ART WORLD'S GRAND DAME LOUISE BOURGEOIS DIES AT 98

French-born sculptor and artist Louise Bourgeois died Monday at age 98 of a heart attack.

POP ICON DENNIS HOPPER DIES AT 74

Dennis Hopper 1971
Andy Warhol

Dennis Hopper, actor, filmmaker, photographer, and art collector, died today at 74 of complications due to prostate cancer.

WHITNEY PLANS MOVE DOWNTOWN

After 25 years of false starts, the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art has taken a step that will redefine the 80-year-old institution. It voted on Tuesday afternoon to begin construction on a building in the meatpacking district in Manhattan, to be completed by 2015, that will vastly increase the size and scope of the museum. 

The site near the High Line in the meatpacking district where the Whitney Museum of American Art plans to break ground next year. The downtown Whitney will be a six-story building.

 The New York Times

The board also agreed to sell a group of brownstones adjacent to the museum’s signature Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue and East 75th Street, and the museum’s annex building around the corner on 74th Street. The sale will effectively end any chance of the Whitney expanding in its current space, where it has been since 1966 and which it has been trying to enlarge since the architect Michael Graves unveiled the first of many expansion plans in 1985.Without room to grow uptown, and without the income necessary to run two museums, the Whitney now faces the question of what to do with the Breuer building — which may end up being shared, at least temporarily, by another institution, perhaps the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Certainly such an alliance would lighten the Whitney’s financial burden. So far the board has raised about $372 million toward the downtown project, which it estimates will cost $680 million, a figure that includes construction and endowment. The sale of the brownstones and the annex building is expected to raise about $100 million more. The vote to break ground downtown — and the choice of holding it so close to the planned site — were the latest in a series of moves that have been carefully choreographed by board members who saw the new building as the Whitney’s last chance to grow after so many failed efforts at expansion. The Whitney has been struggling with space issues for decades. When it moved to the Breuer building, there were 2,000 works in its collection — a number that has since grown to about 18,000 — but there is only enough room to show about 150 works from its permanent holdings at one time. Many larger works in the collection have never been displayed because of the lack of space. The downtown Whitney, designed by Renzo Piano, will be a six-story, 195,000-square-foot metal-clad building, with a dramatic cantilevered entrance. It will include more than 50,000 square feet of indoor galleries and 13,000 square feet of rooftop exhibition space, as well as classrooms, a research library, art conservation labs and a multi-use indoor/outdoor space for film, video and performance art. It will also include a restaurant, cafe and bookstore. Most important, in Whitney's director Weinberg’s view, “it will have one of the largest column-free spaces to show art in New York.”

