GEARING UP FOR ART HAMPTONS 2009
Now in its third year, the Art Hamptons 2009 international fine art fair, July 10-12, presents 64 galleries from around the world in a custom-designed complex on the grounds of the Bridgehampton Historical Society. The opening gala and collectors preview on July 9 benefits Guild Hall in East Hampton; tickets are $200. For more info, see www.arthamptons.com.
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Art Hamptons organizer Rick Friedman says that $20 million in sales were generated at the 2008 installment, and that the 2009 edition is on track to do even better, with interest from dealers up 33 percent. Among the participating galleries are Brick Walk & Harvey, DC Moore, David Findlay Jr., Forum, Mark Hachem, Gary Snyder, Godel & Co., Hirschl & Adler, June Kelly, Kathryn Markel, Lori Bookstein, Mark Borghi, Peter Fetterman, Spanierman Modern, Throckmorton and Vered.
This year Art Hamptons has named painter Jane Wilson as winner of the lifetime achievement award in painting, and photographers Elliott Erwitt and Lillian Bassman as winners of the lifetime achievement awards for photography.
Want to pay Art Hamptons a visit? Get a free pass to the fair by going to the Artnet homepage and clicking on the "Art Hamptons" button.
GRAFFITI IN PARIS
The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris is presenting "Born in the Street Graffiti," July 7-Nov. 29, 2009, a show that takes up the entire space of the center and also spreads to the building façade and surrounding garden. The first part of the exhibition explores the early days of graffiti in New York City via photographs, films and sketches, and includes special commissioned works by three graffiti pioneers, Phase 2, Part 1 and Seen. The show’s second half focuses on "the ongoing vitality of the movement" via new works made on site by artists from around the world.
Participants include Basco Vazko (Santiago), Cripta (São Paulo), JonOne (Paris), Olivier Kosta-Théfaine (Paris), Barry McGee (San Francisco), Nug (Stockholm), Evan Roth (Hong Kong), Boris Tellegen / Delta (Amsterdam), Vitché (Sao Paulo) and Gérard Zlotykamien (Paris). The exhibition is accompanied by a 250-page catalogue, Born in the Streets Graffiti.
ALBERTO SUGHI IN PALERMO
The Roman artist Albero Sughi (b. 1928), heralded as an "Existential Realist" in the 1950, is currently the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Palazzo Sant’Elia, a recently renovated 18th-century villa in the heart of Palermo, Italy. Titled "Dove va l’uomo," May 9-Aug. 2, 2009, the show is organized by Maurizio Calvesi and encompasses paintings and drawings dating from 1958 to the present (the survey is also scheduled to make a subsequent appearance in London). An extensive selection of images of Sughi’s works can be found here.
VISIONARY ART AT BERGDORF GOODMAN
Donna Karan, meet Divine. New York luxury clothing store Bergdorf Goodman is teaming with Baltimore’s pioneering American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM), June 26-July 20, 2009, filling its store windows with work by self-taught and "outsider" artists. Bergdorf’s, of course, is known for its window displays, often team-ups with high-voltage art institutions -- but Andrew Logan’s life-like 10-foot-tall statue of John Waters muse Divine is still a first. Some 50 pieces from the AVAM collection are to grace the windows at the retailer’s Fifth Avenue and 58th Street flagship, including "wooden critters" by sculptor Clyde Jones, a family of robots by Devon Smith and a chess set that pits "Aliens versus Angels" by Lyle Estill, according to the Baltimore Sun. A version of "Fifi," a giant kinetic sculpture of a pink French poodle that highlights an annual race sponsored by the museum, gets pride of place within the store.
SUMMER GROUP SHOWS, PART II
You gotta love the summer group shows in New York, if for nothing else but their titles. Could the uncertain economic climate be making our curators wackier than usual? You be the judge. A sampling:
* "Whaddaya wanna be, a flower?!" June 23-Aug. 14, 2009, at Alexander and Bonin, with a dozen artists whose works employ flowers as "sexual, corporal, kitschy and all-too-human memes."
* "The Crack-Up," June 24-July 30, 2009, at ATM, a show of seven emerging artists from New York and Philadelphia whose works have "an intensity of vision."
* "The Emperor's New Clothes," June 25-Sept. 4, 2009, at Talwar Gallery, with eight contemporary Pakistani artists addressing questions of "dress, politics and identity."
