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Expert Eye: Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy picks her Frieze faves p12-13
New York Spring Fairs Frieze New York 19-21 May 2023
Has New York’s hot art market finally cooled?
News in brief
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GOLDIN, COALITION AND VIZCARRONDO-LABOY: ALEX WROBLEWSKI.
Dealers at Frieze remain optimistic while noting a shift in collector behaviour
he art market is shifting into a new phase. Some describe it as “cooling”, while some are talking of a “slowdown”. Others say we are simply “moving away from the frenzy of the past” few years. Andrew Fabricant, Gagosian’s chief operating officer, thinks the changes have been slight—so far. “There’s not been a wholesale correction, there have been subtle shifts in pricing,” he says. “The art market is not immune from the vicissitudes of the real world, but the effects are delayed. It remains to be seen how this will play out.” Earlier this month, the US central bank raised interest rates to the highest level in 16 years. “High interest rates have definitely contributed to a cooler market—money is expensive and people are not speculating,” says Josh Baer, writing of the New York auctions in the Baer Faxt newsletter this week. Other real-world concerns impacting the art industry include a declining real estate market. As Jessica Kreps, a partner at Lehmann Maupin, puts it: “Fewer people are buying homes, and there’s less need to fill those homes with art. There’s a diminished appetite to buy. That said, collectors are more discerning about what they want; there will always be a market for quality.” Another bellwether that the boom is well and truly over is the news that one of the art world’s top advisers, Lisa Schiff, is being sued by clients alleging she has been running a “Ponzi scheme”. Such scams typically proliferate in fatter times and are often exposed when the bubble bursts. Schiff, whose previous clients include actor Leonardo DiCaprio, now faces two lawsuits that allege she defrauded collectors in sales of art worth millions of dollars, including an Adrian Ghenie painting sold for $2.5m at Sotheby’s, which had been co-purchased by collectors Candace Carmel Barasch and Richard Grossman. Instead of paying collectors, galleries and other businesses, Schiff allegedly used the money to fund her “lavish lifestyle” as well as
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The Artist Plate Project is likely to raise $3m for the Coalition for the Homeless charity
BLUE PLATE SPECIAL
One of the longest queues at Frieze New York this week formed at the stand of the Artist Plate Project on level two of the fair. Forty-two artists have created dinner plates (in editions of 250 each) to benefit the Coalition for the Homeless charity; the plates, priced at $250, have been a talking point with “major collectors” waiting up to 45 minutes on the VIP preview day, says Michelle Hellman, the project curator. “What is interesting is that artists are buying each other’s works; Glenn Ligon, KAWS and Mickalene Thomas have bought a slew of other plates,” she adds, highlighting that more than $3m is likely to be raised for the charity. Seventy-five plates from each edition are reserved for Frieze visitors; the remainder is available 22 May on the Artware Editions website. G.H. Visitors walk past photgraphs by Nan Goldin, the latest addition to Gagosian’s roster “purchase artworks for other clients”, according to court papers. Schiff abruptly shut her business this week as the crisis deepened, though she has declined to comment to the press.
Focused stands stand out
At Frieze New York, booths dedicated to one or two artists are proving popular among dealers who are perhaps more interested in making a splash than racking up multiple sales. Even the mega galleries are pitching their offerings modestly this week. Gagosian is showing new work by the latest addition to the gallery’s roster, Nan Goldin, who has garnered attention for her activism in recent years, but whose market has lagged behind. A spokesperson says the gallery has sold “a significant number” of grids and individual photographs, priced between $64,000
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and $90,000, to private collectors and museums, “indicative of the ongoing excitement and respect for Nan Goldin’s work”. Stephen Friedman has also opted for a solo booth, which features new works by the abstract painter Pam Glick, who joined the gallery in March. Five paintings sold on the opening day for $55,000 each to clients based in New York and abroad. One sold to a corporate collection. Mira Dimitrova, the director of sales at the gallery, says business at the fair “has started very promisingly”. She adds: “The heat may have cooled slightly but that’s no bad thing and on balance the market feels stable.” Pace reported selling out its booth of paintings and works on paper by the fast-rising New CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
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GUGGENHEIM AND LG LAUNCH ART AND TECH PRIZE
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and South Korea-based corporation LG have named Brooklyn-based artist Stephanie Dinkins as the recipient of their inaugural LG Guggenheim Award, which celebrates artists working at the intersection of art and technology. Dinkins will receive an honorarium of $100,000 to help broaden the scope of her work. Her career spans 20 years of ground-breaking research and inquiry into the social ramifications of artificial intelligence (AI). She was selected by a jury of internationally recognised arts professionals, including Legacy Russell, executive director and chief curator of the Kitchen in Manhattan, and Tina Rivers Ryan, curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in western New York. T.A.
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NEWS New York
Theatre producer attempts to collect works by women in landmark show
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Arnold Newman’s portait of the legendary Gypsy Rose Lee taken in New York, around 1945 t was during lockdown in 2020 that Jenna Segal, a New York theatrical producer, made it her mission to create a collection of works by the all-female cast of artists featured in Peggy Guggenheim’s historic show at her Manhattan gallery, Exhibition by 31 Women (1943). The exhibition is said to have been the first dedicated exclusively to women in the US. Over the past three years, Segal
has scoured auction houses, art fairs, galleries and online marketplaces, acquiring 143 works by 30 of the women (a selection of which are on show this week in the space that housed Guggenheim gallery, which Segal rents, at 30 West 57th Street). But one artist remains elusive: Gypsy Rose Lee—the burlesque entertainer, stripper and inspiration for the musical Gypsy, who also made paintings and collages.
Nigerian artists make a mark at 1-54 fair IN THE OVERFILLED MAY ART MARKET CALENDAR, the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (until 21 May) feels like a breath of fresh air. With 26 stands, this is 1-54’s largest iteration in New York to date since the fair first expanded to the US in 2015. “When I first started, it was very difficult to find enough galleries to fill the fair,” says director Touria El Glaoui, “and there was definitely less of an appreciation for African artists.” That has changed in the years since, she explains, with some of the world’s biggest galleries now representing artists from across Africa, and their work getting more recognition in museums and attention at auction. At this year’s edition, there are four galleries from Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, and its largest city Lagos is home to
“It was as if Kim Kardashian was creating art and was in an exhibition, and then you couldn’t find anything ever again,” Segal tells The Art Newspaper. “The most famous woman of that time and her work evaporates, there’s just nothing.” According to Gypsy’s son, Erik Lee Preminger, who lives in California, most of her work was bought by a friend of his but was destroyed in a fire.