SITTING WITH MARINA

Photographs by Marco Anelli 

Performance art, as currently practiced, emerged as an avant garde movement in the 1960s and ’70s, and some of its features made it difficult to visualize how it might make the transition from galleries and public spaces to the more institutional environment of the museum. For one thing, the medium of the artist is his or her own body, sometimes nude or engaged in highly dangerous circumstances. Pictures of nude bodies doing dangerous things raise no such obstacles in a museum space, but performance art itself is real in all dimensions. Before it can be translated and presented in a museum, a number of problems, both practical and philosophical, must be worked out. One method would be to allow the pieces to be re-performed, which purists naturally disallow. For them, a performance is a one-time event, unlike a play, which is made to be re-performed; in theater, the distinction between character and actor is widely accepted. In the purist’s conception of performance art, there can be no such distinction; the artist and the performer are one, and must use his or her own body in the work. No one else, they argue, can do this, for reasons both moral and metaphysical. Marina Abramovic is one of the early performance artists whose works have the deep originality that justifies their inclusion in great museums. In recent years, she has not adhered to the purist approach; she has re-performed the work of other artists, when they have granted her permission, and of course has re-performed her own. She did both at the Guggenheim Museum in November 2005, in a one week show called “Seven Easy Pieces.” But knowing that she will not always be around, she has also trained other artists to re-perform some of her work. Five of these re-performances are included in “The Artist Is Present,” the retrospective of Marina’s work currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, now in its final week. One of those pieces, “Imponderabilia” — originally performed in 1977 by Marina and her former partner, Ulay — consists of two nude performers facing one another in a doorway. Visitors to the show may pass through to the next room by working their way through this living gate. (A few steps away, there is an alternate way into the next room; in the original performance, visitors to the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna in Bologna were required to pass through Marina and Ulay to enter.) At the MoMA show, visitors must be aware that in this case “don’t touch the art” is underwritten by considerations of privacy that go with works consisting of living, breathing bodies. And as MoMA and other museums seek to go beyond exhibiting and actually acquire such performances, they will also have to deal with a number of imponderable issues that do not normally arise with works of art like paintings and sculptures. The live performers share the MoMA exhibition space with other more conventional works of art — photographs, videos and various props. All these are conceptually as well as aesthetically exciting, but in no respect have they aroused the sort of universal interest generated by Marina’s new performance piece, enacted daily by the artist since the show opened on March 14. It has captured the imagination of everyone interested in contemporary art. Because of my role as critic and philosopher, and as a New Yorker associated with the arts, I am often asked for my opinion of what this new work, designed for this occasion, means. It consists of Marina seated in a chair on the floor of the atrium, one flight up from the museum’s entrance, across from an empty chair, in which anyone can sit for any length of time. (A table that had been placed between Marina and the sitter was removed a few weeks ago, as it was felt to be an unnecessary barrier.) The performance has brought MoMA itself to the cutting edge of contemporary artistic experiment, and has in every way proven to be a succès fou. I was a sort of witness to the creative history of the work, since I had accepted the invitation to write the main essay for the show’s catalog. Part of my task was to establish the historical setting of Marina’s work, which was part archival and part interpretative. But it was another matter to describe the new piece; Marina was still uncertain what the atrium performance would be and on this point my essay was necessarily vague. Originally, she imagined a scaffold of seven platforms on one of the atrium walls, connected by ladders, which would have related to an earlier work, “The House With an Ocean View,” performed at the Sean Kelly Gallery in 2002. There she fasted through the 12 days the performance lasted, and did certain things acceptable in a gallery space that would be at least questionable in a public museum space: she urinated, for example, and sometimes stood nude, weeping on the scaffold. For the MoMA show, which would be nearly three months long, fasting was out of the question, and nudity would have to be negotiated. Then, in a moment of high inspiration, she changed the program radically. On May 23, 2009, she wrote her curator, Klaus Biesenbach, as follows:

I decided that I want to have a work that connects me more with the public, that concentrates … on the interaction between me and the audience.
I want to have a simple table, installed in the center of the atrium, with two chairs on the sides. I will sit on one chair and a square of light from the ceiling will separate me from the public.
Anyone will be free to sit on the other side of the table, on the second chair, staying as long as he/she wants, being fully and uniquely part of the Performance.
I think this work [will] draw a line of continuity in my career.

