Paul McCarthy, Dreaming, 2005, Painted silicone, t-shirt, artificial hair, plastic, styrofoam, garden chair, 180 x 62 x 71 cm. All images via Fondazione Nicola Trussardi.

Fondazione Nicola Trussardi has invited artist Paul McCarthy to exhibit in Palazzo Citterio, an extraordinary space that has been closed to the public for over 25 years. The building was originally conceived to house the extension of the Pinacoteca di Brera, and is the property of the Italian government. This show presents viewers with an opportunity to view McCarthy’s work in a unique architectural setting, and also marks the premier of Pig Island, a piece which McCarthy has been working on since 2003. Over a long and distinguished career, McCarthy has created his own satirical language of fairy tales and nightmares that challenge social conventions, and test the emotional limits of the viewer. As the press release tactfully explains, “McCarthy’s videos, performances, installations and sculptures transport visitors to a universe that combines Hollywood glamour with the dark side of the American dream.”

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Cover of the catalog for last night’s Contemporary Art auction at Phillips de Pury & Co showing Thomas Schutte’s Doppelkopf (1994), via Phillipsdepury.com

Last night’s Contemporary Art auction at Phillips de Pury & Co reinforced uncertainties regarding the present state of the Contemporary Art market, as the sale earned just £3,963,450 against the pre-sale estimate of £6,075,000-8,575,000 (totals realized include buyer’s premium, estimates do not). Of 45 lots offered only 24 found buyers, leaving 47% of the lots unsold. For comparison, last year’s Contemporary Art Auction at Phillips earned £5.1 million.

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Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ (or, The Kiss of Judas) 1573-1602, which was stolen two years ago and was recovered recently by German and Ukranian authorities.

German police announced Monday that a painting by Italian Renaissance master Caravaggio, rumored to be worth $100 million, was recovered after being nabbed from a Ukranian museum two years ago. According to the Associated Press, four suspects (three Ukranian nationals and one Russian) were arrested in Berlin as they attempted to sell the painting. Twenty additional suspects were arrested in the Ukraine in connection with the theft.

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Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Oxidation Painting (in 12 parts), 1978. Acrylic and urine in linen, 48 x 49 in. (121.9 x 124.5 cm) All images courtesy of: © 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum is ‘Andy Warhol: The Last Decade’, a survey of the artist’s works from the late 1970s until his death in 1987. The exhibition was organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and its tour schedule includes the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Although Warhol is best known for his works from the 60s – soup cans, Marilyn Monroe portraits, and other iconic images that have become symbols of pop culture as a whole – but Warhol’s final decade was his most prolific. The 50 some works included in this show give a broad overview of the variety and scope of these late years. By the end of his career  the art community perceived Warhol as an overly eccentric washed-up artist. Over 20 years later, and with the benefit of hindsight, ‘The Last Decade’ proves that these final years gave rise to works worthy of both appreciation and admiration.

Andy Warhol Self-Portrait (Strangulation), 1978. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, ten parts, 16 x 13 in. (40.6 x 33 cm) each.

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Sotheby’s Evening Contemporary Art Auction in Progress, via Sothebys.com

With the audience being described as “dazed” and “fatigued,” excitement was sparse at yesterday evening’s Contemporary Art auction at Sotheby’s in London. The sale realized a total of £41,091,800, well within the £32-52 million estimate (total realized includes buyer’s premium, estimates do not).  The sale had a sell-through rate of 83% by lot and 87.3% by value, while 45.4% of lots sold above their high estimates.

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Yves Klein, MG 42, 1960 (estimate £200,000-300,000, realized £481,250), via Sothebys.com

The headlining work, Yves Klein’s RE 49, sold for just over £6 million (estimate £4.5-6.5 million) after three minutes of bidding from four interested buyers.  The other Klein canvas for sale yesterday evening, MG 42, realized a price of £481,250, above its pre-sale estimate of £200,000-300,000. Though the works performed reasonably well, there is still concern that the market might be tiring of them. “There are too many Kleins and Fontanas in these auctions,” Dusseldorf-based art adviser Jorg-Michael Bertz said, in conversation with Bloomberg reporter Scott Reyburn. “We need a rest from them.”

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Tanguy/ Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction, Installation view. Image via L & M Arts.

