The Art Newspaper reviews the case of Pierre Le Guennec, a retired electrician accused of stealing and hiding a vast collection of works by his former employer Pablo Picasso before attempting to sell them in 2010.  Mr. Le Guennec has been ordered to appear in French court in February of next year on charges of receiving stolen goods.   (more…)

The Telegraph takes a special look inside the home of late painter Lucian Freud’s home in Kensington, where the artist spent the last twenty years of life.  “He was a good cook, very fond of game, but he never ate carbs,” says former assistant David Dawson. He knew he needed to be light on his feet.” (more…)

Paul McCarthy, WS SC (Installation View), all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Currently on through Saturday at Hauser & Wirth’s London exhibition space is an exhibition of new paintings by multimedia artist, sculptor, and performance artist Paul McCarthy, marking the artist’s first exhibition devoted entirely to painting since the 1980s.  Continuing his work with the narratives of Snow White, McCarthy delves deeper into the formats and genres of Hollywood film production.

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Karel Appel, Big Bird Flying Over the City (1951), all images courtesy Blum & Poe

Dutch painter Karel Appel was born in Amsterdam in 1921, and worked in Europe for much of his life, passing away less than a decade ago at the age of 85. During the time of the German occupation, Appel studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and eventually left home due to his parents’ disapproval of his decision to be a painter. Perhaps as a result, Appel’s career can’t be defined by any singular characteristic other than discontinuity, and an interest in opposing expectations of normality.

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A new conservation approach is being used to return Mark Rothko’s badly damaged Harvard Murals series to public view, works that have sat in storage for years to avoid any additional damage to their already badly faded surfaces.  Using a series of colored light projections, the works will restore portions of the surface that had faded from view.  “Where’s the line between what is Rothko and what is the projection?” says Mary Schneider Enriquez, the museum’s associate curator of modern and contemporary art. “What is the original work of art when you project light on it? Is it the same work of art? As a teaching museum within Harvard, that’s the kind of discussion we want to generate.”  (more…)

Jenny Holzer, Presently in the United States (2014) via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

On view now at Cheim & Read through October 25th, 2014, Dust Paintings is a series of recent paintings by Jenny Holzer, an artist known primarily for her use of language and political investigation. Culled from the ongoing use of political documents from 2004, months after the United States and United Kingdom instigated the invasion of Iraq, Holzer makes a comprehensive “map”, of sorts, from linguistics to action; from intention to execution, stressing importance and the power of language, while providing a kind of physical and aesthetic proof of this idea.

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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…)

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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Sterling Ruby, SP288 (2014), Courtesy Sterling Ruby Studio and Gagosian Gallery.

Declared ‘one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century’ by Roberta Smith, Sterling Ruby has become one of the major fixtures among West Coast artists after leaving the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 2005. The L.A. based artist, who is known for his large scale ceramic or bronze sculptures and ambitious installations challenging the limits of artistic production (his first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth was on view in Chelsea this spring after the artist joined the gallery roster), is presenting VIVIDS, his spray paint works on canvas at Gagosian Hong Kong.  This exhibition is another addition to Ruby’s recent series of projects in Asia, which started with an exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo, and will continue with the Gwangju and Taipei biennials, alongside an upcoming exhibition at the Ullens Center in Beijing. (more…)

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…)

Gerhard Richter is interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the artist opens a new show of works at Marian Goodman in London.  “Abstract pictures do indeed show something, they just show things that don’t exist,” he says. “But they still follow the same requirements as figurative works: they need a setup, structure. You need to be able to look at it and say, ‘It’s almost something.’ But it’s actually representing nothing. It pulls feelings out of you, even as it’s showing you a scene that technically isn’t there.” (more…)

Helen Frankenthaler, Cool Summer (1962), © 2014 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo by Rob McKeever

On view at Gagosian Gallery in New York is an exhibition of work by American abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, focusing on a period of her career (1962-1963) in which the artist focused primarily on composing with color and tone rather than formal lines and shapes.  The display will remain on view through October 18th. (more…)