Artists stand at attention on Nada’s opening day
Photographer Mous Lamrabet’s work with Casablanca’s Loft Art Gallery a burgeoning art scene that is still largely artist-driven. One Nigerian exhibitor is the Lagos-based Wunika Mukan Gallery, showing work by Edozie Anedu, a 26-year-old Nigerian artist. Anedu’s colourful canvases at the fair, which range in price from $5,000 to $7,000, show a blue figure that represents long-gone ancestors. Carlie Porterfield
THE OPENING OF THE NADA NEW YORK FAIR WAS HOPPING ON THURSDAY, when many artists were on hand at the gallery stands. Among them was the Philadelphia-based sculptor Kambel Smith, whose large-scale installation of cardboard recreations of urban landmarks—including the Statue of Liberty and the Flatiron Building—at Shrine gallery’s stand (priced from $12,000 to $25,000) caught the attention of many visitors. Titled Autisarian City, the work is the artist’s conception of a “utopia where everyone is equal and free to be themselves”. Smith, who has autism, created the impressively accurate models without the use of measuring tools or any architectural training. When asked what he was working on next, Smith said it would be “something very tall”, so expect more big things from him. At Hannah Traore Gallery, the Welsh and Ghanaian artist Anya Paintsil was keeping an optimistic outlook, despite the fact that her
newest series of hair and textile wall pieces were held up by US customs. Painstil instead installed several earlier but still engaging portraitstyle works on the stand, and was expecting the fresh pieces—which are priced from $10,000 to $43,000— to be released soon. Some of the artists involved with the Center for Creative Works in Philadelphia, which runs an artmaking programme for adults with developmental disabilities, were also planning to come to the fair this weekend to present their drawings (priced from $100 to $450). And for those looking for less social interaction, a more hidden treasure is tucked away on the stand of The Hole gallery. There, in a cozy, log cabin-like back room, are a series of airbrushed hunting scenes by the Nebraska-born, Oregon-based artist Matt Belk (priced at $10,000 each), with a charming flock of painted decoy ducks (priced at $3,000 each) congregating in the corners. Helen Stoilas
When 70s art feels current
Frank Diaz Escalet’s No 8 Kiss (1977) THAT 70S SHOW, A 20-DEALER TAKEOVER OF ERIC FIRESTONE GALLERY’S LOFT SPACE at 40 Great Jones Street, spotlights artists who were active during the titular decade, a period of enormous growth and experimentation. The thematic show (until 21 May) was inspired by a lecture given by the critic Jerry Saltz about the importance of keeping the legacies of older artists alive. Afterwards, dealer Eric Firestone resolved to “disrupt the usual fair week”, gathering a large variety of works from this pivotal era. Galleries participating in the project include PPOW, Karma, Kasmin, Ryan Lee and Gordon Robichaux. Many of the works on display are by chronically underappreciated artists like Robert Duran, an abstract painter of Shawnee and Filipino heritage, or Jane Freilicher, a Long Island-based artist best known for her sweeping landscapes and thoughtful still lifes. By pairing pieces from less well-known artists with heavy hitters like Alex Katz, Agnes Martin and Fairfield Porter, That 70s Show achieves an equitable view of a transitional time in post-war art. Bortolami Gallery has contributed a suite of Minimalist paintings by Daniel Buren, and Anton Kern Gallery and kaufmann repetto have teamed up to present graphic, dreamy figurations by Puerto Rico-born artist Frank Diaz Escalet, an accomplished leather worker and painter whose elegant interpretations of the immigrant experience have lost none of their immediacy. Soft Network, the New York film archive, is showing two films by Susan Brockman, an experimental feminist auteur active in East Hampton and New York. Brockman’s restrained, poignant frames crackle on loop across from a series of wonderfully strange works by Judith Linhares, courtesy of PPOW. The show boasts a strong psychosexual, feminist through-line: Mira Schor’s small-scale depictions of nude women embracing bears live near a grid of drawings by A.I.R. Gallery co-founder Dolly Attie, which juxtapose cropped images of film stills and 18th century artworks to politically chilling effect. Perhaps the most exciting inclusion is a set of striking, surrealistically inflected line drawings from Benny Andrews’s Sexism (1973) series, reflecting his solidarity with the feminists he met as the head of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, an advocacy group he founded in 1969. Torey Akers
GYPSY ROSE LEE: THE 31 WOMEN COLLECTION. 1-54: © EVA SAKELLARIDES. THAT 70S SHOW: COURTESY ANDREW KREPS GALLERY AND KAUFMANN REPETTO
‘Like a striptease’: Gypsy Rose Lee’s legacy lives on
The work by Gypsy thought to have appeared in Guggenheim’s show—for which there is no list of titles, much less any photographic evidence—is a three-dimensional collage that features an image of the artist dressed in a Victorian bathing suit, her head replaced with that of a dog. The self-portrait, from 1942, also includes seashells, clip art and newspaper cuttings documenting Gypsy’s career. According to WorthPoint, an art research website, the work was sold on eBay in 2007 for $1,000, having previously been sold by Sotheby’s in a sale of Gypsy’s estate in 1971. Segal has not been able to locate this self-portrait—however, her mandate is not to exactly recreate Guggenheim’s exhibition (a near impossible task given the lack of documentation), but to collect works by those artists included in the show. Recently, the Broadway producer came close to sourcing another work, Breast in Bowl, which Gypsy painted for her fourth husband. “A dealer contacted me about two months ago saying he’d found this painting. We were in discussion but the owner died,” Segal says. With Gypsy’s art still out of reach, Segal has instead acquired pieces of ephemera relating to the burlesque dancer’s career, including two negatives she bought on eBay and a photograph by Arnold Newman of Gypsy reclining in front of one of her paintings. The producer says she was offered a crocheted G-string allegedly once owned by Gypsy, but, with no proof of provenance, she declined. “For me, Gypsy is literally like a striptease, she keeps sending little crumbs. She shows me her shoulder and then she walks away,” Segal says. “Whether we will manage to acquire any of her art works will be totally up to Gypsy. She’s in charge.” Anny Shaw
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THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM NEW YORK SPRING FAIRS FRIEZE WEEK 19-21 MAY 2023
DIARY New York
Water for democracy
Proud professor Charles Gaines with student Lauren Halsey’s work
Hernan Bas, Conceptual artist #19 (A child of the 80’s, he places his Polaroid self portraits in a familiar spot whenever he’s feeling lost) (detail, 2023)
There’s a buzz around dealer David Kordansky’s stand at Frieze New York which is hosting a solo booth of works by current art superstar Lauren Halsey. Spotted among the many browsers was the artist Charles Gaines. “I taught Lauren at California Institute of the Arts,” he told us. “You could tell something was going on. I’m so happy for her.” During Gaines’ 31year career at CalArts, he mentored many Black artists, among them Mark Bradford, Rodney McMillian and Halsey whose gypsum-based engravings and digital collages sold out on day one of the fair.
Hernan Bas, magnetic Among the various private views across Chelsea this week, we were taken with Hernan Bas’s show at Lehmann Maupin presenting his new series The Conceptualists: Vol. II. These paintings depict mysterious young men who, says Bas, are all fictive conceptual artists. One of the works shows a sallow youth brandishing a Polaroid pic of himself in front of a fridge brimming with milk cartons. “The work brings to mind those adverts that appeared on milk cartons when I was a kid, carrying appeals for missing children. This guy is emotionally lost,” Bas told us. The artist also revealed his love for pink flamingo magnets—he has 900 in total—which might make an appearance one day in one of his works, he quipped.
A visitor drinks water from one of Plan Your Vote’s “banned” bottles, at Frieze New York Thirsty fairgoers parched from running through the aisles can grab a free bottle of water on the top floor of Frieze New York this week. These nifty bottles, covered with the word “Banned”, are raising eyebrows. But look closer and you’ll see that the water containers carry a QR code that,
an art fair but not to people waiting in long lines to vote”, referring to the fact that Georgia lawmakers passed a bill banning the group from giving out food or water to people waiting to vote. Note also—the Banned bottles really are very good sustainable containers if you need a jogging accessory.
