Grayson Perry is featured on the front cover of The Guardian Magazine this week, with a full interview that covers the artist’s defiant, shifting public personae, and the early responses of the art world to his pottery.  “Pottery was what sandal-wearing, windchime-lovers did,” he says.  “Art is sensitive to areas of visual culture that haven’t yet been colonized by the art world, and perhaps what they sensed back then was, here was an area that hadn’t been fully explored.” (more…)

The Telegraph takes a look at the focus on post-war Italian art spanning much of the market in London this, including upcoming auctions focusing on the Arte Povera and related movements, as well as a handful of selling exhibitions.   (more…)

Richard Tuttle is interviewed in the Financial Times this week, in advance of the artist’s new installation commission at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.  “There’s a whole body of my works which starts with the material and then moves to the other sides where the material doesn’t matter,” he writes. (more…)

The Guardian visits Tracey Emin in her Spitalfields studio this week, as the artist prepares for an exhibition of new work next month at White Cube.  “Work is good,” she says.  “If I don’t make things, I become ill and depressed. Painting makes me feel like a better human being. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”  (more…)

Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island (1976) (P.054), all images courtesy Victoria Miro

Photographer Francesca Woodman is the subject of an exhibition exploring her broad range of innovative techniques at Victoria Miro this month, focusing on a theme of the zigzag as both a geometric and compositional form.

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Tony Smith, Smog (1969-70), all images courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery

On view at Timothy Taylor Gallery is artist Tony Smith’s first solo exhibition in the UK.  The American artist and architect was a driving force in post-war art, anticipating the rise of minimalism while working alongside Jackson Pollock, Barnet Newman, and Mark Rothko.

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The Guardian joins Frank Auerbach for a tour of the V&A’s John Constable show this week, as the artist reviews Constable’s longstanding influence on his work.  “With the passage of time,” he says, “Constable has meant more and more and more to me. It is not so much about the more well-known qualities – the clouds and the freshness and the light. It is more that I can’t think of another painter who has invested quite so much in every single image.” (more…)

London’s Herald Street Gallery has announced plans to open a temporary space in Golden Square, the Soho area that has received notable attention from a number of galleries in the past several months.  Sadie Coles and Marian Goodman have both open spaces nearby in recent months, and this new exhibition space seems to have intentions on staying for some time.   “Programming will run into 2015,” says a gallery spokesman.

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Frieze has announced the list of 20 artists who will be included in this year’s outdoor sculpture park, accompanying the fair proceedings in London’s Regent’s Park, among them Yayoi Kusama, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Martin Creed, and Thomas Schütte.  “Unique in the world’s art fairs, this year’s Frieze Sculpture Park is an intriguing and delightful breath of fresh air featuring artists from across three generations,” Curator Clare Lilley said in a statement.  (more…)

The Telegraph profiles Christie’s upcoming London sale of works from the Essl Collection, Austria’s largest private collection of contemporary works.  The sale, featuring pieces by Gerhard Richter, Paul McCarthy, Louise Bourgeois, and Alighiero Boetti, is estimated to bring in up to £60 million next month, making it the most valuable sale of a single collection in auction history.   (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles curator Okwui Enwezor this week, the head of next year’s Venice Biennale, tracing his early move from Nigeria to New York City, and his monumental impact on the global state of contemporary art today.  “The art world was very Eurocentric and very westerncentric, and it needed strong curators to change it,” says Els van der Plas, the general director of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet.  “Enwezor positioned several projects in a very strong way, which gave a different view of the world and different views on the history of post-colonialism, of what Africa contributed to the world’s development and of how different countries in Africa are positioned in the world debate.” (more…)

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red (1937-42) © 2014 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/p HCR International

Running in tandem with the Turner Contemporary in Margate’s expansive Piet Mondrian retrospective, the Tate Liverpool is currently exhibiting an immersive exhibition focusing on the Dutch artist’s creative process and physical locales. (more…)

The New York Times spotlights Phillips new flagship location in London, and the auction house’s renewed efforts to challenge the duopoly between Sotheby’s and Christie’s at the highest end of the secondary market.  “It’s a statement of intent,” says Phillips’s new chair Edward Dolman.  “This gives us the best space for viewing contemporary art in London. It’s potentially a game changer.” (more…)

Gilbert & George, City Lights (2013), all images courtesy White Cube

Now in their early seventies, the artist duo Gilbert & George have built a trademark artistic presence through their eccentric personas, often mocking British conservatism and aristocratic stereotypes. The duo’s artistic and romantic partnership has produced an ambitious body of work over the past 40-plus years, taking their home in London’s East End, with its multi-cultural and occasionally chaotic atmosphere as a home and inspiration for their politically and socially engaged practice.  Extending this practice, White Cube’s Bermondsey gallery is presenting an exhibition of the duo’s recent large-scale photomontages, collaging London streets with images of the dup.  Scapegoating Pictures for London, containing over sixty pieces of predominantly black, red and white works, delivers the duo’s profoundly satirical and often provocative tone, triggering concerns over terrorism, globalism, surveillance and religion in a massive and ever-shifting urban landscape. (more…)

