Alex Ito, Magic Mountain (2013), via Fireplace Project
On view at The Fireplace Project in East Hampton, New York is a collection of works created this year by The Still House Group, an artist-run organization based in Red Hook, Brooklyn made up of eight permanent artists and a different resident artist each summer.
In a recent segment, BloombergTV reviews the current state of Sotheby’s, examining the auction house’s current issues with activist investors Daniel Loeb and others, who have together taken a 15% stake in the company. Emphasizing Sotheby’s position in the market, and its sole rival, Christie’s, the segment goes on to detail the house’s “untapped pockets of value.” “It’s widely expected that they (investors) will focus on the brand, the real estate story, the balance sheet. What’s not clear is whether they will agree.” Says Bloomberg’s Su Keenan. (more…)
Cary Leibowitz, Hey! I’m Not Deppressed Anymore (2013), Courtesy INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York
“Hey! I’m not depressed anymore.” So reads one of the simplistic, shaped canvases currently on view at Cary Leibowitz’s new show at Invisible-Exports. It’s familiar territory for the artist, whose signature conflations of text and paint frequently dwell on the comical neuroses inherent in modern living, scaled appropriately for the New York art world. It was Leibowitz, of course, whose enormous wooden sign sat outside the Armory Show earlier this year, reading “I Need to Start Seeing a Therapist,” blowing his work up to monumental scale for the equally daunting size of the exhibition contained within Piers 92 and 94. (more…)
The New Art Dealer’s Alliance has announced the exhibitors list for this year’s edition of the fair, held concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach. This year’s fair features a group of 80 galleries, with a high number of spaces from NADA’s home city of New York, including Feature Inc. and Zach Feuer, among many others. The fair will also feature a special exhibition section from 11 galleries worldwide, including Rob Tuffnell in London, SculptureCenter in New York, and XYZ Collective in Tokyo. (more…)
The contentious sale of a Thomas Cole painting by the William Seward House Historical Museum has caught the attention of the State Attorney General’s office, which issued a statement questioning the sale, and maintaining the museum’s obligations to maintain the work. In response, the museum has announced intentions for “a plan to safeguard the painting and protect the long term financial viability and well-being of the Museum.” (more…)
A selection of more than 150 works from the collection of Geneva dealer Jan Krugier will be on sale this November at Christies in New York. The auction will include works by Picasso, Kandinsky and Giaccometti. “Because of his connection with the Picasso family, no one could compete with him in terms of the volume and breadth of works in different media he was able to sell.” Says dealer Richard Nagy.
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The Wall Street Journal interviews Raymond Pettibon, who recently settled into a residency at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. His new show, “To Wit”, a show features more than 200 works from this period of creative output. “I had the opportunity to do things on the spot, which is not normally the case. It is a space to work on, rather than just a place to put up work,” said the artist. (more…)
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #564, via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed
As an aspiring painter in New York City during the late 1950s, American artist Sol LeWitt struggled to find his “touch,” in the midst of the waning days of Abstract Expressionism- a movement which focuses on the importance of individual creation. After taking a job at the book counter of the Museum of Modern Art in 1960, LeWitt became familiar with the engineering aesthetic of Russian Constructivism and Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential photographs, developing an interest in reducing art to its bare essentials. Literally recreating art from square one though his explorations of geometric forms, LeWitt is now considered to be one of the essential founders of both Conceptual and Minimal art. Differing from strict Minimalists by his focus on systems and concepts over materials, LeWitt’s art is one in which ideas and collaboration are paramount.
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #564 (2013), Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery (more…)
Sculptor Anish Kapoor has unveiled Unity, a memorial to those killed in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. The 19.5 foot tower will be installed at Hanover Square, near the site of the original towers, and will contain a mirrored interior. “The chamber reflects light so as to form a column, which hovers, ghost-like, in the void of the stone.” Says Kapoor. “This very physically monolithic object then appears to create within itself an ephemeral reflection akin to an eternal flame.” (more…)
Artist Rob Pruitt has launched a website for voting in the third Rob Pruitt’s Art Awards, tallying votes for fields including “Artist of the Year,” “Critic of the Year,” Art Fair Booth of the Year,” and more. Winners will be announced in the December 2013 issue of Art In America. “Conceived as a performance-based artwork, Rob Pruitt’s Art Awards are modeled after the Oscars and the Grammys as high-profile, industry-specific prizes that celebrate the achievements of their respective constituents.” The site says. (more…)
As he prepares to open his first exhibition in Russia, the Financial Times has sat down with artist John Baldessari to discuss the artist’s ongoing work, and his irreverent view for the art-industrial complex: “I was getting mildly irritated by artists getting branded – ‘This is a Warhol’, ‘This is a de Kooning’ – and you don’t even look. It just has to look like a brand,” He says. “And I said, I wonder if I can slow that down.” (more…)
Marian Goodman Gallery has reportedly settled on a new space in London, located at 20 Golden Square, just off Piccadilly Circus. The addition of Goodman to the neighborhood signals what may be the emergence of a new gallery district in central London, to the east of Regent Street. The gallery has not stated an intended opening date, but it is not anticipated to be before the end of this year. (more…)
In an effort to win more consignments, Sotheby’s has filed a statement saying that it has entered into auction guarantees totaling over $166 million, including $23.5 million by undisclosed third-party guarantors. With fall sales in London, New York and Hong Kong, the auction house has increased its borrowing capacity to provide even more in guarantees to interested sellers. “We did this to enhance our flexibility as we negotiate deal opportunities and hopefully provide us with an opportunity to improve margins and profitability by taking prudent balance sheet risk,” Sotheby’s head William Ruprecht said. (more…)
The New York Times reports on the newest art commission for Dior Homme’s 57th street location in New York City, a polished and cut steel mirror by artist Matt Keegan. “There’s a number of ways to look at it,” Mr. Keegan said. “But my interest was not in the merger of disciplines. It was in seeing how the sculpture functions on a heavily trafficked street.” (more…)
Erika Vogt, Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll (2013), Courtesy New Museum, New York Photo: Benoit Pailley
The back room in the New Museum lobby is currently draped with hanging anchors, plaster molds, and other myriad items, a bizarre assemblage of pieces and materials that forces visitors to duck their heads and tread cautiously as they move through the narrow room. This installation, newly created for the museum by artist Erika Vogt, is Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll, a surreal video and sculptural piece that playfully toys with the raw materialism of the works on view.
