Artist Robert Indiana, the pioneering pop-artist behind the iconic “LOVE” sculpture and a broader body of work that investigated the subtle meanings of symbols, text and images, has passed away at the age of 89. The artist passed away this past Saturday at his home. Read More »
| Comments Off on RIP: Robert Indiana, Defining Voice of American Pop Art, Has Passed Away at 89 | | 
Mark Van Yetter, Damn Forest at Night (2018), photo by Gregory Carideo, copyright Mark Van Yetter, courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC
There’s an innate fascination with mystery that winds its way in and out of the work of Mark Van Yetter. The painter and sculptor’s work is flush with unspecified narratives, moments of confusion and abstraction that manages to carry all of his works up into an ever-shifting series of relationships and interactions. For his new show at Bridget Donahue, the artist has turned this interest towards the architectural twisting his narrative arcs through an interest in physical space, and its impacts on the objects within it. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – Mark Van Yetter: “You can observe a lot by just watching” at Bridget Donahue Through July 15th, 2018 | |
Carroll Dunham, Any Day (2017), via Gladstone
Embracing an elaboration and expansion of his interests in the nude form, and a continued interest in the possibilities for abstraction in exchange with approaches to portraiture and figuration, artist Carroll Dunham returns to Gladstone Gallery this month, bringing with him a body of new paintings created over the past year. Drawn from his Wrestlers series, Dunham uses the visual language of mythological depictions of wrestling, mined from art historical sources and his own memory, to propose new through lines in his practice that are both formal and autobiographical in nature. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – Carroll Dunham at Gladstone Through June 16th, 2018 | |
Kerry Marshall, Past Times (1997), Price:$21,114,500 via Sotheby’s
With two nights of auctions now concluded, a choppy look at the contemporary art market has emerged, as Sotheby’s, Phillips and Christie’s strung together a series of occasionally surprising, mixed sales over the course of last night and this evening. The auctions, which mark the last major sales for the U.S. outposts of the international houses before summer recess, saw a number of impressive auction records, as well as a series of high profile works that failed to find a buyer, a note that left many puzzling over the immediate future of the Contemporary field.
Mark Rothko, Untitled (1969), Price:$18,856,500, via Sotheby’s Read More »
| Comments Off on AO Auction Results – New York: Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sales, May 16th and 17th, 2018 | |
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition (1916), Price: $85,812,500, via Christies
With another auction come and gone in New York, Christie’s has posed quite a challenge to its competitors last night, closing out a well-run sale with strong results and a set of major auction records broken. The 37-lot sale was well-appointed, and the sale moved steadily through its paces, ultimately finishing at a final tally of $416,040,000 with only 4 lots going unsold. Read More »
| Comments Off on AO Auction Results – New York: Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Sale, May 15th, 2018 | |
Amedeo Modigliani, Nu CoucheÌ (1917), Price Realized: $157,159,000, via Sotheby’s
A marathon week of auctions in New York is now underway, but not quite off to a roaring start, as Sotheby’s capped an unsteady and often struggling auction this evening at its uptown location. Led by a strong performance by an Amedeo Modigliani masterpiece, the sale failed to achieve much beyond its marquee lots, ultimately capping the sale with 13 unsold works that brought the sale to a final tally of $318,313,600.
Pablo Picasso, Le Repos (1932), Price Realized: $36,920,500, via Sotheby’s
| Comments Off on AO Auction Results – New York: Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale, May 14th, 2018 | |
Jenny Saville, Fate I (2018), via Josie Berman for Art Observed
Jenny Saville returns to Gagosian this month in New York, bringing her iconic painterly style and remarkably attentive perspective towards the human body with her. The artist, whose past 25 years of practice have seen her delve into an ever-evolving interest in the nuanced erotics and endlessly narrative capacities of the human form, returns here to her frequent interest in couples and pairings of form, using intertwined bodies and interlocked figures to explore human relation and emotion. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – Jenny Saville: “Ancestors” at Gagosian Through June 16th, 2018 | |
Harold Ancart, Untitled (2018), via Clearing
The painterly technique of Harold Ancart draws particular strength in accumulation and mass. Accenting his rough line-work with thick layers of paint and broad fields of paint, Ancart’s compositions have long drawn on the grey areas between addition and subtraction, as if his paintings and sculpture existing in a state where void states are always present, yet somehow, always just beyond comprehension. Past works have seen the artist negotiate between different perceptions of space with masterful skill, creating pieces where the accumulation of paint only draws additional strength from its later removal, or vice versa, ultimately creating complex interactions between time and space, depth and flatness. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – Harold Ancart at Clearing Through June 17th, 2018 | |
Harmony Hammond, Inappropriate Longings (detail) (1992), via Alexander Gray
Alexander Gray’s exhibition of the work of Harmony Hammond highlights the artist’s work from the 1990’s, mixing together a divergent series of works using wallpaper, linoleum and other decaying materials plucked from a world between the constructed and cosmetic. Her objects have seen better days, truth be told, eerily reminiscent of slowly rotting farms in the Midwest, or the nefarious forces of Capote’s dark American landscapes. In Hammond’s hands, the two-dimensionally sculpted debris, peppered with brand names of long-gone industrial companies, invoke a yearning for something other than what we experience: the passage of time, the sense of a specific battered place, vague violence, foul weather or foul play. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – Harmony Hammond: “Inappropriate Longings” at Alexander Gray Through May 26th, 2018 | |
Henning Strassburger, The Big Air Conditioner (2018), via Blumenthal
For the past five years, collector Robert Blumenthal has been wading deeper and deeper into the world of exhibition-making, mounting shows with a flair for the adventurous and the scholarly in his gallery that has moved from the Upper East Side and the Hamptons to Chinatown. Having embraced a collecting style that pairs conceptually ambitious work with more classical approaches towards lyrical and figurative painting, Blumenthal’s shows have been a distinct analog to his own collection, which features work by Darren Bader, Isa Genzken, Chris Burden, and Mary Weatherford, among others.
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| Comments Off on New York – Henning Strassburger: “Fünf Bilder” at Robert Blumenthal Through May 10th, 2018 | |