Fortunately, the catalog had not gone to press, and I was able to revise my essay to take account of this decision. It was consistent with certain past performances, where, for example, she and Ulay would sit in silence at opposite ends of a table for a set period of time. What was new was the empty chair. No one, except perhaps Marina herself, knew what the effect of the empty chair would be. What is clear is that the possibility of sitting with Marina has ignited in the public imagination the idea that one can do more than passively experience works of art, that one can be part of a work of art for as long as one is willing or able. I have been told that museum visitors in general stand in front of art works for an average of 30 seconds. At MoMA, some have chosen to sit across from Marina for hours; one young woman sat for the entire length of a day’s performance, frustrating many others waiting their turn in line. Others have returned to sit multiple times. By rough estimate, visitors sit for an average of 20 minutes. I had the opportunity to sit with Marina on April 15. My wife and I were permitted to arrive before the museum opened and were first in line. We watched Marina sweep into the atrium surrounded by some others, and then take her seat. There were only two chairs in the atrium. Everyone else was waiting or working. Marina was sitting in a sort of space within the space of the atrium. The space was defined by tape laid in a square on the floor and lit from above. Just outside the square was a film crew; visitors waiting to sit with Marina stood in line in a sort of L. It reminded me of a portrait by Giacometti, in which the subject is placed within a space suggested by a few lines. Giacometti was after all a sculptor; he used the lines to suggest a space, thus giving the subject a presence. I noticed a similar effect in the atrium. The inner space was the artist’s own. It was charged with palpable feeling. Since I now use a wheelchair to get around, someone wheeled me opposite Marina and the chair was removed. My session as part of the work had begun. Marina looked beautiful in an intense red garment whose hem formed a circle on the floor, and her black hair was braided to one side. I was unclear as to what I was to do in the charmed space across from her other than to maintain a silence. She is in fact a wonderful talker, full of wit and a kind of Balkan humor. But this performance is very much a dialogue de sourds — a dialog of the deaf. Communication is on another plane. I ventured to signal “hi” with a wave, which aroused in Marina a weak smile. At this point, something striking took place. Marina leaned her head back at a slight angle, and to one side. She fixed her eyes on me without — so it seemed — any longer seeing me. It was as if she had entered another state. I was outside her gaze. Her face took on the translucence of fine porcelain. She was luminous without being incandescent. She had gone into what she had often spoken of as a “performance mode.” For me at least, it was a shamanic trance — her ability to enter such a state is one of her gifts as a performer. It is what enables her to go through the physical ordeals of some of her famous performances. I felt indeed as if this was the essence of performance in her case, often with the added element of physical danger. The question was how long to sit. On the one hand, I thought I could sit there interminably. For a wild moment I thought my physical ailments would fade away, as if I were at Lourdes. I don’t really believe in miracles, but I do believe in courtesy. After 10 minutes I decided that it would have been inconsiderate to take much more time away from the other visitors, who had waited their turns so patiently. I held out my arm as a signal, and someone wheeled me away. I stayed long enough in the area to be interviewed by the film crew. In the interview I speculated on the Marina phenomenon. I wondered if others had experienced the translucence. Was it, I wondered, part of the experience for them as well? I searched the Web later that day to see what others who sat with Marina had written. Of course their experiences were different from mine. I had put three months into the catalog essay for the MoMA show, reading about her performances and about her life. I had spent some time in Yugoslavia the 1970s teaching philosophical seminars as a Fulbright professor at the Inter-University Center of Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik. It was around then that Marina was doing her first performances in Belgrade. I recalled that, years before she was born, I had, as a young soldier in Italy, sailed one dark night to the Dalmatian coast with some partisans I had fallen in with, to bring some of their wounded comrades back to Bari for treatment. One’s experience of art draws on one’s total experience in life. One of my art world pals, Domenica, who works in a gallery in California, wrote how lucky I was to have sat with Marina. I thought that the many people now longing to sit with Marina would also say I was lucky to have had that chance. What I know now is that she and MoMA have brought some magic back into art — the sort of magic that all of our courses in art history and appreciation had encouraged us to hope for. James Turrell, the light artist, once told me that after seeing the slides of paintings in the courses he had taken, he was disappointed by the actual paintings. What he had really loved was the light, and in a sense then vowed to make sure his art, consisting of light, would never lose its magic. Those who do get lucky enough to sit with Marina will not be disappointed, because the light I noticed will be there, even if they are not ready to see it.
By ARTHUR C. DANTO for the New York Times

Arthur C. Danto is Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University, and was the art critic for The Nation from 1984 to 2009. He is the author of several books on analytical philosophy and the philosophy of art; and winner of the the National Book Critics Prize for Criticism in 1990, as well as Le Prix Philosophie for “The Madonna of the Future.”

PAUL McCARTHY'S PIG ISLAND AT TRUSSARDI FOUNDATION

Paul McCarthy
Pig Island, 2003–2010 (Detail)
Mixed media, 11 x 10 x 6 m
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

From May 20 to July 4, 2010, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi presents Pig Island, the first major solo show in an Italian institution by Paul McCarthy.

