President François Hollande is set to inaugurate the first Pierre Soulages museum this week, established near the artist’s hometown in the South of France.  “One of the objectives of the museum is to present a variety of works but also a fluid aspect [of Soulages’s canon],” says historian and chief museum curator Benoit Decron says. “I’ll turn to a network of collectors and [will make] acquisitions backed by public and private bodies.”  (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…)

As Brazil prepares to host the World Cup this summer, Brazilian artists Os Gemeos have created a custom design for the plane used by the Brazilian team, featuring the pair’s signature style.  “Everyone has thought about walking on clouds. And this is only possible with a plane and faces painted on it,” says Otavio, one half of Os Gemeos. (more…)

Zhang Huan, Spring Poppy Field No. 34 (2014), via Pace Gallery London

One of the most influential and prolific contemporary artists from China, Zhang Huan has worked across a wide spectrum of practices including performance, installation, photography and sculpture, reflecting his personal history as well as the collective consciousness of the present society.  As a body artist, Huan has delivered performances in which he pushed the limits of physical and psychological endurance, echoing the issues such as war, social injustice and alienation while simultaneously commenting on concepts of spirituality and transcendence. Using his own body as his main tool along with different materials such as blood, meat, brushwood and live animals, he has given impressive and challenging performances in different art institutions around the world, provoking the viewers to contemplate on issues that are often ignored and avoided.

Zhang Huan, Spring Poppy Field No.14 (detail) (2014), via Pace Gallery London (more…)

Pierre Soulages is profiled in The New York Times this week, exploring the artist’s 60+ year career, and his position as one of the most successful artists in France, and his continuous output, even as he approaches his 95th birthday.  “I’ve decided to lose count of his age,” says dealer Dominique Lévy said. “I always feel he’s challenging me and pushing me and such a force of nature.” (more…)

Peter Doig, Burger King (1984), all images courtesy Michael Werner Gallery

On view at Michael Werner Gallery in London is a show from Scottish painter Peter Doig that explores his earliest works, even ones from his student days at St. Martin’s College in London, when he was still finding his voice as a painter.  Included alongside some of the artist’s most iconic and important artworks from his first years of widespread success, the show is an intriguing study into Doig’s continually shifting and specific stylistic tendencies.

Peter Doig: Early Works (Installation View)

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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…)

Sherrie Levine, Bird Mask (2014) via Osman Can Yerebakan

Paula Cooper Gallery is currently presenting new works by one of the most iconic artists of The Pictures Generation, Sherrie Levine. The artist has been reinterpreting the set notions of ownership and authenticity in creative work for more than 30 years, while simultaenously commenting on the canonization process of art history.  Inspired by the pioneer Constructivist Aleksander Rodchenko’s three panel monochrome from 1921, Levine’s new exhibition, Red Yellow Blue, refers to the reduction of a painting to its most minimalistic forms and fundamental colors.  One of the most notable artists of a generation engaged with appropriation and representation of consumeristic and media-centric production, Levine’s works in the exhibition investigate the essence of art-making, and its creative limitations with reference to certain precedents. Regarding art history as a circular form instead of a linear one, Levine goes back to the roots of art production to redefine set concepts on issues such as death and mysticism throughout the works on view. (more…)

The New York Times looks at artist Spencer Finch’s special commission for the 9/11 Museum in New York, which opens this week to family of the disaster’s victims.  The memorial seeks to recreate the crystal clear blue the marked the sky on the date of the attacks on the United States.  “It was a risk, certainly, to do,” said Paula Grant Berry, lost her husband in the attack and serves on the Sept. 11 Memorial Foundation’s Board. “Even when we tested it, we never really knew what it was going to look like.” But she added: “I got to see it early and I became a real advocate. I think it’s extraordinary, and it’s so needed, and it brings in the light of day on so many levels and in so many dimensions.” (more…)

In lieu of paying an inheritance tax, the estate of Lucian Freud has donated a selection of 40 works by Frank Auerbach has been donated to the United Kingdom, covering an approximate £16,250,000 tax bill.  The works will be divided into 11 groups and distributed by Arts Council England to various public collections. (more…)

Railway operator Amtrak has announced a public art commission with artist Katharina Grosse, designed to combat urban blight along the company’s rail lines.  The Psychylustro project has seen a group workers painting buildings in Northern Philadelphia with an enormous spray gun, shooting streams of house paint on a series of buildings.“It’s a very different understanding of where a painting sits,” Grosse says. “You just get a glimpse of something rather large, it’s just touching the warehouse there on that little edge. The painting itself is far bigger, it’s maybe in the sky but there is no surface where it can land.” (more…)

Andy Warhol sells at Christie’s, via Art Observed

The contemporary art auctions this week were set off on a bounding start last night, as Christie’s opened its new auction event “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday” to thunderous results, capping a 35 lot auction that sold all but one work, and achieved a final sales tally of $134 million, as well as a number of world auction records for the artists on sale.

