A recent Forbes India interview with Christie’s Steven Murphy, following its successful first auction in Mumbai, has indicated the company’s approach to the growing international market.  “The fundamental fact is that the combination of the surge in interest in art, combined with the new connectivity available online, has opened the door to a vast population of new collectors globally. This surge in new buyers, which is continuing, far outstrips any modulation in sales that macro-economic trends would affect.” (more…)

The New York Times has published an interview with Christie’s auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen, discussing the continued growth of the contemporary market, the atmosphere of the auction, and some of the tricks in working a room.  “Someone might have collected 40 or 50 good paintings, and when the one work that he wants more than anything else comes up for auction, the auctioneer has to be very sensitive to that,” he says. (more…)

Filmmaker and Video Artist Steve McQueen is profiled in The Guardian this week, talking about his inspirations, his childhood dyslexia, and his personal reflections on the history of slavery.  “All I remember feeling was a real sense of shame and embarrassment about it,” he says. “We can deal with the second world war and the Holocaust and so forth and what not, but this side of history, maybe because it was so hideous, people just do not want to see. People do not want to engage.” (more…)

The Financial Times continues its ongoing “Breakfast with the FT” series with Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, talking about the challenges of public interest, his opinions on contemporary art, and the role he sees the National Gallery taking in education and advocacy.  “I don’t believe art up to the present should be taught at university,” he says. “Because of consumer demand, the explosion of teaching of contemporary art now is colossal – and it is achieved at the expense of older art. We at the National Gallery should do more to become a magnet for scholarship.” (more…)

Artist Raymond Pettibon is interviewed in The Guardian this week, and discusses his recent work, his stance against the US government, and his thoughts on his logo design for Black Flag being one of the most tattooed images of all time.  “I don’t know which is worse sometimes… I’ve never encouraged anyone to get one. I don’t know how those things work. Some things become iconic for whatever reason and people have the logo on their arms, or wherever, but a lot of them don’t even know their music.” (more…)

The New York Times has published a profile on Salon 94 owner Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, and her quiet influence on the contemporary art landscape in New York.  “The interesting thing about Jeanne is how involved she is in the ‘becoming’ of an artist’s creations,” says artist Terry Adkins. (more…)

Isa Genzken spoke with the New York Times recently, discussing her current retrospective at MoMA, her long career, and the public reception of her art.  “I think my work is very difficult to understand. Sometimes people do and sometimes they don’t. I can’t do much about that.” (more…)

Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman are the subject of the Financial Times’ ongoing “Lunch with the FT” series, talking about their early work, and response to criticism that their work has scarcely changed in the past years.  “But it’s the same criticism you could level at Mark Rothko,” The brothers collectively ask. “Is it imperative for the artist to be novel?” (more…)

Painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal’s “20 Odd Questions” section, including the answer to why the artist so often paints “Bez,” the name of the Happy Mondays musician across many of his canvases.  “Why not?”  He asks.  He goes on to discuss more of his life and art, including his influences and inspirations.  “One thing that I admire about Picasso was how he changed the way he worked so many times. So did Matisse, Magritte, de Chirico. They were looking for another version of themselves in other forms,”  he says. (more…)

Ahead of an upcoming show at Tate Britain, featuring a group of five British painters under fifty, Chris Ofili and Simon Ling sat down with the Financial Times to discuss their personal styles, the act of painting, and their inspirations from the streets of London.  “Well, this is about the city’s lack of aspiration.”  Says Ling during the interview, considering a fragmented canvas. “The lack of planning and failure, where the city is almost like a tectonic construction, a weird jumble.” (more…)

The Village Voice has published a rare interview with Banksy, discussing the artist’s ongoing show of street art in New York City, and his views towards his craft.  “There is absolutely no reason for doing this show at all. I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached. There’s no gallery show or book or film. It’s pointless. Which hopefully means something.”  The artist says. (more…)

Gallerist Marian Goodman will open her new London space in the fall of 2014, and spoke with Art Info about the size and scope of her third gallery.  “The London gallery was inspired by our artists, many of whom are eager to show there but do not already have working relationships with other London galleries,” Goodman said.  “The London scene is so dynamic that I have been thinking about opening there for a very long time, it was just a question of finding a wonderful space.” (more…)

Frank Auerbach was recently interviewed in The Daily Telegraph, discussing his long career as a painter, the solitary life of painting, and his simple, unadorned opinions towards working on his canvases.  “People who turn out pictures and think, ‘How nice,’ and then go to the next picture seem terribly boring to me. You might as well work in a factory. The whole thing is about the struggle and the struggle makes it a fun activity.” (more…)