Hermann Nitsch,Kreuzwegstation (Station of the Cross) (1961) at Hauser and Wirth, via Art Observed

The Viennese Actionist movement was one of the more visceral post-war collectives that sprung up from the war-torn landscape of mid-20th Century Europe.  The group of Austrian artists (while claiming they were never affiliated officially), among them Otto Mühl, Günter Brus, and Rudolph Schwarzkogler, combined disturbing and often surreal imagery with a ritualistic approach to art making, creating elaborate pieces that often involved flayed animal carcasses, body parts, and bucket upon bucket of blood.

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The Guardian profiles painter Eric Fischl’s recent series of works documenting the peculiar, occasionally surreal landscapes and politics of the modern art fair circuit.  “The big collectors do this kind of speed-dating thing,” the artist tells The Guardian. “They try to get in and out before anyone buys what they are after and certainly before the hoi polloi gets to look. And then you’ve got people who are just there for the social scene. So you have people texting or not paying any attention at all. But when you stop the moment you can see this weird world that is taking place. They are being regarded and judged by the work itself in some ways.” (more…)

Ed Ruscha is featured on NOWNESS today, part of the publication’s Getting There series, in which artists take an interviewer on a drive through a certain area.  For this edition, Ruscha drove interviewer Matthew Donaldson through his home city of Los Angeles, charting the shifting landscapes and sounds of the California city.  “More than the changes of Los Angeles, I notice when things don’t change,” he says. (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…)

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…)

A painting by Edward Degas, valued at around $7.6 million, has been stolen from the home of an elderly Greek Cypriot.   Ballerina Adjusting Her Slipper was stolen Monday in Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and police have already arrested one man in connection with the case. (more…)

An iconic still life by Vincent Van Gogh, painted only a few years before the end of the artist’s life, is anticipated to sell for $30 to $50 million at Sotheby’s in New York this November, a figure that indicates strong competition for the work.  The piece could very well see fierce bidding to break the artist’s record of $82.5 million, set in 1990.  (more…)

Painter Chris Ofili is profiled in the New Yorker this week, in advance of the artist’s upcoming retrospective at the New Museum.  “Painting is a kind of pursuit, a hunt,” he says. “I think it’s more interesting when you can corral your subjects, instead of just going right to them. Enjoy and engage with the process—you want to keep going into the unknown, to the point where you don’t think about how long it’s going to take to get there.” (more…)

Tomma Abts, Feke (2013), via Art Observed

Currently on view at David Zwirner’s 519 19th Street Space in New York, Tomma Abts is presenting a body of new paintings and drawings, a new entry in her ongoing practice involving flux, change and construction over the course of the compositional process.  Under formal analysis, Abts’s work is rooted in the history of 20th Century abstraction, colorful shapes and lines converging in a studious and well-executed canvas that exploits its own relations to its surrounding space as much as the picture plane itself, but upon closer inspection, the works on view here often offer a much deeper narrative.   (more…)

Gert & Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2014), all images via Maureen Paley

In their second solo exhibition at Maureen Paley, Gert & Uwe Tobias have brought a new selection of their mesmerizing woodcuts and collages. With a collection of fantastical characters printed on dark backgrounds, the woodcuts exemplify the tension between the fanciful and the terrifying present in fairy tales and folklore.  These passed-down stories, as told in countless variations, have a tone that is at once childlike and unsettling, a contrast that the Tobias brothers exploit in their work. (more…)

Bloomberg takes a look this week at the trend towards artists painting luxury automobiles, profiling specially commissioned projects by Frank Stella, Jeff Koons, and others, and investigating the economic versus aesthetic values that the work brings up.  “It’s not a given that because it’s a Calder or a Warhol car it’ll automatically get a huge premium — that has not been proven by the market,” says luxury auto insurance head McKeel Hagerty. “An art car raises more questions about the real value of the car than it answers.” (more…)