Denver woman punches, scratches, and after removing her pants, physically slides down Clyfford Sill painting “1957 J No. 2,” estimated at between $30 and $40 million. [AO Newslink]

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Sanford Biggers, Chesire (2008)

The art of Sanford Biggers is a pastiche of cultural signifiers, stacking symbols and tropes from the African-American experience together for a wide contextual palette of juxtapositions. Such is the nature of Blossom, seeing its Brooklyn debut as part of Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective at the Brooklyn Museum. Referencing lynchings, Buddhist enlightenment, and the artist’s musical identity, all while making conscious aesthetic and situational ties to the early 20th century landscapes of the American West, the poetic piece functions as an example of Biggers’ densely multi-cultural work that speaks to both broad senses of American identity and the artist’s own personal experience.

Sanford Biggers, Blossom (2007)

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Josef Albers, Homage to the Square (1957). All images courtesy of Galleria Civica di Modena.

Currently on display at the Galleria Civica di Modena is the first retrospective exhibition held in Italy dedicated to the artist, designer, and teacher, Joseph Albers. The large scale retrospective takes up both exhibition spaces within the Galleria Civica to display a survey of Albers’ legacy.

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Russian anarchist art collective Voina (meaning War) set fire to police cars in St. Petersburg on New Year’s Eve an art form and ‘gift’ to political prisoners [AO Newslink]

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David Hockney criticizes Damien Hirst’s use of assistants, claiming it insults skillful craftsmen [AO Newslink]

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Piotr UklaÅ„ski, Untitled (Better than Truth) (2011)

Polish-born artist Piotr UklaÅ„ski is currently showing Midsummer Night’s Dream on the Caribbean island of St. Barthélemy, a Gagosian Gallery exhibition hosted by the Eden Rock Gallery. The opening reception took place over the holidays on December 29th, though the work has been on view since December 21st, and is up through January 31st. Art Observed was on site to visit the exhibition, which is positioned in likely the most iconic hotel on the island, the Eden Rock. St. Barths swells with international travelers from around the world through the New Year’s holiday and boasts likely the largest collection of mega-yachts on the planet during this time, as such, this pop up exhibition of UklaÅ„ski works in this location was well timed and positioned by Gagosian Gallery. UklaÅ„ski works in a variety of mediums, including sculpture, photography, performance, and film, directing and producing his first feature-length in 2006. Midsummer Night’s Dream showcases the artist’s new ‘pottery paintings,’ three-dimensional compositions of assorted ceramics, paying homage to various themes and artists of post-war Poland, as well as his grandmother. “My grandmother did hard labor in a ceramic factory in Communist Poland. This St Barths exhibition would be her Midsummer Night’s Dream,” UklaÅ„ski states in the press release.

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Eden Rock Hotel

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Cecily Brown, The Green, Green Grass of Home (2010). All Images via Gagosian Gallery.

Gagosian Gallery in Rome is currently exhibiting a series of paintings by New York-based, London-born artist Cecily Brown. The exhibit examines the human experience, captured in lavish colors, radical abstractions, and voluptuous forms. Brown brings a rich history of painting to her work,  as she channels everything from the sensuality of Rubens to the expressionism of Willem de Kooning.

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Vasily Kandinsky, Painting With White Border (2008)

Several rooms at The Guggenheim are devoted to Vasily Kandinsky’s works this season. The artist’s personal renaissance—an abandoned legal career, a relocation from Moscow to Munich—yielded iterations of nascent abstractionism that in turn contributed to a rebirth for the artistic community, cementing his place among the eminent artists and thinkers of the early 20th century.

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Trailer released for the documentary film ‘Ai Weiwei Never Sorry’ [AO Newslink]

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American sculptor of crushed steel John Chamberlain (born 1927) has passed away [AO Newslink]

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Eva Rothschild, Blackout (2007) All images courtesy of 303 Gallery.

Eva Rothschild‘s latest exhibition is her second at 303 Gallery, titled The Heart of a Thousand Petalled Lotus. The main white room is peppered with matte black objects and looming sculptures, focusing on the form of the line and simplistic silhouettes of shape. Crudely structured objects are precisely wrapped and woven with red and white, while a series of totem pole-like columns huddle together. Also included in the show are brighter, more psychedelic paintings, a distinct difference from her sharply calm sculptures.

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Leonardo da Vinci, St. Jerome (circa 1482). Image via the Vatican Museum.

The National Gallery‘s Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan brings together the most comprehensive display of surviving paintings and drawings by the artist to date, as only a small number of da Vinci’s works remain accounted for. While da Vinci’s interests included painting and sculpture, anatomy, engineering, and music, the National Gallery defines the scope of the show to drawings and paintings dated primarily within the 1480s and 1490s—the period in which da Vinci was the court painter to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza.

