Bursting out of the frame and off the pedestal, installation art has proven to be one of the most vital artistic innovations of the past century. Its practitioners—including Robert Smithson, Mike Kelley, and Yayoi Kusama—appreciate its anything-goes sensibility and relative absence of historical baggage. Individual installations may take the form of architectural interventions, taxonomic collections, or large-scale […]
Early last March, London’s Conservative mayor Boris Johnson unveiled Hans Haacke’s “Gift Horse,” the tenth commission installed on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Described on the Greater London Authority’s website as a rumination on the “link[s] between power, money, and history,” “Gift Horse” consists of a bronze horse skeleton and a live electronic ticker of the […]
Artnet News Part Two of the top 55 European Galleries is below, including Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the UK. Pictured is Nicholas Logsdail, Founder and Director of London’s Lisson Gallery, representing a wide range of significant conceptual artists including: Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, Allora & Calzadilla, Art & Language, Cory Arcangel, Broomberg […]
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 […]
On Wednesday morning, Chinese artist and prominent dissident Ai Weiwei announced via an Instagram post that Chinese authorities have returned his passport. “Today I got my passport” his Instagram caption read. “Ai Weiwei and his many supporters around the world are thrilled at the news that his passport has been returned after 600 days,” Ossian Ward from Lisson Gallery, […]
Egypt-born and -based Wael Shawky inhabits the epic’s structure impeccably, and in the most unexpected way possible: with puppets. In a lush, labyrinthine trilogy of films being exhibited at MoMA PS1, he uses sublimely designed, marvelously costumed ensembles of marionettes and puppets — some made centuries ago, others fashioned by the artist of Murano glass. […]
Art Basel is appointing Noah Horowitz, currently the executive director of theArmory Show in New York, to be its new director of the Americas, running Art Basel Miami Beach. Mr. Horowitz’s job will be to oversee and lead the development of Art Basel’s outpost in the United States, which takes place each December. He will […]
A triumvirate of the world’s biggest galleries—Gagosian, Pace, and David Zwirner—is headed to the Pacific Northwest this month for the debut Seattle Art Fair. Debut fairs are not always expected to be big sales events, dealers often say, but rather opportunities to start to build relationships with new clients. Goff’s expectations are higher than that. […]
Life has been happier for many of us in the art world since we stopped caring about runaway commerce in art, which has seemed—but only seemed—to reduce all measures of aesthetic value to raw price. Sure, the billion-plus dollars shaken loose, since May, at three New York and London auctions of modern and contemporary works—with […]
The hundreds of gallery owners who apply each year to secure a coveted booth at Art Basel, the Swiss art fair, spend weeks on their admission applications. They describe the evolution of their galleries, track the history of their exhibitions and list the biographies of their artists. Then there is the matter of the “mock […]
“The architecture becomes semi-conscious,” said Philippe Parreno during a morning press conference debuting his new installation for the Park Avenue Armory, which opens today and is on view through August 2. I believe he followed up this building-coming-alive statement with a comparison to the work of Philip K. Dick — the artist’s thick French accent […]
Philippe Parreno’s H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS (pronounced “hypnosis,” just to confuse us all) is bewildering. Staged in the Park Avenue Armory’s massive drill hall, it’s an installation that involves film, sculpture, music, and performance. It takes at least two hours to get through, and feels as slow and frustrating as the traffic on Broadway during […]
The artist’s new project at Chateau de Versailles, in France, has already led to controversy. The exhibition runs from 9 June to 1 November.
French conservatives are outraged over Anish Kapoor’s work in Versailles. But he’s not the first artist to bring sex into the country’s establishment. Anish Kapoor is putting the vagina in Versailles. Why on earth are the French so shocked? What has happened to the nation that gave us Courbet’s explicit painting The Origin of the […]
The sculptor has produced a brutish, gaping funnel sculpture called Dirty Corner for the Versailles gardens. Oh dear, is this how men still see women? Anish Kapoor has made another whacking great sculpture for the Versailles gardens, called Dirty Corner. And it’s meant to be Marie Antoinette’s vagina. I know the queen had her faults, […]
Paris might be the world’s most romantic city, but when it comes to talking about sex, Parisians are proving a little prudish (see Paul McCarthy Beaten Up over Butt Plug Sculpture and Artist Enacts Origin of the World at Musée d’Orsay—And, Yes, That Means What You Think). One of Anish Kapoor‘s sculptures at his newly-opened solo show at Versailles […]
The huge installations by the artist inspire both admiration and disapproval and his latest work, Dirty Corner, at Versailles is causing more discord than ever. Like some corporate-sponsored mega rock band on a mammoth world tour, there is a type of international artist whose epic-scale installations are must-see events in a string of major cities. […]
When he was young, the French artist Philippe Parreno had a fantasy in which he would open his mouth and a beam of projector light would shoot out, casting his thoughts onto whatever was in front of him, medium and message in one human head. “My imagination would just be easy and available,” he once […]
Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum are artists, journalists, dissidents, polymaths — and targets. Their respective governments, China and the United States, monitor their every move. They have been detained and interrogated. Ai cannot leave China, and Appelbaum is advised not to return to the United States. They are separated from their families. Ai has been […]
Laing and Kathleen loan “Notes for Strangers” (and “Void numbering project (continuous)“) to the Geoffrey Farmer exhibition How Do I Fit This Ghost in My Mouth? opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery May 29, 2015. Joanne Latimer: “Okay, so nobody can accuse the Browns of buying art to match the couch.”