A group of Detroit’s creditors are pushed for an independent valuation of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection, marking a tense escalation between the city and its debt collectors, with the embattled museum caught in the middle.  “This motion doesn’t compel a sale,” said Derek Donnelly of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. “It just establishes a communal framework for addressing value maximization of the artwork.” (more…)

Aurel Schmidt, Fruits (2013), via Art Observed Staff

Once again turning heads with an evocative, sexually-potent set of works, artist Aurel Schmidt is currently showing a new set of works at a former bodega on Stanton Street on New York’s Lower East Side.  Affixing sexual organs and fetishized body parts to drawings of fruits and vegetables.

Outside of 200 Stanton for Aurel Schmidt’s “Fruits”, via Art Observed Staff (more…)

Balthus, Untitled (1990 – 2000) ©Harumi Klossowska de Rola.  Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Inaugurating a new ground-floor gallery at 976 Madison Avenue, Gagosian presents The Last Studies, a never before seen exhibition and the gallery’s first partnering with the Estate of Balthus – on display until December 21.

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Lee Ufan, Dialogue (2013), all photos via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

The work of Lee Ufan takes pleasure in simplicity.  Utilizing simple, geometrically-influenced forms, the artist walks a line between the classic theories and demands of post-war minimalism, and more nuanced, organic approach to the forms and materials of the everyday.

Lee Ufan, La peinture ensevelie…. (2013) (more…)

Francesco Vezzoli, Galleria Vezzoli (Installation View), Courtesy MAXXI Rome

MAXXI in Rome this weekend closed the exhibition of Galleria Vezzoli, a gallery cum timeline of Francesco Vezzoli’s artistic career, and a self-created tribute to the artist, beginning from his embroideries in the 1990s and continuing to his more recent video works and sculptures made of marble.  The exhibition was part of a larger exhibition entitled The Trinity, Galleria Vezzoli and was the first in a three-part project, Vezzoli in three different locations: at MoMA PS1 in New York and MOCA in Los Angeles. The works in the exhibition at MAXXI mimiced a 19th century museum aesthetic, but were placed within the contemporary architectural context of the gallery space, designed by architect Zaha Hadid.

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Vogue Magazine’s Genevieve Bahrenburg writes on a chance encounter with artist Chuck Close, and the artist’s process of capturing her on film for a painting, and the artist’s impressive perceptual capacities.  “I know from years of experience how the incremental units of the grid will fall on an image.”  Close tells her. (more…)

After 20 years on the podium for Sotheby’s, Chief of Contemporary Art and auctioneer Tobias Meyer  has announced that he will be leaving his position in order to pursue work as a private dealer.  Mr. Meyer has been on the stand for some of the auction house’s most significant sales, including the record sale of Andy Warhol’s Car Crash painting earlier this month. “Contemporary art has become a little too much like ‘American Idol,'” he told said. “We’re an overvisualized culture, and young artists can find themselves with a real career only six months after starting to paint.”
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John Baldessari, Double Play: Eggs and Sausage (2012), Courtesy of Champagne Holdings, LLC © John Baldessari

On view at Garage Moscow, co-curated by Garage’s new Chief Curator Kate Fowle and International Advisor Hans Ulrich Obrist, 1+1=1 is the first exhibition of work by John Baldessari in Russia. The exhibition is a compilation of Baldessari’s most recent series of paintings, exploring the relationship between text and image in visual art.

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Richard Serra, Inside Out (detail) (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

Rounding out a gallery year that included exhibitions by Jeff Koons, Basquiat and more, Gagosian Gallery has opened the doors to both its Chelsea locations for a major showing of new work by Richard Serra, including an enormous new torqued steel structure, Inside Out in its 21st Street location, and a series of smaller, albeit no less impressive works at the gallery’s 24th Street space.

Richard Serra, Grief and Reason (for Walter) (2013) © Richard Serra. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photograph by Robert McKeever (more…)

The controversial “Playboy Marfa” sculpture previously on view along U.S. route 90, has been dismantled, and will be placed on view at the Dallas Contemporary.  The move comes after heated protest over the piece, opposed by Marfa residents for its attempt to turn the town into a space for art-driven marketing and promotion.  “We are happy this has been resolved and that Texans will still get to enjoy this piece of art,” said Veronica Beyer, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation. (more…)

Dia Fall Gala, atmosphere (during Matmos commission). All images courtesy Dia Art Foundation.

Last Monday’s Dia Art Foundation Fall Gala was a striking affair. Video projections, sound, light-play, chatter, and music gave the cavernous venue its mystical feel, all accompanied by a commission by experimental electronic music duo Matmos, whose performance was reminiscent of a spiritual journey. Even so, the full series of events and installations fell in line with the framework of minimal and progressive art that the Dia Art Foundation specializes in bringing to the public through an array of different channels.

