The former Paris studio where Pablo Picasso waited out the Nazi occupation and painted some of his most famous works, among them Guernica, is currently embroiled in a bitter argument between a private arts education group that currently occupies the space rent free, and the building’s owners, who want the group gone.  Calling them “squatters,” the firm owning the building has made moves to evict the group, despite sharp protests.  “It was abandoned and we renovated it completely, respecting its original state,” said Alain Casabona, spokesman for the occupying group, the Comité National Pour l’Education Artistique. (more…)

Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong and his colleagues have returned to the Finnish city of Helsinki, in an attempt to revive talks over the possibility of a Guggenheim Museum there.  Meeting with Finnish officials, the group of representatives are seeking what would be the Museum’s northernmost outpost in continental Europe.  “Topics that were mentioned during our discussion were the exclusion of the Helsinki Art Museum from the proposal, the possible sites, and funding,” says Helsinki Mayor Jussi Pajunen.  (more…)

One of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks exploring the possibilities and potentials for human flight will come to the Smithsonian Institution this fall, on view at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.  Codex on the Flight of Birds, which will begin showing in mid-September, explores the various concerns of flight, including weight, space, and an early exploration of the force of gravity, years before Newton formally named it as such.  “Centuries before any real progress toward a practical flying machine was achieved, Leonardo expressed the seeds of the ideas that would lead to humans spreading their wings,” says National Air and Space chief curator Peter Jakab. (more…)

James Turrell, Aten Reign (2013) (Installation View) © James Turrell, Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

The highly anticipated James Turrell exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, which opened last month, and remains on view through the summer, has renewed the ongoing debate surrounding contemporary artworks of Disney-esque proportions, especially considering whether or not these spectacle-inducing affairs are worthy of the attention they often command. Like his ongoing work-in-progress, Rodin Crater (a massive naked-eye observatory built within an ancient crater near Flagstaff, Arizona), Turrell’s multi-venue comeback is not exactly a modest undertaking, with concurrent exhibitions on view at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. At the Guggenheim, Turrell joins Matthew Barney, Nam June Paik, Maurizio Cattelan, and others who have mediated Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic rotunda through Turrell’s site specific Aten Reign, which uses an ingenious system of stretched fabrics and LED lights to create the illusion of billowing clouds of color that unfold in concentric rings through the rising levels, with visitors invited to watch the dizzying light show from the rotunda floor. Four other historical projected light works, three of which date to the 1960s, are also on view in adjacent galleries along with a selection of thirteen aquatints that, with expert lighting and position, appear to emit a soft glow. However, it is Aten Reign that has generated the most buzz, both good and bad.

James Turrell, Aten Reign (2013) (Installation View) © James Turrell, Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York  (more…)

A report on behavioral economics in art, as summarized in The Economist, examines the link between the experience of viewing art, and its effects on the viewer’s desire to see more art.  Through repeated exposure in a blind study, subjects were found to grow more partial to works they had repeated experience with, particularly with works that were considered high quality versus works that are generally regarded as trite or “poor” (in this case, Thomas Kinkade). (more…)

Sotheby’s has posted its earnings for the first half of 2013, with profits up to $91.7 million, over last year’s $85.4 million in the same period.  Revenues also saw a 0.3% increase, likely from the increased commissions that the auction house announced earlier this year.  In addition, the auction house noted that the global bidding activity of Asian collectors at Sotheby’s in the first half of 2013 has exceeded the total for all of 2012, an impressive feat that once again trumpets the importance of the Asian market. (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art has announced a new initiative, in conjunction with blogging platform Tumblr, to engage younger internet users and introduce them to art through education and exposure.  The project, titled MoMA Teens, was launched on Monday after nine months of work.   “Museums can be very intimidating at times,” Says MoMA’s associate educator Calder Zwicky said.  “The idea was to meet teens where they already are, and it seemed like Tumblr was the platform to use.” (more…)