Martin Kippenberger, Untitled (1988), via Christie’s (more…)

Artist Mark Grotjahn is profiled in the New York Times this week, reviewing some of his recent works, and his recently opened show of Butterfly paintings on view at Blum and Poe’s New York space, and a larger show of masks, sculptures and other works at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.  “I think the masks are fascinating objects and also important as painting surfaces that allow for tremendous freedom and experimentation,” says Nasher director Jeremy Strick. “You could see it as a way for Mark to give himself license to do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do, to paint in different ways.” (more…)

A lost Van Gogh has been discovered by tax collectors in Spain, hidden away in a bank deposit box.  The work, Cypress, Sky and Country, is dated 1889, and has three seals of authenticity.  It was last on view at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum over 50 years ago, and an investigation is underway as to how the work may have found its way into deposit box. (more…)

A Mondrian held in private hands for over 50 years will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s New York this week, estimated at about $30 million, and anticipated to potentially break the artist’s record at auction.  “It’s from what is considered to be Mondrian’s best period, in the 20s,” says Helena Newman, co-head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby’s.  “By which time he has developed this very iconic and unique style which is so beautifully epitomised in this work. (more…)

The Guardian profiles downtown art icon Dan Colen, in the run-up to the artist’s retrospective at The Brant Foundation, which opens this week, reappraising the artist’s career in terms of his material and technical concerns.  “I’m trying to equalise the world to say there is no high and low,” Colen says.  “People have often thought I was fucking with them when really I was just trying to share that sentiment.” (more…)

Nate Lowman, This Is Your Brain On Drugs Again, via Art Observed

Nate Lowman’s current solo show is notable in its subtlety.  Once a maker of enormous reproductions of vinyl, consumer-grade bullet hole decals and canvases covered with smiley-faces, Lowman’s new work currently on view at Maccarone Gallery takes a different tack entirely.  Lightly painted, cut canvases and pixelated cut-outs dot the works, rendering soft, pastel forms that mark a notable break from the often harsh images of urban decay he so often selected as the subject of his past practice.

Nate Lowman, Rave the Painforest (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

Maria Lassnig, via Art Info

Austrian painter Maria Lassnig has passed away at the age of 94.

Born in 1919, Lassnig’s career spanned over 50 years, and her work traces a long and intricate relationship with the history of painting and abstraction, moving from her abstract experessionist works in the 1950’s to her pioneering style of vivid color and dramatic self-portraiture, often utilizing visceral body positions and frank, revealing depictions of herself.  “Her art meant everything to her and she sacrificed herself, family, relationships… she an extremely focused and extreme personality that way,” dealer Iwan Wirth told ArtInfo.  “She was very headstrong, very critical of photography, fighting photography her whole life and she had no mercy when it came other painters.”

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Portrait of Dirck van Os, a 1658 painting long discredited as a Rembrandt copy, has been returned to public view at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha as an officially authenticated portrait by the Dutch master.  “People here sensed the underlying quality,” says Joslyn executive director, Jack Becker, “but you need the scholarly community to rehabilitate a picture like this.” (more…)

Claude Monet, Nymphéas (1907), via Christie’s

As the art world turns its attention to New York this week during the hustle and bustle of Frieze Week, Sotheby’s and Christie’s will hold their annual spring auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art, boasting an impressive collection of works that speaks to the current strength of the auction market, and the enthusiasm of its buyers.  The competition between the two auction houses has remained fierce over the past year, even while Sotheby’s has fought off advances from Daniel Loeb and his Third Point team.  Now, with an agreement between the parties reached just this morning, the auction house will turn its full attention to its upcoming sales, and the feverish sales estimates some are predicting for the pair of auctions early this week.

Pablo Picasso, Portrait de femme (Dora Maar) (1942), via Christie’s

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Alex Katz, Nabil’s Loft (1976), all images courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

On view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin, is a retrospective of paintings by American figurative and Pop artist Alex Katz.  The monographic exhibition is composed of around one hundred works, including paintings from the 60’s and 70’s, as well as more recent works through to the present. The exhibition will remain on view through July 12, 2014.

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Sigmar Polke, Untitled (Heron) (1966), via Michael Werner

Presented for the first time in almost twenty years, Sigmar Polke’s works on paper are currently installed at Michael Werner Gallery. Including a number  drawings that have never been exhibited before, Sigmar Polke: Early Works on Paper suggests a distinctive look at the German master’s less known drawings, ink compositions and sketched out ideas, through a collection of nearly a hundred works created by the artist in the 1960’s. (more…)

Frances Stark (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York is an exhibition featuring new work from Jennifer Bornstein, Judith Bernstein and Frances Stark.  While the work presented by each of these three artists is diverse in their concerns, they all possess a monumentality fitting to the large-scale environs of GBE.

Judith Bernstein via Art Observed (more…)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, 2555-2012 (2012), via Art Observed

At just 28 years old, Korakrit Arunanondchai (“Krit” for short) has already compiled an impressive aesthetic vocabulary for himself.  Mixing his own blend of aesthetic signifiers (denim, flowers, musical tropes, performative hip-hop) with a variety of media including painting, video, sculpture and performance, to create a fluid, intertextual universe.  It’s just this universe that dominates the artist’s first exhibition at MoMA PS1 this spring, a single room affair that culls from the artist’s already dense body of work to extract a series of focused themes and subjects in the artist’s young career.

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Untitled (Muen Kuey No. 17) (2013), via Art Observed (more…)