Heman Chong, Mrs. Dalloway (2014), via Art Observed

On view at P! in New York is two-person exhibition featuring works by Elaine Lustig Cohen and Heman Chong, in which the artists curate and commission works from each other.  The exhibition emphasizes the concept of holding multiple roles within creative work.  Both Lustig Cohen (b. 1927) and Chong (b. 1977) have worked in a variety of different positions and roles in the art world, including artist, designer, curator, dealer, and writer, and hold a mutual respect for each other’s work. For the exhibition, this respect played out in the gallery as Chong selected works from Lustig Cohen’s body of paintings, while Cohen commissioned Chong to create nine new pieces within his ongoing series of imagined designs for book jackets.

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Walton Ford, Windsor, May 1829 (2014), via Art Observed

On view at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York is a series of watercolors by Walton Ford, exploring the iconography of traditional natural history painting, while focusing on encounters between human culture and the natural world, and featuring for the first time words written in the margins from Ford’s imagined perspective of the animal subjects.

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Jerry Saltz is in New York Magazine this week analyzing the state of abstract painting in the current market, and the increased popularity of what he deems “diluted” abstract works.  The piece is accompanied by a slideshow of several works, tracing markedly similar trends in the current market.  “The artists themselves are only part of the problem here,” Saltz writes. “Many of them are acting in good faith, making what they want to make and then selling it. But at least some of them are complicit, catering to a new breed of hungry, high-yield risk-averse buyers, eager to be part of a rapidly widening niche industry.” (more…)

Researchers have proven a long held belief that there is a hidden painting beneath Picasso’s iconic The Blue Room.  Using infrared scanning technology, experts revealed a portrait of a bow-tied man, resting his head on his hand buried under the layers of the finished painting.  “It’s really one of those moments that really makes what you do special,” said Patricia Favero, the conservator of the Phillips Collection.  “The second reaction was, well, who is it? We’re still working on answering that question.” (more…)

Guillermo Kuitca, Untitled (2013), all images courtesy Sperone Westwater

On view at Sperone Westwater in New York, NY is an exhibition of new works by Argentinean painter Guillermo Kuitca, featuring large scale works with a concept of fragmentation and fractured forms, including a painted, room-like structure visitors can pass freely in and out of. The exhibition will continue through June 21st, 2014.

Guillermo Kuitca, This Way (Installation View) (more…)

Venus Over Manhattan’s Adam Lindemann has penned an op-ed for Gallerist today, humorously reflecting on the popularity of Instagram among collectors, dealers, artists and consultants, and his love of those willing to ruthlessly critique any and all contemporary art.  “It’s perfect for people with zero attention span, zero education and zero interest in learning about anything—perfect, in other words, for the art collectors of today,” he writes. (more…)

Following concerns over possible damages during a renovation at the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, Pablo Picasso’s immense stage curtain painting Le Tricorne will be moved to the New York Historical Society.  “It’s going to be at a good home, where even more people will see it,” Landmarks Conservancy President Peg Breen said. (more…)

The Independent profiles Celia Paul, a painter who for years has lived in the shadow of her former lover Lucian Freud, and who has worked tirelessly in pursuit of her craft, including sending her young son to live with his grandmother so that she could continue her work.  “An artist has to be very selfish,” she says. “Being ruthless has been painful at times but my son is very close to me, and he has a very close relationship with his grandmother.” (more…)

Writer Paul Levy is in The Telegraph this week, writing on the unique experience of seeing his own portrait put up for auction later this month at Christie’s in London.  Levy was the subject of two portraits painted by artist Howard Hodgkin, one of which led to a bizarre encounter with Charles Saatchi, the original purchaser of one of the works.  “I greeted an old friend who was then secretary of the RA,” Levy writes.  “He was talking to someone vaguely familiar, who turned to me and said: ‘You don’t recognise me. But you’re the first thing I see every morning.’ That is how I learnt that my portrait hung in Charles Saatchi’s bedroom.” (more…)

Glenn Brown, Cactus Land (2012), via Osman Can Yerebakan

In his first solo show in New York in seven years, Glenn Brown delivers a large scale body of work, focusing on sculptural works besides his widely recognized paintings. Palatially spread across Gagosian Gallery’s twenty-first street location with an array of exuberant colors, Brown’s selection of artistic references in this exhibition include nods to Rococo, Baroque and Mannerist techniques, alongside the likes of Frank Auerbach and Pieter Bruegel. (more…)