Collector Lyndon Barrois in his Basquiatstyle coat among the stands at Frieze
Visitors to Frieze in search of truly heart-warming art need look no further than Argentine gallery Barro’s stand in the fair’s Focus section, which is devoted to Buenos Aires-based artist Mónica Giron’s 1993 series Ajuar para un conquistador (Trousseau for a Conqueror). The project consists of merino wool sweaters, gloves and leggings that Giron designed and knitted to snuggly fit bird species that travel through the chilly Patagonia region of South America, such as the Andean flamingo. The delightful outfits are no mere flights of fancy though—each set of knitwear is priced at $40,000.
Fran Lebowitz gets frank at the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize event
Fran, frankly
Frieze is for the birds
King fashion Visitors to Frieze New York are certainly fashionable and always on trend, sporting the latest arty garb. Indeed, the Los Angeles-based artist and animator Lyndon Barrois was turning heads with his Basquiat-adorned coat emblazoned with a striking figure of a man running along the back of the garment. “My wife bought it as a present,” he said, while fielding numerous enquiries from other admiring fairgoers about the eye-catching coat. In a recent interview in Frieze magazine, Barrois discussed his stellar collection of works by artists such as Amoako Boafo and Diedrick Brackens, encompassing also an intriguing portrait of boxer and activist Muhammad Ali from 1975.
when scanned, links to planyourvote. org, an initiative co-created by Frieze New York director Christine Messineo, in partnership with the non-profit vote.org which is dedicated to removing barriers to voting. Crucially, the association website points out that “it is absurd that we can give away water bottles at
Mónica Giron knitted cozy sweaters for our feathered friends
Fran Lebowitz was in typically feisty form earlier this week, presenting the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize at the Noguchi Museum. The famed raconteur author, who is known for her wry take on Manhattan’s quirks, explained why she struggled a little with the prize concept, telling Artnet News: “I did ask Jonathan Anderson [Loewe’s creative director] why this is called craft instead of art. Because in my opinion, let’s face it, the difference really is between usefulness and uselessness, and most of these things are useless—which makes them art.” Congrats to the winner, Eriko Inazaki, who bags €50,000. Each of the shortlisted works by 30 finalists will be exhibited in Isamu Noguchi’s Studio at The Noguchi Museum (until 18 June).
WATER: © ALEX WROBLEWSKI. HERNAN BAS: COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN, © 2023 SILVIA ROS. COAT: GARETH HARRIS. SWEATER: BENJAMIN SUTTON. GAINES: GARETH HARRIS. LEIBOWITZ: BFA
Charles Gaines praises
Frieze New York
Booth B11
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Whispers of Insides, 2023, acrylic, crayon, and grease pencil on paper, 22 × 30" | 55.9 × 76.2 cm © Robert Nava
Robert Nava
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NEWS Has New York’s hot art market finally cooled? CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 York artist Robert Nava—11 were pre-sold and four sold on the opening day. Going for between $30,000 and $80,000, the prices are a fraction of Nava’s auction prices, which routinely hit the $500,000 mark. But, as new buyers retreat and the froth comes off the top of the market for ultra-contemporary art, prices are beginning to fall at auction. With that, calls are growing for galleries that have raised prices in line with auction results to cut them too. “Galleries will have to adjust pricing, that shouldn’t be an anomaly. That’s a correction that’s long overdue, especially for works that are dated 2021 or 2022,” Fabricant says. “That’s wholesale speculation—the attitude of ‘I want to wake up rich tomorrow’—and I would like to see a moderation of that behaviour.”
Galleries at all levels appear to be feeling the pinch, though accessible price points are keeping the wheels turning at Frieze. At Canada, four out of five paintings by Elizabeth McIntosh, priced $25,000 to $32,000, sold on the opening day. The gallery’s sales director Andrew Lee says: “We have all experienced a shift. When you get calls and texts from other dealers asking ‘how’s business for you?’ you know something’s up.” Few galleries noted sales over the $1m mark. Hauser & Wirth reported selling “numerous” works from its solo stand devoted to the late Jack Whitten, ranging in price from $95,000 to $2.5m. Thaddaeus Ropac says he sold ten works on the opening day, with the most expensive, by Robert Rauschenberg, topping out at nearly €2m. The Austrian dealer disagrees that the market is softening, though he says that “surprisingly
Pace sold out its stand of Robert Nava’s paintings and works on paper few Europeans” are in town. Auctions represent another area of activity, and the results have been mixed this week. Here too, prices are down; there have been no works with nine-figure estimates, or even estimates in the high eights. “There isn’t the allure of a marquee sale to command attention,” Fabricant says.
Secondary market stumbles
The big question is whether there is enough demand to absorb all of the material. Among those to cut through the noise were a small Ed Ruscha painting with a big estimate, which sold on one bid for $22.3m
during Christie’s 20th century sale. The other prize lot of the week was a large Jean-Michel Basquiat painting from 1983 that racked up $67.1m with fees in Christie’s 21st century auction—more than half of the whole sale’s total ($98.8m). Just two bidders, one of them Larry Gagosian, drove the price up. While that auction was 96% sold by lot, several others have hovered around the 80% sell-through rate, suggesting the auction houses are realistic about lowering their standards. Pre-sale nerves appear to have got the better of consignors to Sotheby’s Modern art sale, which saw six lots
withdrawn at the last minute. Nonetheless, more than $2bn worth of art was expected to be sold over the two-week auction jamboree and there are plenty of signs of life elsewhere in New York. The French dealer Daniel Templon launched a space here last October, followed by the Mexico City powerhouse Kurimanzutto, which opened in November. Both are located in Chelsea. After ten years of discussion, White Cube is opening in a former bank on Madison Avenue is September, while Stephen Friedman will open in Tribeca this autumn. With the number of galleries mushrooming, there are rumours that Frieze is now looking at other venues in the city to accommodate more exhibitors—and more income. This year the fair boasts its biggest lineup since moving to the Shed, with 68 galleries—though still a snip compared with the 190-plus that used to participate when Frieze pitched its tent on Randall’s Island. A spokesperson for the fair says “it is too early for us to comment on future plans”, and The Art Newspaper understands that another three-year contract with the Shed has recently been signed, so any move is far from imminent. But with the market facing more and more uncertainties, the biggest changes could be yet to come. Anny Shaw
NAVA: ALEX WROBLEWSKI.
Art market
Luc Tuymans, Abe, 2023 (detail). © Luc Tuymans
Luc Tuymans The Barn David Zwirner
On View Through July 21, 2023 537 West 20th Street, New York
Isamu Noguchi, mask (Orpheus’s severed head) for George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky’s Orpheus, 1948. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 06665. ©INFGM / ARS. Screenshots from the Noguchi Museum’s guide, Noguchi Subscapes exhibition.
