Anish Kapoor: superstar sculptor who loves to court scandal

The huge installations by the artist inspire both admiration and disapproval and his latest work, Dirty Corner, at Versailles is causing more discord than ever. Like some corporate-sponsored mega rock band on a mammoth world tour, there is a type of international artist whose epic-scale installations are must-see events in a string of major cities. […]

In Philippe Parreno’s ‘H{N)Y P N(Y}OSIS,’ Art Is the Big Idea

When he was young, the French artist Philippe Parreno had a fantasy in which he would open his mouth and a beam of projector light would shoot out, casting his thoughts onto whatever was in front of him, medium and message in one human head. “My imagination would just be easy and available,” he once […]

See Anish Kapoor’s Gruesome, Chaotic, and Mesmerizing Sculptures at Versailles

On June 7, Anish Kapoor‘s newest sculptural interventions will be unveiled at the Palace of Versailles (see Anish Kapoor Tapped for 2015 Solo Show at Versailles). Kapoor’s installation is part of a series of contemporary art exhibitions at Versailles that began in 2008 with a controversial Jeff Koons show, and has since included artists Xavier […]

The Art of Dissent

Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum are artists, journalists, dissidents, polymaths — and targets. Their respective governments, China and the United States, monitor their every move. They have been detained and interrogated. Ai cannot leave China, and Appelbaum is advised not to return to the United States. They are separated from their families. Ai has been […]

40 Percent of World Gallery Art Sales Made at Fairs and Other Key Findings in the TEFAF Art Market Report 2015

The TEFAF Art Market Report, delivered by Dr. Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, is considered the authority on data relating to auctions, art fairs, and market trends (see Clare McAndrew Explains How She Prepares the TEFAF Art Market Report). It’s presented in conjunction with the opening of the TEFAF art fair in Maastricht. Sales at […]

Mclean’s Magazine: It’s a collage, an installation, a play!

Laing and Kathleen loan “Notes for Strangers” (and “Void numbering project (continuous)“) to the Geoffrey Farmer exhibition How Do I Fit This Ghost in My Mouth? opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery May 29, 2015. Joanne Latimer: “Okay, so nobody can accuse the Browns of buying art to match the couch.”

Glass tea house Mondrian pavilion by Hiroshi Sugimoto opens in 56th Venice Biennale

Situated on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the ‘glass tea house mondrian’ by japanese artist hiroshi sugimoto unites wood, glass and water as a pavilion, holding the traditional japanese tea ceremony within its transparent walls. the temporary structure, presented at the venice architecture biennale 2014 as part of the activities of le stanze […]

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 […]

The Danger Artist

Our final (so far) column on Chris Burden, by Peter Schjeldahl – you should read it. Burden adventured alone in wilds that aren’t outside civilized life but that seethe within it. He coolly structured convulsive experience.  His mastery of form made him a poet, as in a piece that I knew from hearsay and wrote […]

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 […]

Agnes Martin: the artist mystic who disappeared into the desert

In the summer of 1967, Martin left New York and went off-grid before reappearing in New Mexico. The art she made there – with its buoyant bands of colour – offer no clues to the turbulent life of an artist who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Ahead of a major retrospective, Olivia Laing celebrates her […]

‘Shot in the Name of Art’

What does it take to get shot in the name of art? For the late conceptual artist Chris Burden, who did just that, it required courage, vision and an excellent triggerman. One willing to accept the risk that if he missed his target by inches, art could morph into homicide. So when Mr. Burden, who […]

Stroke of genius: Peter Doig’s eerie art whisks the mind to enchanted places

Amid the impostures that sometimes pass for 21st-century art, Doig’s record-breaking compositions are jewels of imagination and haunting vision. It must be the most expensive canoe in history. This week in Manhattan a painting by Edinburgh-born Peter Doig of a small white boat lost in a tangle of weeds and tree stumps in some remote […]

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 […]

10 Tips To Make Art Fairs More Fun

As any seasoned art lover knows, art fairs are a double-edged sword: while attending them is an easy way to see and sell art, they aren’t always the most enjoyable experience (see 11 Art World Rules Decoded for 20-Something Newbies) thanks to myriad factors like inconvenient locations, overcrowded aisles, and the sheer amount of ground […]

10 Reasons To Be Excited About The New Whitney Museum

The new home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, in all its 28,000 tons of glory (as architect Renzo Piano pointed out during the preview Thursday), opens to the public May 1 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District (see Does the New Whitney Museum Herald a Golden Age for New York Institutions?). artnet News joined the preview, […]

The Whitney Opens with a winner

Let’s cut to the chase: the Whitney Museum of American Art’s inaugural show in its new home in the Meatpacking District, “America Is Hard to See,” is outstanding. With about 600 works by a little over 400 artists, it offers a history of American art—and America—that is richly textured and that teems with beloved classics […]

NYT Review: New Whitney Museum’s First Show, ‘America Is Hard to See’

From outside, Renzo Piano’s new Whitney Museum of American Art, set beside the Hudson River, has the bulk of an oil tanker’s hull. Inside is entirely different. The galleries, with high ceilings, tall windows and soft pine-plank floors, are as airy and light-flooded as the 19th-century sailmaker’s lofts known to Herman Melville, who worked as […]

11 Art World Rules Decoded for 20-Something Newbies

For a newcomer, the art world can often feel like a social minefield, booby-trapped so that as soon as you start to make progress in establishing a name for yourself, you screw it up with a big-time blunder. Luckily, we’ve got you covered on how to navigate everything from an open bar to a Twitter […]

Does the New Whitney Museum Herald a Golden Age for New York Institutions?

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s Meatpacking District museum, opening May 1, is fiercely awaited. In its new building, designed by Renzo Piano, the galleries and sculpture gardens will nearly double the museum’s previous exhibition space, with two floors devoted to showing off its collection. The museum expects to take in spillover from the millions of yearly […]