Handicapping 2014, maybe I see up to a 10% gain for the S&P 500 Index, refusing to anticipate the death toll of rapidly escalating interest rates or inflation. The market can sell at a high teens price-earnings ratio, even with earnings rising mid-single digits. Speculation is in the air so good stock pickers can do […]
The Museum of Modern Art is on the march again, advancing westward down 53rd Street, sweeping away the old American Folk Art Museum and planting its flag in the base of a future skyscraper. Only the American Folk Art Museum building, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s twelve-year-old gem, has to go, because, like a cobbler’s […]
The word art barely came up. Maybe that’s why midway through this excruciatingly verbose three-hour closed-door briefing about MoMA’s second major rebuilding in less than ten years, I felt my eyes tear up and my stomach turn.
“The National Gallery’s great advantage is that we are obliged to give prominence to works of art that are important in the collection but don’t mean much to people today,” he says cheerfully. Conceptual works by trendy names – notably installations by Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger alongside Titian in 2012 – have entered the […]
For his first major show in Turkey, famed Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor brought huge works that have never before been exhibited to a gallery that ripped down walls to accommodate him. Massive slabs of rough-hewn slate, polished Iranian onyx and rough sandstone, weighing a combined 110 tonnes, dominate the galleries at Istanbul’s Sakip Sabanci Museum.
The National Gallery has re-installed Forty-Part Motet, the sound work by Janet Cardiff that is one of the very best things in the Gallery’s permanent collection. Forty-Part Motet consists of 40-plus voices, each singing its own part of the 16th-century choral piece Spem in Alium, by Thomas Tallis, and each heard through its own speaker. The 40 speakers are […]
Soft power, wall power, purchasing power, power alliances, perennial power, emerging power, power plays: there are as many different ways to wield influence in the art world as there are personalities who do so. Herewith, Art+Auction’s annual list of the top players – from the Renaissance to the Contemporary cutting edge – in auctions, galleries, […]
From the streets of Manhattan Alan Cumming whips through the history of Pop Art in America and Britain, from Andy Warhol’s soup cans to Peter Blake’s blue jeans.
Sometimes I think the British artist-musician Martin Creed makes art for dummies, not excluding myself. At the same time, his accumulations and arrangements of everyday objects and materials initially seem so rudimentary and forthright that they can also make you feel smart. Roberta Smith reviews Martin Creed
Here’s one opinion, from Modern Painters, via Blouin Artinfo
The super-rich have grown in number since 2008, adding the feel-good factor to this year’s fair. Millions of dollars have been spent on art, parties and hotel rooms this week as the circus surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach rolled into town. Given such conspicuous consumption, it is, perhaps, hard to remember that the art market […]
Our selection of pieces with back stories that add interest as well as value. Even though we are at an art fair, there is more to the works on show here than their price tags. There are many personal stories behind the paintings, sculptures and photographs on sale. Art historians are often interested in these […]
The 12th edition of the Art Basel in Miami Beach art fair opened to VIP cardholders on Wednesday, and, in barely two hours of Black Friday-like shopping, racked up many millions in sales. Watch the video at the bottom of the page.
Miami is still partying, but galleries have institutional collectors in mind. t is currently in vogue to dismiss Miami as a hedonistic party town where art plays second fiddle to the fizz and glamour of this week’s soirées. The sheer number of events organised by brands promoting booze, bags and luxury goods has recently sparked […]
Back-pats were flying at yesterday’s VIP opening of Art Basel Miami Beach. Several booths had already sold out by midday, and there was no shortage of interest from swarms of bees collectors. The fair’s success was summed up by a dealer from Andersen’s Contemporary—a six-year ABMB veteran and Frieze and Armory exhibitor—when he told us, […]
Thanks to Paula Cooper Gallery, ABMB visitors have four more days to take in the most offensive artwork in the fair: Meg Webster’s “Food Stamp Table.” Comment: Paddy Johnson and ArtFCity usually get it right, but not here, we say. We think these issues do need to be raised, even at an art fair.
Learning to Love the Eight-Figure Art Market. Big bucks can excite hot tempers. by Walter Robinson
Watching Kanye West’s “Bound 2” is about as joyous as romping through a stock photography website. The generic sprawling sunsets, mountain vistas, and gradient backgrounds are airless. Our two protagonists are large as gods, with Kim Kardashian reclining in the buff—though her nipples are airbrushed—playing a human hood ornament atop Kanye West’s motorcycle. These two celebrities, and a […]
Jacob Kassay turns 30 next year, which means he has time to develop some originality to match his surfeit of intelligence and attitude.
The Chapmans not only are what they are, but they embody what they are to perfection. And just when you think you may have outgrown them yourself – like you might a lover whose jokes have grown wearisome, but really, it’s you, it’s you – they hijack your affections once more by being both brilliant and […]