Displaying items by tag: richard serra

Today, artist Richard Serra will receive France's highest honor, the insignia of Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York, "The Art Newspaper" reports.

The prestigious award—created in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte to reward outstanding services rendered to France—celebrates the close relationship of the American artist with French art institutions and galleries, as well as his great contribution to contemporary art.

The San Jose Museum of Art has received a major gift of 44 works of art from the collection of Barbara and Dixon Farley. Among the highlights are works by Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Philip Guston, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, Gay Outlaw, Richard Serra, James Siena, David Simpson, Richard Shaw, and Peter Wegner. This latest group of works joins the Farley’s earlier gift of 29 works given to the Museum following Mr. Farley’s death in 2012. SJMA will showcase the Farley’s gift in a fall 2015 exhibition.

“The Farleys built their collection with deep passion, independence, and a keen eye for abstraction. Their art filled their home and their life—as did their commitment to supporting the work of living artists,” said Susan Krane, Oshman Executive Director of SJMA.

Richard Serra’s “Bent Pipe Roll,” from 1968, is a free-standing lead pipe that lies along the floor, angles upward through a cylindrical lead roll, then leans against the wall. It rests serenely, gracefully, alone in a gallery at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield. 

Nearby, Kate Gilmore’s new, site-specific installation, “A Roll in the Way,” consists of more than 500 painted logs stacked upright on a raised white platform.

The artist Richard Serra is working on a major new sculpture for an exhibition in May 2015 at David Zwirner’s vast space on West 20th Street in New York.

The news will be seen as a coup for Zwirner but a blow for Gagosian Gallery, which has been Serra’s primary dealer since the 1990s and is currently showing four large works at its space in Britannia Street, London (until 28 February).

Although Serra’s relationship with Gagosian has long been non-exclusive, it had been assumed that this was the only gallery with the space and structural capacity to show the artist’s large Minimalist sculptures, which can weigh hundreds of tons.

The Centre Pompidou in Paris is currently hosting Frank Gehry’s first major retrospective in Europe. Gehry, who is best known for his expressive, sculptural buildings, is one of the most influential figures in contemporary architecture. Since opening his first office in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, Gehry has revolutionized architecture’s aesthetics, its social and cultural role, and its relationship to urban environments.

Shortly after opening his own office, Gehry fell in with the California art scene, befriending important artists such as Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, and Claes Oldenburg. Gehry’s relationships with these artists helped him develop his unique ability to bridge the gap between art and architecture. Additionally, Gehry’s encounter with the works of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns paved the way for a reconfiguration of his style all together.

The title of this exhibition is adapted from the phrase “the sight of a reason,” a line in Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking prose work Tender Buttons (1914). In her collection of “portraits” of everyday phenomena, Stein employed experimental syntax to free language from established usage and to “create a word relationship between the word and the things seen.” Sites of Reason: A Selection of Recent Acquisitions begins with an ongoing work by the Los Angeles–based artist Eve Fowler (American, b. 1964), which appropriates phrases from Tender Buttons and Stein's How to Write (1931) in commercially printed posters originally intended for public display—for instance, stapled to telephone poles or fences. Stein’s probing of the correlation between language and the physical world—and Fowler’s act of recontextualization—exemplify a set of concerns shared by the works presented here.

Amagansett firefighters are working to contain a fire in a guest house on the art dealer Larry Gagosian's Further Lane property. 

The fire, which was suspected to be electrical in origin, was reported after an alarm went off around 4:45 p.m. Firefighters reported light smoke in the crawl space, and they were checking behind walls with thermal imaging cameras.

The iconic 11,000-square-foot house, designed by the late Charles Gwathmey, was heavily damaged in a June 2011 fire that was linked to plumbing work.

After 89 years in British collections, Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Child with a Dove will leave the UK. The painting, which marks Picasso’s transition from a predominantly Impressionist style to his somber blue period, was sold last year to a collector in Qatar for nearly $77 million. The UK’s government quickly placed an export ban on the work in hopes that a British buyer would step up and claim the painting. The ban expired in December and no British collector or institution was able to raise the funds necessary to keep Child with a Dove in the country.