Fondazione Nicola Trussardi has invited the legendary American artist Paul McCarthy to conceive a project for Palazzo Citterio—one of the most extraordinary places in the city of Milan, located right in the city’s historical center on Via Brera, yet unknown to the public, as it has been closed for over 25 years. This exhibition will premiere the monumental masterpiece on which McCarthy has been working for over seven years: Pig Island.  Paul McCarthy is a true contemporary master who has achieved a key role in art history over his decades-long career. Combining minimalism and performance, Walt Disney and George W. Bush, McCarthy has used the human body, with all its desires and taboos, to create a unique, irreverent, and satirical language that combines Pop Art with fairy tales, the nightmares of the daily news with universal archetypes. McCarthy’s videos, performances, installations and sculptures transport visitors to a universe that combines Hollywood glamour with the dark side of the American dream. Pirates, clowns, Santa Claus puppets, home-made avatars, and mutant monsters populate McCarthy’s theater. Ketchup bottles, cans of food, mechanized pigs and cast body parts pop up in his exhibitions like the remnants of some bad dream. McCarthy’s shows are conceived as giant theme parks that stage raving bacchanals. Like a circus ringmaster, McCarthy constructs exhibitions in which celebrities impersonators interpret deranged parodies of movies, or in which Mickey Mouse and Snow White are caught in bestial acts of regression. For the exhibition with Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Paul McCarthy presents one of his most complex and ambitious works, Pig Island, a giant sculpture that grew in the artist’s studio to fill over 100 square meters with a surreal anthology of the themes that have cropped up throughout his career. The installation Pig Island is a carnivalesque amusement park in which human beings behave like pigs. A treasure island in reverse, Pig Island is a sculptural shipwreck in which pirates and their heroines throw themselves with abandon into wild revels. The installation is a contemporary Raft of the Medusa: its characters can finally cast off their inhibitions and reveal their all-too-human nature.  The piece—accompanied by a selection of McCarthy’s work from 1970 to 2010—is installed in one of the grandest examples of contemporary architecture in Milan: still completely hidden to the public, and left in a state of disrepair, this building will be unveiled for the first time on this occasion. With Pig Island, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi introduces the public to a new landmark space hidden away in the heart of the city; after the major solo shows by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Darren Almond, Maurizio Cattelan, John Bock, Urs Fischer, Anri Sala, Paola Pivi, Martin Creed, Pawel Althamer, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Tino Sehgal and Tacita Dean, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi is proud to present one of the most ambitious projects it has undertaken since its foundation in 2003, when it set out to explore historic sites in Milan and infuse them with new life through the visions of contemporary art. To help people discover all of its projects, the foundation has published the book What Good Is the Moon?, which presents brand-new articles, behind-the-scenes information, and texts by Beatrice Trussardi, Massimiliano Gioni, Daniel Birnbaum, Stefano Boeri, Tiziano Scarpa, Catherine Wood and Hans Urlich Obrist, among others, along with artist interviews and in-depth historical investigations, in 368 pages with over 450 illustrations. What Good Is the Moon? is a fundamental tool for discovering contemporary art through the projects of Fondazione Nicola Trussardi.
Curated by: Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi

JUDGE DENIES ROBINS' INJUCTION AGAINST ZWIRNER

In a decision filed 20 May, a federal judge has found that Craig Robins's claims against David Zwirner to prevent the sale of works by Dumas are "unwarranted."

A federal judge has denied Miami collector Craig Robins' claims against New York art dealer David Zwirner, alleging a breach of confidentially. In an order filed 20 May, Judge William H. Pauley III said that Robins’ application for a preliminary injunction to prevent the sale of three works by Dumas was unwarranted. In his decision, Judge Pauley also took the opportunity to deliver a harsh verdict on the art world: “This lawsuit offers an unflattering portrait of the art world—a realm of self-proclaimed royalty full of ‘blacklists’, ‘graylists’ and astonishing chicanery.”

Robins was suing Zwirner for $8m, after Zwirner told Dumas, whom he now represents, that he had sold her 1994 painting Reinhardt’s Daughter on Robins’ behalf. Robins filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on 29 March. As well the alleged breach of confidentiality, Robins alleged that the disclosure landed him on a “blacklist” by Dumas, precluding him from buying her works on the primary market. He also says that, to avoid a lawsuit in 2005 when he first found out about the blacklist, Zwirner promised him “first choice, after museums, to purchase one or more [primary market] Marlene Dumas works”. Last month, fellow dealer Jack Tilton testified in support of Robins’ claims that Zwirner had agreed to keep quiet about the sale, and his claims of the existence of a blacklist of collectors barred from having access to Dumas’ new work. According to court documents, Robins has been a major collector of the South African artist, owning 29 works, and was eager to acquire three paintings from her new exhibition at David Zwirner. Although the judge found that Robins has shown that he would suffer “irreparable harm” if Zwirner sold the three paintings elsewhere instead of offering them to Robins, he said that without written proof of either of the alleged oral agreements, enforcement is barred by the Statute of Frauds. According to the decision, “Original works of art are within the small category of intrinsically unique goods for which a specific performance remedy is appropriate… The three Dumas paintings are unique works of art. Thus, if a breach of contract has occurred, a damages remedy would be inadequate to make Robins whole. Dumas rarely makes her work available in the Primary Market. Moreover, the exhibition paintings related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Dumas, scenes of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem are thematically exceptional and in a subject area she is unlikely to soon revisit. If one of these paintings is sold, Robins will have no recourse to obtain a substitute.” But according to the judge, the alleged confidentially agreement is void under the Statute of Frauds because it “was intended to last for ‘an unlimited duration’. Since the agreement was premised on Dumas never learning that Robins had sold Reinhardt’s Daughter, the confidentially agreement could not be fully performed within one year”, the time limit for an oral contract. “Indeed, the only way the [agreement] could terminate…was if Zwirner breached the agreement,” the judge wrote, showing how the oral contract could create a double bind.