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FEATURE Art law
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n May last year, New York state became the first jurisdiction in the United States to introduce a law requiring museums to label Nazi-looted art in their galleries. The primary goal of the amendment to the state education law, which came into effect in August, “was to make sure we don’t forget”, says Anna Kaplan, the former New York state senator who introduced the amendment. “We have to make sure we do everything possible to teach this dark past to the next generation.” Kaplan was motivated by a survey carried out in 2020 by the Claims Conference, which represents Jewish people seeking compensation for the Holocaust. The survey found that 60% of New Yorkers aged between 18 and 39 did not know that six million Jewish people were murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. But the law cannot be enforced. Kaplan concedes it is largely up to museums to implement and police the law themselves. “We are hoping that museums will do the right thing,” she says. “Every museum has its own legwork and due diligence to do.” The law reflects the growing pressure on museums in the US and Europe to be more transparent about the violent origins of some of the art in their collections. As a result, provenance research—once a niche area— is becoming a mainstream concern for both US and European cultural institutions. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis looted hundreds of thousands of paintings, sculptures and art objects from Jewish people, many thousands of which ended up in museums around the world. Under the non-binding 1998 Washington Principles, governments agreed to publish provenance research on Nazi-looted art in public collections and seek a “just and fair solution” with the heirs.
KLIMT: NEW YORK’S NEUE GALERIE
Publicising provenance
The amendment to the New York state education law reads: “Every museum which has on display any identifiable works of art known to have been created before 1945 and which changed hands due to theft, seizure, confiscation, forced sale or other involuntary means in Europe during the Nazi era (1933-1945) shall, to the extent practicable, prominently place a placard or other signage acknowledging such information along with such display.” Many museums already publish provenance information online, and some already include information on previous Jewish owners on labels. New York’s Neue Galerie acquired the most famous painting in its collection— Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)— after it was returned to the heir of the original Jewish owner, Maria Altmann. The Gestapo seized it in Vienna in 1939. “The painting’s history has been clearly displayed at all times in our galleries and on
HAS
NEW YORK’S NAZI ART LAW WORKED? Recent legislation requires museums to label Nazi-looted art, but some are still unwilling to publish their provenance research. By Catherine Hickley
Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) at New York’s Neue Galerie
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our website,” a spokesperson for the Neue Galerie said in a statement. “The museum welcomes efforts to increase transparency around looted and dispossessed work and is taking steps to ensure it is in compliance with the new law.” Including provenance on labels takes museums away from the “white cube” idea that became the archetype for museums in the 20th century. “The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is ‘art,’” wrote Brian O’Doherty, a former New York Times art critic, in an influential Artforum article in 1976. “The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself.” But the white cube concept appears increasingly outdated as museums strive to reflect the societies in which they operate. Pressure from the public is also mounting, with groups like the Commission for Looted Art in Europe and the World Jewish Restitution Organisation in New York pushing curators to adequately communicate the origins of art seized by the Nazis. The American Alliance of Museums, meanwhile, maintains the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal. It currently lists close to 30,000 objects at 179 participating museums, including 16 museums in New York with 2,370 Nazi-era pieces. Some museums have become proactive, staging exhibitions that focus on the provenance of their collections. At CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
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THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM NEW YORK SPRING FAIRS FRIEZE WEEK 19-21 MAY 2023
FEATURE Art law
the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, a display of the Benin bronzes—looted by British troops in 1897 from what is now Nigeria— includes video statements by German and Nigerian scientists, artists and representatives of the museums and the royal family in Benin City.
“Distilled to its essence, the law requires the museums to say something” Nicholas O’Donnell, lawyer The Kunstmuseum in Bern has held two exhibitions about Nazi-looted art since it inherited Cornelius Gurlitt’s tainted collection. In New York, the Jewish Museum staged an exhibition in 2021 called Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art. “The goodwill is already there in many museums and they are already doing the right thing,” says Agnes Peresztegi, a lawyer specialising in Nazi-looted art and the former president of the New York-based Commission for Art Recovery. While recognising the good intentions of the new law, she doubts it will spark a new transparency drive at museums. “Will
a museum that has not been forthcoming suddenly start to do the right thing because of this law?” she asks. “Probably not.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art lists 53 works on its website that have been restituted to heirs of the original owners. “We have followed this legislation closely and we are now developing labels that will appear alongside these works in the galleries,” says Ann Bailis, a spokeswoman for the museum. “The Met embraces the new requirement as it encourages the telling of important histories.” Earlier this month, the museum announced that it plans to hire four specialists to conduct internal provenance research. But given that it is up to museums to determine which works fall under the new law, art that remains contested is unlikely to be labelled as such.
The law’s lack of clarity
The Met has rejected a claim by the heirs of the German Jewish art historian Curt Glaser for a painting he sold at auction in Berlin in 1933, Abraham Bloemaert’s Moses Striking the Rock (1596). The fact that the dispute remains unsettled means the museum and heirs have until now failed to agree on the wording for a label, says David Rowland, a New York-based lawyer who represents the Glaser heirs. “Who determines whether art changed hands due to theft, seizure, confiscation,
New York’s Neue Galerie, located inside the William Starr Miller House on Manhattan’s Upper East Side
Iwan Konstantinowitsch Aivazovsky Istanbul: The Golden Horn in the moonlight. 1868 Oil on canvas, 63.3 x 76.4 cm. Signed and dated. Sale 20 May
forced sale or other involuntary means in Europe during the Nazi era?” asks Nicholas O’Donnell, a Boston-based lawyer specialising in Nazi-looted art. “What degree of certainty is required? The law does not say. The law could act as a disincentive to further inquiry.” O’Donnell also wonders whether the law might contradict the First Amendment, which protects freedom of expression. “Distilled to its essence, the law requires the museums to say something,” he says. “And yet we live
in an age where social media posts trumpet obvious falsehoods.” The First Amendment, he notes, doesn’t even allow the government to insist on corrections by private actors. Still, Wesley Fisher, the director of research at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, says he can imagine other US states introducing legal requirements similar to the New York amendment in the future. “But hopefully they will do it in a more clarified way,” he says.
Guido Reni Mary Magdalene Adoring the Cross Oil on canvas, 69 x 55 cm. Sale 20 May
AUCTIONS IN COLOGNE 17 May Jewellery & Watches 19 May Decorative Arts 20 May Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures 14th–19th C. Cologne, Germany T +49-221-92 57 29 93 [email protected] www.lempertz.com Viewing: 13–16/19 May
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Sadie Barnette: Legacy and Legend at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, and Pitzer College Art Galleries at Pitzer College. Photography courtesy of Fredrik Nilsen Studio. Collection of East West Bank.
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THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM NEW YORK SPRING FAIRS FRIEZE WEEK 19-21 MAY 2023
IN PICTURES Expert eye
Angelik VizcarrondoLaboy’s faves Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, a Los Angeles-based curator and writer, is the creative mind behind Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (until 27 August). Born and raised in Puerto Rico, her elevation of marginalised artists informs her curatorial eye, highlighting voices and aesthetics often sidelined by the art world. The Art Newspaper caught up with Vizcarrondo-Laboy to learn about her favourite works at Frieze New York. Interview by Torey Akers. Images by Alex Wroblewski
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Matthew Ronay
THE CRACK, THE SWELL, AN EARTH, AN ODE (2022) CASEY KAPLAN, $300,000
“Since I come from a craft background, I love this. It is all wood—he’s whittling these pieces down into such insane shapes. It can’t be easy to do. I think there’s something moody and bodily about it, it looks very guttural, but really beautiful, especially with the tones he’s picking. He’s taken so many pieces and created such a long display—his work is usually smaller, single pieces.”
