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  • Posted 2/15/12 at 6:07 PM
  • Art

Rem Koolhaas to Build Marina Abramovic’s New Museum of Performance Art

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PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 23: Performance artist Marina Abramovic attends Grey Goose Iconoclast Sixth Season Launch - Panel Discussion Cocktail Party at Grey Goose Blue Door on January 23, 2012 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Grey Goose)

Marina Abramovic signed a deal with architect Rem Koolhaus earlier this week to design and construct her Center for the Preservation of Performance Art in Hudson, New York. The Serbian art superstar will seek to raise $8 million to pay for the project, she revealed Tuesday night to a group of art collectors at a panel at Manhattan's tony Core Club, and the museum will be devoted to performance art pieces of "six hours minimum." Some of them will go on for days.

Viewers will watch these marathon pieces while sitting in chairs with wheels and tables to dine on. »

  • Posted 2/8/12 at 6:51 PM

New York's Koch-Fueled Binge: Saltz and Davidson on Distasteful Donations

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NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 21: David Koch attends the 2011 New York City Opera Spring Gala at David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center on April 21, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Marc Stamas/Getty Images)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced plans to renovate its double-fountain Fifth Avenue plaza with $60 million of David H. Koch’s money. Koch, a libertarian Tea Party backer, and sworn enemy of many progressive causes, takes political positions anathema to many who benefit from his largesse. The latest donation prompted art critic Jerry Saltz and architecture critic Justin Davidson to discuss whether arts institutions should take any and all donations, however distasteful they might find the donor. 

Jerry Saltz: When I hear that a cultural location is going to be renamed after a billionaire, I want to take the safety off my revolver—except I’ve never touched a revolver*. I know I don’t like calling Shea Stadium Citi Field, and all during Super Bowl week, I hated reading the words “Lucas Oil Stadium,” or whatever it was, but those are gigantic arenas for commercial use. This is a museum. They ought to call it “The Gods of Art Live Here,” or “Velazquez Plaza.”

Justin Davidson: Well, so far, the Met is saying the plaza won’t be named after him. He does have his name on what used to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, though. I don’t have a problem with the Met taking Koch’s money for a project that benefits the city, but I can see the broader moral quandary.

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  • Posted 2/1/12 at 4:15 PM
  • Obits

Jerry Saltz on the Perverse Master Mike Kelley, 1954–2012

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The roiling perverse genius Mike Kelley is dead at 57, reportedly by his own hand. Kelley, a Detroit native, spent his whole career in Los Angeles, where — with Raymond Pettibon, Paul McCarthy, Catherine Opie, Jennifer Pastor, Charles Ray, and Jason Rhodes — he helped turn the incipient foreboding of Edward Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Nancy Rubins, and Chris Burden into an all-out acrimonious art of darkness. In 1992, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art organized many of these artists under the rubric "Helter Skelter."

On 'More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid.' »

  • Posted 2/1/12 at 3:15 PM
  • Obits

Jerry Saltz on Dorothea Tanning, 1910–2012

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Dorothea Tanning died today at 101, and pieces of history die with her. Artist, poet, wife of Max Ernst from 1946 until he died in 1976, and (along with Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, Lee Miller, Maya Deren, Remedios Varo, and Leonor Fini) one of a group of great women Surrealists, she was at the center of a movement that was a vicious mill for women. Among the surrealists, females — while "allowed" to be artists — were often also relegated to the sidelines of neglected or beset mistresses, muses, and madwomen.


A big life. »

  • Posted 1/31/12 at 6:00 PM
  • Art

Jerry Saltz: As Massimiliano Gioni Takes Over, New Hope for the Biennale

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FLORENCE, ITALY - JANUARY 11: Fondazione Nicola Trussardi Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni attends the "8 1/2" Exhibition" press preview held during the Pitti Immagine Uomo 79 on January 11, 2011 in Florence, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Massimiliano Gioni

If the artistic past is any predictor of future behavior, the heads of the Venice Biennale did themselves a solid this afternoon, naming the New Museum's Massimiliano Gioni the chief director of the 55th Venice Biennale. Even though he oversaw my own 2011 museum nadir — the recently closed Carsten Holler slideshow — Gioni has overseen, curated, thunk-up, and been behind so many interesting efforts, wedge ideas, and optimistic energy that there's every reason to believe his Venice effort will be arousing.

