Jim Shaw, The Deluge (2014), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

With a humorous wit and sarcastic tone, Jim Shaw has been mining the deep archive of Americana for decades, uniting the supposedly separated elements of high and low culture into comic pieces that carry a deeply caustic undertone. The artist’s newest show at Metro Pictures, I Only Wanted You to Love Me, continues this trend, featuring acrylic on muslin works that pull from expansive investigations of visual representation through strong symbolism and appropriation. (more…)

Detail from one of Rob Pruitt’s Furniture Pieces, via Art Observed

Rob Pruitt is back at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise this month, bringing a diverse and somewhat scrambled show of new works to the New York gallery, including a set of graffitied furniture pieces, a set of enormous minimalist prints, and as well as sculptural and painted works that deliver Pruitt’s iconic, tongue-in-cheek renegade style through a broad scope of material form. (more…)

Paul Sietsema, Red painting (detail) (2014), all images courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

On view at Matthew Marks is an exhibition of new work from LA-based artist Paul Sietsema. The exhibition includes new paintings and drawings, in addition to Sietsema’s two most recent films, all focusing on varying themes of production, consumption, proliferation of cultural objects and the systems in which these objects circulate.

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Genieve Figgis, Our First Party (2014), All images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

Following her American debut at Harper’s Books in East Hampton this past summer, Genieve Figgis moves to the Upper East Side for her first New York City show at Half Gallery. One of the recent rising stars of the art world, the Dublin native received major international attention with her unearthly depictions of aristocracy’s heydays, maneuvering between an impressionistic figurativeness and bold abstraction. In Good Morning, Midnight, the artist continues her ambitiously exhilarated portrayals of joyous escapism. (more…)

Sotheby’s Impressionist sale in New York this November is anticipating record numbers for a 1881 Claude Monet painting, already estimated to achieve $35 million on the auction block.  “It truly is the ultimate trophy painting: dappled sunshine, lovely garden and a pretty woman in a white dress, it’s got everything you would want in a Monet,” says Sotheby’s Impressionist expert Peter Hook. (more…)

In an interview with Bloomberg, Christie’s chief executive officer Steven Murphy has commented on the ongoing growth of the contemporary auction market, noting that sales are only increasing, and that Christie’s is increasingly focused on digital auctions.  “We have 14 exhibition spaces around the world where we exhibit the art, and we’ve really grown our accessibility to clients through the online experience,” he says.  “What brings the most consignments is the number of buyers.” (more…)

Next month, Christie’s New York will place a landmark set of 21 “Film Stills” by Cindy Sherman on sale, a set of works from early in the artist’s career that carries an estimate of $6 million – $8 million.  The stills were originally collected by curator by Ydessa Hendeles, who sold them in turn to industrialist Mitchell P. Rales, who noted his intent to keep the works together as a set.  “We are deep into Cindy’s work and will continue to collect it,” he says. “Ydessa did a fabulous job putting it together, and it would be almost impossible to replicate it today.” (more…)

Gavin Brown is opening a new location on the Lower East Side at 291 Grand Street, a building which has also recently seen the addition of Margaret Lee’s 47 Canal.  The gallery will also maintain the same name has his original space.  “We couldn’t think of what else to call it!” the gallerist says. (more…)

Christie’s has announced that it will be offering a series of three classic Magritte canvases at its New York Impressionist and Modern Art sale next month, including Mesdemoiselles de l’Isle Adam, 1942 (estimated at $5-$7m).  Magritte has been a strong seller in recent years, with a sizable percentage of his top sales occurring in the past five years. (more…)

Andy Coolquitt, 2fer (king raashiid) (2011), via Art Observed

In a humorous blend of sculpture, installation and design, Andy Coolquitt complicates the essence of utilitarianism to examine the ritualistic and imposed purposes of objects. Approaching  everyday commodities as physical entities that extend beyond their limited fields of use, the Texas-born artist orchestrates alternate narratives out of materials such as wooden sticks, light bulbs or metal pipes, not just to provoke their aesthetic limitations, but to explore new social dialogues that ultimately encircle these arrangements. (more…)

This November, Christie’s will be selling a rarely seen sculpture by Willem de Kooning, one of the few works the artist created in the medium.  “It is a depiction of the artist himself,” says Brett Gorvy, Christie’s worldwide chairman of postwar and contemporary art. “It is the closest de Kooning came to a self-portrait and was created specifically at a time when he was pushing the boundaries.” (more…)

Jules de Balincourt, Underneath the Trees They Listened…and Heard Silence (2014), Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac‘s Marais gallery in Paris is currently presenting fifteen new paintings by Jules de Balincourt,  his third solo exhibition for the gallery.  Titled “Blue Hours,” the exhibition continues Balincourt’s exploration of broad expanses of bright colors that dominate many of his pieces, and bring the viewer into vivid worlds just beyond the bounds of reality. (more…)

Roger Hiorns, Untitled (2014), all images courtesy Luhring Augustine

On view at Luhring Augustine is the first New York solo exhibition from London-based artist Roger Hiorns, comprised of a series of varied installations and objects produced in 2013 and 2014. The works will remain on view through October 18th.

