Next Thursday, Phillips de Pury will auction the Maybach 57 featured in Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Otis video, which was directed by Spike Jonze. The proceeds of the car’s sale (which has been on a genuinely rough ride as depicted in the music video) will go to Save the Children. A charitable donation has been planned since the video’s completion, with the closing caption: “The vehicle used in this video will be offered up for auction. Proceeds will be donated towards the East African drought disaster.” At the time of the video’s release, East Africa was deep in famine, as a result of the worst drought to hit the region in 60 years.

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‪‬Britain’s White Cube gallery opened its first branch outside Britain today with a Gilbert and George exhibition in a 557 square-meter space in Hong Kong’s central business district. Hong Kong is the world’s third biggest auction center after New York and London, with China overall accounting for 41.4% ($4.8 billion) of global art sales internationally in 2011. [AO Newslink]

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‪‬ Qatar continues to build its international art collection, with Qatari purchases accounting for an estimated 25% of the Middle East’s $11 billion art market. [AO Newslink]

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Titian, Diana and Callisto (1556-1559), via BBC

Diana and Callisto by Titian went on display today in Room 1 of The National Gallery in London, completing the paired purchased with Diana and Actaeon after a long-awaited fundraising effort. Noted art patron the Duke of Sutherland attempted to sell the two works to the United Kingdom in 2008 for £100 million, which was reportedly half their total market or potential auction value. British art authorities and museum-goers alike are delighted to have met the price-point, and to maintain the masterpiece for the nation of England.

Titian, Diana and Actaeon (1556-1559), via NPR

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Murakami sculpture at Ego (2011) press conference, via QMA facebook

The Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) presents Murakami – Ego at the Museum of Islamic Art‘s detached Al Riwaq hall in Doha as Japanese artist Takashi Murakami‘s first solo show in the Middle East. Introducing Japanese contemporary art and animation style to a broader audience, the QMA has also published an illustrated catalog on Ego with commentary by Takashi Murakami, curator Massimiliano Gioni, and photo-documentation of the site. For Ego—referencing the retrospective’s psychological emphasis—Murakami designed sculptural pedestals, a 100-meter wall painting, and a digital animated circus tent to double as an indoor cinema. The retrospective features fifteen years’ worth of 60 works, most of which are on loan from both public and private international collections, although some art is new. Viewers entering the hall are greeted by an oversize inflatable self-portrait to personify the explained internal mindset.

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‪‬Despite pending lawsuit against David and Helly Nahmad to return Modigliani’s Seated Man with a Cane (1918) (alleged stolen from a Paris dealer by Nazis in 1939), the Nahmads’ lawyers now say the International Art Center purchased from Christie’s in 1996, not the Nahmad family, thus the suit is misdirected. [AO Newslink]

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Gert and Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2011). All images courtesy of Der Kunstverein.

The entirety of Der Kunstverein is currently inhabited by the dark and fantastical world of brotherly duo Gert and Uwe Tobias. On view until November 18 is their largest installation to date, taking over a total area of 1,300 square meters, spilling from both exhibition areas into the foyer and stairwell. Over time the exhibition will slowly recede to make room for other exhibitions and by the end of the year the work will remain only in the foyer and the stairwell. The Transylvanian born-, Germany-based twin brothers work with a range of forms from works on paper—collages of disjointed figures, eerie watercolors, and drawings created by typewriter strokes—to large scale woodblocks of otherworldly creatures, and abstract assemblage sculptures. Each medium explored is imbued with qualities of the surreal, a dark haze of gloom, and a touch of whimsical humor. Their practice is rooted in the decorative, patterned, and pictorial qualities of Eastern European folk art. Also embedded in their work are allusions to art historical moments such as Constructivism, socialist architecture, and Expressionism.

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Dan Flavin, in honor of Harold Joachim in pink, yellow, blue and green fluorescent light 8′ high and wide (1977)

The Morgan Library & Museum is currently exhibiting Dan Flavin: Drawing, a retrospective of the Dan Flavin’s works on paper, from pencil to charcoal to watercolor. Primarily comprised of pieces made by the artist himself and a group from his personal collection, this body of work demonstrates Flavin’s abilities as a draftsman, as well as an installation artist. More than one hundred of Flavin’s own pieces are on view, starting with his abstract expressionist watercolors from the 1950s and ending with pictures of sailboats made with conté crayon in the late 80s and early 90s. Also included in this collection are a series of plans that the artist made in preparation of his renowned fluorescent light installations.

Dan Flavin, untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3 (1977)

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‪‬Mike Kelley project with Artangel and MOCAD ‘Modern Homestead’ public art work to stay in storage in Michigan, while 3 project-based videos will show at Whitney Biennial, which is dedicated to the recently deceased Kelley [AO Newslink]

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All installation views of The Blue Period via Salon 94.

