The innovative, iconoclastic curator Walter Hopps (1932-2005) was one of the most influential figures in mid-to-late-twentieth-century American art. He founded his first gallery in L.A. at the age of twenty-one and, at twenty-four, opened the Ferus Gallery with the artist Ed Kienholz, where they turned the spotlight on a new generation of West Coast artists. […]
You’re often viewed as controversial—especially in Germany—because of your willingness to address difficult subjects, both in the content of your work and the press. How do you deal with that perception? I can’t really comment on my reputation because the reputation is in no way justified. I’m a peaceful, happy, cheerful, elderly gentleman, except for […]
Art collectors face a dilemma as they update their estate plans: What to do with a collection that is potentially worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars? Whether they’ve bought the pieces as an investment or to fuel a passion, collectors heading into their retirement years are trying to figure out whether to […]
Published on 20 Apr 2017 One hundred years ago this month, Marcel Duchamp changed the art world forever by unveiling Fountain—a urinal presented as a “readymade” work of art. MoMA Chief Curator Ann Temkin explains how Duchamp forced us to rethink the role of art and the artist. Watch the video!
On the eve of his 90th birthday in 2013, Ellsworth Kelly told me that working in his studio in Columbia County was “as exciting for me as ever.” “I have had some physical challenges related to aging, though I accept it,” the painter said. “But it has given me an added surge for continuing to […]
In 1985, A. R. Penck told curator Klaus Ottmann that he didn’t miss East Germany, where he had been born in 1939 and from which he was exiled in 1961. East Germany, Penck said, “disappeared in a black hole”—it was totally behind him. But, of course, his homeland and everything he lost when he left […]
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 […]
The Bronx-born artist came to fame in the 1970s with an array of unsettling work. Vito Acconci, a towering figure with influences on both performance art and experimental architecture, has died at the age of 77. A cause of death has not been confirmed by the estate. Born in the Bronx in 1940, Acconci worked as […]
This will be remembered as a year when art got seriously political. The Whitney Biennial in New York and the inaugural Athens edition of Documenta are just two of the high-profile exhibitions trying to convey and confront the tumult of our times. Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket,” showing the mutilated corpse of Emmett Till, the […]
Decades after giving up the dream for good, an art critic returns to the work he’d devoted his life to, then abandoned — but never really forgot. It pains me to say it, but I am a failed artist. “Pains me” because nothing in my life has given me the boundless psychic bliss of making […]
Textbooks tend to organize art history chronologically. But what if we re-told art history through color instead? Artspace is publishing a series of articles excerpted from Phaidon‘s Chromaphilia: The Story of Color in Art, each one offering a close look into the history of a single color in its relation to art. Last week we examined red, […]
The long-reigning bad boy of German painting has consistently poked and prodded at whatever preciousness we associate with the medium. The long-reigning bad boy of German painting has consistently poked and prodded at whatever preciousness we associate with the medium. Early in his career, fueled by his association with Martin Kippenberger and other Junge Wildeartists, he […]
Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008 and the art market’s subsequent decline a year later, the middle market has come under increasing pressure. According to economist Clare McAndrew’s Art Market | 2017 report, the middle market—defined for dealers as works priced between $5,000 and $50,000—is the “most difficult segment” in which to operate. […]
Artists the world over were instantly captivated three years ago when UK-based Surrey NanoSystems announced the invention of Vantablack, the darkest material ever made. And things continue to get darker: The company has been advancing the technology, and released some astonishing photographs and footage of the pigment in action, which have to be seen to be […]
An Art-Documentary Film About Duchamp’s Ideas and Artworks (1963). Watch the Video and turn up the sound.
The Conceptual art movement is probably the most radical and the most controversial plane in modern and contemporary art. Some artists, experts and art historians even dismiss it as art. Conceptual art is based on the notion that the essence of art is an idea, or concept, and may exist distinct from and in the […]
Revisiting the irony of the original Dada movement, Neo-Dada was first popularized in the early 1960s. The label has been applied to a wide variety of artistic works, mostly including Junk art, use of found objects and the employment of banal activities and objects as instruments of social and aesthetic critique. The most popular names […]
The art movement known as Dada, or Dadaism, has undoubtedly shifted the course of artistic history on multiple fields. Uniting the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, the movement was officially created in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1916 at CabaretVoltaire, and it celebrates 100 years of existence this year. Nurturing many monumental artists and their […]
Can One Make Works That Are Not “Works” of Art? This was a question asked by Duchamp in his notes from 1913, and remains being the essential question while considering the Richard Mutt Case. Exactly one hundred years ago, in 1917, the course of art history has been completely changed by a submission of a urinal […]
Presuming that calls for censorship and destruction constitute a legitimate response to perceived injustice leads us down a very dark path. The presence of blackness in a Whitney Biennial invariably stirs controversy — it’s deemed to be unfit or not enough, or too much. The current Whitney Biennial is no exception — the art press […]