A new article by curator Sam Smiles in The Guardian this week studies the perceptions of late-life creativity in famous painters and artists, particularly in contrasts of value between the 19th and 20th century, and cites a number of critics who have noted most master artist’s work comes after their 50th year.  The article comes with concurrent run of three exhibitions exploring late work by Matisse, Turner and Rembrandt in London. (more…)

BBC Two has commissioned a feature-length documentary on the life and work of David Hockney, focusing on the life and work of the iconic British painter.  HOCKNEY, as it has been titled, will air next year, and will be made by the same filmmaking team behind the popular Lucian Freud: Painted Life.  “David Hockney stands as one of Britain’s seminal and most important artists, and I’m delighted to be showing this major film on him on BBC Two,”  says BBC Two Controller Kim Shillinglaw:  Arts on BBC Two is all about bringing the biggest and best documentaries to the broadest of audiences, and I know this film will be a riveting and inspiring watch.” (more…)

Artist David Hockney is the subject of a new biography by author Christopher Simon Sykes, who has chronicled some of the artist’s least known and most peculiar stories in a new book,  A Pilgrim’s Progress.  The book includes a number of Hockney’s famous feuds with artists and actors like Dennis Hopper and Rudolph Nureyev, whom Hopper once fired from a collaborative project.  “Well, Rudi, it’s obvious that we are not going to be able to work together, so I’m afraid it’s all finished,” Hockney reportedly said. (more…)

A considerable proportion of the over 7,000 works from the Essl Collection will go to the auction block this October in London, worth an estimated €160 million ($211 million) in total.  The works, which will sell at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, include iconic pieces by Gerhard Richter, Martin Kippenberger, and Georg Baselitz, among others.   (more…)

Artists Gilbert and George are interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week, discussing their most recent exhibition at White Cube, Scapegoating Pictures for London. “We thought it strange that the world’s governments, churches, mosques and schools are all confronting the issue of Islamist fervor, but the world’s artists aren’t touching it,” says George Passmore. “We try to create art we feel the world need.” (more…)

Phyllida Barlow at Tate Britain (Installation View), all images via Tate Britain

‘Our era has been defined by falling monuments’ says Phyllida Barlow in an interview with The Guardian about her Tate Britain commission. She points out the tragedy, triumph, beauty and the immense grief evident in the collapse of a public icon; underlining the extraordinary range of emotive qualities that such a public piece of imagery conveys.  Barlow is delivering another major show defining the notion of monuments in a collaboration with Tate Britain as a part of the museum’s annual artist commissions. (more…)

Giulio Paolini, Young Man Looking at Lorenzo Lotto (1967)

Arte Povera, meaning ‘poor art’ in Italian, contained a profound criticism towards commodification and consumeristic production. Among its key figures stands Giulio Paolini, who was invited to Arte Povera’s first exhibition by art historian Germano Celant.  But Paolini also occupies a separate position in terms of focusing on a noticeably historical examination of the artistic state in turn. Related to his critical approach towards production dynamics in art, Paolini on the other hand has been investigating the duality between the seer and the seen, questioning the exchange not only between the artwork and the viewer but also between the subject matter and the artist. (more…)

Julia Rommel, Comedy Club (2014), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

Currently on view at Lisson Gallery in London is a group exhibition including paintings, prints, relief objects, and works on canvas from nine different artists, grouped together around a theme of seemingly minimal artistic intervention. Contrasting with the minimal nature of these works, the pieces often required a complex, long and contemplative processes that preceded the works’ final production.  Participating artists include: Allora & Calzadilla, Cory Arcangel, N. Dash, Robert Janitz, Paulo Monteiro, David Ostrowski, Michael Rey, Julia Rommel, and Dan Shaw-Town.

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Damien Hirst has purchased one of London’s most impressive examples of Regency architecture, a five story mansion built in 1811 by John Nash and overlooking Regent’s Park.  The home was previously owned by Anne Van Lanschot, a Dutch banking magnate who lived there for over 50 years.  The home was put on the market last year for £34 million, but some speculate that the artist paid more. (more…)

Henri Matisse, Memory of Oceania, (1952-1953) via Museum of Modern Art

Currently on view at London’s Tate Modern, Henri Matisse’s vivid cut-outs reveal the final chapter in Matisse’s career: when he began ‘carving into color’, as the artist was known to describe his spectacular cut-outs, a vastly divergent and fascinating point in the artist’s career.

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