In 1942, Peggy Guggenheim wore one earring by Yves Tanguy and one by Alexander Calder to the opening of Art of This Century; a year later, Pierre Matisse presented the artists in adjacent rooms of his gallery.  In the 1940s, critics began to notice the aesthetic likeness of the artists’ work, including mutual biomorphic designs in paintings and sculptures.  The colloquy and stimulus inspired by the pair’s mutual Connecticut community is explored in this extensive, two-floor exhibition.  Tanguy/ Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction at L & M Arts celebrates the creative relationship between these two artists, presenting their works from the 1930s-1950s alongside photographs and previously unpublished documents that testify to the collaborative aspect of their rapport and seamlessly harmonizing abstraction and Surrealism.
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Being, George Condo (2008). All images via Galerie Andrea Caratsch.

On view through July 30th at Galerie Andrea Caratsch in Zurich is an exhibition of sculptures and silkscreen paintings by New York artist George Condo. ‘The Lost Civilization’ refers to the group of nine sculptures cast in bronze and finished with a white patina, giving the works the appearance of ancient sculptures recently recovered from the ground. Included in the show is series The Birth, The Triumph and The Death of Insanity, along with six busts and five paintings which further exemplify Condo’s unique vision.

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Kathy Grayson mid-smooch. Image courtesy Taylor Derwin for Art Observed.

Currently on view at the new art outfit, The Hole, on 104 Greene St. in Soho is “Not Quite Open for Business.” The show, which opened to much hype last night, runs until August 21st. The Hole is run by former directors at the legendary and now-closed Deitch Projects, Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman, in collaboration with former Executive Director at Deitch Projects, Suzanne Geiss. With the gallant goal of filling a hole in the downtown community, they are off to a running start.

The first exhibition is called “Not Quite Open for Business,” a conceptual group show of unfinished art, unfinished poems, and unfinished symphonies. The installation is designed by Taylor McKimens and the show includes over twenty artists from the community.

Left: Ben Jones, Unfinished Video, 2010, single channel DVD, edition of 5. Right: Kunle, Vomit, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

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Yves Klein, Re 49, 1961 via Sothebys.com

Expectations are high for this week’s Contemporary Art auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London.  The auctions, which will take place between June 28^th and July 1st, will feature sought after works by several important artists, including Yves Klein, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Lucio Fontana, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.  The strength of the works being sold is the result of buoyed seller confidence following a recent series of record-breaking auction results, such as the sale of a Picasso for $106.5 million in May at Christie’s in New York and 43.2 million euros for a Modigliani sculpture this month at Christie’s in Paris.  Sotheby’s evening auction carries a low estimate of £38.3 million for 53 works, while the Christie’s Post War and Contemporary evening sale carries a low estimate of £40.9 million for 63 lots.  Last summer’s Contemporary Art sale at Sotheby’s, which was expected to bring between £19.8-27.4 million, brought in £25.5 million for 40 lots. The comparable Christie’s auction last year brought just over £19 million for 40 lots with a low estimate of £17.4 million.

At Sotheby’s, all eyes will be on an Yves Klein sponge painting from 1961 titled Re 49 and dedicated to the artist Charles Wilp.  This large-scale work comes from the collection of the Munich-based HypoVereinsbank and is estimated to bring £4.5-6.5 million.

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Alice Neel, photographed by Sam Brody courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery

“In The Company of Alice” is currently on view at Victoria Miro Gallery. This is a group exhibition of paintings honoring the life and work of Alice Neel. Each of the painters participating in the show drew inspiration from their admiration for Neel’s work. Some of the artists in the show often create portraits–but for others this is a new endeavor, and their very first portraits are being shown in this exhibition. “In the Company of Alice” coincides with a retrospective of Neel’s work at Whitechapel Gallery, opening on July 8^th. Studying Alice Neel’s work as a point of departure for modern and contemporary portraiture, “In the Company of Alice” aims to broaden the viewer’s perspective of figuration and portraiture. The exhibition also brings forth the importance of  these modes of practice in relation to contemporary art.

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Alice Neel, Richard, 1973, courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery

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Drawing Restraint 15 (2007) by Matthew Barney, Photo: Neville Wakefield, via Schaulager

Currently on view at Schaulager in Basel is “Drawing Restraint” presenting sixteen performances by American artist Matthew Barney. In each enactment the artist leaves traces in an atmosphere of self-inflicted psychological and physical restraints. The result of such performances are sculptures, vitrines, drawings and videos all of which are juxtaposed against North Renaissance art.

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Rivane Neuenschwander, I Wish Your Wish, 2003, installation view (detail) © New Museum, all installation photos by Jordana Swan

Earlier this week at the New Museum, Rivane Neuenschwander’s first American museum retrospective, “A Day Like Any Other”, opened, finally giving the States the opportunity to view the internationally acclaimed work of this Brazilian-born artist.  Art Observed was on site for the three-floor opening, which spans a decade of Neuenschwander’s refined and poetic presentations on how she understands the world.