Dealer Victoria Miro is profiled in the Financial Times this weekend, discussing the opening of her second gallery space in London, her impressive stable of artists including Chris Ofili, Grayson Perry, Peter Doig, Conrad Shawcross, Elmgreen & Dragset, and Yayoi Kusama, and the changing nature of the art market.  “It affects production: it doesn’t suit all artists.”  Miro says. “Work is probably not as precious as it was. We are in a quick world. The collector base is moving. There’s a time element – you can go to an art fair and see so much in a few hours. I really regret that people don’t spend the time to look at things.” (more…)

With the first career retrospective of artist Pierre Huyghe set to open at Centre Pompidou this week, the French artist sat down Art Newspaper to discuss his selection of works for the show, the act of exhibition, and the focus of his work.  “I look at how things change, are transformed, or metabolise. The word might not be perfectly appropriate and I might change it. But I am trying to find a word to say ‘something that is alive.'”  He says. (more…)

Moscow Biennale Curator Catherine de Zegher has spoken on the current calls for a boycott of Russian art and art events, stating that she has no intent on a boycott or cancellation of the event to protest the current state of civil rights for Russian LGBT citizens.  “I’m not a big believer in provocation,” De Zegher says. “Art that is very provocative is like fast food almost. It flares up, then it’s finished. Of course I do believe in activist gestures, and movement and action, but I think art works in a different way.” (more…)

As he prepares to open his first exhibition in Russia, the Financial Times has sat down with artist John Baldessari to discuss the artist’s ongoing work, and his irreverent view for the art-industrial complex: “I was getting mildly irritated by artists getting branded – ‘This is a Warhol’, ‘This is a de Kooning’ – and you don’t even look. It just has to look like a brand,” He says.  “And I said, I wonder if I can slow that down.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal recently sat down with sculptor Anthony Caro, who is currently in the middle of a series of shows in Europe, including exhibition at the Venice Biennale and a soon to open show at Gagosian Gallery.  Speaking with the newspaper, Mr. Caro discussed his prolific output, working approach, and his preference to work on sculptures at full-scale. “I’m never comfortable working on something that has to be imagined bigger or different,” he says. (more…)

Gallery mogul David Zwirner has been featured in Bloomberg’s Businessweek, discussing his early aspirations as a jazz drummer, the increasingly wealthy art market, and his thoughts on the impact of the internet on the techniques and approaches to the aesthetics of contemporary art.  “It changes the way they interact with the world.”  He says.  “I’m starting to see work where there’s something radically new in the way images are produced. Some of it’s in film and video, some of it’s in photography, some of it’s in sculpture. But we’re on the cusp of something. The emotional quality around the Internet is nonexistent—that cold, cold, cold energy I’ve seen in some works of art recently.” (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…)

In support of her ongoing Kickstarter campaign for the Marina Abramovic Institute, artist Marina Abramovic will log into popular website Reddit today, for one of the site’s ongoing “Ask Me Anything” sessions.  The artist will open herself to questions from fans and users from around the world, submitted via the site’s simple message board structure. (more…)

Painter Peter Doig is profiled in the New York Times, in advance of his retrospective exhibition at the Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh.  Speaking from a rented studio in Manhattan, the artist discusses his new paintings, his studio and home in Trinidad, and the start-stop nature of his creative process.  “Sometimes you get so frustrated, you end up washing off or scraping off what you spent hours or days applying,” he said. “By going backward, you see something you could have never achieved by going forward.” (more…)

Painter Eric Fischl sat down with the LA Times this past weekend to discuss his career, the communication of art, his recent memoir, Bad Boy, and his self-described “search for normal.”  “I think the process of aging and using art as a life process for learning, understanding, evolving, etc. … it seemed like I had reached a point where I could take a lot of what I accomplished and I could let go of a lot of things, so maybe it would be recent.”  He says. (more…)

Berggruen Museum head Olivier Berggruen is featured in the Wall Street Journal this week, after the reopening of his institution after a two year renovation.  Focusing on both 20th century masters like Picasso, Matisse, Paul Cézanne and Paul Klee, the museum also focuses on evolution of the art market itself, and consists of 165 works sold by Olivier’s father Heinz to the city of Berlin in 2000 for around $100 million. “He thought of paintings and works of art as illustrations for stories,” says Olivier of his father. (more…)