* "No Bees. No Blueberries," June 26-July 30, 2009, at Harris Lieberman, with over 40 artists selected by Sarina Basta and Tyler Coburn, "in the midst of an economic moment that draws focus to the economic frailty of the art world."
* "TIME-LIFE PART II," June 26-July 31, 2009, at Taxter & Spengemann, a "group show of group shows" originally presented elsewhere.
* "The Living and the Dead," July 1-Aug. 7, 2009, at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, with about 60 artists.
* "Give Them What They Never Knew They Wanted," July 1-Aug. 7, 2009, at Jeff Bailey Gallery, a survey of the gallery’s program presented as a challenge to the art-market recession.
* "Almost Home," July 2-Aug. 14, 2009, at Frederieke Taylor Gallery, presenting various spatial investigations by six artists, selected by An Hoang.
* "Turn On," July 2-Sept. 19, 2009, at SLAG Gallery, works by 16 artists examining "the sometimes obscure line between art and pornography."
* "The Thousand and One Nights," July 7-Aug. 8, 2009, at Postmasters, a show of works by seven Palestinian artists, curated by Mary Evangelista with Michael Connor.
* "The Figure and Dr. Freud," July 8-Aug. 22, 2009, at Haunch of Venison New York, with 30 artists, including Nobuyoshi Araki, Martin Eder, Wangechi Mutu, Francis Picabia and David Salle.
* "After Color," July 8-Aug. 21, 2009, at Bose Pacia, presenting works by nine artists, selected by Amani Olu, who use black-and-white photography to pursue conceptual ends.
* "Naked!" July 9-Sept. 19, 2009, at Paul Kasmin Gallery, presenting images of women in the main gallery and men in the back room, organized by Adrian Dannatt.
CUTS AT THE SPERTUS
As the impact of the recession works its way through the art world, it continues to be small and medium-sized institutions that suffer the most. Case in point: Chicago’s Spertus Museum. The Spertus is a division of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, occupying the top two floors of a spectacular $55-million building designed by Krueck & Sexton, which debuted just two years ago. Now, however, the museum’s opening hours are being cut to the bone, leaving it open to the public only every other Sunday, and for special events. The story was broken by Proximity Magazine, which also reported the gossip that the Spertus "is firing the majority of their staff" and "keeping the director and a preparator as the only full time staff members." TimeOut Chicago followed up with a spokeswoman, Susan Baum, who confirmed only that "There have been some changes made," though she did verify the reduction in hours.
ADJAYE’S ARTPACE PROJECT ON HOLD
A plan for the construction of a home for the art of late San Antonio collector Linda Pace, dubbed the Linda Pace Exhibition Space, has been put on hold after the foundation backing it lost more than a third of its value in last year’s stock market meltdown. The design, by British starchitect David Adjaye, envisions four large galleries housed within a building made of cement infused with a red pigment -- Pace’s signature color -- located at the site of a warehouse on San Antonio’s Camp Street. Pace’s namesake foundation remains firm in its $1-million annual support for the Artpace contemporary art center, with its pioneering program of artist residencies, but foundation director Rick Moore told the San Antonio Current that plans for the Adjaye-designed home for Pace’s art depended on "what happens next to the stock market."
XAVIER VEILHAN AT VERSAILLES
French artist Xavier Veilhan (b. 1963) has been invited to install several major artworks at the chateau and garden of Versailles in 2008, following in the footsteps of Jeff Koons, who initiated the art project last year [see "Artnet News," Sept. 10, 2008]. Among the works (designed specifically for this project) are a four-meter-long statue of fallen astronaut Youri Gagarine, a nude woman done is sparkling metal, a sculpture of a large carriage rendered in violet digital facets, a 100-meter-tall water fountain (in homage to Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column), an overscaled planetary mobile, and a short digital film in the Versailles garden. The project opens to the public Sept. 13-Dec. 13, 2009.
SAATCHI "BRANDING IRON"
Say one thing for former ad mogul Charles Saatchi -- he knows how to get his brand out there, whether it’s with his namesake gallery, his super-popular free art website or his profit-making plays in the art market. Now, artist John A. Walker -- co-author of Supercollector: A Critique of Charles Saatchi -- has taken Saatchi at his word, and produced a limited edition Saatchi Branding Iron, an actual implement that can be used to burn the collector’s name into wooden stretcher bars, if not into "artist’s flesh, dead cows, sheep and sharks, etc." No price is given. Promised soon are "GOGO" and "JAY JOP" branding irons as well.
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