What he's like. »

  • Posted 1/28/12 at 2:46 PM
LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 2004: Visitors Drink coffee and champagne during a champagne Sunday Brunch viewing for Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie's auction house, South Kensington. Behind is Andy Warhol's canvass 'Dollar Sign' which later sold for £386,050. (Photo by Mike Goldwater/Exclusive by Getty Images)

Art Dealer Secretly Sold Client’s Picassos, Matisses for $4 Million, Then Spent It All

Robert Cook may not be a Ponzi schemer — like fellow art dealer Lawrence Salander, who was charged in 2009 with defrauding clients of $88 million — but he did spend all $4.2 million from the unauthorized sale of sixteen pieces belonging to a single client, including several Picassos, Manets, Matisses, and Renoirs. The charge against him, according to one rhyme-happy FBI assistant director involved with the case, "is that Mr. Cook is a crook."

  • Posted 1/19/12 at 3:35 PM

Jerry Saltz on Maurizio Cattelan’s Mysterious New Gallery

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The Force moves in mysterious ways. On the same night when the Gagosian Death Star's haughty, chutzpah-filled Damien Hirst spot-painting extravaganza opened worldwide, I saw an auspicious sign. Unable to muster the nerve to go inside Gagosian's bespotted 21st Street palace, I noticed something new just down the block: a double glass door at Anna Kustera Gallery on which a handwritten masking tape sign read "Family Business." I flagged down Kustera, who was having an opening of her own, and she came out, laughed, and said, "Oh. This is Maurizio Cattelan's new gallery." I was thrilled, and not just because it proved that Cattelan was a big liar.

Remembering the Wrong Gallery. »

Damien Hirst’s Pricey Scavenger Hunt

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New York, UNITED STATES: A member of the public walks past the painting "Strontium 500" by Damien Hirst during a preview 14 May 2007, for the 2007 Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's New York. The sale will be held 15 May. This season's impressionist, modern and contemporary art sales in New York are expected to see several major records fall, especially in the contemporary artworks section. AFP PHOTO/ TIMOTHY A. CLARY (Photo credit should read TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Noted marketing genius (and, fine, artist) Damien Hirst is currently showing a massive retrospective of his spot paintings, spread across all eleven of Larry Gasogian's galleries worldwide, in places as far apart as Hong Kong and Geneva. So most people probably won't see them all. Unless, that is, they have thousands upon thousands of dollars and oodles of time to spare. Hirst has come up with something he's calling the Complete Spot Challenge. Go to all eleven galleries within a month, and fill out your (spotted!) stamp card, and win a personalized signed print of one of the spot paintings. So, the economics don't make it worth it, obviously — it's basically more like the Idle Rich Person Olympics. New Yorkers, you've got a home field advantage.  Three out of eleven galleries are here. You're not gonna let some Moscow billionaire's bored wife win this first, are you?

Previously: Damien Hirst Is Hawking Spot Pictures Again

  • Posted 12/27/11 at 5:48 PM
  • Art

Jerry Saltz: On Helen Frankenthaler, 1928–2011

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For a long time — probably too long — not enough people have thought about the far-reaching accomplishments of Helen Frankenthaler, foremost inventor in the fifties of what is variously called American Color Field painting and post-painterly abstraction. Whatever you call this short-lived movement, Frankenthaler used it to throw up an artistic bridge allowing artists to cross the blood-and-thunder-encumbered cosmos of Abstract Expressionism into a new world of Minimalism. Painter Morris Louis called her “a bridge between Pollock and what was possible.” Minimalist painter Kenneth Noland wrote, “We were interested in Pollock but could gain no lead from him. He was too personal. Frankenthaler showed us a way … to think about, and use color.” She did something else, too, although it’s even less obvious now. Frankenthaler may have been the first artist not regularly referred to, demeaned, neutralized, and made safe with the label “woman artist.” Before her, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, and Louise Nevelson regularly were relegated to the ghetto. Georgia O’Keeffe was said to feel "through the womb"; her paintings were a "revelation of the very essence of woman as Life Giver"; her "outpouring of sexual juices"; "loamy hungers of the flesh" were evidence of "one long, loud blast of sex, sex in youth, sex in adolescence, sex in maturity ... sex bulging, sex tumescent, sex deflated." 