Newly released documents in a civil court case against Ann Freedman have shown that one of the forged Jackson Pollock paintings purchased by the former Knoedler Gallery director herself had misspelled that name of the artist as “Pollok.”  “Freedman, Knoedler and their so-called ‘experts’ claim not to have seen forgeries even when it was literally (mis)spelled out for them,” lawyer John Cahill quipped in an email to the New York Times. (more…)

Richard Prince, Cheese & Crackers (2008), via Art Observed

Showing for the first time since Richard Prince settled his lawsuit with photographer Patrick Cariou over several of the source photographs, Gagosian’s uptown location is currently presenting Canal Zone, the series of photo and paint collages that sat at the center of the legal dispute for the first time since 2008. (more…)

MOCA is drawing criticism this week, following the loan of a Frank Stella painting to a Culver City art gallery, which many have called a conflict of interest.  The work Ctesiphon I, was loaned to Honor Fraser Gallery with approval of  the Acquisition and Collection Committee.  “MOCA is committed to loan artworks to encourage public enjoyment of objects,” MOCA said in an official statement. “MOCA lends to commercial art galleries only on a case-by-case basis.” (more…)

An Henri Matisse painting from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt has been confirmed as Nazi loot, the Art Newspaper reports.  A task-force has uncovered that the 1921 work Femme Assise was taken from the collection of the Paris-based dealer Paul Rosenberg.  “Even though it could not be documented with absolute certainty how the work came into [Cornelius Gurlitt’s father] Hildebrand Gurlitt’s possession, the task force has concluded that the work is Nazi loot and was taken from its rightful owner Paul Rosenberg,” says researcher Ingeborg Berggreen Merkel. (more…)

Over £50 million worth of works by Cy Twombly have been donated to the Tate by the Cy Twombly foundation, ranking as one of the most valuable gifts the museum has ever received.  “It ranks alongside Rothko’s gift of the Seagram mural paintings in 1970 and together with Twombly’s cycle of paintings The Four Seasons 1993-5, acquired in 2002,” Tate Director Sir Nicholas Serota said of the acquisition. “His gives an enduring place in London to the work of one of the great painters of the second half of the 20th century.” (more…)

Martin Kippenberger, ab in die Ecke und Schäm Dich (Martin, Into the Corner, You Should be Ashamed of Yourself) (1989) via Osman Can Yerebakan

Paris was where the artists that planted the roots of Modernism in late 19th century. New York on the other hand emerged in the middle of 20th century as the destination for a large group of international artists as well as those from all around the United States who expanded notions of material and practice as the 20th century waned. Today, cities like Berlin, Tokyo and Sao Paulo are some of the top centers for artists to create and be a part of a community.  No Problem: Cologne/New York 1984-1989, a group show currently on view at David Zwirner, is presenting a transatlantic approach to the 80’s art scene through the works of twenty-two artists from Germany and the United States.  Underlying the dense creative vibrance of Cologne on one side of the Atlantic and New York on the other side, the exhibition presents a concentrated look at the productive interaction between the two cities, bringing together notable names that shaped the artistic nature of the era. (more…)

Yves Klein, Painting of fire (1961), via Art Observed

Skarstedt Gallery has joined the crowd in Chelsea this month, opening its  new W. 21st Street space with a selection of unorthodox paintings by Yves Klein and Andy Warhol, created using human urine, oxidized metallic paints, water and fire.  Spread among the high-ceilinged rooms of the new space, the show welcomes an intuitive look into the pair’s interests not only in non-art materials and processes, but particularly those closest to the human condition.

Andy Warhol, Oxidation Painting (diptych) (1978), via Skarstedt (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…)

A Francis Bacon portrait of Lucian Freud, formerly owned by renowned children’s writer Roald Dahl is set to hit the auction block this month at Christie’s in London, estimated to sell for up to £12m at auction.  “Both were enigmatic outsiders who were hard to pin down and liked to work in small, claustrophobic spaces,” says Christie’s Francis Outred.  “Both also aroused controversy and fascination in their public and private lives.” (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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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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The Guardian reports on Gallery A, a little known and just recently refurbished exhibition space located inside London’s National Gallery, where a number of masterworks not normally shown in the main rooms are kept for public viewing.  The new exhibition spaces in Gallery A have been drastically reworked, allowing visitors a more relaxed, expansive viewing atmosphere. (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…)