“CAN WE QUICKEN this up?” It’s lunchtime in New York and Larry Gagosian is hungry. It’s time for supper—or at least aperitifs—in Europe, where he recently did a three-week working tour of France, England, Germany and Switzerland, and it’s breakfast in Los Angeles, where last week he hosted his annual pre-Oscars opening at his Beverly […]
Never has the phrase “Hindsight is 20/20″ held as much weight for anyone as it has for collectors and other art world observers in the wake of the recent high-profile Knoedler forgery trial. The case was settled a few days ago (February 10), but not without the art world experiencing a mountain of frequently cringe-worthy evidence and an earful […]
Working across a wide range of media, French artist Philippe Parreno came to prominence during the 1990s and is known both for his collaborative approach to artmaking (with artists such as Liam Gillick, Douglas Gordon and Tino Sehgal) and for treating exhibitions as objects or artworks in themselves, rather than as a collection of discrete […]
Political art has changed over the past 50 years. Unlike the protest art of an earlier era, much of the most interesting new work feels slippery and evasive, as if reluctant to speak its mind. In part, this is a reflection of different, though not necessarily evolved, thinking. We’ve abandoned old beliefs in utopias, in […]
If a collector wanted to buy a Frank Stella at Art Basel Miami Beach last December, he could have walked up to the booth of New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery, which represents Frank Stella. Or, he could have walked up to the booth of London and New York gallery Dominique Lévy, which also represents Frank Stella. […]
Florence Waters takes a closer look at the life and work of the woman behind the dots — the world’s most popular artist of 2015. Illustrated with works offered in our forthcoming Post-War and Contemporary Art auctions in London. 1. Painting became an act of rebellion for Kusama when she was just a child. Her […]
The first decades of the 20th century were among the most fruitful periods of artistic production of the modern era, especially for the still-fledgling art of photography. In New York, just after the turn of the century, a small circle of photographic visionaries revolved around the magnetic figure of Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), whose influence as […]
Classified images leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden will figure as artworks at the Whitney Museum of American Art in its Laura Poitras solo exhibition, “Astro Noise,” opening next week. In an unprecedented sprint from headline to gallery wall, news of the covert intelligence program to which the works pertain will have scarcely broken […]
America’s preëminent museum finally embraces contemporary art. Gertrude Stein’s famous remark that “you can be a museum or you can be modern, but you can’t be both” sounds archaic today. Every self-respecting urban center has its museum of modern art, and climate-change-denying business leaders will spend lavishly to get their name on its walls. The […]
Did anyone catch the Guerrilla Girls’ brief appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? Masked members of the anonymous feminist art collective gave a short introduction to what they do, and gave some really good answers as to why we should care about what museums collect. When Colbert asked about the important of even noticing […]
Art is a self-starting, entrepreneurial activity, and what is true of entrepreneurs in general is perhaps true of artists. “[T]he most common shared trait among entrepreneurs is access to financial capital—family money, an inheritance, or a pedigree and connections that allow for access to financial stability….,” Quartz recently explained, debunking the cult of the entrepreneur as visionary risk-taker. “When […]
In a dramatic development for the auction industry, Sotheby’s announced on Monday that it had acquired Art Agency, Partners, a two-year old, New York-based art advisory company, for $50 million plus built-in performance fees that could elevate that number to $85 million over the next four years. “AAP’s profitable business helps drive initiatives that are […]
In a somewhat surprising move, Sotheby’s announced today it will pay $50 million in cash to acquire the art advisory firm Art Agency, Partners and create a new Fine Art Division run by AAP’s Amy Cappellazzo and Allan Schwartzman. The deal could reportedly total $85 million if the performance benchmarks over the next five years. The left-field […]
Yet another lawsuit has been filed by a photographer against a major artist, and the case could have a major impact on the interpretation of copyright and intellectual property law. Photographer Donald Graham has brought suit against Richard Prince for using a photograph of a Rastafarian in his 2014 Gagosian Gallery exhibition “New Portraits,” which […]
Renowned photographer Donald Graham brought a federal complaint against Gagosian Gallery, Larry Gagosian, and artist Richard Prince on December 30 for unauthorized use of one of his famous images,Rastafarian Smoking a Joint, in the 2014 show “New Portraits.” Along with the black-and-white image of a Rastafarian man lighting a marijuana cigarette, which is the subject of […]
It is easy to forget just how really good a painter Alex Katz can be. This is because he makes everything look so easy and natural. Coming of age during the early 1950s, at the height of Abstract Expressionism, the idea of showing struggle and existential angst became anathema to him. This is what he […]
Any exhibition of older art drawn from a museum’s permanent collection is a palm held out for us to read, a snapshot of the museum’s sense of its role over time, its present ambitions and its view of art history. Place two such exhibitions side by side and an especially intense and revealing frisson can […]
A towering figure of the postwar era, Ellsworth Kelly charted a singular and often solitary artistic path. He ventured to Europe twice—first as a camoufleur for the Ghost Army during World War II, then as a questing painter on the G.I. Bill—and brought back a bright and lively new style of American painting, seductive in […]
The American painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly passed away on Sunday at the age of 92. Kelly died of natural causes at his home in Spencertown, New York, his gallerist Matthew Marks announced. He is survived by his husband Jack Shear and his brother David. Kelly is considered one of the most influential American artists of the […]
Judging from the number of seven, eight-, and even nine-figure prices at auction this past year, there is clearly no shortage of trophy-hunters around the world to continue powering the global art market boom. While money—and lots of it—is clearly a key prerequisite for collectors to play at the top level of the art game, […]