The New York Times profiles the work of the overlooked New York School painter Raymond Spillenger, who passed away last year at the age of 89, leaving behind a massive collection of paintings and drawings that speaks to the artist’s long and often unacknowledged career.  “Was it fear of failure?” says his son Clyde. “An unwillingness to be self-promoting? Some of the others had big personalities, but our father was quiet and diffident, not the type to compete.” (more…)

Helly Nahmad, recently convicted to a year in prison following his role in an illegal gambling ring, is being sued alongside his father for allegedly helping to hide a $20 Million Modigliani reportedly looted by Nazis.  The case, filed  by Frenchman Phillippe Maestracci in Manhattan Supreme Court this week, argues that the painting was hidden through a secretive company called International Art Center, and will attempt to force Nahmad to disclose the IAC’s leadership, and where it is located.  “This painting was bought at a Christie’s London auction in 1996 by IAC, and the location of the painting is a matter of public record,” says Nahmad lawyer Richard Golub. (more…)

Keith Haring, Moses and the Burning Bush (1985), via Art Observed

On view at Gladstone Gallery is an exhibition of large-scale works by Keith Haring, including canvases and tarps painted in the artist’s immediately recognizable style, which has since become part of a widely reproduced visual language of the late 20th century. The display will remain on view through June 14, 2014.

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As art theft market experts gather at a three day symposium at New York University from June 4-6 to discuss the 3rd largest crime enterprise in the world, Bloomberg Television notes the current $6 billion value of the art theft market, in relation to the $200 billion global art market. Cases of art thefts costing hundreds of millions of dollars date back to 1990, with daring attempts dotting the history books. “I’ve heard stories of a helicopter coming and zooming down and taking statues out of a garden,” Steel reports.

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Pierre Soulages, Peinture 175 X 222 Cm, 23 Mai 2013, via Art Observed

Held in high regard in his home country of France, and throughout much of continental Europe, the work of Pierre Soulages has never really achieved the same stature in the United States, despite his formal ties to the particularly American strains abstract expressionism and minimalism that have populated his work over the past sixty years.  But it’s that same lack of recognition that Dominique Lévy and Emmanuel Perrotin are looking to change this spring, bringing a selection of the artist’s most recent work, and some of his most classic canvases to show at the pair’s uptown exhibition spaces.

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 202 X 159 Cm, 18 Octobre 1967, via Art Observed (more…)

Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Yellow Butterfly Orange Mark Grotjahn 2004) (2004), all images courtesy Blum and Poe

Celebrating the inaugural show at its first New York location, Blum & Poe’ is presenting a show of Mark Grotjahn’s Butterfly Paintings, curated by Douglas Fogle at its E 66th Street location.  The show focuses on select works from Grotjahn’s recognizable series, which range in date from 2001 to 2008, and tracing the evolution of the paintings over a period of 7 years.

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Mark Flood, Available Nasdaq Symbol (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists are prepared to plumb the depths and egoistic state of the art market, image culture and corporate personhood the way Mark Flood has for the past decades.  Time and again, the artist’s occasionally crass, bold-faced techniques and assemblages of mass-media signifiers toys with the spectacle of consumption, mocking both advertisements and political symbolism as bound up in a state of image-consumption.  It’s this dichotomy, writ large against the backdrop of the art market that defines his current show of work at Zach Feuer in New York. (more…)

Jay DeFeo, White Shadow (1972), via Osman Can Yerebakan

Jay DeFeo’s most seminal work in her career took eight years to be completed and weighs more than two thousand pounds. A monumental embodiment of extreme orientation to detail and experimentalism, this work of DeFeo has been the artist’s most recognized part of her oeuvre, but a year after her retrospective at The Whitney, the legacy of Jay DeFeo is growing in New York City, as Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents a body of fifty works spanning the years 1965-89.

Jay DeFeo, Tuxedo Junction (1965-74) via Osman Can Yerebakan (more…)

The Wall Street Journal takes an early look inside the New York home of Lousie Bourgeois, set to reopen next year as an art research center, exhibition space, and sculpture garden.  Filled with drawings and notes on the walls, yellowing paper and notes, the space is an indication of Bourgeois close affinity for working from home.  “It’s decrepit splendor,” says her longtime assistant Jerry Gorovoy.  (more…)

As Jeff Koons prepares to open his major retrospective at the Whitney next month, the artist will also be installing Split-Rocker, his cartoonish, monumental flower sculpture at Rockefeller Center on June 25th, two days before the show opens.  “We couldn’t do any topiary at the Whitney, because there wasn’t any space,” Koons told the New York Times. (more…)

Gardar Eide Einarsson and Oscar Tuazon, Liberator I (2014), via Team Gallery

Chez Perv, a group exhibition of work by Oscar Tuazon, Matias Faldbakken and Gardar Eide Einarsson is currently on view through June 1 at the Team Gallery in New York. Concrete slabs and immoveable duffle bags mark this show’s exploration of the hard edges and enormous weight of the physical world, deriving its title from a New York Post cover story on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal. Politically potent, heavily minimalist, and privileging the alienating, this group show brings the stillness of the physical world to the fore.