The gallery agreement giving Robins right of first refusal is similarly barred under the Statute of Frauds. “The three Dumas paintings are each priced over $1 million, and Plaintiff has not come forward with any writing signed by Zwirner promising to sell the paintings to Robins. Absent a writing signed by Zwirner, enforcement of the oral gallery agreement is barred.” The judge went on to explain that “as an alternative ground for recovery”, Robins attempted to stop Zwirner from “reneging on his promise to sell the three Dumas paintings” under a legal doctrine known as “promissory estoppel”. In order to succeed, Robins needed to show: “(1) a clear and unambiguous promise, (2) reasonable and foreseeable reliance by the party to whom the promise was made and (3) an injury to the party whom the promise was made by reason of the reliance. When promissory estoppel is interjected to overcome a valid Statute of Frauds defense, it ‘has been strictly construed to apply only in those rare cases where “the circumstances [are] such as to render it unconscionable to deny the oral promise upon which the promisee has relied”’.” “Because Robins alleges no injuries sufficiently severe to be ‘unconscionable’, he is unlikely to succeed on estoppel grounds,” wrote the judge. “Here, any injuries Robins suffers are within the realm one would reasonably expect from the non-performance of a sales contract—Robins does not own the artworks promised to him. Moreover, when Robins sold Reinhardt’s Daughter, he was aware Dumas might learn of the transaction and ban him from purchasing in the Primary Market. Indeed, it was for that reason that he sought the confidentiality agreement.” Judge Pauley went on to say that “the standard of ‘unconscionability’ cannot be judged solely based on Plaintiff’s personal tastes. Because Robins has not shown an unexpected and serious injury flowing from the breach of Zwirner’s promises, has been able to purchase Dumas art, and has been offered another painting form the exhibition by Zwirner, he is unlikely to show an unconscionable injury. Accordingly, a preliminary injunction … is not warranted.” The judge also addressed Robins fraud claims against Zwirner, which he says “amount to nothing more than a reiteration of his contract claims with words like ‘purposefully’ and ‘induced’ sprinkled in.” According to his decision: “While Robins alleges ‘wanton dishonestly’ on Zwirner’s part…[he] does not allege any special duty owed by Zwirner, and … he suffered no special damages from Zwirner’s misdeed. Further, given that Zwirner did not even represent Dumas in 2005, and was himself on the Dumas blacklist, it is difficult to conceive how Zwirner intended to violate his agreements with Robins.” In the end, Judge Pauley offered Robins and all collectors the ancient advice of “buyer beware” and “get it in writing”. And he reserved his most severe judgement on the murky dealings of the art world in general. “As the facts of this case make clear, some in the art world desire a market that is neither open nor honest. Thus, collectors in this seemingly refined bazaar should heed the admonition ‘caveat emptor’ and be mindful of the Statute of Frauds.”

Neither Robins nor Zwirner were available to comment when approached immediately following the decision. 

By Helen Stoilas and Marisa Mazria Katz

The Art Newspaper

COLLECTOR PETER BRANT'S NEW URS FISCHER SHOW

 Urs Fischer "Abstract Slavery"

Peter Brant has given Swiss artist Urs Fischer the run of his bucolic Greenwich, Connecticut-based Brant Foundation Art Study Center, resulting in an irreverent, cunning portrait of the collector. Using wallpaper and wax, Fischer raises poignant questions about mortality, reproduction and the very nature of art accumulation. Brant’s reputation as a longtime collector is well known, but there is still something startling about seeing a two dimensional likeness of his home, filled with so many expensive artworks, reduced to flat copies.  The wallpaper piece, which reproduces Brant’s Warhols and Lichtensteins, alongside shelves arrayed with art books, family photos and silver polo trophies, is pointedly titled “Abstract Slavery.” To further the point, Brant’s waxy likeness, a life-size human candle, melts amid the material trophies. There has been no credible explanation from anyone involved about the show’s ironic Oscar the Grouch title. Oscar is the squat green Muppet best known for his compulsive hoarding of trash!