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Steven Cohen is placing King Oliver, a $30 Million painting by Franz Kline, up for sale this November at Christie’s in New York, Bloomberg reports.  “It’s got scale and bravado,” said Brett Gorvy, Christie’s chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art. “In today’s masterpiece-driven market, this is exactly the type of language that speaks to our global buyers.” (more…)

Robert Wilson, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, via BAM

Shakespeare’s sonnets were never intended as a theatrical work, a set of poems that extend the Bard’s legendary repertoire beyond a cache of plays that already constitutes a sizable portion of the western theatrical canon.  But that doesn’t seem to have stopped Robert Wilson, who has revived Shakespeare’s Iambic Pentameter for his production currently showing at Brooklyn Academy of Music. (more…)

Artist and architect Maya Lin has been awarded the Gish Prize, in recognition of her “outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”  The $300,000 first prize will be given on November 12th at MoMA. (more…)

Cory Arcangel, Asshole 2 / Lakes (2014), via Team

Given Cory Arcangel’s past exhibition tendencies, the work on view at the artist’s newest Team Gallery solo exhibition downtown is something of a concise affair.  Gone are the artist’s abstracted consumer objects, video game hacks and gradient paintings, substituted for a series of simple flat-panel televisions, each bearing a pixelated digital image, and offset by a deep red carpeting that runs along the gallery’s floor.  On-screen, the smiling faces of Hilary Clinton (or rather, Hilary Clinton’s book jacket), Jay-Z and P. Diddy, among others, stare out of the viewer, as a delicately waving digital effect below them gives the impression of a liquid reflection. (more…)

Ryan McGinley, YEARBOOK (Installation View)

One of the most prolific contemporary American photographers, Ryan McGinley has continually photographed his subjects inside his Lower East Side studio for over a decade.  Two years after Animals, his series of nude models posing with live animals, the artist is continuing his exploration of the human form, as well as its positioning within a reserved studio setting at Team Gallery, where he has been showing for the last seven years.  YEARBOOK, however, expands on the notion of space beyond simply signifying an architecture for displaying art, embracing an alternative use of the gallery interior. (more…)

Richard Serra has been announced as the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Americans for the Arts organization.  Serra will receive the award on October 20th in New York. (more…)

Nick Cave, Sea Sick (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

Nick Cave and Jack Shainman Gallery have opened a pair of shows this fall, spanning the gallery’s two Chelsea locations on 20th and 24th street locations. Separately titled as Rescue and Made for Whites by Whites, the exhibitions articulate the artist’s familiar thematic concerns, addressing racial impositions and how they are reflected in everyday consumer culture.  Cave delivers the prominent aspects of his practice, such as repurposing of found objects, assemblage of varying textures, and the performance of cultural rituals, with a somewhat stark hand, allowing a fierce critique to emerge from the works themselves. (more…)

Amedeo Modigliani’s seminal sculpture Tête will be offered at Sotheby’s New York this November, a rare work in stone from the Italian Modernist, that is expected to achieve up to $45 million during the sale.  ‘‘Modigliani’s Têtes rank among the most revered sculptures of the 20th century,” says Simon Shaw, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department. “Working alongside Constantin Brancusi, he believed that direct carving and staying true to materials were critical if sculpture was to be reborn for the Modern age. The present Tête has a truly mesmerizing aura, and is recognized to be the greatest Modigliani sculpture in private hands.’’  (more…)

The New York Times profiles the reopening of the SculptureCenter in Long Island City, Queens, following its expansive renovation, and its take on the presentation of the work within its space.  “There are plenty of white boxes in New York, and we don’t want to be another one,” says executive director and chief curator Mary Ceruti.  “People come here ready to see art because they’ve made the effort, and that’s a good thing. Would I like more people to make that effort? Yes, and that’s part of why we did this.” (more…)

Pace Gallery has announced that it will be installing three late Alexander Calder sculptures at the foot of the Seagram Building.  Calder’s work was always intended to be installed in the plaza of the International Style icon, but financial reasons prevented his work from making a permanent home there.  “So in our minds, it’s always been a Calder plaza,” says the artist’s grandson Alexander S.C. Rower, “and it’s always nice to see works back there again.” (more…)

Eric Fischl is in the New Yorker this week, taking writer Emma Allen on a tour of the Art Southampton fair in Long Island while he captures photographs for the artist’s newest series of paintings depicting the wealth and society of the world’s most prominent art fairs.  “They’re all art fairs,” he says of his work.  “All people in various relationships to each other or to the art, usually ignoring it, sometimes looking at their phones.” (more…)