A group of protestors, working under the name Liberate Tate, showered the Tate Britain with fake pound notes this weekend, continuing the series of protests over the museum’s British Petroleum sponsorship. “It’s time for the arts to draw a line,” says one protestor. “Oil companies are a whole category of unacceptable partners for public arts, like tobacco and arms companies.” (more…)
Claude Monet, Le Grand Canal (1908), via Sotheby’s
The Impressionist and Modern Auction week has begun in London, as Sotheby’s closes its doors on a strong set of evening sales. It was the first sale since the auction house announced its increase in rates for 2015, but buyers seemed undeterred by the price increases, bring the final sales tally for the 54 lot sale to an impressive £170,274,000. (more…)
Claude Monet, Le Grand Canal (1908), via Sotheby’s
Picking up where last week’s Old Masters auctions in New York City left off, the art market’s attention turns to London this week, as Christie’s and Sotheby’s prepare a set of Impressionist and Modern auctions. (more…)
Pointing to concerns over security, the Victoria and Albert Museum has attempted to withhold information on its ownership of a devotional image of Muhammad following the terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month. “Unfortunately we were incorrect to say there were no works depicting the prophet Muhammad in the V&A’s collection,” said spokeswoman Olivia Colling. “As the museum is a high-profile public building already on a severe security alert, our security team made the decision that it was best to remove the image from our online database (it remains within the collection).” (more…)
Claude Monet’s L’Embarcadère will hit the auction block next week during Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and Modern works next week in London. The “museum-quality” work featuring the landscapes of Zaandam in the Netherlands, is estimated to sell for between £7,500,000 and £10,000,000. “Monet captures the Dutchness, not merely externally…but also the delicate enveloping light and atmosphere, subtly different from the Ile de France,” writes art historian Ronald Pickvance. “The superb manner in which he registers the immense and often changing Dutch skies is sufficient proof of this.” (more…)
Gillian Wearing, Me As an Artist in 1984 (2014), all Photos Courtesy of Regen Projects Los Angeles.
One of the most prominent members of the Young British Artists, Gillian Wearing, who in the past few decades has established a unique and enduring voice in the contemporary discourse, is presenting her new body of work at Los Angeles’ Regen Projects. The artist’s fourth collaboration with the gallery, everyone, features two new video pieces as well as various multimedia works that juxtapose Wearing’s investigations on personal memory, confrontation with past and unfolding of angst as a direct result. (more…)
Richard Tuttle, I Don’t Know, or The Weave of Textile Language, (Installation View), all images courtesy Tate Modern
The largest work ever created by American sculptor Richard Tuttle (1941) is currently on view at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, which has been the host to some of the world’s most striking works of monumental contemporary art. I Don’t Know, or The Weave of Textile Language was a commissioned work, composed of vast cuts of fabrics designed by Tuttle himself from both manmade and natural fibers. Three vibrant colors are hung in a bold, majestic display, making use of its coiling form to generate a sense of movement within the massive hall.
The lawsuit between Sotheby’s and collector Lancelot William Thwaytes has been decided in favor of the auction house. Sotheby’s sold a work for Thwaytes, attributed to a follower of Caravaggio, for £42,000 in 2006, only to have the work authenticated as a true Caravaggio weeks later. Mrs Justice Rose ruled there had been no negligence in the case, stating that Sotheby’s is “entitled to rely on the connoisseurship and expertise of their specialists.” (more…)
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus (1839), all images courtesy Tate Britain
On view at the Tate Britain is the first exhibition devoted entirely to the work of Joseph Mallord Wiliam Turner, created between the years of 1835 and his death in 1851. The show brings together major series of works including a group of square pictures highlighting Turner’s tendency towards innovation, even at the end of his life.
