George Condo, Lost at Sea (2014), via Art Observed

George Condo is currently presenting a new body of work, on view at Skarstedt Gallery‘s recently opened Chelsea exhibition space, titled Double Heads / Black Paintings / Abstractions.  Decamping to his studio in East Hampton, Long Island, this summer the artist has produced a series of paintings that marks a noted departure from his most recent exhibitions. (more…)

The New York Times looks at the nearly $67 million in upcoming renovations slated for the Louvre in Paris, and president Jean-Luc Martinez’s vision for a more visitor-centered experience.  “I lived in a suburb that was very modern, and everything was new,” Martinez tells the NYT. “And when I arrived here, everything was ancient. Imagine for a child, to see five centuries of art, some as old as two or three millenniums. In this space, I felt the depth of human history.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports that the European art exhibition Manifesta is in the final stages of negotiations in securing the Italian city of Palermo as the location for its 2018 edition.  The exhibition will aim to look at “how artistic practices and interventions can play a role in improving the social cohesion of this remarkable city,” says Manifesta director Hedwig Fijen. (more…)

Bernadette Corporation, no kinda ho3 (2014), via Art Observed

Painter Rita Ackermann takes the curatorial helm at Hauser and Wirth’s uptown gallery this month, presenting an exhibition of works that offers a fascinating, and notably specific study of recent art history.  The exhibition, titled Freezer Burn, focuses on a specific group of artists cresting in the early years of the 21st century, as well as affiliated artists from the past decade exploring the pervasive aesthetics of pop culture and political interference. (more…)

David Crespo of the Connecticut-based Brandon Gallery is awaiting sentencing today over his conviction in the sale of imitation Marc Chagall lithographs, which the dealer reproduced and forged the signature on.  Crespo was apprehended after selling a fake print to an undercover FBI agent.   (more…)

Thieves in Madrid have broken into Puerta de Alcalá art gallery, stealing 70 paintings worth an estimated €600,000.  The thieves reportedly entered the gallery through a hole punched through the wall of an adjacent building.  “This has destroyed us. It’s left us in a really tough situation,” gallerist Pedro Márquez says. “Forty years of work and they just walked out with it.” (more…)

Artist Maurizio Cattelan is in New York Magazine this week, taking a tour of the Los Angeles art world, including studio visits with Frances Stark, reviews of the Pierre Huyghe LACMA show, and an afternoon spent with actor, comedian and long-time painter Jim Carrey.  “His energy is boundless, and he’s clearly having fun testing the boundaries of painting and sculpture,” Cattelan says. (more…)

MoMA has announced plans for an exhibition focusing on the work of Japanese conceptualist Yoko Ono.  Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971 will include 125 of Ms. Ono’s early works, including sculpture, videos and other pieces.  It will open in May. (more…)

Fulton Ryder, the secretive bookstore owned by artist Richard Prince, has announced via email that it will close its doors on Christmas of this year.  “Fulton Ryder was always meant to be an ephemeral space, an experimental venue for spontaneous creativity where things constantly changed and shifted,” says gallery head Fabiola Alondra. (more…)

Little more than one week has passed since Christie’s CEO Steven Murphy announced he will be leaving his post, but the auction house is already seeing more position changes, as Doug Woodham, president of its Americas division for the past two years, has announced he will step down.  Jussi Pylkkanen will be taking over for Murphy.  “Jussi Pylkkanen will be responsible for the global management of Christie’s art specialist community and for the global development of client engagement,” Christie’s said in a statement. (more…)

Artist Ryan McNamara is interviewed in the New York Times this past week, following the opening of the artist’s performance ballet ME3M 4 MIAMI at Art Basel Miami Beach.  “I’ve obviously done a lot of things here, but for me it’s just another context,” McNamara says. “It’s super-specific and super-bizarre. I feel most at home at galleries and museums, but I would get bored if I were only performing there. It’s a different kind of excitement.” (more…)

Takashi Murakami, In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow (Installation View), via Ellen Burke for Art Observed

The recent work of Takashi Murakami is firmly embedded in the critical state of Japan in the 21st Century, a sense of the ecological peril that the country has attempted to deal with since the disasters of Fukushima several months ago.  Taking this cataclysmic event as the jumping-off point for much of his recent work, the artist has taken his signature style, replete with smirking characters, huge swaths of psychedelic color, and the delicate iconography of classical Japanese art, applying it to a new series of works on view through January at Gagosian Gallery’s Chelsea exhibition space. (more…)