Rivane Neuenschwander, Rain Rains, 2002, installation view

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Picasso’s Portrait d’Angel Fernandez de Soto sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for £34,761,250 – the 2nd highest price for a work of art sold by Christie’s in London (est. £30-40million)

Last night Christie’s held London’s biggest ever art auction when 46 Impressionist and Modern works racked up £153 million ($227 million), but the total was off from the pre-sale estimate of £164-231 million. While nearly quadrupling the anemic $60.4 million brought in by Christie’s at the same sale last June, tonight’s results suggest that while the art market may have recovered, pricing points are still a moving target. The sale was dominated by UK and European bidding – that includes Russia and former Eastern Bloc countries – which bought 55 percent of the lots sold, the U.S. accounted for 40 percent, and Asia for the remaining five percent. The sale saw only 46 of the 62 lots on offer sell, for a buy-in rate of 25 percent by lot and just 26 percent by value. Eight lots sold for over five million pounds and 31 broke the million-pound mark (37 works sold over $ 1million).

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Untitled (Throat) (1991) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, via Fondation Beyeler

Currently on view at the Fondation Beyeler is “Specific Objects without Specific Form,” part of a traveling retrospective featuring principal works by influential Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996). Among the principal works on display are the artist’s piles of candy and paper stacks. Viewers are allowed to enact with such works by taking away a small part. Also exhibited are a group of lesser known paintings, sculptures, photographic works and public sculptures.

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Self-Portrait with a Palette, Edouard Manet sold for a record £22,441,250 (est. £20-30 million) Image via Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern sale last night marked a sluggish start to the summer auction season in London as sixteen of the 51 lots offered failed to find buyers. In percentage terms, 31 percent went unsold by lot and 16 percent by value. The sale totaled £112,101,350 ($165,282,230) – surpassing the low end of the pre-sale estimate of £101 million ($150 million), but far off the £148 million ($220 million) high estimate. The total is the third-highest ever achieved for an Impressionist and Modern evening sale at Sotheby’s in London and stands in stark contrast to the £33.5 million realized in June 2009. In another encouraging sign of a surging market, nineteen lots fetched over a million pounds, and of those, three made over ten million pounds. In all, four artist records were set. The sale was topped by the cover-lot Edouard Manet‘s Self-Portrait with a Palette, which reportedly sold to the New York based dealer Frank Giraud for a record £22,441,250 ($33,087,379). The previous Manet record was set at Christie’s when La Rue Mosnier Aux Drapeaux sold for $26.4 million in 1989. The work, consigned by hedge-fund billionaire Steven A Cohen, had been estimated to fetch between £20 million and £30 million.

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Liam Gillick, Bundeskunsthalle installation view, 2010. All images via Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn.

Currently on view at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany, are works by British artist Liam Gillick, in a show enigmatically entitled “One Long Walk… Two Short Piers.”  The exhibit includes works produced by Gillick over the last two decades, and presents itself as a comprehensive survey exhibition of Gillick’s work.  Gillick’s work has often been the subject of such retrospectives: this exhibit is very much in the same vein (albeit on a smaller scale) as Gillick’s mid-career retrospective entitled, “Three Perspectives and a Short Scenario,” which traveled internationally to the Kunsthalle Zurich, the Witt de Withe Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the Kunstverein Munchen, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, from spring 2008 to fall 2009.  The amount of attention paid to the entirety of Gillick’s oeuvre points to his status as one of the leading conceptual artist working today.

Liam Gillick, Bundeskunsthalle installation view, 2010

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Ugo Rondinone with two of his works in lower Manhattan, 2007, photo by Charlie Samuels via artnet

Currently on view at Aargauer Kunsthaus, in conjunction with the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, is “The Night of Lead”, the first comprehensive exhibition of Udo Rondinone’s oevre in his Swiss homeland in eleven years.  New and recent works of painting, small and environmental sculpture, video and sound installation cover two floors of the gallery with a surrealist sensibility that speaks more to a tone of poetic metaphor than to a grope toward the unconscious.

Ugo Rondinone, The twenty-third hour of the poem, 2010, wax cast, pigments, 55 x 32 x 32 inches, © Ugo Rondinone via Aargauer Kunsthaus

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Nymphéas, Claude Monet (est. £30 – 40million)

The June sales in London are packed with potentially record-breaking Impressionist and modern works that are expected to fetch a combined total of £300-450 million. If the pre-sale estimates are realized, these the most lucrative series of auctions ever held in London, easily surpassing the £298 million realized in June 2008 before the global economic meltdown during which the June sales achieved just £96 million. Giovanna Bertazzoni, Director and Head of Impressionist and Modern art at Christie’s, London has noted the recent confidence renewed in vendors in light of the the strong results witnessed at auction over the last year, “we are witnessing a great willingness from clients to consign works of art of the highest quality. There is a fierce international demand in the art market, particularly for the rarest and the best, and the market itself is now truly global as illustrated at our auction in New York in May where we saw bidding from Russia, China and the Middle East, as well as from Europe and the Americas.”

