September 08, 2011
Gregg Brown's North Tower, 10/08/2001, from Above Ground Zero. Photo © Gregg Brown.
When deciding how to solemnly commemorate the tenth anniversary of September 11, New York's International Center of Photography (ICP) made a decision from the start—to not show images of the attack itself. "They're painful images, and they're images that have been shown 100 million times," says ICP curator Carol Squiers. "I wanted to focus on the people who had to clean up the tragedy." Squiers's exhibition, "Remembering 9/11," opening at ICP September 9, includes five distinct bodies of work, each focusing on the recovery. They range from Gregg Brown's sobering aerial photographs of Ground Zero to Francesc Torres's shots of World Trade Center materials that had been cleared and stored in a JFK Airport hangar. One of the more unusual projects is a 23-minute video collaboration from artist Elena del Rivero and filmmaker Leslie McCleave. It captures the steady stream of dust, papers and debris that infiltrated del Rivero's home and studio, located just blocks away from the attack site. September 9 through January 8. 1133 Avenue of the Americas; 212-857-0000; icp.org.
Plus: New York, a Decade Later
September 29, 2011
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Paris may be the ultimate destination for art history buffs (Degas, Rodin, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Dalí have all called the city home), but for some reason, the French capital has struggled to assert itself as a major player in the modern and contemporary art world. That's poised to change over the next few years. The Centre Pompidou continues to up the stakes with enviable programming (including a major retrospective dedicated to Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama launching October 10); the Palais de Tokyo is reopening next year after massive renovations; LVMH CEO Bernard Arnualt is finally moving forward with his Frank Gehry-designed museum; and last year the city got its very own branch of the ultra-blue-chip Gagosian Gallery. The programming at Gagosian's new outpost has been nothing short of major, with shows dedicated to Richard Prince, Richard Avedon and Elizabeth Peyton. The gallery kicked off the fall season yesterday with a museum-caliber exhibition of work by the 20th century master Robert Rauschenberg.
Traveling to Paris? Check into one of these small hotels.
October 06, 2011
Cecily Brown's Park, 2004. Image courtesy of Phillips de Pury & Company.
Of the dozens, if not hundreds, of international contemporary art fairs that have popped up during art market's staggering ascent this past decade, London's Frieze remains a perennial favorite among patrons and professionals. The fair will launch its eighth edition in London's Regent's Park from October 12-16. Inside its massive tents, representatives from 173 galleries and 33 countries will man booths adorned with some of the most cutting-edge contemporary art available. Competition is increasingly stiff. Frieze's success has prompted the emergence of a slew of local satellite fairs (including the Pavilion of Art & Design, for those who favor more functional art), not to mention a string of "Frieze Week" auctions at the London outposts of Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury. Artists to watch out for this year: Gabriel Kuri, Do-Ho Suh, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Martin Kippenberger, Zhang Dali, Jacob Kassay, Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
In other art news: Ben Stiller's auction raised $13.7 million for Haiti.
October 13, 2011
© Adagp, 2011. © Succession Picasso 2011.
The vast majority of a museum’s permanent holdings are kept out of sight and in storage, awaiting the right exhibition or a well-placed loan. It’s sort of a sad image—masterpieces languishing in very fancy, private, particular and carefully calibrated crates. So what better way to get some mileage out of a stellar collection then to take it on tour? That’s why Paris’s Centre Pompidou has created Pompidou Mobile, a sleek, collapsible 7,000-square-foot pavilion designed by French architect Patrick Bouchain. The portable museum—the first of its kind—will debut on October 18 in Chaumont (Haute-Marne), a small historic town about 160 miles southeast of Paris. Next year the museum will travel to Cambrai and Boulogne-sur-Mer (Nord-Pas-de-Calais). Many of the artists whose works are included in this first run, which tackles the theme of color, are long dead (think modern masters such as Alexander Calder, Georges Braque, Picasso, Matisse and Yves Klein). But a tour is a tour, so we’re not discounting the possibility of groupies. Open Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–Sunday. At Quartier Foch, Rue Raymond Savignac; tourisme-chaumont-champagne.com/fetes-et-manifestation/le-centre-pompidou-mobile,57,fma740; www.centrepompidou.fr.
October 20, 2011
Courtesy New Museum
Carsten Höller’s work has always challenged the traditional art/viewer relationship. He has exhibited participatory carnival rides and wading pools in galleries. In 2008, he installed a functional hotel room inside the Guggenheim Museum; later that year, he opened a pop-up nightclub in London that introduced partygoers to Congolese food, beer and street art (it also drew a steady stream of celebrity patrons—Mick Jagger, Penelope Cruz and Kate Moss among them). Next Wednesday, the New Museum, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, will open the German artist’s biggest New York exhibition to date. The show offers a wide range of Höller’s work from the past two decades (including light installations, towering sculptures of mushrooms and a mirrored, user-friendly carousel), but the coup de grace is a 102-foot-long, water park–esque plastic slide that will take participants from the museum’s fourth floor down to the second. Ladies, we should probably avoid skirts on this one. October 26, 2011–January 15, 2012; $12; 235 Bowery; 212-219-1222; newmuseum.org.
