Roy Lichtenstein, Woman Drying Her Hair (1980), Courtesy Gagosian Paris
On view at Gagosian Paris is an exhibition exploring the work of Roy Lichtenstein, who remained the motifs and stylistic tropes of Expressionism motifs using his signature primary colors and flat geometry, a style he had slowly developed and refined during the 1960’s and early 1970’s.
A work by artist Jan Schoonhoven, stolen from the Bommel van Dam Museum in Venlo several months ago, has turned up at Sotheby’s, stopping the sale after a Dutch fence confessed to police that he had tried to sell the work. The 1969 work had already achieved a sale price of €214,000, sold under a different name and turned 90 degrees in the catalog. The auction house acknowledged that it had already been investigating the work after buyers became suspicious. (more…)
Jeffrey Deitch will once again exhibit in New York, the New York Times reports. The current curator of MOCA has announced a soon to open show at Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea, focusing on the intersections of graffiti and calligraphies in contemporary art. Opening September 5th, Calligraffiti: 1984-2013 will feature work from over 50 artists, including Basquiat, Haring, Shirin Neshat, an eL Seed. ”Graffiti has become an important part of the imagery that has defined the Arab Spring.” Deitch writes in the catalog. “Today new communications platforms like Instagram and YouTube have given street art a new resonance.” (more…)
Hyperallergic has posted a thorough exploration of the debate surrounding the brutalist architecture and Picasso murals currently at risk of demolition at Oslo’s Regjeringskvartalet government center, badly damaged in a 2011 car-bomb attack. Tracing the history of the design, the works, and the debate surrounding their preservation or destruction, the article places brutalism at the center of the debate, noting the continued destruction of many of its architectural masterworks based on their purported unattractiveness. Joern Holme, the head of the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, echoes this statement, saying: “We can’t demolish the best of a cultural era just because we find it ugly today.” (more…)
New arrests are expected in the ongoing investigation into the Knoedler Gallery, the New York Times reports. The news comes after the indictment of dealer Glafira Rosales, in which the prosecuting attorney, Jason P. Hernandez, stated that he was contemplating further arrests. The news comes after the announcement that Mr. Pei-Shen Qian, the artist who created these works, has left the country for China. Both the prosecutor and defense attorney in the trial have also forecasted that the case will be resolved soon. (more…)
British architect Norman Foster has resigned from the proposed expansion of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, a projected $670 million project that had seen numerous delays over disputes and arguments between officials and preservationists. “Foster & Partners took this action because the museum, for the last three years, has not involved us in the development of the project, which was being carried out by others.” Foster’s firm said in a statement. (more…)
Gary Hume, Blackbird (1998), all images courtesy Tate Britain
The Tate Britain is currently presenting an exhibition of works by British painter Gary Hume, created throughout his career. On display are 24 recent paintings, rare works never before seen in the UK, as well some of his most well-known pieces, offering a pointed view of his minimalist style and challenging aesthetic practice.
Urban fashion company Supreme has just unveiled its Fall lookbook, which has partnered with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat to include a number of graphics and images from the paintings of late artist. In one photo, a model sports a red denim jacket, with Basquiat’s famous Cassius Clay figure. Other pieces feature Basquiat’s signature textual juxtapositions and images. (more…)
Europe’s Manifesta Art Biennial has named the Berlin-based Kasper Konig as its curator for next year’s edition of the fair, which opens next June in St. Petersburg. Konig’s active role in defending artistic statements in the face of conservative criticism in Germany will make for an interesting counterpoint to Russia’s current political climate, where Putin has just passed the Homosexuality Propaganda law. “Contemporary art and exhibits from the State Hermitage should dance side by side.” Konig said in a statement. (more…)
The Apology Line, a confessional telephone art project that enabled callers to phone in and confess their misgivings and misdeeds, has been revived in New York City. Originally created by artist Allan Bridge, the project fell silent after Bridge was killed in a boating accident. But recently, posters have reappeared across the city, thanks to the efforts of an anonymous Brooklyn artist. “A voice inside of me said there’s no reason that the line had to die just because Allan died,” the unknown artist said in an interview with the NY Times. “It’s an outlet, and some people need that outlet.” (more…)
In an unprecedented move, the final tally of Christie’s Detroit Institute of Arts appraisal later this fall will offer a rare look into the true market value of a major museum’s art collection. Expected to reach into the billions, the valuation of the museum’s collection will add a new sense of urgency to the current budgetary crisis in Detroit, and its effects on DIA. “This is like the weighing of souls,” says Maxwell Anderson, director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “This is biblical stuff, not the approximations that insurance companies look for. It’s extremely problematic for all museums, because it alters the public’s perception of artworks from being ciphers of public heritage of transcendent value, to objects for sale to pay other people’s debts.” (more…)
A budding artist residency program at Mount Tremper in the Catskills is featured in the Wall Street Journal this week, profiling the 6-year old program as it caps off its season with a barbecue celebration and performance by the Brooklyn-based Catch Performance Series. “We’re sleeping all over the place,” says Catch artist Andrew Dinwiddie. “There are bedrooms in the farm house, a room in the dance barn, a loft in the studio, two Airstream trailers.” (more…)
German television station ikono has announced a 3 week, 24/7 video art festival, streaming on their channel and online next month. The On Air Art Festival will begin September 6th, and will feature work by Bill Viola, Alfredo Jaar, William Kentridge, and A.K. Dolven, among others. “I thought why not achieve for the arts with TV as radio has been achieving for music? Why not use this mass medium for bringing the entire world of arts into the homes of an international public? ” Says station founder Elizabeth Markevitch. (more…)
Pat Steir, Last Wave Painting: Wave Becoming a Waterfall (1987-88), via Cheim and Read
The 1980’s have long been marked for their resurgent focus on the painted canvas. Led by a dynamic group of New York artists, and a supportive system of gallerists and collectors, the decade saw an explosive body of work emerge that blended expressive technique with a new vision towards abstraction and figuration, breathing new life into a medium many were labeling dead in the water.
