In just the past few months a New York art dealer flew to Hong Kong for that city’s first global art fair; gave a party for 50 at Harry’s Bar in Venice; installed an exhibition at his gallery in London; spent three days schmoozing American collectors in San Sebastián, Spain; and then jetted off to Switzerland for one of the biggest events of the art-world calendar, Art Basel. Whew!
An evil gallerist reminds us how art has sadly always been used as an ambitious symbol of power. This gallery girl from Milan has some confessions to make.
With the exception of Gauguin, the French stockbroker who plunged into Tahiti with whom Doig is frequently compared, there are few artists it makes less sense to consider through the filter of their national identity.
New York’s annual Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art may serve to celebrate the Costume Institute’s newest exhibitions but, from experience, it is also an event of debauchery!
I feel like the Met Gala’s punk theme was dreamed up by a drunk intern who knew she was getting fired anyway so why not?
We’ve all been rejected before. But if you’re an artist who’s been rejected by a gallery, maybe not the most qualified individual was calling the shots. This NYC gallery girl has some confessions to make.
It’s like grading a work of art: who really knows what is good or bad these days?
Forget pickled sheep and unmade beds – Peter Doig’s new show will turn the Scottish National Gallery into a temple of painterly delights.
The pleasure principle struggles for recognition these days as a measure of art appreciation. The pleasure of paint in particular, with life-drawing as its grammar, has been brushed aside with gestures heavy in conceptual irony. There may be good reasons for gazing at a pickled sheep or a tent with the names of the designer’s lovers sewn in, but visual exhilaration is not among them. For the next three months, William Playfair’s neoclassical rooms at the old Royal Scottish Academy buildings in Edinburgh, now part of the Scottish National Gallery, will be a temple of painterly delights. Peter Doig creates big, well-constructed oil paintings that are sometimes years in the making and are apt to change under the artist’s hand as the paint itself ages and alters in character. They reflect his preoccupation with weather – the shaping force behind all the forms and colours of nature.
No modern artist was as riddling and enigmatic as the Frenchman Marcel Duchamp. Born in 1887, he spent his life upending expectations about what art could be. Even his most diehard disciples were confounded by his decision in 1923 to stop producing art in order to concentrate upon chess, at which he competed in tournaments around the world.
Jerry Saltz often offers and interesting take.
This was certainly a “performance”, but we are not sure if it was an “art performance”.
Perhaps after viewing the Jay-Z video (or as much of the 10+ minutes you can get through), you might want to check out the BAC Link to the Vulture review by respected critic, Jerry Saltz, who often offers a thoughtful perspective.
Just came back from the strangest summer job – let’s just say it wasn’t your average internship. It’s a true story with a juicy, behind-the-scenes look at the world’s most notorious museum: The Louvre.
Walter De Maria, a reclusive American sculptor whose multifaceted achievement and sly Dadaist humor helped give rise to earthworks, Conceptual Art and Minimal art, on an often monumental scale, died on Thursday in Los Angeles.
He was best known for large-scale outdoor works that often involved simple if rather extravagant ideas or gestures: a SoHo loft filled with two feet of earth, for example, or a solid brass rod two inches in diameter and one kilometer long driven into the ground in Kassel, Germany, so that only its smooth top was visible (a work consistent with an artist who once noted that “the invisible is real”).
Why the Avant-Garde Should Cheer Up
“The contemporary art world is flourishing. Despite all the grumbling—and we’ll get to that in a moment—does anyone doubt that we are flooded with artists, overwhelmed by art shows, and swamped by art fairs and biennials?”
frieze editors and contributors share their thoughts on the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale
Frieze editors and contributors share their thoughts on the main exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale, curated by Massimiliano Gioni
Only the rich, jet-setting, diamond-eating socialites collect art, right? WRONG. So maybe you don’t own a Yacht with a Picasso above the toilet, but guess what: even YOU can be an art collector.
Is bigger art always better art? Certainly in the age of Instagram, anything monumental is hard to discredit; people are easily impressed and love to obsess over questions like “How did it get here, how was it made and how much does it cost?” Somehow they forget the basic questions: “What is it and why is it?”
A friend has been interning at a gallery for over a year with the promise of a paid job. She was asked recently to drive from Berlin to Bavaria to drop off a work. That’s where all the fun begins—or not.
Is the Art Market Due for a Correction? Maybe Not.
Is the art market experiencing a new boom, or is it all just another bubble destined to burst? With artists seemingly setting benchmarks at auction on a monthly basis and prices at fairs for pedestrian artworks pushing into the millions of dollars, there are fears in the art world of another crash. Privately, some people are talking about a steep market correction—as much as 60 to 80 percent in the contemporary art sector.
Lately the ever-versatile artist Ugo Rondinone has focused with a certain steadiness on figurative sculpture — without, as usual, repeating himself.
I Found the Sublime in Jeff Koons (and No One Agreed With Me)
Walter Robinson reviews three New York exhibitions by Jeff Koons at Gagosian, Paul McCarthy at Hauser & Wirth and James Turrell at