Dealer Yvon Lambert will close his Paris gallery at the end of the year, the Gallery announced this week in a press release. The dealer has made the decision to focus on editioned works, bibliophilia and other printed works, and will open a new venue dedicated specifically to these disciplines. (more…)
Zhang Xiaogang, The Prisoner of Book No. 5 (2014), Courtesy of Pace Gallery
One of the major artists tied to the recent boom of Chinese contemporary art, Zhang Xiaogang has gained some impressive recognition in the last decade, proven in particular by his recent auction record. Referring to certain Western styles of Surrealism and German Expressionism, Ziaogang has been delivering a body of visually captivating figurative paintings, building a signature style from hybridized forms of the subliminal and the physical in human consciousness. (more…)
Artist William Kentridge will bring a massive wall installation to the banks of the Tiber River in Rome later this year, part of a commission by the Maxxi Museum. The work, Triumphs and Laments, will depict scenes from Rome’s 2,000 year history through wall murals, made by removing layers of pollution from the river embankment. As smog continues to accumulate in the city, the work will slowly disappear. (more…)
The annual Sculpture in the City festival has opened in London, with a work by artist João Onofre commanding notable attention. Titled Box Sized Die, the small black cube contains a black metal band, Unfathomable Ruination, playing until they run out of oxygen. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal reports on the growing impact and popularity of the Hudson region in Upstate New York as an arts destination. “It’s a little bit of Bushwick mixed with the Upper East Side,” said Joel Mesler, who opened Retrospective on Hudson with Zach Feuer this year. (more…)
Official opening of ‘Jeff Koons: A Retrospective’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Images via Kelly Lee for Art Observed
After months of hushed tones and starstruck reports on the scale, cost and ambition of Jeff Koons’s career retrospective at The Whitney, the doors have opened at the museum for its last exhibition before the long-held 75th and Madison building is abandoned for its new Meatpacking District headquarters. As indicated, the show has indeed pulled out the stops for Koons, with a combination of new works and classic pieces.
With Gemini G.E.L.‘s colorful “Art on Color” show that opened last month, Paul Kasmin Gallery‘s “Bloodflames Revisited” brings another exhibition in the Chelsea area that mixes up the traditional white-walled gallery space. This show is a “contemporary response” to the show “Bloodflames” that shook up the conventional gallery when it showed in New York’s Hugo Gallery in 1947. “What interests me is how can we now together as a group of artists in the show trying to attempt to activate the floor, so the floor becomes as active viscerally active, formally acted as the wall, which is through a work of art…” Phong Bui, the show’s curator said. “Bloodflames Revisited” will be on view through August 15th in Paul Kasmin Gallery’s two spaces.
A lawsuit seeking to block the takeover of the Corcoran Gallery of Art has been filed in D.C., brought forth by a group of museum donors, students, and faculty, saying the takeover would go against the institution’s 1869 deed. The suit also complains that the institution suffered from “self-dealing, conflicts of interest, hiring unqualified management and profligate spending on consultants whose advice was ultimately ignored.” (more…)
The court case between relatives of Peggy Guggenheim and the Guggenheim Foundation has been decided in favor of the museum. The ruling was issued in a Paris courtroom this week, giving the museum free reign to show art as it deems fitting at the collector’s Venice palazzo. “The Foundation is proud to have faithfully carried out the wishes of Peggy Guggenheim for more than thirty years by preserving her collection intact in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, restoring and maintaining the Palazzo as a public museum and contributing to the knowledge of modern and contemporary art in Italy,” the Guggenheim said in a statement. (more…)
Kara Walker, A Subtlety (2014) all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Since her debut at The Drawing Center in 1994, Kara Walker has been one of the most prolific American artists of African descent, delivering an ambitious oeuvre on the politics of race, gender and identity. As with contemporaries such as Lorna Simpson and Mickalene Thomas, who address similar subject matter, the artist has continuously mined history to reveal the untold micro-histories of those that are neglected and enslaved, reflecting on the representation of Black history in the U.S. and abroad. Her infamous cut-paper silhouettes narrating the stories of anguish and abuse in African-American history have earned the California-born, New York based artist a singular position in the contemporary art dialogue.
