As his new paintings and drawings go on view in Los Angeles and Berlin, the artist reflects on his experience as a young artist in Berlin in the ’70s. Albert Oehlen is something of a living legend. He might be 63, but his reputation as an enfant terrible remains. There’s something eternally youthful about the German painter, who first […]
Why It’s Worth a Look: Marking the artist’s 80th birthday, this exhibition brings together significant works loaned from institutions and private collections, spanning the breadth of Baselitz’s long career. One of Germany’s most significant and celebrated artists, Baselitz is a part of a generation of artists that reinvented German painting in an era that was struggling […]
In former sex clubs, churches, and East German watering holes. When the Berlin collector Karen Boros first visited the place she now calls home, in the late 1990s, she was “catapulted into a different world,” she recently told me. “People were running around in leather outfits and strange masks, and fog machines made it impossible […]
From Athens to Zurich, here are the European galleries. Part 1
From Athens to Zurich, here are the some of the best European galleries. Part 2
It’s hard to believe, but the year is almost over. Another 12 months have whizzed past us, with their usual load of openings, exhibitions, biennales, and art fairs. In this article artnet news goes down memory lane to remember some of the best exhibitions that took place in Europe in 2015, in no particular order.
There have been persistent murmurs in the art world about the imminent (market) demise of the so-called Zombie Formalism movement, a kind of colorful, undemanding type of abstract painting that’s commanded astronomical prices for the past few years. Dire predictions and a few disappointing auction results aside, the evidence is hardly overwhelming. And yet, looking ahead to the fall’s most […]
James Turrell’s work is as instantly recognizable as it is undefinable, existing somewhere between land art, light art, sculpture, and installation. Turrell has been exploring the nature of light and space since the 1960s, and in that time has created works all over the world from Yucatan to Japan, not to mention his yet-unfinished opus […]
According to Artnet News, Part One of the top 55 European galleries is below: Europe’s cities offer a wealth of contemporary art galleries, making the continent an important destination for art lovers across the world. Those looking to admire both established and leading artists, as well as seek out new and emerging talent, flock to Europe’s top […]
JOHN NEWSOM: So, how did you discover art? What was your ‘eureka’ moment? PATRICK PAINTER: Well, when I was 28, I was living in Paris, and I was working for an insurance company, Metropolitan Life. One day I said to myself, “I don’t know anything about art, so I’m gonna start looking at art.” It’s […]
This year hasn’t even come to an end. Yet, intrepid gallerists and collectors are no doubt already pulling out their calendars to mark out the fair circuit for the year 2015. To help weed out the best from the rest, artnet News’ European editors sorted through the stacks of notes and reports from the year’s fairs […]
Berlin played host to the third edition of ArtFi, the Fine Art and Finance Conference, on Wednesday, welcoming influential panelists and art world insiders to the Tagespiegel newspaper headquarters for a day of high-tempo exchange on the latest trends and developments in the art market. Coinciding with Berlin Art Week, the conference’s focus on art and […]
The week leading up to the press preview for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art marked a change of seasons. (Disclosure: Biennale curator Juan Gaitan is a friend, and participating artist Judy Radul is my partner.) Gone were the cold winds and grey skies of winter; in their place, golden mornings, tawny afternoons and […]
The Martin-Gropius-Bau opened a one-man show of Ai Weiwei’s work titled “Evidence.” It spans three decades of the dissident Chinese artist’s career. Watch the Video.
The Berlin show is vast, Ai’s largest ever, spanning 32,300 square feet in the Martin-Gropius-Bau. Most of the works are new, tracing the time since his relationship with the government went sour ahead of the 2008 Olympics. They also tend to take a more personal tone, playing up (for better or worse) the celebrity status […]
Monstrous as the Wall was, it offered artists like Noir – and musicians like Bowie – a dark subject matter that is lacking in safe consumerist societies. Has culture ever recovered from the fall of the Berlin Wall? Seriously. The division of Berlin and state surveillance endured by people trapped in the eastern half of the […]
We always knew Ai Weiwei was a fan of Marcel Duchamp. The Chinese artist’s massive bicycle sculptures made reference to both a mode of transport commonly associated with Chinese peasantry, and also Duchamp’s first readymade,Bicycle Wheel (1913), consisting of the front forks and wheel of a bike fitted into a wooden stool. Now the Chinese artist has drawn […]