the recent Picasso vandalism in Houston. The painting, Woman in a Red Armchair (1929), is being restored and will show again soon.
Paul Schimmel, chief curator of The Los Angeles based Museum of Contemporary Art, has stepped down following a 22 year tenure. The split was reportedly due to ongoing differences of opinion regarding the direction of the museum between Schimmel, museum director Jeffrey Deitch and the museum board. “I think this is a potential tipping point for MOCA,” said artist and MoCA board member John Baldessari.
ARTnews released its annual top 200 art collectors list for 2012. Notable names in the top ten list include Leon Black, Bernard Arnault, Eli Broad, Francois Pinault, Ronald S. Lauder, and Sheikha Al-Mayassa.
Artinfo published a list of the 30 most influential people in the art world aged 30 or under, including Alison Klayman, Alex Gartenfeld, Maria Baibakova, and Sheikha Al-Mayassa.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Olympics (1984) which sold for a record-breaking price of £6 million
This evening in London, Phillips de Pury‘s Contemporary Art Evening exceeded pre-sale estimates of £15.1- £21.1 million, with sales totaling £23.4 million. Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s Olympics (1984) at £6 million broke the record for a Warhol-Basquiat collaboration. With three pieces in the auction selling for over a million pounds, the take was over twice the amount received just a year ago for the auction house. Of 30 original lots, 2 were withdrawn (including a Cindy Sherman piece) and 4 were passed on. Although the total sum was not as large as the sales of either Christie’s or Sotheby’s, it was the only auction house to surpass pre-sale estimates for this week.
Stephen Fry interviews Tracey Emin at Turner Contemporary in her hometown of Margate, who states, “if it hadn’t been for art, I think I’d probably be dead by now. Art is like my lover that keeps me alive.”
Yves Klein, Le Rose du bleu (1960) which sold for £23.5 million (£3.5 million over its high estimate)
Last night in London, Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction experienced a stellar sale. Totaling £132.8 million against an expected excess of £120 million, it was the highest grossing contemporary art sale in Europe. Achieving sales with an 87% sell-through rate and 98% sold by value – Christie’s sold all but 9 on it’s 71 lots – save for the 2 withdrawn. Four of the lots sold above £10 million, and five lots boosted over $10 million. Christie’s Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Europe, Francis Outred, was quoted in a post-sale press release: “Following the record result achieved at Christie’s New York in May, we are delighted with tonight results which established a new record for an auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art in Europe… Overall we brought together consignments from four continents, reached buyers on four continents and benefitted from a depth and strength of bidding from across the room and on the phone.”
Singapore, which holds the highest number of millionaires per capita, continues to bolster its art profile by opening the Gillman Barracks this September. The former British military compound will hold 13 art spaces, with a projected 7 more to come. ShanghArt owner Lorenz Helbling comments that: “The barracks is away from the city… There’s more space for experimentation.”
Shot of the Contemporary Art Evening Auction. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Last night in London, Sotheby’s demonstrated a sound Contemporary Art Evening Sale, with sales totaling £69 million, against an estimate of £57-82 million. They possessed a good sell-through rate at 87.3% by lot and 93.4% by value. In a press release, Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art Europe, was quoted: “The auction this evening was led by blue-chip artists, such as Bacon, Basquiat, Richter and Lichtenstein… With buyers from 15 different countries, the global demand for this area of the market continues to be underlined.” Despite the overall formidable sales of last night, Sotheby’s did not receive quite the same reception as it did in its evening auction in New York in the Spring.
Glenn Brown, The Tragic Conversion of Salvador Dalà (After John Martin) (1998), which sold for £5.2 million with an estimate of £2.2-2.8 million
Bravo TV’s “Gallery Girls” trailer is released, the show is to premiere this August 13th and will follow seven young women living in Manhattan and Brooklyn as they attempt to ‘make it’ in the art world.
