Eyes in the wall, coins glued to the floor: Gander’s new show at Manchester Art Gallery is full of spoof and childish wonder – he’s having a laugh, but is it at our expense? The eyes swivel and follow me round the room, blinking with an echoing clack! Insouciant eyebrows are raised then furrow with […]
Can money buy critical immunity? It certainly seems so, judging by critics’ response to the Whitney Museum’s retrospective devoted to the most expensive living artist,Jeff Koons. In this week’s edition of Critical Reduction, we boil down eight critics’ takes on the shiny extravaganza, which, befitting of such a divisive artist, tend to be either vividly enthusiastic or vehemently dismissive. […]
Art Basel and the London summer auctions are behind us, and the auction market continues to hit unprecedented peaks. But today’s records and art stars came straight out of yesterday’s headline-grabbing auctions. With that in mind, we take a look back at some major milestones of the last few decades—from the 1973 sale that arguably […]
MOSCOW (AFP).- A hugely controversial Russian law banning curse words in films, theatre, the media and arts came into force on Tuesday, part of a Kremlin-backed drive to play up traditional values and root out swearing. The legislation, wich was signed off by President Vladimir Putin in May, imposes hefty fines on offenders — up […]
If I had to sum up American history in a word, I wouldn’t use racism,though obviously that’s a biggie. I’d pick hokum. I put it right up there withliberty, as in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” a passage which itself could be taken for hokum, written as it was by a man who owned slaves. However, I […]
Art is a “platform for the future,” Jeff Koons announced at yesterday’s press conference at the Whitney. What that means is anyone’s guess, but he followed that up by explaining that he’s 59 and hopes to be making art for at least another three decades. In short, while this may be his first New York […]
There are so many strange, disconcerting aspects to Jeff Koons, his art and his career that it is hard to quite know how to approach his first New York retrospective, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s largest survey devoted to a single artist. First there are the notorious sex pictures from his “Made in Heaven” […]
Given that he’s a goliath figure in the art world whose output spans three decades, it may come as a surprise that Jeff Koons’s Whitney retrospective is the artist’s first major solo show at a New York museum. The exhibition offers 150 works dating back to 1978, giving visitors a comprehensive look at the former commodities trader’s ambitious and diverse artistic […]
A titanic presence in American postwar art, Jeff Koons is an icon whose popular fame, instantly recognizable sculptures, and consistent status as the most expensive living artist ensure that he will be remembered for a long, long time to come. And that’s not even considering their value as works of art, an appraisal that will have its […]
Midway through the Whitney Museum’s Jeff Koons retrospective, you come upon “Banality.” The series, unveiled in 1988 at three galleries concurrently (Sonnabend in New York, Donald Young in Chicago, and Max Hetzler in Cologne), made Koons the neo-Pop god that he is today. It consists of a series of man-sized kitsch figurines. “In my ‘Banality’ series I started […]
Carl Andre is credited with changing the history of sculpture. Now nearly 80, Andre once scrounged industrial materials — timber, bricks, squares and ingots of metal — and arranged them on the floor. No pedestals, no joints and no altering of the surfaces. In 1970, the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan gave the young artist a […]
NEW YORK, NY.- The Whitney Museum of American Art will debut the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to the groundbreaking art of Jeff Koons. This unprecedented exhibition will be the artist’s first large-scale museum presentation in New York and also the first time that a single artist’s work will fill nearly the entire Whitney Museum. […]
BASEL, Switzerland — In an old market hall adjacent to the cavernous center where Art Basel, the gold standard of contemporary art fairs, is taking place, there is a happening unlike anything ever staged here. Called “14 Rooms,” it consists of 14 mini-performances created by artists including Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst and Yoko Ono, each […]
Douglas Coupland’s new exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery crackles with creativity, invention and insight. Coupland’s work in “everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything” combines an incredible pop art sensibility that delights in combining colour, shape and form with a surprising and subtle mix of ideas. In the first major survey of his work […]
Douglas Coupland has been collecting the stuff for years: toy guns, adding machines, little astronaut figures, tiny cribs and toilets, a giant molar, a punching bag. They came from Craigslist, dumpsters, garage sales, eBay. Now gathered in an enormous installation – white items on white shelves; colourful trinkets on black shelves; a precarious Tower of […]
WAKEFIELD.- Yorkshire Sculpture Park announces an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, opening in the Park’s newly refurbished 18th century chapel following a £500,000 restoration. The project, the first by Ai Weiwei in a British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in 2010, is accompanied by poetry readings from the works of celebrated poet Ai […]
Two exhibitions of new work by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei have opened in the UK. The first at a public art gallery in Yorkshire (Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is his first in a British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in 2010. iron tree, 2013 is a majestic six-metre high sculpture […]
How do Dubai, Istanbul, or Hong Kong differ from the “traditional” hubs of London and New York? How can artistic activity and its economic corollaries be encouraged? Such were the questions put to a panel chaired by the indefatigable art market expert Georgina Adam at Christie’s London on May 27. Art Dubai director Savita Apte, art critic […]
The row around Marina Abramović is redundant, as the story of art is one of homages and remakes. But that’s not to say there isn’t a problem. “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” said Pablo Picasso. Or at least he gets the credit for saying it. Perhaps he pinched the words from Oscar Wilde. For there […]