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Magdalena Abakanowicz
KOLO I (ORCHIDEE I) (1973) MICHAEL ROSENFELD, $250,000-$500,000
“This woman is an icon in terms of the Craft movement in the US. You know how the kids say ‘mother’? She’s ‘mother’. Basically, she makes giant fibre vaginas! She was a part of Woven Forms, the 1963 show at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, right next door to MoMA, which was a big historical deal.”
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Lauren Halsey
UNTITLED (2023) DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY
“She’s from California, so her work is very much about her community, her people. She’s taking these ancient images and bringing them into a contemporary moment—hieroglyphs as a form of graffiti. I love the idea of creating artefacts for the future, especially from a Black perspective.”
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Kelly Akashi
CULTIVATOR (EARTHEN SOLITUDE) (2022) TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY, $20,000-$50,000
“I think glass is a really hard medium; it’s really technically challenging. There’s an expectation of virtuosity sometimes that I find to be too traditional, but with Kelly, the juxtaposition of hard and soft is incredible. It’s also notable that bare hands can’t actually touch glass during the process of making it, so it’s really cool that they’re placed together in that way.”
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Sahar Khoury
UNTITLED (SCAFFOLDED TREE COLUMN WITH TWO PERSIAN LIMES) (2022) CANADA, $16,000
“I love the structure of it, how there’s all this negative space in this tower that feels a little shaky, and there’s the mixed media moment happening on top. But the palm trees always get me. It’s a very abstract piece over all, but the artist has included these super recognisable elements. It feels quirky, in a way, there’s a humour to it.”
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Naudline Pierre
RESOLUTE (2023) JAMES COHAN,
SOLD
“Painting for me is hard, since I’m coming from a more dimensional background, but her work feels so mythical, I really like the transcendental quality of it. There’s something going on with the way the bodies and the elements are rendered that feels very now and of the moment, also very young. I love thinking about the way the fire is interpreted in the paintings, it’s really beautiful.”
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Jagdeep Raina
SHE TRAVELS SOFTLY THROUGH THE SEVEN GATES AS HER GARDEN CROONS FOR HER (2022) COOPER COLE, $8,000
“I love the way he’s playing with the presumed neutrality of the thread. It’s embroidered in a way that’s really loose, so he’s making a painting of sorts, there’s a lot of dynamism to it. I love the way he’s using colour, and I like how there’s a more traditionally embroidered piece at the bottom, and the rarer, stunning narrative depiction on the top.”
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Sharif Farrag
PANTHERMOBILE (2023) FRANÇOIS GHEBALY
“I’ve watched Sharif’s career grow since he was doing his BFA in California. This is actually from his recent MFA show. His work is fun, and it really says California to me. It’s funny, but also technically amazing. During his MFA, his work really crystallised, you can see it in the little details throughout.”
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THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM NEW YORK SPRING FAIRS FRIEZE WEEK 19-21 MAY 2023
INTERVIEW Artist // Nicholas Galanin
The Indigenous artist used steel destined for construction of the US’s southern border fence to make a large text art piece. By Wallace Ludel
S
peaking from his home in Sitka, Alaska, the Tlingit and Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin discussed his new public sculpture In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra (2023), a Public Art Fund project in Brooklyn Bridge Park, situated with a view of Manhattan and the East River. Made from the exact steel used in the construction of the wall along the border between the US and Mexico—and with the same imposing 30ft height as the wall—he repurposed the material to spell the word “land” in a fashion that recalls Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE works.
THE ART NEWSPAPER: How did you arrive at the title, In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra? NICHOLAS GALANIN: The work is about language and land, so specifically this title utilises English and Spanish, the two colonial languages on either side of the US-Mexico border. The material of the work came directly from the border wall construction, so this would have been the wall if the material hadn’t instead
become this piece. There is only one company that fabricates the material for the border wall, and the steel that was sourced here was en route to be part of it, but we were able to divert it for this project. With that, I’m looking at how so much is intentionally removed through colonialism: Indigenous people, Indigenous land and their relationship to it—and language. So again, the language reference of this understands that not only is it a physical history and space, but this type of colonialism and genocide takes many forms, and that’s especially experienced through our languages. I come from Tlingit and Unangax background, and I have an ancestral lineage here in southeast Alaska, and one of the largest cultural battlefields is language. We’re still dealing with that now, where there is revitalisation of language in relationship not only to our culture and history, but also to place and place names. This work is in conversation with that.
with all of its history and mythology, has often been so central to your work. Yes, and land and history of place have been as well. For me, a few things are brought together in this work: one is that there is a contrast in this work in reference to Robert Indiana’s LOVE (1970) sculpture, which is more Pop iconography, as well as the language or idea of love. And my understanding is that there is a religious history or background in that work, too. So how far is that extended with the home? And when we talk about Indigenous histories and nationalism and borders and colonial violences, there is a very clear distinction of who and for whom. Another big part of this conversation is the violence of national border walls and the root of that— whether it’s capitalism or other forms of government power—and what those walls ignore as they cut through Indigenous land or Indigenous waterways, and not only for humans but for who we share the land with, too.
I’m thinking about this extremely loaded material choice, and I know that material,
Yes, I remember seeing videos of ancient cacti being cut down to make way for the
Given that it’s going to be in a public space occupied by a wide variety of people—New Yorkers, national and international tourists and so on—what do you think about the meaning of the work and of the word “land” being so open to different interpretations? Everyone has their own perspectives when they approach these things, and I feel like a lot of my work holds a mirror to one’s perspective and how they may feel complicit or whatever their relationship to it may be. Especially in conversations around land in a place like New York today, and in conversations of migration and movement across land and borders, these are conversations that extend far beyond the US-Mexico border. Everyone has stories and relationships to where they’re at and how they got there, and I hope this work allows for that to be heard, understood and reflected upon. • Nicholas Galanin: In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra, until 12 November, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn
CAN ART FAIR
Luciano Fabro, Piede Senile II, 2000, white patinated bronze, clay and silk, 33 1/2 x 15 3/4 x 39 3/8 in. (85 x 40 x 100 cm) (approx.) © Silvia Fabro (Archivo Luciano e Carlo Fabro). Courtesy Archivo Fotografico, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.
2023 12-16 JUL IBIZA
FECOEV. Ctra d’Eivissa a Sant Antoni contemporaryartnow.com @canartibiza
GALANIN: MERRITT JOHNSON
‘My work holds a mirror to one’s perspective’
wall. Thinking of language, the work is situated with a view of Manhattan, and Manhattan is of course an Indigenous word. Yes, the East Coast especially in terms of the pathways of colonisation and the histories of this westward expansion—manifest destiny and all of that. There’s a lot of conversations and relationships still happening as extensions of this, whether it’s current situations where we are faced with these similarly enforced barriers and borders for specific communities, or we’re looking forwards at how that will change with the climate crisis and which communities will be faced with the worst hardships.