FACTUALITY #9

At the end of this weeks contemporary art sales in New York Christie’s pulled in an impressive $231.9 million and Sotheby’s $189.9 million, each house selling 94 percent of their lots—by all appearances two controlled, confident sales. Christie’s total was more than triple their fall auctions; Sotheby’s more than quadrupled its results from last May. Sales especially “paid off” for living artists, with Cattelan, Brice Marden, Richard Tuttle, Richard Serra, and Ellsworth Kelly achieving new records at Sotheby’s; Johns, Mark Tansey, Lee Bontecou, and Christopher Wool setting records at Christie’s. “While the Euro may be falling, America is clearly in recovery,” Christie’s Amy Cappellazzo said after Tuesday’s sale.

CNET FOUNDER SELL'S $21.1M of ART TO PAY CREDITIORS

A painting of a blue-eyed nurse by Richard Prince and an aluminum couch by Marc Newson were among the artworks sold by Halsey Minor that helped the CNET Networks Inc. founder raise $21.1 million to pay his creditors. His collection accounted for just 22 of the 74 lots offered at a contemporary art-and-design auction last night held by Phillips de Pury & Co. in New York, yet they took in more than half of the $37.9 million total, and were the highlight of the evening. Prince’s 69-inch-tall “Nurse in Hollywood #4,” the 2004 canvas depicting a Grace Kelly look-alike, fetched $6.5 million, against a presale high estimate of $7 million. Another highlight from Minor’s collection was the prototype 1988 “Lockheed Lounge” by Newson which fetched $2.1 million, up from the high estimate of $1.5 million. In 2006, the curvy, white-footed recliner sold for $968,000 at Sotheby’s New York. Minor’s paintings by Ed Ruscha also did well. The artist’s depiction of a red-and-yellow feathered bird, “Angry Because It’s Plaster, Not Milk” (1965) fetched $3.2 million, up from high estimate of $3 million.
The auction houses charges buyers 25 percent of the hammer price up to $50,000, plus 20 percent from $50,000 to $1 million, plus 12 percent above $1 million. Estimates don’t include fees.
The two weeks of impressionist, modern postwar-art and contemporary-art sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s tallied $1.1 billion, up from $415.4 million in the same period last year.

ART WORLD GOES GREEN

At Sotheby’s tonight all eyes were on a 1986 painting by Andy Warhol, “Self Portrait,” which sold for $32.6 million, more than twice its $15 million high estimate. The seller was Tom Ford, the fashion designer, movie director and collector; the buyer, one of six bidders by telephone.

One of Mark Rothko’s untitled abstract red canvases, this one from 1961, also went for a high price: $31.4 million, also to a telephone bidder. The painting was estimated to bring $18 million to $25 million. David Martinez, a Mexican financier, was the seller. Marguerite Hoffman, a prominent Dallas art collector, filed suit this week against Mexican financier David Martinez for failing to keep her 2007 sale of a star Mark Rothko painting a secret.

JOHN'S FLAG SETS RECORD

 

A Jasper Johns painting of an American flag from the estate of writer Michael Crichton sold for a record $28.6 million tonight at Christie’s International in New York. The work titled “Flag,” created between 1960 and 1966 with wax encaustic and newspaper, was expected to sell for as much as $15 million.

Christopher Wool's brash painting FOOL painted in 1990 realized $5,010,500! Both prices include the buyers premium. Art world insiders expected the prices to go ballistic tonight, and they did!!

