The New York Times publishes a feature on LES Gallery owner Lisa Cooley, as she discusses her work in the New York Art World, the current show on Ileana Sonnabend at MoMA, and her the long history of prominent female art dealers. “There have always been women dealers,” Cooley says. “It is a profession that has always attracted women. Women have relatively easy access to the field.” (more…)
ArtNet has published its annual list of the Top 10 Highest Selling Artists for 2013, with Andy Warhol once again the top of the list, with a yearly sales tally of $427.1 million, aided considerably by the record sale for the artist’s Silver Car Crash last year for $105 million. Warhol was followed closely by Pablo Picasso at $422 million. Also notable is the presence of three Chinese artists in the top ten: Zhang Daqian, Qi Bashi, and Zao Wou-Ki, respectively. (more…)
A series of sculptures cast from original plasters by Constantin Brancusi have reignited debate over the authenticity of works created after the artist’s death. Brancusi in New York, currently on view at Paul Kasmin, is showing 5 such works, cast between 1992 and 2010 from the artist’s original casts, and with the permission of the artist’s estate, but some critics are calling foul, saying any work made after the Romanian’s death could only be considered a replica. “There are always going to be people who say they’re 100% against it. I can only help guide you with what’s fact—I can’t decide somebody else’s morals for them,” says Kasmin. “What we want to come of this is to know that Brancusi, like many other great artists’ estates, is open for business.” (more…)
Artists Barbara Kruger and Sterling Ruby are collaborating with Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Projects to present a pair of performances at a 1,600 seat historic theater built in 1921 at the newly opened Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. The artists each provided visual concepts for one performance, with Kruger collaborating with Millepied on his piece Reflections, and Ruby working on Murder Ballads by Justin Peck. The works will be performed on February 20th, 21st and 22nd at the Theatre at Ace Hotel Los Angeles. (more…)
Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States has announced a month-long visual arts festival to take place in April of this year, across 46 venues in New York City. The ART2 Festival “will consider issues prevalent in today’s patently global art world…with the goal of encouraging intellectual discourse between institutions, artists, scholars, students and the public,” the organization said in a statement. (more…)
Philippe Vergne, the current director of the Dia Art Foundation has been selected to replace Jeffrey Deitch as the head of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Vergne has previously worked on the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and also served briefly as the head of the François Pinault Foundation. “The most important challenge for the new director,” former director Richard Koshalek says, “is to raise the standard of expectations of the museum within this community and beyond, and that means new, original ideas for the future.” (more…)
Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Sale in London next month will be lead by a 1994 piece by Gerhard Richter, valued at $49 million. Wand (Wall) sat for many years in the artist’s personal collection, during which time it was exhibited in a number of major exhibitions. “As its title suggests, Wand (Wall) presents a compelling wall of colour with horizontal bands of cadmium red, blue and magenta that deliberately echo the chromatic intensity of a Mark Rothko,” Sotheby’s notes in its statement. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal reports that two sources close to the record-setting sale of a Francis Bacon triptych last year at Christie’s have said that the work was purchased by Elaine Pascal Wynn, the billionaire ex-wife of casino mogul Steve Wynn. While her motives are unclear, sources state that she purchased the work through dealer Bill Acquavella, who placed the $127 million bid by phone. (more…)
Josephine Meckseper (Installation View), All images courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery
On view at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York is an exhibition of large-scale vitrines, mirrored wall panels and photographs, all by Josephine Meckseper, and alluding to the rise of the Bauhaus and Deutscher Werkbund in Weimar Germany, and their subsequent destruction by the Nazi regime.
