“Long winter for Old Masters” headlined the Financial Times’ Collecting section this past weekend, referring to the bad performances of London Old Master auctions the previous week. Although Georgina Adam is right in making this statement, what isn’t mentioned is the serious lack of good quality paintings on offer, the ridiculously high estimates given by auction house experts, and a headline lot failing to sell because of authenticity concerns.
It is quite something to be able to celebrate five decades of work by a living artist, but that is exactly what the Lisson Gallery will be doing at Frieze Masters with a solo booth showcasing brightly colored, minimalist paintings of Carmen Herrera who is 100 years old this year.
This is not really a new story, but it feels fitting to start of a Monday, beginning of a week, a month and the summer. Mehdi Ghadyanloo has been decorating Tehran's high-rises and office buildings for eight years now, and reportedly painted over one hundred walls! His surrealist dream-like scenes beautifully complements the minimalistic architectural spaces that are often left blank and grey.
Artangel has introduced "Van Gogh Walk," a free audio walk that re-imagines the emotional landscape of Vincent Van Gogh's London. This collaboration with CoolTan Arts is inspired by the writings of van Gogh and CoolTan artists, and has been developed to be listened to anywhere in the world, but the content was developed in the area surrounding 87 Hackford Road in London where Vincent van Gogh lived from 1873 to 1984.
Earlier this week Kara Walker's impressive large installation was unveiled to a star-studded crowd in New York at Creative Time's annual benefit. This 75-foot-high white sphinx sculpture is made of sugar and sits in the decommissioned Domino Sugar Factor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
There has been a frenzy of cultural activities in London this past few weeks with Fashion Week, BAFTA and Brit Awards making the city a buzzing hot spot for creative industries. But my eyes stay focused on art and after being away for several weeks, I am ready to catch up with the exhibitions in London.
Launched last week on 8th of February, the team behind the new web sensation of art world, SellYouLater.com is already getting threats "from individuals who believe our quantitative forecasting is an unfair market force," as they admit in a recent interview.
The Polish artist Pawel Althamer’s celebrated work at last year’s Venice Biennale made its US debut at the New Museum this past week. Althamer’s cast of Venetian citizens; bankers, shopkeepers, immigrant workers, whom he met on the city’s streets, were turned into haunting zombie-like figures and 90 of them all!
We are used to seeing Jean-Michel Basquiat's name associated with auction records and top prices, but an exhibition that just opened in New York offers a great opportunity to see the artist in a more private intimate setting.
The Suzanne Geiss Company put on display a selection of rare black&white nude photographs taken of the artist by his then girlfriend Paige Powell in the 80s. Together with Pink Martini musician Thomas Lauderdale, Powell have began sorting through her extensive photography archive that chronicled her life in the midst of the 1980s art scene in New York as an inner member of Andy Warhol's Factory crowd. The result is this first exhibition focusing on Basquiat, and the 2-year relationship with Powell, where we see the artist in a series of nude portraits taken by Powell in her apartment. In these natural poses, Basquiat looks pretty relaxed, drawing, smoking, and watching cartoons. It is wonderful to witness Basquiat on a more personal level, who died when he was only 27 from a drug overdose in 1988. The exhibition is on view until 22nd of February 2014.
Tonight is the opening of the Turkish-born artist Canan Tolon's first major London show at Parasol Unit. Dividing her time between San Francisco and Istanbul, Tolon's work is based on and deals with space, time, gravity, and chance interactions between disparate materials. She had an early interest in the marks left by the processes of growth and transformation over time which led to her using unusual techniques such as applying coffee grounds, letting grass grow on a canvas, or allowing rust to occur naturally and mix with pigment in her paintings. This exhibition also coincides with the British Museum's recent acquisition of a set of Tolon's drawings, Futur imparfait, 1986–1999, a series of 33 ink-wash and crayon figurative drawings. Since 2009, the British Museum has an active acquisitions committee for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Middle East since 1980s, CaMMEA. This patrons group has joined forces with the Turkish SAHA Association that provides funding to projects and museum acquisitions which contribute to the presence and visibility of contemporary art from Turkey. There is a good educational program alongside the show as well with talks, poetry and concerts. Spanning over Tolon's career from the 1980s until present day, this show promises to be an interesting one to visit. It is on view until 16th of March 2014.
