Anish Kapoor Gets One-Man Show at Château de Versailles

The sculptor Anish Kapoor, no stranger to grandeur, has been awarded a one-man show at the Château de Versailles, reports the New York Times. The show, running from June through October 2015, will follow similar shows in the same space by Takashi Murakami, Joana Vasconcelos, and Jeff Koons.  According to Catherine Pégard, director of the Château […]

The Greatest Painting in the World: 10 Luminaries Cast Their Ballots

There are some questions in the art world that are not well received. Most of these have to do with money and rank. Asking how much an artwork costs or how important it is can seem a little crass and demeaning to the intensely personal experience of viewing high art. “The greatest picture in the […]

Weight of the World: Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy

There are many sides to the work of the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Those lucky enough to visit his studio complex at Barjac in the South of France encounter a staggering array of installations, underground tunnels, and tottering concrete towers resembling some contemporary equivalent to the fortifications of medieval Tuscany. But wisely, the Royal Academy […]

Robert Gober Brings It Home at MoMA

Robert Gober’s retrospective “The Heart Is Not A Metaphor,” which opens on October 4 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is a strange and moving survey of domestic unease, seemingly pointless labor, and creeping horror, among other things. You enter the exhibition past a pair of very different works: “X Pipe Playpen,” […]

50 Women Artists Worth Watching

Wouldn’t it be nice to think that a gender-delimited list is no longer relevant? It’s true that to be a practicing woman artist today is hardly the struggle it would have been in Mary Cassatt’s era. Women artists are actively acquired by museums and honored with major surveys and retrospectives; recent names in the spotlight […]

All Aboard That “Great Koonsian Adventure”

Everything about the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art is over-the-top. That includes the press-conference-cum-love-in that opened Tuesday’s media preview, during which museum director Adam Weinberg whipped himself into a subdued but hyperbolic frenzy, rhapsodizing about how Koons’s artistic career had a partial genesis in a 1974 Jim Nutt exhibition Jeff saw, age […]

Daily Pic: Dennis Oppenheim’s Evanescent Take on Land Art

Sure, I thought the Art Basel fair was mostly a waste of time for true art lovers … even as I found plenty of fodder there for the Daily Pic. In this last item sourced from the fair, I give you a still from vintage footage of Dennis Oppenheim’s “Whirlpool (Eye of the Storm)”. Blake […]

Daily Pic: Tino Sehgal Has the Best Thing in Basel

At the giant Art Basel fair that opens tomorrow in Switzerland, the best thing to be seen has nothing to do with the thousands of deluxe art objects being offered on the sales floor. It sits in a building off to one side, where, as part of a performance-art project called “14 Rooms,” the brilliant artist Tino […]

Forget Go-Go Schadenfreude, Bank On Urs

It was the exhibition that everyone seemed so eager to hate: Mega-dealer Larry Gagosian’s Lower East Side “pop-up” space, open through May 23, showcasing sculptures by Urs Fischer inside a former Chase bank on Delancey Street. (Another gallery outpost at 821 Park Avenue is hosting his massive bronze piece, “last supper.”) “How’s Gagmewithaspoon?,” my friend […]

Holding the Gaze: The Sexual Power of Jordan Wolfson’s Animatronic Doll

“I don’t want to tell you this work is about women,” said artist Jordan Wolfson over the phone, “because I don’t think that’s true.” Wolfson, a 33-year-old artist who works in video, performance, and sculpture, was on a lunch break at a special effects studio in Los Angeles where he was developing his latest work, […]

VIDEO: Judd Tully Tours TEFAF Maastricht 2014

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — TEFAF Maastricht (The European Fine Art Fair) is in full swing, and during its 12-day run the fair will show off works from 275 of the world’s premier art and antiques dealers. Art+Auction Magazine editor-at-large and ARTINFO market reporter Judd Tully traveled to Maastricht to find out how much you can expect to pay for […]

Daily Pic: Art’s Favorite Subject

In art schools, there is an ancient rule – maybe first promulgated by Her Worship Marina Abramovic – decreeing that it’s not performance art until a girl takes her clothes off. This is a still from a brand-new six-minute video by Jennifer Bornstein, on view in the Whitney Biennial, that feels as though it’s revisiting that […]

VIDEO: 60 Works in 60 Seconds from TEFAF Maastricht 2014

MAASTRICHT — Vincent van Gogh’s “Moulin de la Galette” from 1887 is one of four of the Dutch painter’s works — and one of many stunning discoveries — on view at TEFAF, The European Fine Art Fair, which opened Thursday in Maastricht, The Netherlands. “Moulin de la Galette,” which was last exhibited in public in 1965, is […]

Is Futurism’s Time Now? The Guggenheim Takes a Chance On Turbulent History

Famously inspired by a car crash, Futurism burst forth in 1909 with an uncompromising agenda. Its poetics, as decreed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in his manifesto, would be “courage, audacity and revolt” nurtured by “fire, hatred, and speed.” Museums had become “cemeteries,” Marinetti wrote, and should be demolished, along with libraries, to deliver Italy from the […]

Contemporary Keeps Climbing at Sotheby’s

London—The contemporary art market continued its steady climb at Sotheby’s on Wednesday night, with a sale dominated by a strong grouping of paintings by international blue chip artists that brought in £87,915,500 ($144,550,665). Ten of the 57 lots offered went unsold, for a trim buy-in rate by lot of 17.5 percent and seven percent by value. Twenty […]

A Night of Fevered Bidding on Arte Povera at Christie’s London

London—The market for the relatively esoteric Italian art movement of the mid-1960s known as Arte Povera (Poor Art) took a giant leap forward at Christie’s on Tuesday evening with a single-owner sale that earned £38,427,400 ($63,020,930). The figure compared well to pre-sale expectations of £25.7-36.5 ($42.1-59.9 million). Of the very large number of offerings in the […]

Saving Face: MoMA to Preserve and Store Former Folk Art Museum’s Façade

Those still mourning the loss of the Todd Williams Billie Tsien-designedAmerican Folk Art Museum at MoMA’s hands may find some (small) consolation in a new revelation: Although the building will still be demolished as planned, “We will take the façade down, piece by piece, and we will store it,” MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry told the New York Times. Taking down the façade […]

Another Record Night for Imp/Mod Sales – Sotheby’s London

Anchored by superb works on paper from a storied collector-dealer and an important restituted painting by a French Impressionist, Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionism, Modernism, and Surrealism brought a  stellar £163,461,500 ($266,654,745) on Wednesday night, making it the firm’s highest-earning London auction ever. Of the 89 lots offered, only ten failed to sell, for a […]