November 30, 2011
Art by Fung Ming Chip
The Chinese-born Fung carved these eight original seals out of soapstone and artfully stamped them on traditional
xuan paper for the October issue’s cover. Here, he tells us what they mean: “For more than 2,000 years, seals have played a crucial role in East Asian culture. They are not always only literal expressions but often reflect the character of their creators. From left to right, the first two seals simply display my Chinese name, while the third one represents my studio, Four ‘No’ Studio (for no principle, no judgment, no reality, no truth). Some, like the cloud, just depict images I like, and the rabbit and carrot are because I was born in 1951, the Year of the Rabbit. They can also just be sayings. The last seals display two of my personal favorites: ‘Life of ease’ and ‘Right and wrong all life long.’”
For more information on the artist, go to fungmingchip.com.
November 17, 2011
James Welling’s 0865, 2009. © James Welling.
Art at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York has finally come full circle. Built in 1959 by famed architect Philip Johnson, the restaurant doubles as a hub of art and design, one that has displayed works by Picasso, Pollack and Miró. No exhibition has hit quite so close to home, however, as the current installation of ten limited-edition photographs by James Welling. The series (on display and on sale through January 2) depicts another of Johnson’s creations: the Glass House, a 47-acre compound scattered with 14 modernist buildings and structures designed by Johnson, anchored by the crystalline home where the architect lived for more than 50 years. Welling photographed the site in all seasons over the course of three years, using reflections and color filters on his lens to play with the structure’s natural translucence. “In his photos, the Glass House is converted from a transparent box into a lustrous crystal,” says Meri Erickson, the curator of the Four Seasons exhibit, “and from a minimalist articulation of materials and construction to a maximalist expression of colored light.”
The photographs have been shown at galleries worldwide, and the entire series was compiled into a book, James Welling: Glass House (Damiani Editore), published last spring. As for the installation in the Four Seasons? “It’s the perfect backdrop,” says Erickson. “He loved the restaurant, ate lunch there almost every day, and to have photographs of his iconic home there on display—it captures history.” fourseasonsrestaurant.com; philipjohnsonglasshouse.org.
December 01, 2011
Courtesy Grey Area
The Art Basel Miami Beach blitz has begun and the art world’s dealers, tastemakers, patrons and cheerleaders have abandoned their full-time posts for balmier pastures down south. Galleries worldwide are strutting the best of what they’ve got (Louise Bourgeois and Subodh Gupta at Hauser & Wirth; Willem de Kooning and Hiroshi Sugimoto at Pace; and Andy Warhol at L&M, just to name a few). But if walls are full or the art budget’s spent, consider shopping what’s sure to be one of the buzziest pop-ups at this weekend’s festivities.
Grey Area, co-founded earlier this year by designer and consultant Kyle deWoody and Artlog’s Manish Vora, will pop up, so to speak, through Sunday at Miami’s Bass Museum of Art. This is the third pop-up shop for the online retailer that explores the “grey area” between art and design, following successful outings in the Hamptons over the summer and at Art Platform–Los Angeles this fall.
The temporary boutique is well stocked with both functional and not-so-functional objects, furniture, jewelry and avant-garde wares, all designed by artists looking to expand the parameters of their work. Look for statement jewelry from Orly Genger, Abraxas Rex, Rob Wynne, Michele Lopez, Kate Cusack and Emily Miranda; gold-plated “brick” bookends by Christian Dietkus; dinnerware by Leah Piepgras and Rudolf Stingel; and, for those of you who packed light, limited-edition beach towels by Tracey Emin, Peter Doig and Ed Ruscha. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through December 4 at the Bass Museum of Art; 2100 Collins Avenue; shopgreyarea.com.
January 05, 2012
Summer Cocktail Party with English Butler (1961) by Larry Salk. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
You know what they say: It’s five o’clock somewhere… and this winter, happy hour is ongoing at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach—at least in theory. “Cocktail Culture,” an exhibition of some 150 examples of highball-friendly art, fashion, jewelry and design dating from the 1920s to the present, lends a bit of historical context to one of our favorite after-work activities. Covet vintage cocktail party attire by McQueen, Dior, Lanvin, YSL, Balenciaga, Valentino and Pierre Cardin and over-the-top jewelry, accessories, cosmetic cases and cocktail shakers by Tiffany & Co., Judith Leiber, Van Cleef & Arpels and Elsa Schiaparelli. Our favorite works on view are the drawings, paintings and photographs depicting the imbibers themselves—impossibly glam ladies snapped by legendary fashion photographer Lillian Bassman—and Larry Sulk’s Summer Cocktail Party with English Butler (1961), a watercolor, gouache and ink on paper in which a handsome white Afghan hound sneaks a sip from his Don Draper-esque owner as he stares off vacantly (drunkenly, perhaps) into the distance. Through March 11, 2012. The Norton Museum of Art, 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach; 561-832-5196; norton.org.
January 19, 2012
© David Hockney, Pearblossom Highway, 11-18 April 1986 / The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Gift of David Hockney
David Hockney—the bespectacled English artist best known for his 1960s-era paintings of sky-blue swimming pools, friends, lovers and Beverly Hills housewives—took up a different subject matter altogether in 2005. He returned to his childhood town of Bridlington, perched seaside in northwest England, and found himself completely seduced by the lush greenery and expansive landscape he had known when he was younger. He set about depicting it, both in intimate watercolor sketches and in monumental, multi-panel paintings. The resulting works—some of which are realistic, others wild with shocks of psychedelic, van Gogh–esque color—are the basis of a new survey of Hockney’s landscapes at the Royal Academy of Art in London, titled “David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture.” It illustrates Hockney’s continued stylistic strides, the benefits of studying familiar sights with fresh eyes and, perhaps, that there really is no place like home. January 21 through April 9 at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J OBD; 44-20/7300-5610; royalacademy.uk.org.
