Convergence, Jackson Pollock (1952) via NYTimes

Up now at the Jewish Museum in New York City is “Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976”. The exhibition includes over 50 key works by 32 artists involved in the Abstract Expressionist movement, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Mark Rothko. A unique aspect of the show is how the work is shown through the perspectives of the two leading art critics of the time, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. The Abstract Expressionist artwork that fills the walls of the museum until September 21st is accompanied by texts and opinions, photographs, and film clips of the two prominent critics.

Action Figures: The fifties in paintings and words [The New Yorker]
Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 [The Jewish Museum]
“Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976” [Timeout]
How famed critics Greenberg, Rosenberg impacted markets of De Kooning and Pollack [AO Newslinks 5.15.08]

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Naked Portrait with Reflection, Lucian Freud (1980) via Artinfo

Christie’s held its Postwar and Contemporary Evening sale on Monday, June 30th, setting new records and selling 83% of the lots. The four largest sales came from Jeff Koons, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Andy Warhol. Other artists who were featured in the finely curated sale were Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter, and Gilbert and George just to name a few. Out of the 48 lots that sold, 30 of them made over $1 million, and the total sale raised $172 million. This is Christie’s best result for a post-war and contemporary art sale in Europe.
Bacon Self-Portraits Fetch $34.5 Million at London Art Auction [Bloomberg]
Koons sculpture highlights record-breaking art sale [APF]
Koons record as London art sales draw to close [Reuters]
Christie’s London Bests Own Contemporary Record [Artinfo]
Record price for Koons sculpture [BBC]
Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art Sale [Christie’s]
Bacon Triptych Sells for $34.4 Million in London [NYTimes]
Dead Artists Breathe Life Into Auctions [Wall Street Journal]
Koons’s ‘Balloon Flower’ sits in St. James Square before sale at Christie’s June 30th [Art Observed]

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Image via Bloomberg

On May 4^th, The Art Newspaper revealed the buyers of five of last year’s highest priced artworks at auction. The Al-Thani ruling family of Qatar was one of the previously anonymous buyers of three of these through Sotheby’s in May and June of 2007.

Revealed: $72.8m Rockefeller Rothko has gone to Qatar [The Art Newspaper]
Qatari Ruling Family Revealed as $72.8 Million Rothko Buyers [ArtInfo]
Qatar rulers pay £26m for Bacon [Times Online]
Revealed: Record-Breaking Rothko In Qatar [Art Forum] (more…)

Banksy’s graffiti in London via Supertouch

Banksy’s possibly largest most brazen, work to date [Supertouch]
Update: Murakami’s superflat: “epidemic wanderlust produced by psycho-socio-sexual binarism”[NYObserver]
Update: Rothko kin successfully transfer his remains [NY Times]
“The New York canon” from Acconi to Warhol [New York mag]
Painter Ross Bleckner to write a memoir [Daily news]
Whitney Biennial annex at Henri Bendel window [Artnet]
Centre Pompidou cancels Calder exhibition due to lack of funds [Art NewsPaper]

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Victoria Beckham by Juergen Teller via New York Times

Juergen Teller’s casual, quirky, highbrow photographs  [NYTimes]
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Rothko’s kin petition to transfer his remains [NYTimes]
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Book Review: Renzo Piano’s monopoly; “Piano effect” [archidose via C-Monster]
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Matthew Barney honored by the National Arts Club [ NY Sun]
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Indian contemporary art at Wolverhampton, UK [Financial Times]
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Interview with Glenn Lowry, MOMA’s director [Timeout New York]
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Mark Rothko via Kunsthalle München

Mark Rothko, the influential American painter known for his large abstract paintings consisting of blocks of color, currently has a retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Munich. The exhibition at offers an extensive look at the entire oeuvre of the Russian-born artist, with over 100 paintings and drawings on view.

Exhibition Information[Kunsthalle]
Mark Rothko biography [National Gallery]

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Rothko’s No. 15 via Bloomberg

Christie’s International has announced that they will be offering three of Mark Rothko’s paintings on May 13th. It is rumored that Rothko’s No. 15 could go for as much as $40 Million.

Antiques, Collectibles and Auction News [Bloomberg]

Rothko courtesy of Deutsche Welle

Deutsche Welle, a site monitoring the German cultural scene, gives a quality run down of upcoming art shows across Europe. The article is highlighted by The Queen Sofia Museum in Madrid featuring over 400 Picassos, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg featuring a Rothko retrospective and Kandinsky in Munich’s Lenbachhaus.
Deutsche Welle

On a cloudy day in May, in a drab gray room in Rockefeller Center, three hours ticked by at a normal pace. Within these 3 three hours, nearly $400 million worth of postwar and contemporary art was sold at the Christie’s auction house Wednesday evening. Only one day before, the post-war and contemporary art auctions at Sotheby’s closed at a grand total of $255 million, enabling the two-day total sales in Manhattan alone to surpass a cool half-billion dollars with ease. The undoubted financial star of Christie’s evening was Andy Warhol‘s silkscreen painting “Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I).” Inspired by a 1963 Newsweek photo depicting a car crash that impaled one driver on a telephone pole, the painting ignited a heated bidding war between two parties, urging bids to as high as $64 million. (more…)