Carroll Dunham, Horizontal Bands (1982), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed (more…)
In anticipation of the upcoming Istanbul Biennial, opening later this fall,the New York Times has published a profile on the emerging contemporary art scene of the Turkish metropolis, exploring both the largest new galleries like SALT, and the fervent underground political arts scene of artists like Ha Za Vu Zu. (more…)
Monika Grzymala, Volumen (2013), via Daniel Creahan for ArtObserved
Currently installed on the ground floor of The Morgan Library and Museum in midtown Manhattan, Monika Grzymala’s Volumen is an impressive flurry of paper and string, flowing up from a corner of the museum’s glass atrium, and spreading out as it flows upwards towards the ceiling. Part of the museum’s annual “Summer Sculpture Series,” the piece forms an illusively rich tapestry of colors, mixing homemade paper with copied texts from the museum’s vast collections of manuscripts and books. (more…)
The accusations and investigations surrounding the Knoedler Gallery, and the arrest of dealer Glafira Rosales have taken a new turn, with the identification of the forger of at least 63 works attributed to Modernist masters like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Artist Pei-Shen Qian, is a Chinese painter living in Queens, who fled his country in the wake of the cultural revolution, and who has eked out a living selling forged works to Rosales for over 15 years. His payment for these works rarely exceeded several thousand dollars, even though some of the works sold for millions. “I didn’t know he had this kind of a good technique,” said Qian’s friend and fellow artist Zhang Hongtu. “He had some talent, but I don’t believe he can paint in the same style as a Jackson Pollock; it’s not easy to copy this kind of style.” (more…)
Painter Ed Ruscha has been elected to a three-year term serving on the board of trustees for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, almost exactly one year after he left his same post at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The move comes as SFMoMA begins a landmark $610-million expansion that will leave its main building closed until 2016. Ruscha also voiced his support for departing MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch. “I thought he would add some unconventional touch to the picture. Maybe it didn’t work out for him. But he started to get the engine rolling.” (more…)
James Meyer, an assistant to Jasper Johns, who worked for the artist for over 27 years, was arrested on Wednesday, accused of stealing at least 22 unfinished works from his employer, and selling them through an unnamed New York gallery for over $6 million. Meyers was arraigned in a Hartford courtroom, and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was released on an unsecured $250,000 bond. “Jasper has taught me to think about what I’m making before I make it.” Meyer once said of his employer and mentor. (more…)
Ellsworth Kelly, Chatham I White Black (1971), Courtesy of MoMA
Coming off the wide success of his early experiments in shaped canvases, pure color fields and architectural investigations in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, artist Ellsworth Kelly withdrew from the New York City art world that had helped him attain such a high degree of success, settling in the upstate villa of Spencertown. It was here, painting at a rented studio in nearby Chatham, that the artist would begin a new series of works that would help develop and refine his artistic practice to a fine point.
Ellsworth Kelly, Chatham XII Yellow Black (1971), Courtesy of MoMA (more…)
The Denver Art Museum has received a donation of 50 paintings and sculptures from the collection of Henry Roath, a former Denver lawyer and banker. The donation, which includes works by Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Frederic Remington and Ernest L. Blumenschein, is helping to bolster the Denver institution’s already impressive collection of Western Art. “As my finances got better, my collection got better.” Roath said, but “it seemed that artwork of that quality should be seen by people other than just its owners.” (more…)
German artist Jonathan Meese has been acquitted of making a Nazi salute gesture during a performance last year, winning out with a defense claiming constitutional protection for artistic freedom. The accusations stemmed from a performance Meese gave at “Megalomania in the Art World” last year at Kassel University. “Art has triumphed,” Meese said. “Now I am free.” (more…)
Artist Lia Chavez and Surrealist-attired guests at A Surrealism Salon
On Monday July 29th, Performa presented A Surrealism Salon at the downtown loft of artist Lia Chavez, who presided over the event and moderated the eclectic panel discussion with speakers Dr. Megan Fleming, therapist Heide Banks, Performa 13 artist Shana Lutker, Peforma assistant curator Summer Guthery, and Marc Arthur, Performa research and archives. Modeled on the salon discussions among André Breton, Max Ernst and other early surrealists which helped to develop and continually reshape the 20th century artistic movement, the panel endeavored to “explore dreams and desires.” Addressing a diverse range of topics, the panel used their art historical subject as an unexpected but welcome entry point into more current subjects surrounding the “digital revolution,” such as Facebook and the dating app Tinder.
London’s Frieze Art Fair has announced its program of talks for the 2013 edition of the fair. Leading the names on the list are appearances by Jérôme Bel, Meredith Monk and Stephen Shore, among many others at the October art fair in Regent’s Park. (more…)