Haroon Mirza, Acid Reign (2012). LED tape, LED driver, speakers, Aspirin, cables, digital video on CRT monitor, copper tape. Image courtesy and copyright of the Schering Stiftung
British artist Haroon Mirza debuts –{}{}{} {}–{}{}{}{}–{}, his first solo exhibition in Germany at the Ernst Schering Stiftung as it celebrates its 10 year anniversary. The Schering Stiftung is a foundation that supports and promotes projects that engage both contemporary art and science. The exhibition’s title, –{}{}{} {}–{}{}{}{}–{} is a typographical interpretation of a wave form, translating sound and light into a symbolic representation. It is also the reference for Acid Reign, the new site-specific work for the Schering Stiftung gallery. Works that simultaneaously activate seeing and hearing – with the hope of creating a synesthesia between the two – has been an ideological quest for Mirza for quite some time now. As the press release states, “[for] Mirza it is decisive ‘to understand visual and acoustic space as one sensorial mode of perception’ (Mirza, 2010).
Yves Klein, Le Rose du bleu (RE 22) (1960)
This week in London, the focus will shift towards Contemporary Art, for the second consecutive week of summer auctions. According to the Telegraph, these contemporary sales hold the highest pre-sale estimates ever offered by the London houses. Total sales expected from Sotheby’s range from £57.51 – 82.48 million, while Christie’s are in excess of £120 million. Last week’s Impressionist and Modern Sales were more subdued than the record breaking auctions held in New York this past May. Based upon these record pre-sale estimates, there may be similar hopes for this week’s round of sales.
With a nod to her Fluxus roots, Yoko Ono released her new app, #smilefilm, which allows users to upload pictures of themselves smiling to Instagram and Twitter, in order to collect and map smiles from all over the world. Ono comments that “my ultimate goal in film-making is to make a film which includes a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world.”
Rare bust of Auguste Rodin recovered after 13 years. The portrait, by Rodin’s lover Camille Claudel, is worth an estimated €1 million. “For the moment, the two men are having trouble explaining the origin of the bronze,” a police source told the French daily, Le Parisien.
Louis Vuitton further developing its collaboration with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, is to open seven pop-up shops around the world. Beginning with the New York location debut on July 10, the boutiques are to be designed in polka dots and feature new spotted apparel and accessories.
Installation view, Kukje Gallery (2012). All images courtesy Kukje Gallery.
The Kukje Gallery in Seoul is currently the host of 14 works from “Personages,” Louis Bourgeois’ early sculptural series created in the 1940s and 1950’s. Also on view is the installation “Peaux De Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles Vendre,” from her “Cells” series, created much later in her career in 2006. By showing these two installations alongside each other, the exhibition aims to create connections between biographical themes and architectural sensibilities that permeate Bourgeois’ work over an extensive career manifested in distinctively different forms.
Installation view, Kukje Gallery (2012).
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The NY Times looks back on this past week’s London auctions, examining the unusually careful bidding. Despite some successful standouts, the auctions produced lower-than-expected results for Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
New equestrian statue of the Duke of Cumberland to be made of soap and displayed in Cavendish Square in London, beginning on July 10th. The artist Meekyoung Shin is replicating a bronze sculpture that occupied the same location from 1770 to 1868.
Michael Heizer‘s “Levitated Mass” opens to the public at LACMA. The 340-ton boulder suspends just above a channel, allowing visitors to walk under the sculpture and see it from multiple angles. The reclusive artist poses the question: “When do you get to see the bottoms of sculptures?”
Visitors traverse Jeppe Hein‘s “Invisible Labyrinth” (2005) via The Independent
A new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London is eliciting a good degree of attention among members of the public and press alike. Titled “Invisible: Art of the Unseen 1957-2012”, this joint showing contains otherwise empty rooms, save for a number of blank canvases and empty pedestals. The exhibit’s purpose however is less to display and showcase than it is to survey past and current ideas related to the unknown and push the boundaries of art as we know or perceive it.
Tom Friedman‘s “Untitled (A Curse)” via the Independent
Francesco Clemente, The Artificial Princess (2012). All photos by Ryann Donnelly taken on site for Art Observed
Francesco Clemente’s show of new work, Nostalgia/Utopia is on view through June 30 at Mary Boone’s Chelsea gallery in New York City. The large-scale works exemplify his signature style laid by languid, painterly expressions. Referencing Colonial Baroque, Afro-Brazilian, Indian, and urban American cultural imagery, the otherwise undefined subjects are accompanied by three dimensional objects attached directly to their canvases.
