Passion, Not Profit, Is the Biggest Motivator for Collectors, a New Study Says

The surprising results from a new study by Swiss bank UBS suggest that profit is rarely a driving factor. With the 2017 edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach—also known as the art world’s Black Friday—in full swing, Swiss bank UBS has released an extensive survey of art collectors that explores what motivates them, how […]

The Four-Hour Art Week? Read Carol Bove’s Self-Help Guide for Artists

The sculptor Carol Bove likes to play with associations and forms as she builds her assemblages of constructed and readymade objects. Time and space to experiment are crucial elements of her process, as is a certain psychological sovereignty—Bove writes that “creating a nonpurposive, free space in which to play and have fun is essential.” Here, the Brooklyn-based artist […]

Tehching Hsieh, extreme performance artist: ‘I give you clues to the crime’

The Venice Biennale is hosting the biggest exhibition of work by the Taiwanese artist Marina Abramović calls ‘the master’. “My impression of the Venice Bienniale is that it is the Olympic Games of the arts,” says Tehching Hsieh. “I’m in the category of marathon.” If any artist knows about endurance it is is Hsieh, a […]

What Is the Most Iconic Artwork of the 21st Century? 14 Art Experts Weigh In

How do you choose one defining artwork for a century still in its adolescence? Some of the art world’s leading figures take their best shot. Want to make an art historian laugh? Ask them to name the most iconic artwork of the 21st century. Turns out, it’s not so easy to single out the most […]

An Artist’s Mythic Rebellion for the Venice Biennale

Mark Bradford’s concern: How can he represent the United States when he no longer feels represented by his government? Sitting on a crate, his long legs extended, Mr. Bradford, 55, was confronting a pressing concern beyond exhibition plans: How can he represent the United States abroad at a time when — as a black, gay […]

All the Artists and National Pavilions in the 2017 Venice Biennale

The 57th edition of the Venice Biennale, titled “Viva Arte Viva” by curator Christine Macel, has released the list of 120 participating artists and its national pavilions. “In a world full of conflicts and jolts, in which humanism is being seriously jeopardized, art is the most precious part of the human being,” Macel has said […]

In Search of Lost Time: How the Art World Dispensed With Chronology in 2015 (and Why 2016 Will Be the Year of the “Historical-Contemporary”)

Although it may seem strange to devote a year-end roundup to the subject of atemporality, 2015 found the art world in a state of chronological confusion. The year began, so to speak, in December of 2014 when the Museum of Modern Art opened “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World,” which ran through […]

Vancouver-born Geoffrey Farmer to represent Canada at La Biennale di Venezia in 2017

As the commissioner of the Canada Pavilion in Venice, the National Gallery of Canada announces that Geoffrey Farmer will represent Canada in 2017 at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, in Italy. Over his 20-year career, his installations have been acclaimed around the world and have been shown in numerous solo […]

Why Bruce Nauman’s Persistent Market Defies Trophy Hunters

Bruce Nauman is considered a towering and influential figure in postwar American art. His reputation as a master of minimalist and conceptual art was cemented more than four decades ago when he was first showing with Leo Castelli in New York and in important European shows like “When Attitudes Become Form,” at the Kunsthalle Bern […]

Is Theaster Gates America’s most exciting artist?

Though he has produced pottery and paintings, sculptures, music and video works, Theaster Gates is best known, as we put it in our new monograph, for projects that “bridge the gap between art and life and encourage change by reaching beyond a traditional art audience.” He saved remnants of derelict churches, created black-tar paintings in […]

Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale

The police in Venice closed an art installation in the form of a functioning mosque on Friday morning, after city officials declared the art project a security hazard and said that the artist who created it, Christoph Büchel, had not obtained proper permits and had violated laws by allowing too many people inside the mosque […]

Christoph Büchel: The Mosque. Icelandic Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale 2015

Swiss artist Christoph Büchel was selected to represent Iceland at the 56th Art Biennale in Venice, Italy. His idea was to transform a church, Santa Maria della Misericordia at Campo de L’Abazia, into a mosque. Accordingly, the show is called The Mosque: The First Mosque in the Historic City of Venice and has been realized […]

Artist draws controversy turning church into Venice’s first mosque

In a tranquil corner of Venice’s Cannaregio district stands a handsome church with an icing sugar white baroque facade. Its origins stretch back to the 10thcentury, but the last mass was celebrated here in 1967, since when, deconsecrated and in private hands, it has stood silent and unused. On 9 May, however, as the 56th […]

Anselm Kiefer: Inside a black hole

Kiefer uses a vast panoply of materials in his art, each of which have intricate symbolic meanings. Studiously parsed, they trigger a kind of spiritual-historical giddiness. There is the straw, for instance, that symbolises the hair of the German prison guard Margarethe in Paul Celan’s poem “Death Fugue.” There are the seven flames that represent […]

A Guide to the World’s Biggest Art Prizes

A holdover from the days of the French salon system, art awards provide distinguished organizations—museums, government bodies, corporations, philanthropic groups—with a way to honor the outstanding artistic talent of the day (and to burnish their own reputations in the process). With Grand Rapids’s headline-grabbing Artprize on the horizon, we’ve assembled a glossary of the world’s […]