CONTEMPORARY ART AUCTIONS · EVENING SALE · Paris · 7 June 2023 DAY SALE · Paris · 8 June 2023
YVES KLEIN (1928 - 1962) Age d’or Monogold (MG36) gold leaf on panel 22.5 x 16 cm. Executed in 1959. © Succession Yves Klein c/o Adagp, Paris, 2023
VIEWING · 1 – 7 June 2023 · 9 Avenue Matignon, Paris 8e CONTACTS · Joséphine Wanecq · [email protected] · +33 (0)1 40 76 72 19 Alix Peronnet · [email protected] · +33 (0)1 40 76 72 41
Auction | Private Sales | christies.com Other fees apply in addition to the hammer price. See Section D of our Conditions of Sale at the back of the Auction Catalogue
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EXHIBITIONS
Previews & listings around town Listings are arranged alphabetically by category
○ Art fairs 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair 18-21 May Manhattanville, 439 West 127th Street
Clio Art Fair
18-21 May 550 West 29th Street
Focus Art Fair
18-21 May Chelsea Industrial, 535 West 28th Street
Fridge Art Fair
17-21 May Gallery OneTwentyEight, 128 Rivington Street, and 2B&2C, 9 Avenue B
Frieze New York
17-21 May The Shed, 545 West 30th Street
Nada New York
18-21 May 548 West, 548 West 22nd Street
The Other Art Fair
18-21 May Agger Fish Building, Brooklyn Navy Yard
Volta New York
17-21 May Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street
○ Museums and
institutions
American Folk Art Museum
BROWN: © THE ARTIST, PHOTO © PAUL LACHENAUER
2 Lincoln Square, Manhattan • What That Quilt Knows About Me UNTIL 29 OCTOBER
Americas Society
680 Park Avenue, Manhattan • Bispo do Rosário: All Existing Materials on Earth UNTIL 20 MAY
The Bronx Museum of the Arts 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx • Abigail DeVille: Bronx Heavens UNTIL 18 JUNE
How Cecily Brown breathed life back into painting for a new generation Brown is the first living British artist since Lucian Freud to be given a survey exhibition at the Met Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid Metropolitan Museum of Art UNTIL 3 DECEMBER
When Cecily Brown graduated from London’s Slade School of Art in 1993, the powers that be in the art world had pronounced painting a dead medium. Between the popularity of the Young British Artists and the parallel ascendance of market-approved conceptual installation, oil on canvas felt old-fashioned at best, stale at worst. This confluence of factors made Brown’s runaway success notable, but never unlikely—her fragmentary figural abstractions reinvigorated painting for a new generation and set her apart as a truly original storyteller across genres. Her singular, sanguine eye is on prominent display in Death and the Maid at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition marks the first time since Lucian Freud’s show The Self Exposed three decades ago that the institution has devoted a career survey to a living British artist. Death and the Maid features 50 paintings, drawings and sketches. Its title refers to Franz Schubert’s String Quartet no. 14, Death and the Maiden, in which a terror-stricken young woman begs Death to pass her over. From this theme, the show’s works fan forth to embrace a winking, psychologically charged reverence for European painterly tropes such as the memento mori, vanitas (a still life that symbolises mortality) and the romanticisation of feminine pain. Brown drew inspiration for many of the works featured from Victorian illustrator Charles Allan Gilbert’s double-image drawing All is Vanity (1892), which depicts a beautiful young woman gazing into her mirror and seeing a ghoulish skull staring back. This haunting visual informs Brown compositions such as the furiously expressionistic triptych Fair of Face, Full of Woe (2008) and the inky Untitled (Vanity) from 2005, where disembodied skulls and limbs unravel and coagulate in eerie, romantic flurries of paint. More recent paintings by Brown, such as Nature Morte and Lobsters, Oysters, Cherries and Pearls (both 2020), re-imagine the decadent still
CONTINUED ON PAGE 20
BLACK ART AUCTION
Death and the maid in a mirror: installation view of Untitled (Vanity) (2005), one of the memento mori paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid exhibition lifes of Flemish artist Frans Snyders (1579-1657) as charged sites of texture and flux. “It’s deeply about precedent and messing with precedent, but also delighting in precedent,” says Ian Alteveer, an associate curator in the Met’s department of modern and contemporary art who collaborated closely with Brown on the exhibition. “That’s also in keeping with Cecily’s feeling that painting can do more than one thing at once. To separate the two seems inauthentic.” As a young female painter thrust into the spotlight, Brown’s name became synonymous with hypersensual and sexualised compositions. It is a characterisation that has stuck, despite the enormous diversity of themes and imagery in her work. Alteveer made a conscious decision to underscore other aspects of Brown’s work in Death and the Maid. “The eroticism of the work has sometimes been overstressed,” he says.
“It is often also what folks can focus on first without allowing themselves to dig in further. And so for me it was a deliberate choice to show some really figurative stuff—there’s still a lot of erotics in the exhibition, and I think that that tension is still held in there.” At times in Death and the Maid, Alteveer’s curation feels like a love letter to painting itself, one that posits Brown as a steward of bracing beauty and political ennui. “There are so many ways into the show, but I was thinking about the ways in which her career has been assessed to date, both in terms of this moralising about success, but also in terms of her being an artist who happens to be a woman,” he says. “There is a powerful feminism in the practice, too. It came together holistically, organically and also urgently.” Torey Akers
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THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM NEW YORK SPRING FAIRS FRIEZE WEEK 19-21 MAY 2023
EXHIBITIONS
Previews & listings around town
Our pick of the shows
“An Afrofuturistic, ancient, funkified spaceship that’s just landed here at the Met”: Lauren Halsey’s the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I) (2023)
Lauren Halsey: The Roof Garden Commission Metropolitan Museum of Art UNTIL 22 OCTOBER
Kenyan Collectives Affirmation Arts UNTIL 26 MAY
When the work of the late photographer Peter Beard comes up for auction, the most prized lots are large-format prints with vividly detailed borders painted by local artists at the Hog Ranch Art Department, part of a compound that Beard owned outside Nairobi. E. Mwangi Kuria (also known as Elizaphanson Mwangi Gibson), Nathaniel Kiboi (or Kivoi) and Solomon Misigo are three of eight former Hog Ranch CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn • A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration UNTIL 25 JUNE • Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter: “Ain’t I a Woman” UNTIL 13 AUGUST • Oscar yi Hou: East of sun, west of moon UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER
artists who today make up the Pamoja art collective, and whose recent solo works take centre stage in the exhibition Kenyan Collectives at Affirmation Arts. The 25 or so paintings on show largely address the interaction between Kenya’s wildlife and human populations. There are also around 15 photographs by members of Turkana Artists Xchange, a group of creatives based in Nairobi and the far north of Kenya, as well as collaborative works by both collectives, with Turkana photographs framed with distinctive borders painted by Pamoja artists. Louis Jebb
Fotografiska
281 Park Avenue South, Manhattan • Hip-Hop: Conscious, Unconscious UNTIL 20 MAY
Frick Madison