Qatar has emerged as a major force in the modern and contemporary art markets in recent years. In 2011, the emirate purchased one of Paul Cézanne’s (1839-1906) versions of The Card Players for $250 million. Other major acquisitions by the country include Mark Rothko’s (1903-1970) White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) for $72 million as well as works by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Richard Serra (b. 1939).  

Child with a Dove first came to the UK in 1924 after being purchased by a British collector, Mrs. R.A. Workman. The painting eventually made its way to the art collector Samuel Courtauld and following his death in 1947 was bequeathed to the Welsh Aberconway family. Christie’s sold the painting in 1947 on behalf of the Aberconways. Just last year the painting went on display at the Courtauld Gallery, which Samuel Courtauld founded, as part of the exhibition Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901. The exhibition ends on May 27, 2013 at which point the painting will be returned to Christie’s and then shipped out of the UK.  

Onetime friends and business partners, powerhouse art dealer Larry Gagosian and billionaire collector Ronald O. Perelman have been involved in a bitter legal battle since September 2012. On January 25, 2013 Gagosian asked a New York judge to dismiss the case, which accuses him of using his high standing in the art world to arrange secret deals and influence art prices; Gagosian claims that the lawsuit is frivolous.

The ongoing clash started last year when Perelman purchased Jeff Koons’ (b. 1955) $4 million Popeye sculpture from Gagosian along with two other works said to be a Cy Twombly (1928-2011) painting and a Richard Serra (b. 1939) sculpture. Perelman paid for Koons’ oversize granite sculpture in full, but decided to cancel the deal when the work took longer than expected to complete. Since the value of Koons’ work is constantly on the rise, Perelman insisted that Gagosian owed him $12 million rather than the $4 million he initially paid for the unfinished work.

In his lawsuit, Perelman claimed that Gagosian had a secret agreement with Koons to redirect most of the profit from Popeye’s resale away from Perelman and towards Koons. The sculpture in question was ultimately sold to an unnamed buyer for $4.5 million and Gagosian gave $4.25 million of that back to Perelman, a fact Gagosian pointed out in court on Friday. Gagosian also claimed that Perelman refused to pay the agreed-upon price for the Twombly and Serra works, insisting that he would compensate for the debt he accumulated by giving Gagosian a number of artworks from his collection that he no longer wanted. Rather than benefitting from the deal as Perelman asserts, Gagosian said that he has lost $1.8 million so far.

While Perelman maintains that Gagosian is dishonest and deceitful in his dealings, Gagosian claims that the lawsuit is simply a way for his former friend to mar his name. Perelman’s side has made subpoenas as the battle continues.  

Designed by Renzo Piano, the museum that houses the collection of John de Menil and Dominique de Menil opened to the public 25 years ago. A sold-out gala is being held tonight, November 29, to celebrate. The fete has raised $2.2 million, exceeding its $1.5 million goal. This is only the third gala held by the Menil Collection as the institution already boasts an endowment of approximately $200 million thanks to support from the board, donors, and corporate sponsors.

The theme of the night will be “Celebration in Blue,” a tribute to Yves Klein, an important figure in post-war European art and a personal friend of the Menils. Among the 700 guests will be Pablo Picasso’s grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, philanthropist Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, and hedge fund chief John D. Arnold.

A silent auction will also be held at the gala. The 31 lots include works by Ed Ruscha, Olafur Eliasson, and Richard Serra. Proceeds will support operations and exhibitions. The museum plans to expand their contemporary art collection and hope to build the Menil Drawing Institute to house and exhibit modern and contemporary works.

The free museum features over 15,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books from the 20^th century, all of which were once part of the Menils extensive private art holdings. Included in the impressive collection are works by Paul Cezanne, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Jackson Pollack.