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani: Lady with an Ermine (1489–1490). Image via the Czartoryski Museum.

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Pablo Picasso, Studio with Plaster Head (1925).  © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Modern Antiquity at the J. Paul Getty Museum displays the works of four iconic Modern Art masters who combined ancient objects with 20th-century aesthetics to create what are now seminal artworks. From Picasso’s post-cubist womanly forms to Picabia’s “transparencies,” one can experience the relation of these modern works to their classic counterparts in the setting of the Getty Museum, famous for its antiquities collection. Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, and Picabia each uniquely found inspiration in the antique classical objects in museums that they frequented. Despite the fact these ancient objects belonged to other times and cultures, these artists felt a contemporary affinity towards them as they made up part of their everyday life. This major exhibition focuses on the works these four artists made between 1905-1935.

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‪‬BP Oil £10m controversial sponsorship of four British museums to continue, Tate director stating, “The fact that they had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them.” [AO Newslink]

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John Baldessari – The First $100,000 I Ever Made (2011) Traffic View

In 1934, the United States government initiated a cash bailout of its Federal Reserve banks, sending out 42,000 $100,000 bills bearing the likeness of former President Woodrow Wilson.  These bills were used to guarantee the gold reserves still on hold in these banks, effectively supporting their investments on the verge of a total banking collapse.  This bit of fiscal lore is the inspiration behind a new installation by John Baldessari at the Highline Park in New York City.  The First $100,000 I EverMade hangs above 10th Avenue traffic, bringing historical context to the forefront of the current fiscal malaise.

The Original $100,000 Bill

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Carsten Höller, Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes. Image via Enel Contemporanea.

Well-known Belgian artist Carsten Höller is the recipient of the 2011 Enel Contemporanea Award. Now in its fifth year, the Enel Contemporanea is sponsored by the Italian power company Enel, also sponsor to the 54^th Venice Biennale. In an effort to explore the connections between energy, a lifeline for contemporary society, and current art production, Enel annually commissions an original work that takes on themes around power and energy. Höller, oft associated with what Nicolas Bourriaud coined as Relational Aesthetics in the 1990s, contributed Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes, now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (MACRO). Selected by a committee of curators from around the world, past projects have included The Butterfly House by Dutch duo Bik Van der Pol (2010), an open-air installation on Tiber Island by US artist Doug Aitken (2009), and a lunar eclipse by Canadian artist Angela Bulloch above the Arc Pacis (2007).

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‪‬Shea Hembrey single-handedly fabricates biennial art book of 100 made-up artists in 2 years as a work of “satire and reverence,” the project titled ‘Seek: 100 artists in 2011’ [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Tate Triennial 2012 cancelled due to questionable success, the museum instead reviewing the programme and focusing on the Tate Britain Millbank project [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Metropolitan Museum of Art collaborates with Google Goggles to recognize over 76,000 works through mobile app, “yet another milestone in our effort to provide global access to our collections.” [AO Newslink]

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Installation view of Uta Barth at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. All images via Tanya Bonakdar.

In her current solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, the German-born and Los Angeles-based photographer Uta Barth presents works from her recent partner projects, …and to draw a bright white line with light (previously shown in her 2011 solo exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago) and Compositions of Light on White. Both series carry the themes of atmospheric flux, the passage of time, and ephemerality that have come to characterize Barth’s practice. Long recognized for her rigorous examination of the conventions of photography and the poetics of visual perception, Barth takes on the role of the observer at the window in these most recent series.

Uta Barth, …and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.2) (2011)

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‪‬Richard Serra’s 80-foot sculpture, titled ‘7,’ unveiled at MIA Park inauguration on grounds of Islamic Museum of Art in Doha, Qatar [AO Newslink]

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George Condo, Purple Compression (2011). All images via Skarstedt Gallery.

George Condo is currently showing eleven new works from his ongoing series Drawing Paintings at the Skarstedt Gallery in New York. Combining techniques of spontaneous drawing and more calculated painting, the series blends charcoal lines with pastel acrylics in Condo’s signature figurations. The large colorful canvases are busy with eyes and teeth, bowties and breasts, with the series-within-a-series, Compressions, leaving small stretches of blank canvas outside the compressed scenes. Condo says of the series, “They are about freedom of line and color and blur the distinction between drawing and painting. They are about beauty and horror walking hand in hand. They are about improvisation on the human figure and it’s consciousness.”

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Shepard Fairey designs cover of Time Magazine 2011 Person of the Year: The Protestor (with Ai WeiWei as runner up) [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Tracey Emin appointed Professor of Drawing at Royal Academy Schools in London; Emin “excited to be teaching again” [AO Newslink]

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