An artist too easily compartmentalized. »

  • Posted 12/21/11 at 5:00 PM

Jerry Saltz Reviews Sucklord’s Jerry Saltz Action Figure

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Ed. note: The most memorable (if not most successful) contestant on the second season of Work of Art has probably been the artist who calls himself the Sucklord. His work incorporates toys and references to Star Wars and other pop-culture material, and it was consistently criticized by judge Jerry Saltz. Sucklord was voted off the show several weeks ago; in this video, he talks about the action figure of Jerry that he’s producing in response, and which is available for purchase. (You can preorder starting tomorrow at suckadelic.com.) Jerry’s review of the work appears below, and the show’s final episode airs tonight at 9 p.m. EST on Bravo.

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Damien Hirst Is Hawking Spot Pictures Again

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New York, UNITED STATES: A member of the public walks past the painting "Strontium 500" by Damien Hirst during a preview 14 May 2007, for the 2007 Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's New York. The sale will be held 15 May. This season's impressionist, modern and contemporary art sales in New York are expected to see several major records fall, especially in the contemporary artworks section. AFP PHOTO/ TIMOTHY A. CLARY (Photo credit should read TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Damien Hirst is good at making money. Perhaps never was that more evident than in 2008, right before the financial markets crashed, when he had a perfectly timed, large-scale exhibition. At a September sale that year at Sotheby's London, despite the cratering economy, works from that show brought in $200.7 million. Hirst helped give the bidding a certain urgency when he said that he was done making dead-animal installations and certain kinds of paintings, including his butterflies and rows of bright spots.  The supply of spot paintings, which have a certain assembly-line quality to them,  suddenly became finite.

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  • Posted 12/6/11 at 2:00 PM

Saltz: The Prince of the One Percent Would Like You to Know That Buying Art Is Less Fun These Days

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LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 2004: Visitors Drink coffee and champagne during a champagne Sunday Brunch viewing for Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie's auction house, South Kensington. Behind is Andy Warhol's canvass 'Dollar Sign' which later sold for £386,050. (Photo by Mike Goldwater/Exclusive by Getty Images)

In the December 5 issue of the New York Observer, the art collector and columnist Adam Lindemann announced, “I’m not going to Art Basel Miami Beach this year. I’m through with it, basta. It’s become … embarrassing … why should I be seen rubbing elbows with all those phonies and scenesters … How many celebrities will I meet? How many mega-collectors will I greet? … None, because I’m not going.” It was certainly a departure for him, in terms of his usual business. He’s a collector of recent blue-chip artists like Jonathan Meese and Anselm Reyle, and buys a lot on the international fair circuit. Indeed, last month at a large gallery dinner, after he told me how much he despised art fairs, I asked whether he hadn’t just been to London for the Frieze Art Fair and whether he’d bought anything. He said yes to both questions. I then said, “You hypocritical bastard.” Then we munched on almond biscotti.

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  • Posted 12/5/11 at 5:20 PM

Is a Celebrity Invasion Turning Art Basel Miami Beach Into Sundance?

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MIAMI BEACH, FL - NOVEMBER 30: Julian Schnabel and Sean Combs attends Art Basel Miami Beach at the Miami Beach Convention Center on November 30, 2011 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Rabbani and Solimene Photography/Getty Images)

Over the past decade, the Art Basel Miami Beach extravaganza — the art fair and the hundreds of events around it — has made a name for itself as a tropical Woodstock for the wealthy, a weeklong immersion in art, partying, and big spending. Its latest iteration ended yesterday, and it was as notable for what was missing — political art, photography, market confidence, and, by and large, free food — as for what it had, which was a dotting of great art; an incredible, nonstop bacchanalian energy; and what hoteliers and art-fair managers say was the greatest invasion of celebrities Art Basel has ever seen.

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