A group of friends in the Canadian province of Ontario are convinced that a painting they purchased on eBay for $585 is actually a work by American master Edward Hopper.  The group of Canadians, who had previously made money buying and reselling paintings online, have spent over six years and $40,000 to try and authenticate the work, and are currently waiting for approval from a leading Hopper expert.  The work is of particular note, as it bears a strong resemblance to Hopper’s High Noon, questioning whether this disputed piece may have been a study or forgery. (more…)

David Bowie, Original Photography for the Earthling Album Cover (1997), via Victoria and Albert Museum

Perhaps one of the most widely talked about (and best attended) exhibitions this summer, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is currently showing a comprehensive exhibition of materials from the David Bowie Archive, marking the first time a museum has had access to this collection.  As holders of the national collection of live performance material in the UK, this opportunity is a chance for the museum to showcase one of the UK’s most important artists.  Compiling costumes, programs, documents, instruments and even a film specially made for the exhibition (including exclusive interviews with  Jeremy Deller, Daphne Guiness, and Thurston Moore), the exhibition is an exhaustive look at the work of one of the UK’s greatest rock stars and artists.

David Bowie Is (Installation View), via Victoria and Albert Museum (more…)

After the monumental damages to New York’s art world caused last year by Superstorm Sandy, which some estimate between $200 and $300 million, Art Insurance firms are feeling the pressure to adjust their policies.  Many firms are subtly adjusting their underwriting agreements, taking into account newly redrawn flood maps and the risks of subterranean storage as part of policy coverage as factors in the coverage of high-value artworks.  “Sandy was a wake-up call,” says Christiane Fischer, president and CEO of AXA Art Insurance. “People are much more aware of how much New York is in the path of hurricanes.”  (more…)

A 1903 portrait painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, stolen from a Tokyo home last decade, was reportedly sold at Sotheby’s this past February, Japan Times reports.  The portrait, titled Madame Valtat, had disappeared from its original owner’s home along with works by Marc Chagall and Ikuo Hirayama in 2000.  Sotheby’s has stated that the work had been legally acquired by the seller, and that it will continue to investigate the sale, but the case may prove difficult to fully resolve, as the auction house keeps the names of its sellers confidential. (more…)

This September, Dominique Lévy will open her new gallery at 909 Madison Street with a performance of artist Yves Klein’s sole sound composition, Monotone-Silence.  Consisting, appropriately, of a single chord played for twenty minutes, followed by twenty minutes of silence, the piece has only been performed once before, for its 1960 premiere. “Yves Klein is such a pillar, and yet he’s not well enough known here.” Lévy said. (more…)

Signaling a potential sea-change in the landscape of contemporary sound art, a number of major museums are dedicating space in their fall schedule to the medium, including a major survey of the field at the MoMA, opening this Saturday.   “For the public, sound art it still a fairly new and also a very, very accessible medium,” says curator Tom Eccles, who has commissioned a new work by sound artist Susan Philipsz in New York. “On a very basic, basic level, sound is one of our first experiences — in the uterus, in fact.”
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The New Yorker has published a story on the relationship between Bill Arnett, a white art dealer and archivist of black vernacular art, and Thornton Dial, an 84-year old, self-trained black artist who has had  his highly praised work included in major exhibitions and events, including the 2000 Whitney Biennial.  Facing Dial’s facile categorization as an “outsider artist,” Arnett is currently pushing for mainstream acceptance, not only of his work, but of 20th century African-American Art in general.  “I’m trying to create some documents to leave behind, so that when the system changes, just a little bit, somebody would say, ‘Wow, you mean we had this going on in America in the twentieth century?’  That’s all.” (more…)

The Unicorn in Captivity (1495-1505), Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The word Manhattan conjures images of glass and concrete skyscrapers, bustling streets, and the sounds of honking cars, but a trip to the Cloisters, the evocatively monastic outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, located on the Hudson river vallery, truly transports visitors away from the urban metropolis.  Visitors enter a space of leafy pathways, stone arches, stained glass, hushed hallways, and intricate courtyards. seemingly more at home in the serene South of France than cacophonous Manhattan.

