Serpentine Pavilion, via Serpentine Galleries
The Serpentine Pavilion, the annual summer architecture project hosted by Serpentine Galleries, has opened in London, a swirling series of multicolored chambers and hallways by Spanish architecture firm SelgasCano (the first commission from a Spanish firm) resting on the lawn outside of the museum galleries. (more…)
The Serpentine has announced a Build Your Own Pavilion contest for young and aspiring architects, aged 8 to 14, inviting them to try their hand at executing their own unique architectural design. “The platform and workshops give an insight to the basic principles of architectural design and workshop students will be given the Pavilion brief and a toolkit that begins with sketching by hand, working with simple modeling materials and progressing to 3D design and print technologies,” the Serpentine says. (more…)
Gallerist Jonathan Green has found a previously unknown pastel work by Claude Monet taped to the inside of another two works he purchased at auction last year. “We were very excited,” Green told the Guardian. “Pastels by him are incredibly rare. These are a pointer to his future. You can see his fascination with light.” (more…)
An arrest warrant for Artist Shepard Fairey has been issued in the city of Detroit, alleging that the artist has caused over $9,000 in damages from various tags and murals he left in the city. Fairey’s public recognition “does not take away the fact that he is also a vandal,” says Police Sgt. Rebecca McKay. (more…)
A muralist and designer is suing Starbucks, following the coffee company’s allegedly unlicensed use of her signature style. Painter Maya Hayuk was approached by the corporation late last year, and declined an offer to work with them on a campaign, but sued when Starbucks rolled out new branding that seemed strikingly similar to her own work. “Starbucks brazenly created artwork that is substantially similar to one or more of Hayuk’s copyrighted works,” the lawsuit claims. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal notes the growing number of volunteer museum docents and tour guides among the baby boomer generation, and problems with managing the volunteer staff that often comes with the territory. “There was this culture of resistance,”says Hirshhorn Museum spokeswoman Kelly Carnes of volunteers who opposed changes in the tour guide structure. “They really felt entitled after spending enough time here not to make any changes from the way they had previously done things.” (more…)
François Pinault is reportedly looking to Paris for the potential site of a museum housing his collection of art, WWD reports. “He has met with [Paris mayor] Anne Hidalgo, who expressed her interest,” says a source close to Pinault. “They are looking together.” (more…)
New shoes from artist Takashi Murakami and Vans hit stores this weekend, a collaboration that sees the artist’s signature flowers and skulls adorning the skateboard shoe company’s iconic slip-ons. The collaboration also features a number of limited-edition skateboard decks and t-shirts. (more…)
Artist Cady Noland has repudiated another one of her past works this month, sabotaging a $1.4 million sale for Log Cabin Blank with Screw Eyes and Cafe Door, a work which she denounced after learning of the new owner’s plans to restore the piece’s rotted wood. “Noland angrily denounced the restoration of the artwork without her knowledge and approval,” a complaint collector Scott Mueller filed in New York Federal Court this Monday. “She further stated that any effort to display or sell the sculpture must include notice that the piece was remade without the artist’s consent, that it now consists of unoriginal materials, and that she does not approve of the work.” (more…)
Collector Bert Kreuk has won his lawsuit with Danh Vo, forcing the artist the create a room-sized installation work, after the artist delivered a much smaller-sized work. Kreuk will pay the artist $350,000 for the piece, but Vo must deliver the piece by a set date. If not, will be fined $10,000 for each day after he fails to produce the work. (more…)
Rob Pruitt, Esprit de Corps (Hokuskai’s Great Wave) (2015), via Art Observed
Rob Pruitt turned 50 this year, and marked the occasion with the opening of this summer’s bi-annual artist retrospective at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, the sprawling complex owned by magazine mogul Peter Brant, just across the street from his family home. The show, taking its suburban locales and high art context as a point of departure, is a remarkable distillation of Pruitt’s practice over the last decades, and welcomes a renewed perspective on the artist’s own personal history in relation to his work. (more…)
Richard Dorment, the head arts critic at The Telegraph who is retiring after serving at the position for over 30 years, has an article in the newspaper this week, reviewing the changes in contemporary art since he began writing, and his thoughts on writers unwilling to accept the new in the world of art. “Had the same critics been writing about film, sport, or the stock market they’d have been rumbled in a week,” he notes. (more…)
The Guardian looks back at the final degree shows for a number of prominent British artists, including David Shrigley, Gillian Wearing and Tracey Emin, including humorous anecdotes and reflections from the artists on their future careers. “I remember saying, if I have one exhibition when I leave I will be happy,” Wearing says. “That’s all I expected.” (more…)
Georg Baselitz, Glastrinker Beckmann (1981), All images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.