Dinner, atmosphere. (more…)

David Salle, Ghost 1 (1992), © David Salle, VAGA, NY. Courtesy, Skarstedt New York

Currently on view at Skarstedt Gallery’s uptown space is a series of 13 works by David Salle, from his Ghost Paintings series.  Executed in 1992, these busy, color-inflected works were created from a series of photographs, documenting improvised actions with an enormous white sheet.  Taken as a whole, the works create a dialogue on the image as the result of a series of practices, processes and flows, rendering a final piece that belies its mode of creation in subtle ways. (more…)

Constantin Brancusi, Mademoiselle Pogany II (1925-2006), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

In 1913, Constantin Brancusi sent 5 sculptures to the now-infamous Armory Show, gently loping sculptural works that set the stage for the revolutionary sculptural abstractions that would change the face of contemporary art for good.  It was the beginning of a long and occasionally rocky relationship with the United States, including a defining court case in which the artist successfully proved his work’s position as art, and breaking the long-held definition of an artwork asbased on a model or subject, opening the door for the proliferation of American abstraction. (more…)

Art Basel Miami Beach has announced the contents of this year’s “Public” section in Collins Park, under the title Social Animals.  Including work by artists Olaf Breuning, Jeppe Hein, Thomas Houseago, Alicja Kwade, Richard Long, and many more, this year’s edition of the show explores the concept of art objects themselves as a community.   (more…)

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

One may recall the final room of The Whitney’s sprawling retrospective of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama last year, stacked floor to ceiling with bold, brightly colored canvases.  Flourishing tentacles, patterns of eyes and teeth, cartoonish faces and swirling animalistic forms dominated the work, all delivered with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that made them hard to ignore.

Yayoi Kusama, My Heart (2013), via David Zwirner (more…)

Yayoi Kusama, INFINITY NETS [FBB] (2013), via Victoria Miro

Victoria Miro Gallery is currently opening its new Mayfair gallery with an exhibition of works by Yayoi Kusama‘s newest series of White Infinity Nets, intricate canvases covered almost entirely with white paint over a wash of black and grey.

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The hotly contested painting Red, Black, and Silver has been authenticated as the final painting from artist Jackson Pollock, given to his mistress shortly before his death in 1956.  The painting had long believed to have been a Pollock, but was blocked from authentication by Pollock’s wife, Lee Krasner, who held a personal vendetta against his mistress, Ruth Kligman.  That changes today, now that authorities have found strands of Pollock’s hair in the canvas, as well as sand unique to the beaches around his East Hamptons home.  “The world was flat. Now it is round. It’s Galileo. Science can now be used to authenticate the art.  We are [tracing] the painting back to where it was executed. It’s very CSI.”  Says artist and Kligman estate trustee Jonathan Cramer.      (more…)

Mike Kelley. Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991/1999), © Estate of Mike Kelley. Images courtesy of Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography Joshua White JWPictures.com

It’s hard to decide just where to begin with the monumental Mike Kelley retrospective currently on view at MoMA Ps1.  The blockbuster exhibition takes up all four floors of the museum, and spans his full career, from his early video and performance work through to some of the last installations and pieces he made before he tragically took his own life in 2012 at the age of 58.  All of his immediately recognizable works are on view, including Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, his Kandor series (recreating the miniature home city of the Superman mythology), and his sprawling masterwork, Day is Done from 2005-2006, all brilliant entries in Kelley’s signature inquiries into the American mythos.

Mike Kelley, Mike Kelley as The Banana Man (1981), © Estate of Mike Kelley Photo: Jim McHugh (more…)

Writer Alain de Botton has contributed an essay to the Wall Street Journal, challenging the age-old questions of why art should matter to the average person.  Illustrating the art work as a moment of reflection and repose, de Botton reviews works by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pieter de Hooch, Diego Velazquez and more, examining the benefits and impressions a single work of art can make in the viewer’s perception of the world. (more…)

Eva et Adèle – All Photos by Caroline Claisse exclusively for Art Observed

The doors of the Paris-based FIAC fair closed today, concluding what was called a “smooth” edition of the fair by several observers, notching considerable sales, and an increase in the overall attendance of the fair, reaching a total count of 73,550 visitors over the course of the four day event. “This is a great success. Fiac has spent 40 years in style,” Jennifer Flay, fair artistic director, told Le Point. “Paris has regained strength in terms of the art market,” she said.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pace Gallery (more…)

Raymond Pettibon, “To Wit,” (Installation View), via David Zwirner

Exploring the spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, David Zwirner Gallery is currently exhibiting a display of works from Raymond Pettibon entitled To Wit, which will continue through today, October 26th.

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Jon Rafman, I am alone but not lonely, (2013), via Zach Feuer

The artist Jon Rafman continually explores processes of archiving and history-making, storytelling and expression online, trawling the deeper recesses of gaming and message board communities to explore how these groups express senses of their own identities, their own mythologies, and their own senses of being.  It’s this sense of recording and presentation that marks Rafman’s current show at Zach Feuer, which sees the artist examining the shared sense of history and presentation for various communities through written dialogues, amateur film, and image.

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Bertrand Lavier, Dino (1984), Yvon Lambert, all photo by Caroline Claisse for Artobserved.

Contemporary and conceptual art spring forth once again within the Grand Palais in Paris yesterday for the first day of the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, or FIAC. Starting off as the Frieze Art Fair in London ends, it is the 40th year that FIAC has been held in France.   Below is a photoset from the fair.

Ai Weiwei, Iron Tree (2013), neugerriemschneider, photo by Caroline Claisse for Artobserved.
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FIAC at the Grand Palais, via Grand Palais

Following close on the heels of last week’s blockbuster Frieze art fair in London, the French capital of Paris will take its turn in the art-world spotlight, opening the doors of the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC) for its 40th edition.  It’s a markedly different affair from the high-profile glitz of the comparatively younger Frieze franchise, but will nevertheless boast an impressive lineup of galleries, installations, performances and spotlights that place the fair among the top events of the contemporary art calendar.

Neo Rauch, Das Bannende, Neo Rauch, (2013), Courtesy Galerie Eigen+Art (more…)