The Guardian notes the recent completion of two new European contemporary art spaces (The Garage Center in Moscow and the Fondazione Prada in Milan) designed by Rem Koolhaas, heralding what some consider a new era in the shape and strategy for cultural centers. “If you want to change the world you also have to decide what you want to keep,” Koolhaas states.
Robert Motherwell. Opens (Installation View) All Images Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery.
Now through June 20, Andrea Rosen Gallery will host a comprehensive exhibition of Robert Motherwell’s Open series, composed from 1967 through the 1970s, and set to coincide with the centennial of the artist’s birth. This historical marker exemplifies the gallery’s ongoing commitment to looking to the recent past of contemporary art in order to expand upon trends currently emerging, and to trace the influence of major figures in the art world. As the gallery’s press release states, “Opens not only allows us to compare these masterworks against the present-day focus on abstraction, but also encourages us to reconcile the breadth of Motherwell’s rigor and clarity.” This comprehensive exhibition of one of the artist’s lesser-known series provides the opportunity to deepen public understanding of the legacy of Motherwell as an artist and a significant force in mid-twentieth century New York City.
Karen Kilimnik, The Cold Winter Lane, The Polish Countryside, A Delft Landscape (2013) via Sprüth Magers
Artist Karen Kilimnik returns to Sprüth Magers this month, showcasing her small-scale, painted appropriations, mixed with the influence of traditional Delftware. Kilimnik’s work focuses on expressing her own views of openness and precision, elegance and humor through a variety of mediums, often creating site-specific projects that mimic 19th Century interiors and often incorporating the design and fashion of the era. Her small paintings overlay found imagery with new landscapes and imagined scenarios, reinforcing the atmospheric effects of the painterly surface while maintaining the scale and shape of the landscape and her palette. (more…)
Following the example of collectors seeking tax breaks for their donation of art works to museums, artists themselves are seeking more equitable tax treatment for donating works. While collectors currently can claim fair market value for the works they donate, artists themselves can only write off the cost of materials. “It seems to me there is a discrepancy in treatment there”, says Philippe Vergne, director of MOCA. “What’s extraordinary is that artists keep giving.” (more…)
Yinka Shonibare MBE, Ballet God (Apollo) (2015)
Currently on view at James Cohan Gallery is Yinka Shonibare MBE’s new body of work, including exuberant, playful sculptures along with digital prints. The UK-based Nigerian-born artist came into recognition with his hybrid sculptures, utilizing Dutch wax fabric, a textile material of complex patterns and tight allusions to colonialism due to its long, bureaucratic history of trade. In his recent exhibition, Shonibare weighs on a broader issue compared to his familiar themes of colonialism, political supremacy and racial identity, looking at global climate changes and growing effects of these permutations throughout the world. (more…)
A Los Angeles Judge has rejected a lawsuit against the nation of Spain and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid to return a Camille Pissarro taken from the Cassirer family through forced sale by Nazis in 1939. The painting, Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie, was subject to Spanish law, Judge John F. Walter ruled, and therefore could not be removed by his decision. The family plans to appeal. “Museums and governments around the world recognize the need to return Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners,” said Laura Brill, a lawyer for the Cassirer family. “Here, it is undisputed that the Pissarro was owned by the Cassirer family until it was stolen by the Nazis in 1939.” (more…)
Tony Oursler, EUC (2015), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.
The new body of work by acclaimed new media artist Tony Oursler is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie street location. Aligned with his signature style of analyzing high technology and its idiosyncratic tone in correlation to the human body, Oursler delves into the limits of human expression in his new exhibition. Although he was born in New York City, Oursler emerged in late 1970s along with a group of West Coast artists such as Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari. (more…)
A long-running investigation into the contested work Saul and David has resulting in the painting’s reattribution as the work of Rembrandt, an attribution that was previously denied in 1969. “For eight years, a large team of international experts has contributed to the research. A wide range of trusted and innovative research techniques have been employed,” says Mauritshuis Museum Director Emilie Gordenker The result is significant: the Mauritshuis has one of its most famous Rembrandts back.” (more…)
Mark Flood, Shrek Your Privilege (2015), via Art Observed
For years, Mark Flood has mined a specific aspect of the artistic vocabulary when it comes to pop culture, a sort of irreverent mirror that plays the often cloying imagery of advertising, corporate branding, and the Hollywood star machine against itself, often performed against the backdrop of more formally-oriented paintings and text-based works, a combination of styles that spreads the artist across a spectrum that seems to mix commentary with composition in any number of permutations. (more…)
Lisa Yuskavage, Bonfire (2013-2015), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
In her fourth solo show with David Zwirner, Lisa Yuskavage furthers her now-signature style as a figurative painter, while moving towards new territories in both content and technique. At the center of the show is Bonfire, a large diptych strikingly positioned facing the gallery entrance, and capturing the gaze of onlookers and passerby with its profound green tones and accentuated, yet oblique narrative. Situated on opposite sides of the painting are two female nudes, sporting Yuskavage’s recognizable stylistic features, such as bulging abdomens and voluminous hair. (more…)
