artnet news’ Top 10 Most Expensive Living Women Artists 2015

Our living ladies span four continents, with work that at times reflects the diversity of their geographical profiles. Using data drawn from the artnet Price Database over the past ten years, there are some shifts from our previous report. Three newcomers join the list, two are no longer on it, and Cady Noland still holds […]

What was good for the Medicis is good for banks

Global companies with an eye on the bigger picture invest in contemporary creations.  Just beyond the turnstiles of Deutsche Bank’s London reception sits a large object resembling several huge dollops of creamy Plasticine. As the viewer comes close, it turns out to be a sculpture made entirely of dice. “Secretions” (1998) by British artist Tony […]

8 Secrets to Larry Gagosian’s Success Revealed

Larry Gagosian has built a veritable art sales empire. From humble beginnings as a poster salesman in 1970s Los Angeles, Gagosian has climbed his way to the top. He currently operates 15 spaces in New York, London, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, Paris, and Geneva, where he represents some of the biggest names in contemporary […]

The Guerrilla Girls, After 3 Decades, Still Rattling Art World Cages

When you’ve spent 30 years wearing a gorilla mask, as the women known by the aliases Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz have, certain behavior becomes second nature. So there were Kahlo and Kollwitz, two of the pseudonymous founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, the activist, feminist art collective, preening and posing at their 30th anniversary […]

artnet News’ Top 10 Most Expensive Living British Artists at Auction 2015

This summer, we’re taking a look once again at the top ten British artists over the past ten years. Looking at the artnet Price Database, we kick off with the top artists by lot, and then give a list of artists by value over the same period. Comparing it to last year’s ten-year look at […]

7 Reasons to Celebrate Marcel Duchamp on His Birthday

Marcel Duchamp was a prankster, a rabble-rouser, and an envelope pusher. Over a century after he plunged a bicycle wheel into a four-legged stool, artists are still paying homage to his life and work. The artist, who passed away in 1968, always had a sense of humor about his work and ensured that no one could […]

Yoko Ono’s Market Is A Mystery Despite Her Superstar Art World Status

After 40 years of neglect from critics and abuse from Beatles fans, Yoko Ono, over the past decade, has risen to an almost untouchable position in the art world. In her 2000 show at New York’s Japan Society, Michael Kimmelman writing for the New York Times called her “a mischievous, wry conceptual artist with a […]

Hans Haacke on “Gift Horse,” Gulf Labor, and Artist Resale Royalties

Early last March, London’s Conservative mayor Boris Johnson unveiled Hans Haacke’s “Gift Horse,” the tenth commission installed on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Described on the Greater London Authority’s website as a rumination on the “link[s] between power, money, and history,” “Gift Horse” consists of a bronze horse skeleton and a live electronic ticker of the […]

Europe’s Top 55 Galleries You Need To Know—Part 2

Artnet News Part Two of the top 55 European Galleries is below, including Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the UK.   Pictured is Nicholas Logsdail, Founder and Director of London’s Lisson Gallery, representing a wide range of significant conceptual artists including: Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, Allora & Calzadilla, Art & Language, Cory Arcangel, Broomberg […]

Chinese Authorities Return Passport to Ai Weiwei after 4 Years

On Wednesday morning, Chinese artist and prominent dissident Ai Weiwei announced via an Instagram post that Chinese authorities have returned his passport. “Today I got my passport” his Instagram caption read. “Ai Weiwei and his many supporters around the world are thrilled at the news that his passport has been returned after 600 days,” Ossian Ward from Lisson Gallery, […]

Wael Shawky’s Epic Films Will Completely Change How You See the Crusades

Egypt-born and -based Wael Shawky inhabits the epic’s structure impeccably, and in the most unexpected way possible: with puppets. In a lush, labyrinthine trilogy of films being exhibited at MoMA PS1, he uses sublimely designed, marvelously costumed ensembles of marionettes and puppets — some made centuries ago, others fashioned by the artist of Murano glass. […]

Why Are Gagosian, Pace, and Zwirner Signing On for the Seattle Art Fair?

A triumvirate of the world’s biggest galleries—Gagosian, Pace, and David Zwirner—is headed to the Pacific Northwest this month for the debut Seattle Art Fair. Debut fairs are not always expected to be big sales events, dealers often say, but rather opportunities to start to build relationships with new clients. Goff’s expectations are higher than that. […]

A Fearful Frenzy: The Art Market Now

Life has been happier for many of us in the art world since we stopped caring about runaway commerce in art, which has seemed—but only seemed—to reduce all measures of aesthetic value to raw price. Sure, the billion-plus dollars shaken loose, since May, at three New York and London auctions of modern and contemporary works—with […]

At Art Basel, a Powerful Jury Controls the Market

The hundreds of gallery owners who apply each year to secure a coveted booth at Art Basel, the Swiss art fair, spend weeks on their admission applications. They describe the evolution of their galleries, track the history of their exhibitions and list the biographies of their artists. Then there is the matter of the “mock […]

Philippe Parreno’s Hypnotism at the Park Avenue Armory

“The architecture becomes semi-conscious,” said Philippe Parreno during a morning press conference debuting his new installation for the Park Avenue Armory, which opens today and is on view through August 2. I believe he followed up this building-coming-alive statement with a comparison to the work of Philip K. Dick — the artist’s thick French accent […]

HERE AND NOW: PHILIPPE PARRENO’S ‘H{N)YPN(Y}OSIS’ TAKES OVER THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY

Philippe Parreno’s H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS (pronounced “hypnosis,” just to confuse us all) is bewildering. Staged in the Park Avenue Armory’s massive drill hall, it’s an installation that involves film, sculpture, music, and performance. It takes at least two hours to get through, and feels as slow and frustrating as the traffic on Broadway during […]

Kapoor’s vagina isn’t shocking. French art has always been a hotbed of amour

French conservatives are outraged over Anish Kapoor’s work in Versailles. But he’s not the first artist to bring sex into the country’s establishment. Anish Kapoor is putting the vagina in Versailles. Why on earth are the French so shocked? What has happened to the nation that gave us Courbet’s explicit painting The Origin of the […]

Artists have done vaginas to death – will someone please tell Anish Kapoor

The sculptor has produced a brutish, gaping funnel sculpture called Dirty Corner for the Versailles gardens. Oh dear, is this how men still see women? Anish Kapoor has made another whacking great sculpture for the Versailles gardens, called Dirty Corner. And it’s meant to be Marie Antoinette’s vagina. I know the queen had her faults, […]

Public Outrage Erupts in France Over Anish Kapoor Vagina Sculpture at VersaillesPublic Outrage Erupts in France Over Anish Kapoor Vagina Sculpture at Versailles

Paris might be the world’s most romantic city, but when it comes to talking about sex, Parisians are proving a little prudish (see Paul McCarthy Beaten Up over Butt Plug Sculpture and Artist Enacts Origin of the World at Musée d’Orsay—And, Yes, That Means What You Think). One of Anish Kapoor‘s sculptures at his newly-opened solo show at Versailles […]