945 Madison Avenue, Manhattan • The Gregory Gift UNTIL 9 JULY
Hill Art Foundation
239 Tenth Avenue, 3rd floor, Manhattan • Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained UNTIL 21 JULY
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens • Onyeka Igwe: A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver) UNTIL 21 AUGUST • Iiu Susiraja: A style called a dead fish UNTIL 4 SEPTEMBER • Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo Griot—Una historia de todos nosotros UNTIL 4 SEPTEMBER
Morgan Library and Museum
2 East 91st Street, Manhattan • Deconstructing Power: W.E.B. Du Bois at the 1900 World’s Fair UNTIL 29 MAY • Give Me a Sign: The Language of Symbols UNTIL 2 SEPTEMBER
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan • The Sassoons UNTIL 13 AUGUST • After “The Wild” UNTIL 1 OCTOBER
225 Madison Avenue, Manhattan • Uncommon Denominator: Nina Katchadourian at the Morgan UNTIL 28 MAY • Claude Gillot: Satire in the Age of Reason UNTIL 28 MAY • Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi UNTIL 4 JUNE
Dia Chelsea
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
Museum of Arts and Design
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
537 West 22nd Street, Manhattan • Chryssa & New York UNTIL 23 JULY
Faurschou Foundation
148 Green Street, Brooklyn • Embrace the World from Within: Bourgeois, Greenberg and Ono UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER
Flag Art Foundation
545 West 25th Street, 9th floor, Manhattan • Somaya Critchlow: Paintings and Drawings UNTIL 3 JUNE • In New York, Thinking of You UNTIL 3 JUNE
26 Wooster Street, Manhattan • Coyote Park: I Love You Like Mirrors Do UNTIL 16 JULY • Images on which to build, 1970s-1990s UNTIL 30 JULY
Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan • Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty UNTIL 16 JULY • Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter UNTIL 16 JULY • The Roof Garden Commission: Lauren Halsey UNTIL 22 OCTOBER • Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid UNTIL 3 DECEMBER
2 Columbus Circle, Manhattan • Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture UNTIL 27 AUGUST
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan • Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Walled Unwalled and Other Monologues UNTIL 11 JUNE • Ming Smith: Projects UNTIL 29 MAY • Signals: How Video Transformed the World UNTIL 8 JULY • Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time UNTIL 12 AUGUST
For her long awaited commission on the Met’s rooftop, Lauren Halsey has created a spectacular Afrofuturist temple, which fuses elements of the Egyptian antiquities housed in the galleries below, science-fiction touchstones such as the P-Funk Mothership, and allusions to her community in South Central Los Angeles. The work, the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I) (2023), takes the form of a temple guarded by four large sphinxes and four ornate columns
• The Encounter: Barbara Chase-Riboud/ Alberto Giacometti UNTIL 9 OCTOBER
New Museum
235 Bowery, Manhattan • Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined UNTIL 4 JUNE
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West, Manhattan • Crafting Freedom: Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw UNTIL 28 MAY • Nature, Crisis, Consequence UNTIL 16 JULY
Pioneer Works
159 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn • Aura Rosenberg: What Is Psychedelic UNTIL 11 JUNE
Poster House
119 West 23rd Street, Manhattan • Black Power to Black People: Branding the Black Panther Party UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER
Public Art Fund
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn • Nicholas Galanin: In every language there is Land/En cada lengua hay una Tierra UNTIL 12 NOVEMBER
Queens Museum
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens • Aliza Nisenbaum: Queens, Lindo y Querido UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER • Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER
Rubin Museum
150 West 17th Street, Manhattan • Death Is Not the End UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024
○ Commercial
Scandinavia House 58 Park Avenue • Arctic Highways UNTIL 22 JULY
291 Grand Street, 2nd floor, Manhattan • Emmanuel Louisnord Desir: Ashes of Zion UNTIL 10 JUNE
SculptureCenter
52 Walker
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Casey Kaplan
44–19 Purves Street, Queens • Édgar Calel: B’alab’äj (Jaguar Stone) UNTIL 7 AUGUST
1071 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan • Gego: Measuring Infinity UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER • Sarah Sze: Timelapse UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER • Young Picasso in Paris UNTIL 6 AUGUST
Swiss Institute
38 St Marks Place, Manhattan • Lap-See Lam: Tales of the Altersea UNTIL 27 AUGUST • Jac Leirner UNTIL 27 AUGUST
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street, Manhattan • Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map UNTIL 13 AUGUST • Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century UNTIL 13 AUGUST
47 Canal
52 Walker Street, Manhattan • Bob Thompson: So let us all be citizens UNTIL 8 JULY
121 West 27th Street, Manhattan • Kevin Beasley: In an Effort to Keep UNTIL 28 JULY
David Zwirner
537 West 20th Street and 519, 525 and 533 West 19th Street, Manhattan • Luc Tuymans: The Barn UNTIL 21 JULY • Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers UNTIL 21 JULY
Deli Gallery
36 White Street, Manhattan • Sean-Kierre Lyons: They put sugar in the Kool-Aid where I was forged UNTIL 17 JUNE
Foxy Production
2 East Broadway, 2nd floor, Manhattan • Juan Davila UNTIL 25 JUNE
NJENGA: COURTESY THE ARTIST AND AFFIRMATION ARTS. HALSEY: PHOTO BY HYLA SKOPITZ, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Nicholas Njenga’s Hungry Vultures painting is one of the ecology-focused works on show at Kenyan Collectives
whose elements are partly based on objects in the Met’s permanent collection. The central pavilion features elaborate hieroglyphic etchings that span graffiti and advertising imagery to pop culture imagery. The fusion of ancient and modern forms and icons resonates with the grandiose rooftop setting. “On the one hand, it’s in conversation with Cleopatra’s Needle, the obelisk that’s just nearby in Central Park,” says Abraham Thomas, the Met’s curator of modern architecture, design and decorative arts, who co-curated the commission with Sheena Wagstaff. “But it’s also in conversation with the roof of the museum’s Robert Lehman Wing from 1975, which is an eight-sided glass pyramid.” Benjamin Sutton
THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM NEW YORK SPRING FAIRS FRIEZE WEEK 19-21 MAY 2023
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map
Whitney Museum of American Art UNTIL 13 AUGUST The latest retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art features works evoking artists that the institution has championed for decades—Warholian Pop art, maps and flags à la Jasper Johns, and Rauschenberg-esque collages incorporating newspaper clippings and other printed imagery—all by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, an artist and activist who is a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. Her
retrospective is the first by a Native American artist at the Whitney since it opened 92 years ago. Curated by the Whitney’s Laura Phipps, Memory Map brings together more than 100 paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings made by the artist over nearly five decades. Appropriately, pride of place in the exhibition is given to Indian Map (1992), Smith’s first painting structured around the US map. “I began with the premise that the map didn’t belong to Jasper Johns, the map was an abstract image of stolen land in this country, so how could I turn the map into a new story,” Smith says. “I had a real struggle with that.” Benjamin Sutton
Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture Museum of Arts and Design UNTIL 27 AUGUST
Ceramics may be a serious art form, but Funk You Too! is more concerned with highlighting pottery’s satirical side across more than 50 works. Pieces made during the Bay Area Funk ceramics boom of the 1960s are juxtaposed with contemporary sculptures that attest to the movement’s subversive legacy, updating the irreverence of their countercultural milieu for the modern day. Organised by guest curator Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy (see p12), the
Gagosian
541 West 24th Street and 522 West 21st Street, Manhattan • Harold Ancart: Paintings UNTIL 16 JUNE
Gladstone
530 West 21st Street, Manhattan • Robert Rauschenberg: Spreads and Scales UNTIL 17 JUNE
SMITH: © THE ARTIST, PHOTO BY BRIAN WAGNER. GILHOOLY: © GILHOOLY, PHOTO COURTESY MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN
Greene Naftali
508 West 26th Street, 8th floor, Manhattan • Jonathan Lasker: The Life of Objects in a Picture UNTIL 17 JUNE
Hauser & Wirth
542 West 22nd Street, Manhattan • Mark Bradford: You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice UNTIL 28 JULY
Jack Barrett
89 Franklin Street, Manhattan • Shanna Waddell: Preface: she is s/heness society UNTIL 10 JUNE
James Cohan
48 and 52 Walker Street, Manhattan • Alison Elizabeth Taylor: These Days UNTIL 24 JUNE
James Fuentes
55 Delancey Street, Manhattan • A Study in Form (Chapter One) UNTIL 3 JUNE
exhibition applies a spirit of raunch and wit to an often overlooked period in the development of ceramics. Gore, anthropomorphised creatures and body parts abound throughout the exhibition; pieces are organised non-chronologically to draw parallels between eras and aesthetics. Featured artists range from founders of the movement such as Robert Arneson to emerging artists such as Alake Shilling and Diana Yesenia Alvarado. Torey Akers It’s claytime: David Gilhooly’s Bread Frog as a Coffee Break (1981-82)
Jeffrey Deitch
Perrotin
Lehmann Maupin
PPOW
Luhring Augustine
Rachel Uffner Gallery
Marian Goodman
Sean Kelly Gallery
24 West 57th Street, 3rd floor, Manhattan • Robin Coste Lewis: Intimacy UNTIL 24 JUNE
475 Tenth Avenue, Manhattan • Kehinde Wiley: Havana UNTIL 17 JUNE
Marianne Boesky Gallery
Simone Subal Gallery
509 West 24th Street, Manhattan • Sarah Meyohas UNTIL 17 JUNE
131 Bowery, 2nd floor, Manhattan • Mie Yim: Nightshade UNTIL 20 MAY
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
Sperone Westwater
100 Eleventh Avenue, Manhattan • Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy UNTIL 26 MAY
257 Bowery, Manhattan • Alexis Rockman: Melancolia UNTIL 28 JULY
Nicola Vassell
Tanya Bonakdar
18 Wooster Street, Manhattan • Bisa Butler: The World Is Yours UNTIL 30 JUNE
501 West 24th Street, Manhattan • Hernan Bas: The Conceptualists: Vol. II UNTIL 17 JUNE
531 West 24th Street, Manhattan • Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen UNTIL 24 JUNE
138 Tenth Avenue, Manhattan • Uman: I Want Everything Now UNTIL 17 JUNE
Pace Gallery
TH EDITION
Cargo of complexity: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights (2015)
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540 West 25th Street, Manhattan • Trevor Paglen UNTIL 1 JULY
130 Orchard Street, Manhattan • Rina Banerjee: Black Noodles UNTIL 10 JUNE
The Largest Art Fair for Prints & Editions 550 Years of Printmaking
OCTOBER 26-29, 2023 JAVITS CENTER New York
392/390 Broadway, 2nd floor, Manhattan • Hortensia Mi Kafchin: Years of Bad Hair UNTIL 3 JUNE
170 Suffolk Street, Manhattan • Talia Levitt: Schmatta UNTIL 17 JUNE
521 West 21st Street, Manhattan • Kelly Akashi: Infinite Body UNTIL 10 JUNE
IFPDA.org
Zürcher Gallery
33 Bleecker Street, Manhattan • 11 Women of Spirit, Part 7 UNTIL 21 MAY IFP-26_Art Newspaper_v6.indd 1
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THEARTNEWSPAPER.COM NEW YORK SPRING FAIRS FRIEZE WEEK 19-21 MAY 2023
COLLECTOR’S EYE
THE ART NEWSPAPER
New York Spring Fairs editions
Art lovers tell us what they’ve bought and why
I
n most contexts, being known as the “Slime Queen” would be less than flattering, but collector Karen Robinovitz wears the title as a badge of honour. With Sara Schiller she co-founded the Sloomoo Institute, a neon-hued and multi-sensorial art space that opened in 2019 in Manhattan’s Soho district, where visitors get to interact with all manner of bright, gooey and glistening slime. And while she has devoted much of her energy in the years since to bringing the Sloomoo Institute’s ethos of tactility and play to wider audiences—there are now locations in Atlanta and Chicago, too— Robinovitz is also a very serious and busy collector. Her Brooklyn home is filled with works by women artists, from large paintings by Judith Linhares, Christina Quarles, Cristina BanBan, Hayv Kahraman, Emily Mae Smith and Ginny Casey, to irreverent sculptures by Katie Stout, Genesis Belanger and Kennedy Yanko. Here, she tells The Art Newspaper about her latest purchases, most prized possessions and more.
Karen Robinovitz
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What was your most recent purchase? A lovely Yoora Lee painting from Half Gallery’s booth at Expo Chicago.
If money were no object, what would be your dream purchase? A large Cecily Brown. Which work do you regret not buying when you have the chance? This is a long list. An early Wangechi
Editor (The Art Newspaper) Alison Cole Editor, New York Spring Fairs editions Benjamin Sutton Contributors Torey Akers, Julie Baumgardner, Karen Chernick, David D’Arcy, Aimee Dawson, Gareth Harris, Sophia Herring, Catherine Hickley, Anni Irish, Louis Jebb, Wallace Ludel, J.S. Marcus, Carlie Porterfield, Anny Shaw, Claire Voon, Osman Can Yerebakan Production editors Hannah May Kilroy, Helen Stoilas Designers James Ladbury, Jennifer Waddell Sub-editing Peter Kernan, Amanda Malone Picture editor Sara Feigin Photographer Alex Wroblewski
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THE ART NEWSPAPER: What was the first work you bought? KAREN ROBINOVITZ: Susan Graham’s wall sculpture of a gun, made of liquid porcelain through a pastry squeezer. It is really well executed but not my sensibility now.
If your house was on fire, which work would you save? That’s like asking me what child I like best! The Christina Quarles, Katherine Bernhardt and a mini Emily Mae Smith are closest to the door, so they’re easy to grab—but not easy to carry (well, the Emily is easy to carry).
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Published by The Art Newspaper Ltd, 17 Hanover Square, London W1S 1BN, and by The Art Newspaper USA Inc, The Art Newspaper, 130 West 25th Street, Suite 2C, New York, NY 10001. Registration no: 5166640. © The Art Newspaper, 2023 Printed by Evergreen
Mutu. A Yoshitomo Nara girl. A Loie Hollowell painting when she first started. What is the most surprising place you have displayed a work? In the linen closet. Which artists, dead or alive, would you invite to your dream
dinner party? Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, JeanMichel Basquiat, Yayoi Kusama, Hilma af Klint, Judy Chicago, Cindy Sherman and Mickalene Thomas. What is the best collecting advice you’ve been given? It is going to sound cliche but it’s true—only buy what you love and
want to live with. Don’t get caught up in the market frenzy. Have you bought an NFT? No. I like the concept of NFTs for marketing and access but I also think it will be interesting to see how we look back at them in decades from now. Interview by Benjamin Sutton
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ROBINOVITZ: PHOTO: SETH CAPLAN
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