Erika Vogt, Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll (2013), Courtesy New Museum, New York Photo: Benoit Pailley (more…)
Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is preparing to bring his work Ventilator, which premiered at MoMA in 2008, back to the museum this year. Consisting of a simplistic fan, a cable and the air of the space, the fan moves in haphazard, circular patterns above the room, illustrating the air currents and forces at play in seemingly empty space. “I think that Ventilator is captivating to look at, but you also start to wonder what on Earth makes it fly,” Eliasson says. “When we walk into a space, we tend to look at the walls and the floor as solids, and everything between as somehow not there. We know very well that air is thick enough for a jumbo jet to take off and float on it. There is something there, conceptually, to solidify.” (more…)
In an effort to raise $30 million for scholarly and educational programming, the Willem de Kooning Foundation is selling ten works by de Kooning from its collection. Rather than selling at auction, the works will go on view at Gagosian Gallery this November, bypassing the often harsh public spotlight for a more subdued, conservative sale. “It’s as much about presentation as it is about money,” says foundation board member John L. Eastman, who also served as de Kooning’s longtime lawyer, executor and conservator. (more…)
Gianfranco Gorgoni, Francesco Clemente and detail of General Animal (1984), Courtesy Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zurich
The work of Italian contemporary artist Francesco Clemente is as diverse in style and influence as the life of its creator. Transcending traditional borders of culture, artistic movements, intellectual spheres and even medium, Clemente has developed a sense of decentered lexicality; his work standing as a testament to the synthesis of his personal travels and influences – among them, the artists he met and collaborated with in New York City in the 1980s. Portraits of the 1980s, currently on display in the Thomas Ammann Fine Art Gallery in Zurich until September 27, chronicles this engagement with New York’s intellectual and social community through a series of portraits, speaking to the friendships which both redefined Clemente’s own style and thrust him into the limelight of the international art scene. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal reports on the burgeoning contemporary gallery scene, and the numerous large-scale shows foregoing museum exhibitions in favor of names like Gagosian, Zwirner and Hauser and Wirth, many of which are opening museum-sized spaces of their open. However, these new spaces aren’t only about space to exhibit. “The mega spaces project what they need to—a level of power and gravitas.” Says collector Dennis Scholl. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal reports on Museum Hack, an effort by founder Mark Rosen to breathe new life into the guided museum tour. For $39, guests are treated to a two-hour tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, focusing on more unconventional works and infrequently discussed histories of some of the museum’s more interesting pieces. “You typically don’t go to a fancy restaurant, study the menu for three seconds, order everything, gorge yourself and roll out the door,” Mr. Rosen said to his Sunday-morning charges. “Yet almost everybody comes here, tries to see everything in four hours or less, Instagrams the hell out of the place and leaves, remembering nothing.” (more…)
Haroon Mirza, Frame for a Painting (2013), Courtesy Museum of Modern Art
As is to be expected, MoMA’s first survey into the field of sound art starts with a certain degree of theatricality: 1,500 individually micro-tuned speakers sit on the wall on the way into the exhibition space, filling the space with a sharp white hiss. Shifting slightly with each change of position, Tristan Perich’s Microtonal Wall welcomes a lingering meditation, as viewers pace back and forth, moving their heads up and down close to the speakers or far away, the variance in intensity opening the space around it to any number of perceptual opportunities.
Richard Garet, Before Me, (2012), Courtesy the artist and Julian Navarro Projects, New York (more…)
Ellen Gallagher, Don’t Axe Me (Installation View), Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley
Currently occupying multiple floors of the New Museum is a series of works by artist Ellen Gallagher, a painter and multimedia artist whose work is layered and deeply informed by contemporary and historical references, not only from modern art historic and literary canons but also politics, popular culture and sub-cultures such as Black Power and Detroit Techno. Represented by two major galleries, Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth, Gallagher’s intellectually conversant work has tantalized critics and collectors alike for the past 20 years.
Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic (2001-2005), Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley (more…)
A $2 million painting by Arshile Gorky has been ruled to be the property of tennis legend John McEnroe, and must be returned, a New York Judge has decided. McEnroe purchased the piece Pirate II in 2004 with gallery owner Lawrence Salander, who is currently serving a six year sentence for grand larceny, and sued for the recovery of the works from dealerJoseph Carroll after they were sold without McEnroe’s knowledge. “Carroll acquired Pirate II in a grossly undervalued transaction in which he chose to make no inquiry as to Salander’s authority to sell the work,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich wrote in her decision.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is preparing for its first retrospective in thirty years on the work of Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, better known as Balthus. In anticipation, the Wall Street Journal has published a short series of stories about the artist, as related by his daughter, Harumi. “He thought you should know what’s been done before, to have respect for all masters, to know how to make your own colors, and he frequently complained that nowadays people don’t really learn the tradition. He also complained that there was too much ego, that it was not about what you make with work but more about who you are.” She said. (more…)