Gagosian Gallery in London will reportedly recreate the studio of sculptor Henry Moore for an exhibition next month. The exhibition will be curated by Richard Calvocoressi, director of the Henry Moore Foundation. (more…)
Sotheby’s February 3rd auction of Impressionist works in London will include a Claude Monet deaccessioned from the collection of MoMA, the New York Times reports. The work, Les Peupliers à Giverny is anticipated to bring $13.8 million to $18.4 million. (more…)
Frieze London has announced that curator Clara M. Kim will take the helm for Spotlight, the special section of London’s Frieze Masters this fall. Adriano Pedrosa, who led Spotlight since 2012, will still organize the section at Frieze New York in May. (more…)
Marlene Dumas is interviewed in The Guardian this week, in the run-up to her Tate Modern Retrospective, opening early next month. “When I start work on a painting, it’s total kitsch!” Dumas jokes during the interview. “When I painted myself pregnant, I couldn’t do the legs, and the blond hair made it look like a bad Klimt!” (more…)
Pipilotti Rist, Worry Will Vanish Horizon (video still) (2014), All images Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine New York.
One of the most seminal names in video art, Pipilotti Rist is presenting a new body of work at Hauser & Wirth’s two Britain locations. The Swiss born artist, who emerged in the rapidly developing field of video art during the 80’s with her infamous video I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much, has presented an ambitious oeuvre throughout the years, reflecting on issues related to the body, gender and technology. In doing so, she has blended various mediums and structures that are challenging to consider under one practice, each one holding onto a distinct atmosphere set in what could be considered an alternate reality. (more…)
Chris Ofili, via Art Observed
There’s a room on the third floor of Chris Ofili’s New Museum retrospective that offers a moment of crystallization for the rest of the exhibition. In a dimly lit chamber set back from the rest of the show, the artist has hung a set of works from his Blue Rider series, painted in rich blue hues that reveal various aspects based on the viewer’s position. Sitting in the room for an extended period, recognizable, horrifying images slowly take form, present themselves, and slip back into the shadows: black bodies hanging from trees, unidentified hooded horsemen, and even an image of a black youth beaten by a series of police. (more…)
Luc Tuymans is profiled in the Financial Times this week, as the artist prepares to open a new show of works at David Zwirner London. “Realism, modernism, postmodernism, post-postmodernism: that is a discourse for people who have no visual sense,” Tuymans says. “I mean, these people have to get by. I still indulge in the perversity of painting, which remains interesting.” (more…)
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Birds of the Alps (2012), via Pace London
Hiroshi Sugimoto returns to Pace London this month, presenting a new body of work from his long-running Dioramas series, and exploring notions of the fossil as both an artifact and a contemporary object through his cunningly arranged photographs. (more…)
A rare, vertical Cézanne landscape from the Cortauld collection is set to hit the auction block early next year at Christie’s in London, carrying a sale estimate of up to $12 million. “It’s quite rare to see Cézanne at auction and incredibly rare to have these major motif,” says Jay Vincze, head of Impressionist and Modern art at Christie’s London. (more…)
Over £45 million in art was donated to the British nation in the past year, a new report by the Arts Council England reports, among them a landmark collection of works from the collection of late artist Lucian Freud. “There is something of special significance in the perception that one great artist has of another,” says Arts Council England chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette of the Freud collection. “It was this group of paintings and drawings, rather than his own works, that Freud chose to surround himself with in his home.” (more…)
Artist David Hockney is interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week, reviewing his recent work, and offering his take on the meaning of being an artist. “Lots of people don’t really look,” he says. “They scan the ground in front of them, but they don’t really look that hard.” (more…)
Gerhard Richter (Installation View), via Art Observed
Currently on view at Marian Goodman’s freshly inaugurated Mayfair gallery space in London is a new show of paintings and sculpture by Gerhard Richter, works that show the artist expanding his current practice while branching out into new formal space. (more…)
Former auction house head Simon De Pury is branching out once again into the world of curating, preparing a show at 3 Grafton Street in London, focusing on the work of 92-year-old Polish artist Wojciech Fangor. “The idea is to show great art in this space, we will have an international program,” De Pury says. (more…)
An article in the New Statesman takes a hard look at the state of British art schools this week, noting tuition fees higher than anywhere else in Europe, and a change in the curriculum that has changed how students practice, both of which have limited access to education for lower income classes and discouraged Britain’s famously egalitarian higher education system. (more…)