Everything's gonna be alright mother

Daniel Josefsohn
The Jewing Gun – IDF Soldiers in Israel, 2009

Daniel Josefsohn
Everything's gonna be alright mother
Kunstverein Hamburg
1 May – 30 May 2010

Blurring the borders between art, design and fashion photography, Daniel Josefsohn's works capture the spirit of a generation that playfully mixes media and styles creating a very individual language for its environment and way of life.  Whether the subject is right-wing extremism in Germany or the Middle East conflict, Josefsohn invariably finds unusual motifs and unsettling scenes. His series "Jewing Gun" portrays young Israeli soldiers. The photographs are characterized by the contrasts between military uniforms and small accessories like sunglasses, which make the whole series resemble a fashion spread for a magazine. In fact, what the accessories actually do is show the hue of personality the soldiers have tried to bring to their regulation clothing. Josefsohn does not capture his subjects like an impartial bystander, but as a highly conscious observer who eschews the repetitive stereotypes we so often see in the media.  Daniel Josefsohn was born in 1961 and currently lives in Berlin. Since 1995 he has been working as a freelance photographer for numerous magazines. He first came to public attention with a series of black-and-white portraits of youngsters, which he took for an MTV campaign. The first institutional solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hamburg presents a wide range of his works.

Picasso Nude Fetches Record $106.5 Million at Christie's N.Y.

Pablo Picasso’s 1932 lilac-hued oil painting of his young mistress, Marie-Therese Walter, sold for a record $106.5 million in New York last night, hours after the U.S. stock market had its biggest drop since February. “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” featuring the artist’s profile hovering over a reclining Walter and against a blue backdrop with philodendron leaves, is the most paid for an artwork at auction. It went to an unidentified phone buyer who beat seven rivals after a nine-minute bidding war. The price exceeds host Christie’s International’s own presale estimate of between $70 million to $90 million for the painting. “Masterpieces are recession proof,” said New York dealer Guy Bennett, in an interview. Picasso’s paintings of Walter are some of his most-coveted because of their size and expressiveness, among other qualities. The record price for this painting is a positive start to the city’s spring art auctions over the next two weeks that may fetch a combined $1.2 billion. The five-foot tall painting exceeded the previous record for artwork at auction: $104.2 million set at Sotheby’s in New York in 2004, for a 1905 Picasso painting, “Garcon a la Pipe.” And it beat the 65 million pounds, or $103.4 million, for Giacometti’s “Walking Man I” set in February in London. “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” came from the estate of Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Brody, who died last year at the age of 93. She bought it in 1950 for $17,000 at New York’s Paul Rosenberg and Co., according to Conor Jordan, head of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department in New York. Christie’s auction yesterday tallied $335.5 million, the company’s biggest sale since November 2007. The 69 lots on offer had been estimated to fetch $262.8 million to $368.3 million. All 27 lots from the Brody estate found buyers, totaling $224.2 million. A portion of the proceeds go to the non-profit Huntington of San Marino, California, which has a library, art collection and botanical gardens.

BASQUIAT AT FONDATION BEYELER

Jean-Michel Basquiat: Untitled (1982)
Private collection, courtesy Tony Shafrazi Gallery
© 2009 Jean-Michel Basquiat / ProLitteris, Zurich


May 9 to September 5, 2010

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 –1988) was one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities in the art world. After starting on the New York underground scene as a graffiti sprayer, musician and actor, he began to devote himself to painting at nineteen. His highly expressive, energetic work soon found wide admiration. Supported by Andy Warhol, he advanced to become an internationally acclaimed star. He was the youngest Documenta participant ever, and exhibited at Art Basel, the Venice Biennale, and various famous galleries. The son of immigrants from the Caribbean, Basquiat became the first black artist to make a highlevel breakthrough. He collaborated with Keith Haring, Francisco Clemente, Debbie Harry, and many other stars. In the space of only eight years, he created an extensive oeuvre of about 1000 paintings and 2000 drawings before his tragic death at the age of only twenty-seven. To mark his fiftieth birthday, the Fondation Beyeler is devoting a large retrospective to Jean-Michel Basquiat, comprising more than 100 paintings, works on paper, and objects from renowned museums and private collections around the world. His works, populated by comic-like figures, skeletal silhouettes, curious everyday objects, and poetic slogans, are highly colorful and powerful. They blend pop culture and cultural history into critical and ironic commentaries on consumer society and social injustice. The exhibition brings together many of Basquiat’s major works and illustrates the development of this legendary art scene star. The exhibition catalogue, published in a German and English edition by Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart contains essays by Dieter Buchhart (exhibition curator with Samuel Keller), Glenn O’Brien, and Robert Storr,  and an interview with Basquiat by Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis, previously published only as a video film (1985), 244 pages, 334 illustrations, CHF 68.