Paul Gauguin’s Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When will you Marry?) seems to have had its massive $300 million price tag confirmed by the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, which has currently taken the work on loan for a new exhibition. “Nafea Faa Ipoipo was recently purchased by the Qatar Museums Authority from the Swiss collection of Rudolf Staechelin for more than $300m,” reads text released by the museum, further supporting its new place as the world’s most expensive piece of art. (more…)
Dean Levin, Surface Support (Road Goes on Forever) (2015)
Marianne Boesky Gallery recently presented A Long, Narrow Mark, the gallery’s first collaboration with artist Dean Levin, at its Clinton street location. Levin has enjoyed a growing recognition in recent years, proven by an impressive range of group exhibitions he has been included in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his debut solo at Upper East Side space of Robert Blumenthal last year. (more…)
MoMA has acquired several hundred photographs by artist August Sander from his series “People of the Twentieth Century,” the New York Times reports. “His ambition is nothing less than to use photography to describe the people of the 20th century,” says Sarah Hermanson Meister, a MoMA photography curator. “He is doing this through the German people, but it’s not limited in its intention to that.” (more…)
Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Cyber Iconic Man sculpture, an inverted and gorily wounded subject dripping blood, is set to be installed at Sheffield Cathedral’s Chapel of the Holy Spirit this summer. “The congregation is up for it,” says The Very Reverend Peter Bradley, Dean of the Cathedral. (more…)
Outside Fuchs Project Space During a previous Bushwick Open Studios
With another summer comes another edition of Bushwick Open Studios, the vastly popular arts open that brings a flood of visitors, artists and events to one of North Brooklyn’s strongest arts communities. (more…)
Maja Hoffmann, founder of the LUMA Foundation, a board member at Palais de Tokyo and Fotomuseum Winterthur, and a trustee at the Tate, has been named board chair at the Swiss Institute. “Swiss Institute has a unique voice with a long tradition of championing innovative perspectives in contemporary art,” she said in a statement accepting the position. (more…)
Following widespread protests, the Frick is expected to cancel a planned expansion that would have eliminated a rare piece of landscape architecture. “It just became clear to us that it wasn’t going to work,” says an anonymous museum official. “It won’t be the best plan, but we will go back and prioritize. There was just a number of voices out there and we heard them.” (more…)
Iranian artist Atena Farghadani has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for her works depicting national politicians as monkeys and goats as protest over plans to outlaw voluntary sterilisation and restrict access to contraception. “Atena Farghadani has effectively been punished for her cartoons with a sentence that is itself a gross caricature of justice,” says Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director for Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa. (more…)
The Art Loss Register, widely considered the authoritative body on looted and missing artworks, is currently involved in a trio of cases involving disputes on works’ provenance claimed by the register to be authentic which were actually contested. “It’s incredibly frustrating because it doesn’t matter what you do,” says one anonymous figure affected by the cases. “You do everything you can to check a painting is clean, and it’s useless. How can you protect yourself? You can’t.” (more…)
Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has stated his fears that more art is missing from the Boston Public Library collection following the disappearance of two prints valued at $600,000. “I think the lack of security with these two prints and (more) … really, really concerns me greatly that there’s other things missing,” Walsh said in an appearance on Boston Herald Radio. (more…)
Chicago artist Theaster Gates is planning his first public installation work in the UK, a “sound sanctuary” that will look to be installed in a disused church in central Bristol. “We are looking at a number of different sites of historical importance, but Theaster is particularly interested in sound,” says Claire Doherty, the director of Situations, a UK non-profit sponsoring the project. “We need to get scheduled monument consent [to use the church], so it may change.” (more…)
Last night’s Party in the Garden at MoMA was marked by vocal protests from museum staff, following museum proposals to reduce health care coverage during ongoing contract negotiations. “A lot of us here are professionals,” says Luke Baker, an architecture and design curatorial assistant. “We’ve got master’s degrees. You know, we’re here for the long haul. We really want to make sure that working here, and giving as much as we give to the museum, that this is a tenable position for us and that we’re able to stay here.” (more…)
The Art Newspaper profiles the recently closed Off Biennale Budapest, a response to the right-leaning Hungarian Government’s interference in the selection and promotion of the city’s arts institutions. “Cultural institutions are losing their autonomous position,” warns Tijana Stepanović, one of the event’s lead curators. (more…)
The Tate is receiving an additional £6 million in funding from the British Government this year, earmarked to help fund the operations at the Tate Modern. “Late last year the government in principle committed to an uplift in grant-in-aid to support the running of the new Tate Modern,” a Museum spokesman confirms. (more…)