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MoMA PS1 has announced the line-up for its annual Warm-Up Series of concerts at the Museum.  Held each Sunday, highlights include performances by Pantha du Prince, Total Freedom, Dam Funk and Detroit Techno legend Kevin Saunderson.   (more…)

The Guardian reports on a dispute between Marina Abramovic, the Serpentine Gallery and a group of writers, curators and artists who claim that Marina Abramovic’s new performance at the Serpentine fails to acknowledge the work of Mary Ellen Carroll, another artist who has explored concepts of non-action and doing “nothing” as the core of her performance works.  “There are differences,” says art historian David Joselit . “I am not prepared to say Marina Abramović is involved in plagiarising or anything like that.  I just think there should be a conversation.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal notes an increased focus by novelists on the high-priced art market, setting artists and the auction market as the backdrop to their works.  “Art has become much more mainstream, maybe even more than reading,” Robin Desser, editorial director at Alfred A. Knopf, says. “You can’t get into the Degenerate Art show” at the Neue Galerie in New York.” (more…)

Julian Schnabel, Untitled (los Patos Del Buen Retiro II) (1991), via Art Observed

It’s not difficult to make links between young painters currently working today and Julian Schnabel.  The improvisatory, often deconstructive approach to the canvas as such pervades much of the medium’s current practice, and as if by some tacit understanding, few artists can be seen at as many shows of young painters as Schnabel himself, a man who seems invested not only in the next generation of New York artists (his patronage of the BHQF, for example, among others), but also in his impact on them. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the recent movement of galleries into the Upper East Side, both by major players like Gagosian and smaller gallerists like Robert Blumenthal. “The Upper East Side is so unhip, it’s hip,” Blumenthal notes in the article. “Chelsea is a generation before me.” (more…)

The Morgan Library and Museum has completed digitization on its expansive collection of Rembrandt etchings, which will be available online beginning May 22nd.  “Completion of our Rembrandt project is another important milestone in the Morgan’s ongoing commitment to make its collections available to an ever wider audience,” says Director William M. Griswold. “We are extraordinarily pleased to be able to share them with scholars, students, and anyone interested in his art.” (more…)

The New Museum will launch NEW INC. its new incubator for Art, Design and Technology this summer, and has announced its first wave of technology and entrepreneurial advisors, among them Yancey Strickler (co-founder of Kickstarter), Aaron Koblin (artist and Creative Director at Google Creative Lab), and Lauren Cornell (New Museum Curator, Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects, and Museum as Hub projects).  The initiative will continue its search for members through the June 6th deadline.“We’re thrilled to have such a phenomenal group advising us,” says NEW INC.’s Lisa Phillips, co-founder of the program alongside Karen Wong. “They embody the kind of innovative thinking and entrepreneurial spirit we plan to foster in the program and, together with an expanded group of mentors, will be an invaluable resource to our community.”

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Kevin Sutherland, the Florida Pastor convicted of trying to sell fraudulent Damien Hirst paintings has been sentenced to six months in jail and five months of probation, the New York Times reports.  “Here he had a choice, and he made the wrong choice,” said Justice Bonnie G. Winter of State Supreme Court. “He could easily have rectified it in the right way.” (more…)

The Met has announced that it will undergo an immense renovation of its Modern Art wing, creating special showcase galleries and room for its expanding collection, especially following the windfall gift of Cubist and Modernist works from the collection of Leonard A. Lauder.  “Leonard’s collection is such a huge missing link between our very strong collections of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and our moderately strong holdings of early-20th-century,” says director Thomas P. Campbell, “that if we reconfigure the galleries, we have the potential to tell the chronological story.” (more…)

Jack Shainman Gallery has opened its newest location, a three-floor, converted schoolhouse located in Hudson, NY.  “I just love the building so much—especially its bones,” says Shainman. “We were pleasantly naive when we first took the project on, otherwise, we’d never have done this.” (more…)

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Ludwig II (M.2062) (2013), via Art Observed

Currently on view at 303 Gallery is French born artist Dominique Gonzales-Foerster’s exhibition, euqinimod & costumes. Being the artist’s first collaboration with the Chelsea gallery, the exhibition stands out as Gonzales-Foerster’s autobiographical investigation using clothes from her own wardrobe.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Euqinimod & Costumes (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

An intrepid thief made off with a piece of a Danh Vo sculpture Thursday, stealing the work from City Hall Park in New York while the work was being installed.  “We can confirm that a small part of the artwork disappeared from the park during installation, and a police investigation is underway,” a representative from the Public Art Fund noted. (more…)

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange) (1955) which sold for $50,000,000 at Phillips, via Art Observed

The Phillips Contemporary Evening Sale has concluded, wrapping up what has been a whirlwind week of contemporary art sales with a briskly-paced, 49-lot sale that achieved moderately strong results, while twelve works were either withdrawn or went unsold. (more…)