Hyperallergic reports on Congress’s 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which was released yesterday with the National Endowment for the Arts seeing a funding amount of $146.02 million, only slightly down from last year’s $146.26 million. The funding amount comes after a fractious several months of negotiations, including a proposed cut of 49% to the NEA by the House last year. The Arts in Education Program was also rewarded a similar amount of $25 million, which is up from last year’s $24.6 million. (more…)
Vilma Bautista, the former secretary to Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos, has been sentenced to two to six years in prison in New York for attempting to sell Impressionist masterpieces belonging to the Philippine government, which vanished when Marcos’s husband was overthrown. Bautista will remain free on bail while her case is undergoes an appeal. “The court agrees with the people, the evidence was overwhelming,” presiding Justice Renee A. White said. “But you never really know what the appellate division will do on any case.” (more…)
Writer Melanie Gerlis summarizes her book Art as an Investment? in the Financial Times this week, which reports on the current interest in the art market by major banking and investment firms, and questions the assurances of its value and use in the market. While often compared favorably to other assets, analysis shows that it is not quite as ideal of a market as some would attest. She writes: “Equating a popular asset with a profitable asset is misleading. From an investment point of view, art seems to be a very fragile prospect.” (more…)
Theaster Gates is profiled in the current issue of the New Yorker, talking about his work, his life in Chicago, and his current project working with the University of Chicago’s Arts Incubator to renovate and develop an artistic community on Chicago’s South Side. “I told the artists, ‘We need to make the building work’… That was wrong. We don’t need to make the building work. We need to support you.” (more…)
Colorado collector and philanthropist Frederic C. Hamilton has bequeathed a collection of French Impressionist works to the Denver Art Museum. The works, which include pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Gustave Caillebotte, have not been formally appraised, but could be worth up to $100 million. “This is a game-changing gift,” said DAM director Christoph Heinrich. “We will have the biggest collection in the West of Impressionist art.” (more…)
Christie’s offerings for its February 4th, 5th and 7th auctions in London are already indicating a strong sale, with works by Picasso and Magritte leading an offering that is anticipated to earn nearly $380 million. Picasso’s Femme au costume turc dans un fauteuil leads the auction, and has not been on sale in over 50 years, valued at £15-£20 million. “This stellar sale presents international collectors and institutions with rare opportunities to acquire exceptional works with illustrious provenance by key impressionist and modern masters,” Jay Vincze, Christie’s International Director and head of its Impressionist and Modern Art Department, said in a statement. (more…)
Do Ho Suh, Specimen Series: 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, Corridor, Radiator (2013), Courtesy Lehmann Maupin
On view at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong is a solo exhibition by Korean artist Do Ho Suh, coinciding with his installation Home within Home at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul.
New York Magazine has published an extensive profile of Jeffrey Deitch, marking the former MOCA head’s return to New York. Speaking on his inspirations, sense of history, and views on creative collaboration, the piece offers a broad view into Deitch’s creative and entrepreneurial views .“I’m very aware of the connections between art, literature, and music. I look for aesthetic energy, aesthetic movements that are so big that they’re too big to just be an art alone, that they spill over,” he says. (more…)
The Cooper Union Board of Trustees has issued a statement that the university will move forward with its plan to begin charging admission, with an attempt to continually provide additional scholarship funds as needed. “The actions taken by the board today and in April are intended to provide The Cooper Union with a financial model that will sustain it into the future, while ensuring both the quality of the academic program and the institution’s ability to enroll students entirely on the basis of their aptitude and achievement and to meet their full financial need,” the school said in a statement. (more…)
A Virginia court has ruled that a Renoir purchased at a flea market for $7 must be returned to the museum it was stolen from in 1951. Paysadge Bords de Seine, stolen from Baltimore Museum of Art, was discovered by teacher Marcia “Martha” Fuqua, and was valued at $22,000. “The museum has put forth an extensive amount of documentary evidence that the painting was stolen,” Brinkema said, citing a 1951 police report and museum records. (more…)
Sophie Calle, Le Major Davel (1994), via Galerie Perrotin
For her newest exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, Sophie Calle returns to themes of absence and presence, memory and “the real” through the exploration of three situations in which iconic artworks were stolen or destroyed, and the subtle emotional and structural fallout caused by the disappearance of iconic works by Rembrandt, Degas, and others.
Sophie Calle, Dérobés (Installation View), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed (more…)
Collectors Keith and Katherine Sachs, longtime supporters of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, have endowed the institution with 97 works by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden and Gerhard Richter, among others, valued at over $70 million. This museum has always been committed to contemporary art,” said Museum Director Timothy Rub. “Now, with the Sachs gift, we will have one of the best collections of contemporary art in the country. It’s transformative.” (more…)
Former Auction House head Simon de Pury has reportedly signed a book deal with St. Martin’s Press after leaving Phillips auction house last year. The book will be “a look inside the auction world in his voice,” says executive editor Jennifer Weis. “Stories, history, the highlights, the problems, everything.” (more…)
The Bruce High-Quality Foundation University has announced an ambitious project for early 2014: a full production of the 1957 musical West Side Story. Directed by artist and thespian Peter Zohore, the West Side Story project is beginning this month, and will run throughout the beginning of the year. (more…)
Reinard Mucha, Before the Wall Came Down (2008) and Lennep (2009), via Luhring Augustine
The first steps into Reinard Mucha’s show of new works at Luhring Augustine are something of a jarring affair. Enormous wall-mounted pieces, composed from steel beams, glass casings, and cracked wood blocks are stacked on top of each other in bizarre, serial constructions. In one work, a series of electric trains continually run through a series of stacked, oval tracks, running through metal pipes, joined by a series of boom boxes above the sculpture, all tuned to country music stations.
Reinard Mucha, Hidden Tracks (Installation View), via Luhring Augustine (more…)
