‬Joan Miró’s “Peinture (Étoile Bleue)” to lead Sotheby’s London auction June 19, estimated to bring £15m-£20m. “[This is] one of Miró’s most important paintings, effortlessly bridging the transition between figurative and abstract art,” says Helena Newman of Sotheby’s Europe.
‬Christie’s to offer the “The Lock” by John Constable, expected to sell at £20 million to £25 million, at its Old Master & British Paintings Evening Auction in London on July 3rd. “This superb landscape…is sure to attract bidding from museums and collectors from all over the world,” says Jussi Pylkkänen, President of Christie’s Europe.
‪‬A taxidermied bull and cockerel by Damien Hirst—aptly titled ‘Cock and Bull’—is installed four meters above Mark Hix’s new east London restaurant, Tramshed, which serves a simple menu of mainly steak and chicken
‪‬Frieze Masters releases list of 97 participating galleries for the fair’s first edition, to coincide with Frieze London this upcoming October 11–14, 2012
‪‬Tracey Emin designs London Tube map to print 18 million editions, available in June through the 2012 Olympics, the 16th in a series by Art on the Underground initiative
‪‬Ai Weiwei and architects Herzog & de Meurons’ design renderings for underground Serpentine Pavilion on view in slideshow. The 12th annual version of the pavilion will be completed in time for the London 2012 Festival.
‪‬Anish Kapoor’s 115m Orbit structure in London’s Olympic park to open July 28, construction process shown in time lapse video
Sketch Restaurant, London. All photos on site for Art Observed by Ryann Donnelly.
In celebration of their 10th anniversary, London’s Sketch restaurant in Mayfair unveiled a new installation from Turner prize winning British multi-media artist Martin Creed on March 1st, 2012. Creed’s installation is comprised of three main components: opulent marble tiling, large-scale murals, and an assemblage of mix-matched furnishings and tableware, each piece as functional as it is aesthetically compelling and intricate.
Thomas Ruff, 3D_ma.r.s.04 (2012). All images from ma.r.s : © 2012 Thomas Ruff/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, courtesy Gagosian Gallery.
Thomas Ruff exhibits for the first time with Gagosian Gallery presenting two exhibitions, ma.r.s. and nudes, at the gallery’s two London spaces on Britannia Street and Davies Street, respectively. Ruff’s unique style involves various photographic experiments, often working in series and using sourced imagery combined with an assortment of photographic tools and techniques: composite picture-making apparatus, star light system for night-vision, hand-tinting, stereoscopy, digital retouching, and photomontage. “The difference between my predecessors and me is that they believed to have captured reality and I believe to have created a picture. We all lost, bit by bit, the belief in this so-called objective capturing of real reality,” says Ruff in the press release.
‪‬Skarstedt Gallery to open space in Mayfair district of London this June, joining several other New York galleries expanding to London, including David Zwirner and Marlborough [AO Newslink]
Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration (1967). Images via Tate Modern.
Currently on view at the Tate Modern is the first major retrospective of Yayoi Kusama’s work in the UK. Covering a practice that has spanned nearly six decades, the fourteen-room exhibition reveals the wide range of the artist’s explorations into media and mediation. Including early manipulated photographs, soft sculptures, and immersive installations, as well as more recent paintings and sculptural works, the Tate’s retrospective moves viewers through one of the most individual and idiosyncratic practices to emerge from the 1960s New York art scene.
David Shrigley, I’m Dead (2010). All images courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.
Brain Activity, David Shrigley‘s first survey show in London, brings together choice examples of his photography, sculpture, and drawings to highlight the artist’s humor and wit. While he was classically trained at the Glasgow School of Art, Shrigley’s characteristic style today is stripped down, sketchy and, to use his own word, “misshapen.” The exhibition is organized into four basic themes: death, misery, characters, and misshapen things.”The big themes are the ones that interest me, and the ones that have the potential to be the most comic,” Shrigley says of his work. “Making artwork is kind of one of the most fun things that one can do. It’s fun, I like it.”
Elmgreen & Dragset with Joanna Lumley All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.
This morning in London the newest commission for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square was officially unveiled. This year’s winning entry is titled Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, by Scandinavian artistic duo Elmgreen & Dragset. The bronze sculpture of a young boy atop a rocking horse stands four meters high, and joins the solemn company of Trafalgar Square’s other large-scale memorial statues—dedicated to King George IV and two famous generals respectively. A gentle pun on the tradition of the equestrian military monument, Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 playfully subverts notions of strength and power, instead celebrating their absence. Unlike most monuments, Elmgreen & Dragset’s child is not intended to commemorate history, but rather symbolizes a hope for the future, a fitting choice for one of London’s most famous public spaces as the city prepares to host the 2012 Olympics this Summer.
Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1960)
Phillips de Pury & Company held the last of the Contemporary Art Evening Sales for this week in London on Thursday, bringing in a total of £5,695,550, just under their low estimate of £5,985,000. It is quite possible that they would have hit well above their high estimate had Robert Indiana‘s infamous LOVE sculpture not been pulled from the auction before it started, as it was estimated to bring in between £800,000–£1,200,000. The top seller from the auction was Lucio Fontana‘s Concetto Spaziale, Attese, which sold for the hammer price of £900,000—at the low end of the £1–£1.5 million estimate. The work was once owned by Andy Warhol, and is a quintessential example of the Spazialismo movement that Fontana founded, a movement that was among the first to emphasize the importance of performance as art.
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Herzog & de Meuron, Ai Weiwei outside their Beijing ‘Bird’s Nest.’ Via Bustler.
The Serpentine Gallery in London announced today that Chinese activist-artist Ai Weiwei and Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron will team up for the 12th annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission. The trio will translate their 2008 collaboration of the ‘Bird’s Nest’ arena at the Beijing Olympics into a twelve pillar pavilion in conjunction with the London 2012 Festival and the London Games. Unearthing the eleven foundations of previous pavilions, a new column will be placed on each, with the twelfth situated as a ‘wild card.’ 1.5 meters tall, the twelfth column will hold a floating platform roof, collecting water and creating a reflecting pool, while also offering the versatility of a ‘dance floor’ once drained.
See the previous eleven pavilions after the jump…
David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire (2011), one of a 52-part work. All images via The Guardian
Britain’s Royal Academy of Art is currently showing some two hundred works by ‘Royal Academician’ David Hockney. The exhibition, A Bigger Picture, is centered on fifty-two new works inspired by the Yorkshire landscape of Northern England, where Hockney has been residing on and off for the past few years. Much of the work is new, including fifty-one new works ‘painted’ with an iPad application and enlarged.
Anselm Kiefer presents his largest show in London yet, covering over 11,000 square feet of the new White Cube Bermondsey gallery, Il Mistero delle Cattedrali. With ties to Fulcanelli’s publication of the same name (published in 1926), the show explores his longtime fascination with alchemy and its processes, Kiefer bringing to light the mystical notions behind the pseudo-scientific procedure. “In the past the alchemists sped up this process with magical means. That was called magic,” Kiefer states. “As an artist I don’t do anything differently. I only accelerate the transformation that is already present in things. That is magic, as I understand it.”
Gert and Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2011). All images courtesy of Maureen Paley, London.
The work of Gert and Uwe Tobias is currently on view at Maureen Paley, London. The identical twin brothers collaboratively create large scale woodcuts, mixed-media works, and ceramic sculptures. The artists draw from a multitude of inspirational sources to create pieces that are visually stunning and technically innovative, appearing at the same time both playful and haunting. Decorative patterns, bold colors, and textile qualities are visual characteristics ever present in their abstracted cartoon-like figures, heavily influenced by the Eastern European folk art of their homeland, Transylvania.
Installation view. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.
The Tate Modern‘s exhibition ‘Panorama,’ featuring the work of living German artist Gerhard Richter, will be coming to an end after thee months. The exhibition pays homage to Richter’s variant inspirations, spanning 50 years of work and 14 rooms, providing an all-encompassing display of his oeuvre. Works include photo-realist paintings, landscapes, cloud, squeegee, and history paintings, with less conventionally displayed glass and mirror constructions from the 1980s, as well as his first Color Chart from 1966. One noted work, the 20-meter-long Stroke (on Red) (1980) was developed from a photograph of a brush stroke. This is its first exhibition outside of Germany.
‪‬King’s Cross, London opens nine year art program called ‘Relay,’ beginning with two year installation of Jacques Rival’s 9-foot rainbow cage ‘IFU’ [AO Newslink]
Mark Rothko, Light Red Over Black (1957). Artwork courtesy of the Tate.
Rothko in Britain commemorates the 50th anniversary of Rothko’s inaugural British exhibition. 41 years after his passing, the Whitechapel Gallery has meticulously compiled a retrospection of images, letters, and reviews, all paired with a single work—Light Red Over Black (1957), on loan from the Tate. Light Red Over Black towers over the viewer, a single, saturated painting. The large form and accompanying material, sparsely arranged, were placed in a manner in which to overwhelm the viewer, or, in Rothko’s words, to encourage the feeling of being “enveloped within.” Walls were constructed specifically to show the work in such isolation, in hopes to evoke such intensity. The ‘less is more’ approach is discussed in Whitechapel’s video about the show, explaining the concept of an exhibition about a long closed exhibition.
White Cube to open third gallery this October 12, in a restored warehouse in Bermondsey area [AO Newslink]
Dirk Skreber, Untitled (Crash 1) (2009)
The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture at Saatchi Gallery features 20 sculptors throughout the space, marking the first ever exclusive sculptural exhibition at the Chelsea, London showroom. The international range of artists, some well-known and some up-and-coming, produced mixed media compositions of all sizes. An overarching theme of experimentation pervaded, both with human form and bright-colored whimsy. Geometric and architectural forays are present in the work of Sterling Ruby, Roger Hiorns, and Peter Buggenhout, with more figurative developments by Thomas Houseago and David Thorpe.
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