The prolific German artist Georg Baselitz is the subject of Skarstedt’s current show with two series of paintings from the 1980’s. Entitled Drinkers and Orange Eaters, the exhibition is composed of two series that the adept Neo-Expressionist created as a study on representation and pictorial narrative. Accentuating the gallery’s minimal but elegant townhouse space, these vibrant paintings, emanating from Baselitz’s gestural brushstrokes fervidly reclaim the legacy of oil on canvas. (more…)
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915), via Sotheby’s
The Impressionist and Modern sale has concluded at Sotheby’s tonight, with 51-lot sale that failed to live up to the auction house’s pre-sale proclamations of a record breaking sale. The auction brought a final total of £178,590,000, falling just shy of the £186.44 million record for London auctions it was expected to beat. (more…)
Cyprien Gaillard, Where Nature Runs Riot (2015). All Images courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin.
Now through July 18, Sprüth Magers Gallery in Berlin hosts Where Nature Runs Riot, an exhibition of new work by Cyprien Gaillard, combining film, sculpture, and sound to inform and interrupt each other in the three main pieces that comprise the show. Thematically, Gaillard focuses on the dialogue formed between natural and man-made structures erected at the limits of history and civilization, testing the capacity of sculptural form to illustrate both the esoteric and psychedelic. References to major figures and tropes from art and musical history reveal the artist’s interest in synthesizing seemingly disparate elements towards a type of aesthetic logic to history and dialogue, an often palimpsestic structure of overlapping layers and interpretations. In this exhibition, Gaillard demonstrates and forges relationships between stillness and movement, natural and man-made form, sound and vision.
The New York Times notes the increasing popularity of Chinese art on the secondary market, as the Chinese Communist Party increases its efforts to secure and repatriate works that have been looted, taken or sold away from the state in past centuries to the west, including, in some cases, thefts from national museums that target works looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace during its century raid by British and French troops in the mid 19th century. “They knew very well what they were after,” said Jean-François Hebert, president of the Château de Fontainebleau, where a number of iconic Chinese gold and bronze works were stolen in 2012. (more…)
Paul Cézanne’s Vue sur L’Estaque et le Château d’If has been placed under export bar in the United Kingdom this week in an attempt to keep the work in the nation. “I hope that the temporary export bar I have put in place will result in a UK buyer coming forward and that the painting will soon be back on the walls of one of our great public collections,” says minister of culture Ed Vaizey. (more…)
The New Museum has appointed Lauren Cornell, who recently co-curated the 2015 Triennial alongside artist Ryan Trecartin, as Curator and Associate Director, Technology Initiatives. “Through her work at the New Museum and at Rhizome first, Lauren Cornell has been tracking the influence of technology on art and culture at large,” says Massimiliano Gioni, the Museum’s Artistic Director. “In her new position, she will help the Museum take an even more active role in engaging with the present and the future.” (more…)
The once rigid boundaries between commercial galleries and museum exhibitors are quickly diminishing today, The New York Times notes, as top galleries turn towards high profile museum curators to create historically and culturally resonant shows. “I think galleries do it for prestige,” says John Elderfield, a former MoMA curator who has done independent work for Gagosian. “It burnishes their image. Of course, when one gallery does it, another one wants to do it.” (more…)
As London auction houses prepare for this week’s Impressionist and Modern sales, Bloomberg recaps the battles between giants Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and the aggressive stance on auction guarantees that have helped to define the massive prices achieved in recent sales. “Our profit margin is good,” says Christie’s recently appointed CEO Patricia Barbizet. “Guarantees are risk management and offer an assurance to the seller.” (more…)
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is finally leaving its Greenwich Village headquarters, and moving uptown to a former brewery on 126th Street in Harlem. “In other cities people travel to see art,” Brown says. “I’m not so far from the Upper East Side.” (more…)
Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing some of his large-scale and ongoing projects, including his work on the ballet adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer work Tree of Codes in Manchester. “On stage will be a mirror, and it will reflect the room. It’s a stretch to say that it puts the audience on the stage,” says Eliasson. “However, they will be conscious of being visible there. But anyway, let’s see how it works.” (more…)