In his installation The Blue Period, artist Jon Kessler creates a space so heavily mediated, under surveillance by almost countless video cameras and televisions arranged, that the act of watching becomes intricately ensnared with the act of participation.  Now, for the first time, the well-known installation artist has brought the piece to Salon 94 Bowery for a one month viewing. Obfuscating the line between real and imagined, The Blue Period alters the nature of the gallery experience. Huge walls soaked with blue paint pair up with the images of various rooms, rarely in conjunction with a perceived camera position, beamed in by closed-caption television, and placed alongside manipulated film footage and other imagery. Frequently in motion, the cameras underline the act of viewing in the piece, while also forcing the gallery-goer to evaluate their position in the overall installation.

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‪‬Whitney Biennial pranked by Occupy Wall Street Arts & Labor group with demand to end by 2014, and mock email press release and website launched this morning announcing false break with corporate sponsors Sotheby’s and Deutsche Bank [AO Newslink]

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Lucian Freud, Reflection (Self-portrait) (1985). All images © The Lucian Freud Archive.

Lucian Freud‘s work spans a seventy year trajectory on view now at the National Portrait Gallery in London in the first ever exhibition to focus solely on the artist’s portraiture, curated in collaboration with Freud over his final years. Born the grandson of Sigmund Freud in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, L. Freud passed away at age 88 last July as perhaps one of the most influential and important artists of his generation. The expansive exhibition includes works from as early as 1940 to the last and unfinished painting Freud was working on, highlighting stylistic developments that occurred over the decades. Freud’s subjects ran the gamut from his family, friends and lovers, to celebrities, criminals and aristocrats.

Lucian Freud, Girl in a Dark Jacket (1947)

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Dana Schutz, Young Brünnhilde (2011)

With watercolors, colored pencils and crayons, Dana Schutz presents a whimsical and striking interpretation of the opera Götterdämmerung to complete the Gallery Met’s four-part series of exhibitions inspired by Wagner’s Ring cycle, organized by Dodie Kazanjian. While Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (which translates to “The Twilight of the Gods”) is a superpower of an opera—filled with betrayal, loss, and the clash of gods and men—Schutz’s exhibition breathes life and light into the melodrama.

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‪The FT interviews Ai Weiwei at home in Beijing, a city he is forbidden from leaving on terms of his detention since tax evasion charges in June. Amidst outdoor security guards and cameras, punning artwork, and his pet cats, alleged political dissident and acclaimed activist Ai Weiwei reflected: “Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don’t have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want – not only you, your whole family and all people like you.” As the artists is not supposed to speak to the media, his wife was afterwards questioned at the police station. [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum seeks to raise £7.83 million to stop Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus (1868) from being sold to a foreign private collector at £28.35 million. The Ashmolean has until August before the work is required to be sent overseas, but will send the painting on a British tour if they raise the money from philanthropists and foundations. [AO Newslink]

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Andreas Gursky, Shanghai, (2000)

The photographic works of German photographer Andreas Gursky are currently being shown at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. Born in Leipzig in 1955, Gursky’s work has been renowned for its frank and imposing depictions of industrial spaces and man-made structures, presenting a so-called “dispassionate” method of photography. The show includes 40 very large works and a number of smaller pieces that comprise his oeuvre up to his most current works; each piece meticulously composed of hundreds of individual photos seamlessly combined into one large image.

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‪‬Shepard Fairey may face up to six months in prison for “criminal contempt” over copyright issues related to Associated Press photo for 2008 Obama campaign poster, admitting to “destroying documents and fabricating others” [AO Newslink]

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Tony Cragg, opening night. All photos for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer.

Tony Cragg’s latest body of work is currently on display at the Marian Goodman Gallery through March 10. The show consists of 15 of the sculptor’s pieces, all of which were made in the last five years utilizing a wide variety of materials including plywood, bronze, and stone. Accompanying this exhibition are several large-scale pieces by the artist in The Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison Avenue.

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‪‬Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 ‘Sleeping Girl’ is to be sold at Sotheby’s New York May 9, at an estimated $40 million, and is on view before the auction in LA, Hong Kong, London, and New York [AO Newslink]

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‪‬A tour of Tracey Emin’s studio and home in East London, “Things change, you change, your thoughts do, your life moves on and my work has changed because of that too. I’m asking questions that I wasn’t addressing before and doing things that I wasn’t doing before.”
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Sarah Sze selected to represent United States at 2013 Venice Biennale, installation titled ‘Triple Point’ will approach “orientation and disorientation” [AO Newslink]

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‪An ‬Alex Katz studio visit with Architectural Digest discusses the routines of an 84 year old artist, and new work, “I like painting from the unconscious, from what’s in front of you. Painting is more suited for the immediate present. Photos are the past.” [AO Newslink]

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‪‪‬Ed Ruscha, Lawrence Weiner, Tony Oursler, Marilyn Minter, Carrie Mae Weems, and rapper Jay-Z to artistically modify 300 NYC rooftop water tanks to “raise awareness on the global water supply” [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Cindy Sherman’s 8×10 inch ‘Untitled Film Still #21’  first of edition of 10, signed and inscribed “City Girl,” to be auctioned at New York Sotheby’s March 9 at estimated $150,000–$200,000, art advisor Todd Levin “expect[s] it to sell for between $600,000 and $800,000, with buyer’s premium” [AO Newslink]

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