Why the Upper East Side Is the Best Place to See Art in New York

Artspace Article Published: April 3, 2016: Stretched out alongside the east flank of Central Park like a satisfied cat lying in the sun, the Upper East Side—longtime home to tycoons and celebrities—is still the most luxe neighborhood in New York City, where foreign billionaires plant their money in $100 million manses and ridiculous trend stories […]

Welcome to the Garden of Forking Paths: Ed Winkleman on How to Navigate the Art Industry’s Strange New Landscape

There’s no question that contemporary art galleries are struggling these days. The market is sluggish, the essential handshake-based rules of the art trade are being confused by the proliferation of artworks on the internet, and, at the same time, competition for artists and a globalizing terrain are forcing dealers to take on more costs by […]

Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist on What Makes Painting an “Urgent” Medium Today

Painting has always served as a kind of laboratory for innovative ways of looking at the world, from the perspectival experiments of Alberti all the way to Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, abstraction,Minimalism, et cetera. Painters often saw themselves as an advance guard, pushing a kind of investigation forward in new terrain. Here, you’ve mentioned how in […]

Architect Annabelle Selldorf on Why Mega-Galleries Are Transforming Into Mini-Museums

If you are even a casual appreciator of art in New York, the chances are that you have stepped into one of Annabelle Selldorf’s spaces, and been entranced. Perhaps the most coveted architect among the minimalistically inclined art elite, Selldorf has designed a broad spectrum of the city’s art sites, from theNeue Galerie uptown, steeped […]

Can an Art Fair Be a Political Act? Roman Dealer Paola Capata on Making Granpalazzo the World’s Most “Italian” Fair

Located in the 16th-century Palazzo Rospigliosi in the rustic country village of Zagarolo, a short drive outside of Rome,  Granpalazzo is unlike any art fair you’ve seen before. Instead of traditional booths, there are curated presentations of individual artists, elegantly spaced throughout the historic building. The walls are covered with historic frescos, the conversation is […]

Ellsworth Kelly on His Singular Career, and the “Great Joy” of His Art – Video

A towering figure of the postwar era, Ellsworth Kelly charted a singular and often solitary artistic path. He ventured to Europe twice—first as a camoufleur for the Ghost Army during World War II, then as a questing painter on the G.I. Bill—and brought back a bright and lively new style of American painting, seductive in […]

How Cubism Gave Rise to Contemporary Art

Cubism is famous for its difficulty, and the fact that in the early years of its development, Picasso and Braque treated it as a secret, denying its existence to outsiders. It’s very brown, it’s visually severe, it’s hard to enter. What, exactly, was Cubism?  I think Cubism has been seen as an intellectual art form […]

Whitney Curator Scott Rothkopf on How to Understand Jeff Koons’s Artistic Achievement

A titanic presence in American postwar art, Jeff Koons is an icon whose popular fame, instantly recognizable sculptures, and consistent status as the most expensive living artist ensure that he will be remembered for a long, long time to come. And that’s not even considering their value as works of art, an appraisal that will have its […]

The Best Artworks of Art Basel 2014 – Artspace’s view

With an overwhelming array of booths by top international galleries filling two full floors, Art Basel presents so much first-rate art that it’s hard to believe such visual splendor is only on view for a few days every June, to be immediately dispersed onto the walls of collectors around the globe. Artspace toured the fair to tease out […]

Could Silicon Valley Contemporary Be the Next Art Basel?

The answer is yes and no. Let’s begin with why Silicon Valley Contemporarycould be a success. The obvious allure for creating this new fair, and for the 50-some participating galleries to buy in for its first year, is that the tech sphere headquartered in Silicon Valley is generating more wealth more quickly than anywhere else in […]

Jordan Wolfson on Transforming the “Pollution” of Pop Culture Into Art

There’s an mesmerizing aberration at David Zwirner Gallery, a technological siren that, once it locks its fearsome eyes on you, will drag you deep into the Uncanny Valley and feast on your brain. Occupying its own cavelike room in the gallery, which the viewer is encouraged to enter alone, this animatronic sculpture—a buxom blonde woman in […]

The Sacred Cows of the Art World (Or, Why Everyone’s So Nervous About Stefan Simchowitz)

The herd is spooked. That’s one interpretation of why there has been so much outrage over the the borderline heretical views that the collector Stefan Simchowitz espoused in Artspace‘s recent interview with him—what he said has evidently struck a chord that resonates jarringly with collectors, dealers, artists, curators… everyone, really. A collector who has amassed a hoard of recent art, […]

Cultural Entrepreneur Stefan Simchowitz on the Merits of Flipping, and Being a “Great Collector”

If you bring up the name Stefan Simchowitz in the company of art dealers, collectors, advisors, or other professionals, you are bound to get a vigorous reaction. A producer of Hollywood movies like “Requiem for a Dream” and a co-founder of MediaVast, the photo-licensing site that was sold to Getty Images in 2007 for $200 million, Simchowitz is one of […]

How to Spot and Nurture Emerging Talent – Stefania Bortolami

A widely respected tastemaker in the contemporary art scene, the New York dealer Stefania Bortolami cut her teeth with Anthony d’Offay, a legendary London dealer known for his connoisseurial eye in both art—after closing his gallery in 2001, he donated his $140 million collection to the Tate and theNational Galleries of Scotland—and in budding star gallerists. Moving afterwards to Gagosian Gallery, […]