The Fondazione Prada has unveileved a new design for its space in Milan, designed by Rem Koolhaas’s architecture firm, OMA.  This will be the second space for the Fondazione, which will continue to operate out of its location in Venice as well. (more…)

A silver plate created by Pablo Picasso, and worth nearly $90,000 was stolen from the Art Miami fair this past week, part of a daring heist that has police still searching for the culprit.  “I’ve been doing art shows all my life,” says David Smith, the owner of the Leslie Smith Gallery and the victim of the theft. “I’ve never, ever had anything stolen.” (more…)

Andrew Shannon, the man who punched an immense hole in the surface of at $10 million Claude Monet landscape at the National Gallery of Dublin, has officially been sentenced to 5 years in prison for his actions.  Shannon is also banned from any art museum for 15 months after his release. (more…)

Noted German dealer Helge Achenbach has been accused of falsifying accounts on artworks and classic cars he purchased on behalf of the Albrecht family, the heirs to the Aldi Grocery Store fortune, including paintings by Picasso and Roy Lichtenstein.  In court documents, Achenbach is accused of claiming a higher price on works purchsed to achieve a higher commission, although he claims he offered a buyback deal on all sales, and that his client’s failure to return any work indicates his innocence.  “Where there has been no damage, there can be no fraud,” he said in a statement through his lawyer. (more…)

Douglas Gordon gives an enigmatic interview in the Art Newspaper this week, as the artist opens his newest commissioned piece at the Park Ave Armory, an immense, flooded space around which pianist Hélène Grimaud performs.  “The whole thing started by accident when I was making a lithographic edition based on the eclipse of the sun in the south of France back in 1999,” says Gordon, “and one of the people involved asked me why I was interested in lunacy. I said, “Well, I like wolves…”. And so we got into this hilarious conversation and she said that I should get Hélène Grimaud involved in my practice because, well, she’s clearly not a lunatic, but she has this condition—synaesthesia—which means that she sees colors when she plays music. And she also loves wolves.” (more…)

Neo Rauch, Heillichtung  (2014), via Art Observed

The newest show of work by Neo Rauch, on view at David Zwirner, is a fitting continuation of the German artist’s take on painting, combining surreal imagery with a vaguely familiar technique recalling the intertwined political and cultural history of his German homeland. (more…)

Sinne Gallery at Untitled Miami, all photos via Art Observed

Set in a strikingly designed beachfront structure, Untitled Miami carries the annual distinction as the best located fair of Miami Art Week. But the fair itself has also built a reputation for its highly selective and carefully arranged list of exhibitors, an approach that has earned it a premier position among the throng of fairs flocking each year to South Beach. (more…)

NADA at the Deauville, all photos by Art Observed

Again located up Collins Ave at the Deauville Beach Resort in North Beach, the New Art Dealers Alliance fair seems perfectly content to let the buyers come to them.  Boasting a tightly curated but welcoming atmosphere for younger artists and smaller galleries, the fair has remained a yearly mainstay in the proceedings of Miami Art Week. (more…)

Andra Ursuta at ICA Miami (Installation View)

For those following the fractious events surrounding the schism between the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami and the newly founded Institute of Contemporary Art this year, one had to wonder what the new space, located in Miami’s Design District, would bring forward for its first Miami Art Week. Without a permanent home, the ICA has taken up residence at the historic Moore Building, where it held its launch party Tuesday night. (more…)

The Guggenheim has released a list of finalists in the competition to design the prospective new Guggenheim in Helsinki, Finland. The final six selections include a variety of designs, including repurposed buildings and a series of pavilion-style structures linked through an interconnected walkway. The design contest “opens extraordinary possibilities for a Guggenheim in Helsinki and asks us to imagine what a museum of the future can be,” according to director Richard Armstrong. (more…)

Over £45 million in art was donated to the British nation in the past year, a new report by the Arts Council England reports, among them a landmark collection of works from the collection of late artist Lucian Freud.   “There is something of special significance in the perception that one great artist has of another,” says Arts Council England chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette of the Freud collection. “It was this group of paintings and drawings, rather than his own works, that Freud chose to surround himself with in his home.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal heads upstate for a tour of artist Richard Prince’s Catskill Mountains home, where the artist has built a studio and a number of immense sculptures and special projects he has never exhibited. “A lot of stuff here I don’t consider art, or at least it didn’t begin as art,” Prince says. “I’m just trying to make something I haven’t seen before. Cool stuff.” (more…)