Kara Walker, A Subtlety (2014) (more…)
Rockaway! Festival, photo via Art Observed
The art world decamped to the Far Rockaways this weekend, as MoMA PS1 initiated its new public arts festival at the increasingly popular Queens beachfront. Sponsored by the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC) to celebrate the reopening of Fort Tilden, as well as to benefit the ongoing recovery of the area following the immense damages wreaked by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the event included exhibitions, performances and an after-party at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.
James Franco Reads Walt Whitman during Rockaway! Festival, via Art Observed (more…)
The “Art Everywhere US” project, which will cover billboards, bus stops and other public spaces with art, is set to get underway this August, with 58 works to go on display after a public vote. Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks was the leading vote-getter, and will join works by Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman, among others. The project begins August 4th in Times Square, when digital billboards will display all the works. (more…)
A trove of artworks valued at over $4.5 million has been discovered in Brazil, hidden away in shipping crates sent over from the United States. The works, among them pieces by contemporary artists Os Gemeos and Sergio de Camargo were among the possessions of a Brazilian woman who authorities believe was seeking to avoid export taxes. (more…)
The opening of Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg has offered many artists the platform for protesting Russia’s increasingly aggressive stance against LGBT citizens. The exhibition sees a number of works speaking candidly about sexuality, including Marlene Dumas’s gallery of gay men who made major contributions to world history. “This is probably the gayest show I have done,” Wolfgang Tillmans tells the Guardian. (more…)
The New York Times notes Margate as a growing destination for artists and art lovers on the British Isles, made possible by a new high-speed rail link and thriving artistic community. “The town has picked up, and that’s the best thing,” said John Cripps of the Dreamland Trust. “We lost our way a little bit, but people are starting to come back.” (more…)
W Magazine has published a power list of 60 luminary artists, collectors, gallerists and other art world leaders, including among them, Michael Slotover and Amanda Sharp (co-founders of Frieze Art Fair), Larry Gagosian, and Kara Walker. “The weirdest thing I get all the time is ‘I thought you’d be shorter,'” Walker says. “I think it’s because I put a lot of small, childlike bodies in my work: not-quite-to-scale caricatures enacting terrible power games. Some folks see the figures and assume they’re based on me.” (more…)
A recent Financial Times article notes the continually shifting state of the contemporary art market, and the changes in gallery representation, points of sale, and dominant art buying countries that are currently shaking up the art world and in correlation, notes the skyrocketing rents felt by many galleries in hot art neighborhoods like New York’s Chelsea and Mayfair in London. (more…)
After several years of petitioning, Jeff Koons has been granted approval to gut a pair of houses the artist purchased at 11 and 13 E. 67th St, and to combine them into a colossal mansion. “It must be nice to not only be an artist but to be your own Medici,” comments one local renter. (more…)
Francis Bacon, Study for Head of Lucian Freud, at Christie’s
Following the Impressionist and Modern sales in London last week, the British arms of the major auction houses will open their doors once again for a series of Contemporary sales this week, bringing the spring art season to a close with one last set of high-profile sales evenings.
Peter Doig, Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror) via Sotheby’s (more…)
Antony Gormley has created a special architectural installation for The Beaumont Hotel in London, using his trademark figuration to create an illusive luxury hotel suite. Titled Room, the suite is modeled after one of Gormley’s squatting figures, and contains a full luxury apartment inside, which has also been meticulously shaped by the artist. “Shutters over the window provide total blackout and very subliminal levels of light allow me to sculpt darkness itself,” Gormley says. “My ambition for this work is that it should confront the monumental with the most personal, intimate experience.” (more…)
Peter Doig’s Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror) will hit the auction block for the first time next week at Sotheby’s in London, and is estimated to bring in $15 million. The work, part of Doig’s Country-Rock series, depicts a view of the mysterious, rainbow clad tunnel in Canada from the passenger seat of a car. (more…)
Court proceedings regarding the lawsuit filed by members of the Robert Rauschenberg Trust, demanding they receive up to $60 million in compensation for their work maintaining the foundation, are nearing their conclusion. The plaintiffs claim that their work has grown the value of the Rauschenberg estate, and they should be paid accordingly. (more…)
Kurt Schwitters, Ja – Was? – Bild (1920), via Christie’s
The Impressionist and Modern Evening Sales concluded Tuesday evening, capping a pair of sales that saw impressive prices on a number of works without pushing any major new records for artists at auction. (more…)
