Is an exhibition ever too beautiful for its own good? Jenny Holzer’s new show at Cheim & Read, Dust Paintings, is ravishing. But the sensuality of these text-based abstractions, done in oil on linen in mostly muted colors, runs counter to their content, which is derived from declassified government reports of brutalization and death during the […]
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 […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Judging from the large bags of colorful Legos on the floor and dozens of plastic base plates piled on tables, this room could have been the activities station for a well-funded summer camp. And the five women and men drifting in and out, slicing open boxes and rooting around for the right […]
With his trademark style, Robert Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it have radically changed in the last 50 years, telling the story of the rise of contemporary art and looking back over a life spent talking and writing about the art he loves, and loathes. The video […]
A holdover from the days of the French salon system, art awards provide distinguished organizations—museums, government bodies, corporations, philanthropic groups—with a way to honor the outstanding artistic talent of the day (and to burnish their own reputations in the process). With Grand Rapids’s headline-grabbing Artprize on the horizon, we’ve assembled a glossary of the world’s […]
When John Baldessari started creating his text paintings in the mid 1960s, only a handful of artists had ever trifled with the idea. There were Roy Lichtenstein‘s paintings from comics, and the Cubists had integrated newspaper clippings in their work, but nobody had been brave enough to exhibit paintings that simply offered text. For one […]
Protesters swarmed the Fesch Museum in Ajaccio, Corsica on Tuesday and Wednesday, demanding that it remove Andres Serrano’s ever-incendiary work Piss Christ (1987). As Le Figaro reported, approximately 50 people stood outside the museum holding a large sign which read “PISS CHRIST FORA,” or “Piss Christ out.” The protesters contend that the work is an affront to Catholicism and an “insult to every Corsican,” the […]
LONDON — Sometimes art can be difficult to understand. Sometimes the art market can be even more baffling. Back in December, the contemporary dealer David Zwirnersaid in a New Yorker profile that art was “an industry in its golden age.” His point seemed to have been proven during the June 17 preview of the Art Basel fair in […]
On August 20, Canadian performance artist Istvan Kantor smeared a white wall on the third floor of the Whitney Museum’s Jeff Koons retrospective with his own blood, and signed the impromptu mural with the name “Monty Cantsin,” andHyperallergic reported. He was photographed by a passerby, ecstatically raising his arms and holding a piece of paper.
When artists agree to be represented by a gallery, they usually work out with the gallery owner such matters as the amount of the dealer’s commission; how often their work will be exhibited in solo or group shows; the price of their artworks; that sort of thing. Another expectation, usually not as explicitly stated but increasingly […]
Since the dawn of the avant-garde, artists have striven to challenge the boundaries set by conventional painting—the traditional use of oil, acrylic, tempura, and other mediums designated by the Academy as appropriate for dignified employment on canvas. Modern art, especially, unleashed an onslaught of new and unusual art processes, beginning with the Cubists’ magpie use of […]
Although Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996) was one of the most influential art historians of the 20th century, his legacy is hard to quantify. He was a professor at Columbia University from 1928 until his death; he also lectured at New York University in the early 1930s and thereafter at the New School. For an academic, Schapiro had a uniquely extensive reach through his […]
PARIS — One cloudy afternoon this month, the line to enter the Louvre stretched around the entrance pyramid, across one long courtyard and into the next. Inside the museum, a crowd more than a dozen deep faced the Mona Lisa, most taking cellphone pictures and selfies. Near the “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” Jean-Michel Borda, visiting […]
The becalmed days of summer are upon us, with the art world gearing up for its annual August disappearing act and the antic joys of summer shows beginning to wane. Sure, you could use this time to simply head to the beach and forget about it all for a while. Or… you could muscle up […]
The selfie isn’t a 21st-century invention. Buzz Aldrin has reminded us on Twitter that he took the first space selfie in 1966. Here’s a selection of other early examples of the form – from the 1830s to the 1980s.
Standing before Marc Quinn’s looming Myth Venus sculpture in front of Christie’s Rockefeller headquarters last night was a masked protester holding a large poster that readF*** U. It was a parody of Wade Guyton’s 2005 Untitled that sold for $3.52 million just hours later at the live-streamed “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday” auction, which included 35 contemporary artworks from blue-chip […]
Beuys, Richter, Kiefer, Polke, Ernst … such a formidable lineup shows up British contemporary artists for the commercial, over-hyped and celebrity focused lightweights that they are. Germany has proved its global footballing eminence by winning the 2014 World Cup, yet soccer is just one of many things Germans excel at. There’s also art. What is the […]
An early Damien Hirst painting titled Bombay Mix has become the source of controversy London, reports the BBC. The artist is blocking the sale of the piece, claiming that his company, Science Ltd, still holds the certificate for the spot painting, which was painted directly on the wallpaper of a London house in 1988, and is therefore the piece’s […]
“Scanner Room” – an installation designed specifically for the gallery space that engulfs this space completely, creating an environment constructed by light and filled with it. The form is minimalist, its most important element is a constant, monochrome flow of light that materializes and diffuses itself subsequently. The space has been created for people to […]
If you go to Kara Walker’s new exhibit, “A Subtlety,” at the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, a lot will overwhelm you. You’ll likely wait outside in a line that snakes down Kent Street, across from rowhouses that were once owned by Puerto Rican families and now fetch millions. You’ll sign a waiver absolving the […]