Unicorn Aquamanile from Germany (1425–50), via The Metropolitan Museum of Art (more…)

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013, Designed by Sou Fujimoto, © Sou Fujimoto Architects, Image © 2013 Iwan Baan

Each year, the Serpentine Gallery commissions an outstanding architect who has yet to build on British soil to design a Pavilion in the yards of the gallery in Hyde Park. This year’s pavilion, an impressive cloud of white steel built upon a three-dimensional grid, was conceived by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. (more…)

In the buildup to his upcoming show at the Scottish National Galleries, Peter Doig recently sat down with The Telegraph to discuss his work, his high prices at auction, and the multifaceted appearance of much of his work.  “You try to create scenarios and atmospheres in your paintings,” Doig says. “I don’t set out to be deliberately sinister, but I always wanted to make paintings that told stories and suggested things.” (more…)

Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the first planned location for a traveling retrospective of the work of Jeff Koons, has announced that it will no longer be hosting the show.  The news comes in the wake of Director Jeffrey Deitch’s resignation from his position.  The exhibition will now open in New York at The Whitney Museum in June of next year. “It was decided by MOCA and the Whitney that it would be better for an exhibition as complex and ambitious at this one to be developed over a longer period of time,” said Whitney spokesman Stephen Soba. “And that the show should open in June in New York.”  (more…)

Gilbert & George, We Are (1985), courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

On view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in both of its Salzburg locations (Villa Kast and Halle) is “30 Years,” an exhibition of works intended to be both “retrospective and prospective” of the gallery’s own history and future.  Presenting a series of works by artists who have passed through the lens of Ropac’s thorough gallery practice, the show is at turns a celebration and forecast of what’s to come for the expanding gallery brand.

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Robert Irwin, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue³ III, all images courtesy Pace London

Currently, Pace London‘s 6 Burlington Gardens location is presenting the gallery’s first exhibition of works by American artist Robert Irwin. The new work springs from the artist’s pioneering practice during the West Coast’s monumental Light and Space movement.  Born in 1928, Irwin has been exploring the concepts of perception and space for over sixty years. Beginning as a painter, he was a foundational member of the Light and Space movement in the 1960s, helping to develop a concept of art as a response to specific life experiences in equal measure with the work’s surrounding environmental conditions.

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A group of artists, led by Jules de Balincourt, are taking active measures to prevent the ongoing cycle of gentrification from driving them from their studio spaces in the North Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick.  The rising rents in the swiftly gentrifying neighborhood has some artists pushing to take a stand before they are priced out.  “Ten years ago, artists were paying $1 a square foot. Now, in some cases, it’s as much as $4,” says artist William Powhida. “We’re seeing floors subdivided into smaller and smaller spaces, and landlords are charging more and more money. It certainly prices out a number of artists.” (more…)

Edward Hopper, Study for Nighthawks, (1941 or 1942), via The Whitney

An Edward Hopper painting inevitably leads the viewer to contemplation of the meaning and purpose of the simple and mundane moments that make up the majority of our lives. His scenes depict the usual, the all-too-familiar, and even the occasional melancholy moments of existence.  Empty gas stations, coffee shops, movie theaters, and bedrooms communicate the paradoxical isolation of American society;  while many of the inhabitants are depicted in social settings, in crowds or social establishments, they convey overwhelming feelings of remorse, isolation and resignation. Through his brushstrokes and pencil marks, Hopper provides a commentary on the American life of mid-20^th century, a commentary that is in many cases still applicable to the America of today.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, (1942), via The Whitney (more…)

Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s Architectural Curator for the past six years, has announced that he will be leaving the position to return to Columbia University as chair of the Art History Department.  “The university has now requested that I return to teach full time,” Mr. Bergdoll said in a letter to journalists. “It is for me a great honor that I feel also recognizes the scholarly work that I have continued to pursue most recently in exhibitions and publications here at MoMA.” (more…)

The Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome has announced critic and curator Hou Hanrou as its new artistitc director.  The Chinese-born Hanrou will take up the position in September, assuming responsibility for the museum’s diverse blend of programming during a time when the museum is struggling to keep its head above water in a difficult European economy. (more…)