Whitney Edits a Tale of a Nation

A year away from opening, the new home of the Whitney Museum of American Art is still a construction site, but it is already a vivid presence in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, and curators have mapped out months’ worth of exhibitions there. The first show to go on view next spring — an opening date has […]

Out of Site: Finding Robert Smithson’s New Jersey

Montclair show tours the land artist’s Garden State legacy. On a frigid morning this past winter, the art historian, critic and curator Phyllis Tuchman was guiding her blue Mercedes sedan through the desolate parking lot of a shopping plaza in Bayonne, N.J., past a Super Stop & Shop, a Starbucks and a Houlihan’s, toward an […]

The top 10 artworks of the 20th century

From Picasso’s formidable whores and Magritte’s provocative pipe to Pollock painting like and angel, the best 20th-centrury art reflects a world of flux, abstraction and imagination. The century was not yet out of its teens. For most of the small minority aware of the experiments of modern art, the bright colours of Matisse were still […]

Video – Tate Unlock Art: Exploring the Surreal

The Doctor travels through time to bring us the story of Surrealism Need some help getting to grips with Surrealism? The Doctor will see you now. Peter Capaldi, a former art student, and the latest actor to play Doctor Who, settles down on Freud’s couch to deliver his wry take on the Surrealist movement.  

Top 10 Most Expensive Living American Artists – artnet News

Next up in our series of the world’s most expensive living artists: the Americans. Auction results reveal both the usual suspects as well as some surprises, making this list more diverse than might have been expected. Some of these artists are auction darlings with thousands of works on the block, while others have had nary […]

The overpriced world of bad art

In May 2013, German artist Gerhard Richter broke his own record when his 1968 painting “Domplatz, Mailand,” which looks like a fuzzy black-and-white photograph, sold at auction for $37 million, the highest amount for any living artist. It was a record he held for six months, until Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog” smashed it, selling for […]

Recapturing the Past, and Then Revising It – Julian Schnabel

Two Shows Offer a New Look at Julian Schnabel. At the moment, Julian Schnabel’s painting seems to be the art that dares not speak its name. Its influence is widely visible but rarely cited. You can see it in the work of artists from Joe Bradley to Oscar Murillo and all sorts of painters who […]

Top 10 Most Expensive Living French Artists – artnet News

artnet News’s ongoing series on the world’s most expensive living artists by nationality turns next to the French—after previous installments devoted to the Brits and the Germans. And a quick glance at the list below is enough to realize how isolated (others might say undervalued) the market for French art remains. Only three of the auction records presented […]

10 Japanese Photographers You Should Know

Since 1974, when legendary photography historian John Szarkowski introduced New Japanese Photography to the Western audiences at the Museum of Modern Art, critics have lauded the work of this group of artists, from Shomei Tomatsu and Ken Domon to Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyami, for being exceptionally distinct from that of their Western counterparts.Often incomplete and fleeting in quality, these artists’ photographs are no less pronounced today in […]

Sigmar Polke, Bad Ass of German Pop, Rocks MoMA Senseless

In 1976 I found myself in Düsseldorf, one stop on a mission to gather material for a special “European” issue of Art-Rite magazine (which we never managed to put out). One memorable highlight was a Sigmar Polke exhibition at the Frankfurt Kunsthalle. The entryway was blocked off by wood fencing, probably bought at a garden supply store, but visitors could […]

Why James Franco’s Cindy Sherman Homage at Pace Is Not Just Bad But Offensive

James Franco’s new exhibition at Pace is bad. It’s not a George W. Bush–caliber train wreck, but it’s close. The exhibition, “New Film Stills,” features 29 photographs from Franco’s series inspired by Cindy Sherman’s seminal “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80). In each black-and-white photograph the artist-actor-scholar appears dressed (or undressed) in women’s clothes, often sporting a wig and makeup, for […]

The History of the Found Object in Art

Tracey Emin‘s sculpture My Bed (1998) is exactly what it sounds like: the work consists of the artist’s freshly slept-in bed, with crumpled pillows, disheveled sheets, and dirty tissues and other junk (including sanitary items, prophylactics, and liquor bottles) strewn around the footboard. When it debuted at 1999 at London’s Tate, it created an instant commotion in the […]

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries – Video

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, “ART IS A LIE THAT JUST WON’T DIE,” 2014. HD Quicktime Movie, 6 minutes. Online. Everything you need to know about what makes art great, Museums and collecting, the life on an artist, and family – especially Mothers!  And that’s a lot for a Video to cover – in just 6 […]

Top 10 Most Expensive Living German Artists – artnet News

In the second installment of our series of the world’s most expensive living artists, we focus on the Germans. Artists from the country have seen unprecedented success in recent years. And high-flying auction results have been spread relatively evenly across media, if not between the sexes. Perhaps most interestingly, however, all of the Germans in […]

Indictment Details How to Forge a Masterpiece

The painting caught Pei-Shen Qian’s eye, but it was the price that affected him deeply. Mr. Qian, browsing in a booth at a Manhattan art show a decade ago, had stumbled across his own work: a forgery of a modern masterpiece that he had recently completed. He had sold it for just a few hundred […]

Video veteran Joan Jonas to represent US in Venice

The artist is expected to create a multimedia installation for next year’s Biennale. Joan Jonas has been selected to represent the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale. The video and performance artist is expected to create a site-specific multimedia installation for the US pavilion, one of the most visible and celebrated international platforms for […]

A Provocateur’s Medium: Outrage

The 2012 survey of the courageous Chinese artist Ai Weiweiseen at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington has finally arrived in New York, and is much improved. The show, “Ai Weiwei: According to What?,” which opens Friday at theBrooklyn Museum, has been beefed up throughout, but most notably by two installation pieces completed in 2013. One, “S.A.C.R.E.D.,” […]

25 Art World Women at the Top, From Sheikha Al-Mayassa to Yoko Ono

For centuries, the art world and art market were dominated by men—just look at Giorgio Vasari’sThe Lives of the Artists, or, more recently, Jonathan Jones’s all-male list of the greatest artworks ever—but that’s beginning to change. Women now occupy top positions in every sector of the art world, and though they are still paid less than their male colleagues […]