Anish Kapoor Gets One-Man Show at Château de Versailles

The sculptor Anish Kapoor, no stranger to grandeur, has been awarded a one-man show at the Château de Versailles, reports the New York Times. The show, running from June through October 2015, will follow similar shows in the same space by Takashi Murakami, Joana Vasconcelos, and Jeff Koons.  According to Catherine Pégard, director of the Château […]

Anish Kapoor Chosen for Solo Show at Versailles

PARIS –The sculptor Anish Kapoor will be the next contemporary artist to be given a one-man show at the Château de Versailles. Mr. Kapoor’s show will run from June to October next year, the palace’s chief administrator, Catherine Pégard, said in an interview. “It’s not easy to choose an artist for Versailles,” Ms. Pégard said. “It’s not […]

2014 in Review: Top 10 Big (Architecture) Projects

Best art gallery: Museo Jumex by David Chipperfield Architects Built to house the private contemporary art collection of Colección Jumex, owner of Mexico’s leading juice company, David Chipperfield’s three-storey-tall gem of a building is a paragon of travertine-clad understatement. The most distinguishing feature of the relatively small, 2,500-square-metre building is a row of sawtooth peaks that give it the look […]

Will Contemporary Art Sold Today Be of Any Value in 100 Years?

When sightings of Leonardo DiCaprio and Miley Cyrus (dressed as deranged vagabonds) at Art Basel in Miami cause a stir, one wonders what remains of the art world. Indeed it is tempting to think that the art world has been swallowed by the combined marketing and publicity machines of Hollywood and the fashion and music industries. Art is an […]

The Greatest Painting in the World: 10 Luminaries Cast Their Ballots

There are some questions in the art world that are not well received. Most of these have to do with money and rank. Asking how much an artwork costs or how important it is can seem a little crass and demeaning to the intensely personal experience of viewing high art. “The greatest picture in the […]

When Private Goes Public: Miami Collections Raise Ethical Questions

Art Basel Miami Beach is an ostentatious display of wealth and the wealthy. That this obvious fact is annually broached with dismay and shock by much of the art world is in no small part due to Art Basel itself, which, increasingly, insists on being similar in style to a biennial or large-scale exhibition, with […]

The Art of Good Business: Hans Haacke Goes After a Koch, Readies London Plinth

Anyone in need of a potent antidote to the feeding frenzy at Art Basel Miami Beach last week should head right now to Paula Cooper Gallery’s second-floor space at 521 West 21st Street in West Chelsea. On view there is a solo show by the German–born, New York–based artist Hans Haacke, whose six-decade career is […]

You Definitely Need to See This Work in Person’: Art Basel in Miami Beach

For weeks I’d been telling myself, and anyone who would listen, that I was going to skip the 2014 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. It had been a busy fall. October’s Frieze London fair is at least on my home turf, but then there were whirlwind trips to Paris, for FIAC, and New York, for […]

A Plea to Art Basel: Leave Miami

As we close out our coverage of Art Basel, a small recommendation for next year’s fairs: Get the hell out of Miami. It may look nice, but not even those with helicopters can avoid the traffic jams, there are never enough cabs and the food and hotel costs are astronomical. People, this is bullshit. Time for […]

Have Art Fairs Destroyed Art? Zombie Abstraction and Dumb Painting Ruled in Miami?

“If no one ever looked at art, would anybody even create it? And how much does art actually need buyers.” Extremely reasonable questions put forth by the 2014 BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors, these queries appeared especially intriguing during the latest iteration of Art Basel in Miami Beach (ABMB). A positively gilded affair that […]

Truth or Dare

ON WEDNESDAY, a man with a plan was talking into a banana, walking down Lincoln Road. Two wives, fidgeting with rings and bracelets, prepared to step into a large inflatable concept—TRUTH—while the husbands stood a few paces back. At a bar made of sand, a woman wearing a pure white silicone alligator, clipped like a […]

‘Selling Like Hot Cakes’: NADA Opens in Miami Beach

The publicist said they had to open the doors to the NADA fair at the Deauville Beach Resort five minutes early because the crowd was that eager. Publicists are paid to say those kinds of things, but inside there was a veritable feeding frenzy that gave off the feeling of a Moroccan street market. The day’s […]

Your Concise Guide to the 2014 Miami Art Fairs

With the mercury dropping in the art world power centers of old, it’s time for the annual migration to Miami for Art Basel Miami Beach, its ever-expanding roster of satellite fairs and pop-up exhibitions, and the impossible schedule of parties and performances all week long (December 1–7, 2014). Great week, but getting a bit crazy…?!

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 […]

Some Thoughts About Richard Serra and Martin Puryear (Part 2: Puryear)

From the outset of his career, Puryear refused to give up what he knew and studied in order to align his work with the prevailing aesthetic. Some people believe they should do whatever it takes to fit in, while others accept that they will never fit in and do not try. There is the assimilationist […]

Some Thoughts About Richard Serra and Martin Puryear (Part 1: Serra)

Quotes from Richard Serra: “Art is not democratic. It is not for the people.” “My sculptures are not objects for the viewer to stop and stare at. The historical purpose of placing sculpture on a pedestal was to establish a separation between the sculpture and the viewer. I am interested in creating a behavioral space […]

Allen Jones, Royal Academy

A brilliant painter derailed by an unfortunate obsession. There’s no escaping it; Hat Stand, 1969, is a beastly object. The blank-faced mannequin is too literal to succeed as a sculpture, and the conceit is too nasty to be ignored. Her position – holding up her hands to receive our hats – recalls the torture meted […]

Is Allen Jones’s sculpture the most sexist art ever?

Zoe Williams goes among the women as fetish furniture at the RA’s new show to find out. I find it very difficult to have an authentic response to work that has generated a lot of controversy in the past. My inner contrarian harasses me to disagree with the orthodoxy. So I was all set to […]

Weight of the World: Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy

There are many sides to the work of the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Those lucky enough to visit his studio complex at Barjac in the South of France encounter a staggering array of installations, underground tunnels, and tottering concrete towers resembling some contemporary equivalent to the fortifications of medieval Tuscany. But wisely, the Royal Academy […]