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Portrait of Ángel Fernández de Soto, Pablo Picasso (est. £30-40million)

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Quilt by Alexandre da Cunha, and Six Billboards by Angus Fairhust, Art Basel.  Image via Art Daily, AP Photo/Keystone/Georgios Kefalas.

Yesterday marked the end of the most highly-attended Art Basel to date. The 41st annual contemporary art fair boasted 306 galleries from 36 countries, and AO was on site to peruse the work of some 2,5000 artists.  62,500 dealers, collectors, curators, high-profile shoppers, artists, and art appreciators navigated installations, browsed gallery booths, mingled, and enjoyed the city of Basel.  Artists, established and newcomers both, showcased works ranging from Polaroids to performance pieces, paintings to videos, sculptures to large-scale installations.  A social and teeming affair with an obvious commercial edge, Basel’s sales were optimistic.  Picasso, Warhol, Prince, Hirst, de Kooning, Pollock, and other similarly established artists reigned supreme as the focus of this year’s event.  Franck Giraud, a New York dealer, spoke to the New York Times about the lack of prominently featured up-and-comers: “Is it because that’s what the market wants, or is it because dealers didn’t want to take risks? I think it was a bit of both.” Nonetheless, certain galleries used Basel as a platform to introduce new artists and show off their latest signings.

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Robert Morris, Untitled, 2010. Felt with steel brackets. All images courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery.

Currently on display at Sonnabend Gallery are works by Robert Morris.  These include for the most part reiterations of works he has explored at various points in his career, such as the Felt Pieces, which he began making in 1967, and the Blind Time drawings, which he executes blindfolded following certain self-imposed rules, and which he began making in 1973.  Two films, Neo-Classic and Slow Motion, made in 1971 and 1969 respectively, are also on display.  Morris played an important role in defining the principles of Minimalism, a practical field which he also endued with a new softness and sensuousness, most notably with these works in felt.

Robert Morris, Sonnabend Gallery installation view.

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Damien Hirst and Michael Joo, 2010 © Damien Hirst/Hirst Holdings Limited and Michael Joo 2010 via Other Criteria, photo by Johnny Shand Kydd.

On view at Haunch of Venison, Berlin, “Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?” is the first joint exhibition of Damien Hirst and Michael Joo, two artists whose often-controversial mediums (animals, a diamond-encrusted, platinum skull, urine) have offered convenient comparisons since the late 1980s.  This exhibition displays both new and canonical works in a manner that allows the works’ conceptual interests to flourish, despite—and in conversation with—their formal similarities.

Michael Joo, Improved Rack (Elk #18), 2010, antler, stainless steel, 72 x 115 x 37 inches © Michael Joo, via Haunch of Venison

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Louise Bourgeois, Fragile Goddess, 2002, cloth, 31.7 x 12.7 x 15.2 cm, courtesy of The Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg Museum.

The Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, Berlin’s museum of Surrealist art, is currently holding its first temporary exhibition co-curated by Udo Kittelmann and Kyllikki Zacharias. Kittelmann had the idea to create a curatorial dialogue between the work of Louise Bourgeois and Hans Bellmer before the museum’s opening in June 2008. ‘Hans Bellmer-Louise Bourgeois Double Sexus’ consists of over seventy works by Bellmer and Bourgeois, including sculpture, graphic art, and photographs.

Hans Bellmer, Die Puppe, 1935-1965, cast aluminum on gold plated bronze, 50 x 27 x 25 cm, courtesy of The Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg Museum.

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Robert Rauschenberg, Reach Beach (Runts) (2007) All images via Galleri Faurschou.

Currently on view at the Galleri Faurschou in Copenhagen is ‘Robert Rauschenberg: Runts’. The exhibition features the last series of collages created by the artist before his death in 2008.  Unlike much his earlier collage works, which were comprised of prints from newspapers and magazines, many of the images in ‘Runts’ draw from Rauschenberg’s own photographs. Many of these photographs were taken in Florida, where Rauschenberg lived for several years. As a result, the series has a highly personal feel that both transcends and enhances the pictures of sunny blue skies and beach paraphernalia featured among the works.

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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

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