In one corner, we have a female, South African artist with a MoMA solo show and a significant auction record under her belt. In the other, a Miami collector willing to name names, a no-no in tightly-knit commercial art circles. The issue at hand? Craig Robins has gone on record stating that painter Marlene Dumas “maintains an active blacklist of those she views as speculating in her work,” part of a larger spat with David Zwirner Gallery, who now reps Dumas. Robins — by all accounts, an extremely wealthy real estate developer — claims $3 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages from the gallery for denying him the right to purchase any more works by Dumas, of which he already owns 29. In our completely unlicensed court of law, we have to voice some skepticism about Robins’s litigious grounds.
In the hierarchy of art, painting has always been at the top of the heap. The medium lends itself to the depiction of life, death, and desires, as well as to the investigation of imaginary, abstract forms. Two new Phaidon Press tomes, Painting Today and Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting, offer an exciting overview of painting in every conceivable genre — from ambiguous abstraction to hybrid pictures.
Painting Today presents an international roundup of the best painters of the past 40 years. Written by Tony Godfrey, a 20-year veteran at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the volume begins with a look at the Global Scene, which includes Australian aboriginal painter Uta Uta Tjangala, Korean abstractionist Lee Ufan, and the Colombian portrayer of fat-figured people Fernando Botero. The next chapter examines Western Traditions in contemporary painting, featuring Richard Prince’s riffs on Willem de Kooning’s abstract women, Bridget Riley’s op-art patterns, and Alex Katz’s formal figurative studies, among others.
We hear bankrupt investment firm Lehman Brothers is doing what any formerly wealthy person with an empty bank account would do when the auction house comes a-calling: sell it and don’t look back. Lehman’s multimillion dollar corporate art collection is being sold in 165 lots over the course of three sales this winter at Freeman’s in Philly. Check out the goods after the jump and get your paddles ready. Read More »
Art and drinking have always mixed. Ask any poor college student who’s taken advantage of the free wine served at gallery openings (and for those indigent NYU undergrads out there, here is the source for happy hour plans). Nothing improves a canvas, opens the checkbook of a patron, or “relaxes” a model more than a glass of the strong stuff.
Most struggling artists would probably be content with a little cheap wine or a six-pack. But a few of the most acclaimed artists deserve more. They’ve reached true fame. They have a drink named after them.
Fresh back from Art Basel Miami, Flavorpill’s Paul Laster hit up the opening of Marlene Dumas’ latest exhibit at the MoMA. His dispatch from the evening follows.
Marlene Dumas’ much-anticipated retrospective of paintings and works on paper, titled Measuring Your Own Grave, opened last Wednesday night at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Despite the dark subject matter of so much of her work, Dumas was jovial as she greeted friends and supporters, while hanging tight with her daughter Helena, in the third and sixth floor galleries. Collectors Michael and Susan Hort, Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, and Michael Ovitz admired the show — comparing who owned what — and former Dumas dealer Jack Tilton and his wife Connie graciously bumped elbows with the artist’s current representative, David Zwirner, who had his whole family in tow.
