"'I Plan to Stay a Believer' at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York," Blouin Artinfo
Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York is hosting an exhibition “I Plan to Stay a Believer” at the gallery’s New York venue.
The exhibition brings together a cross-generational group of artists, featuring , , , , Leon Golub, Beatriz González, Christian Holstad, Tala Madani, Catherine Opie, Adrian Paci, Marinella Senatore, Nancy Spero, Wu Tsang, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Martin Wong, and Tobias Zielony.
"Radical Art from the Past Decade, from Tahrir Square to Recife," by Murat Cem Menguc, Hyperallergic
For those attuned to the current climate of political activism, a summer exhibit you won’t want to miss is at MoMA. It’s tucked away on the sixth floor, and visitors, mostly tourists, seem to wander around it, appearing slightly lost. Outside the gallery, on a seemingly unrelated wall, is some background information that describes the exhibit and its importance, which remains mostly ignored. But the text makes the show’s fierce political nature clear, stating: “The artists that make up this intergenerational selection address current anxiety and unrest around the world and offer critical reflections on our present moment.”
Take Andrea Bowers’s “A Menace to Liberty” (2012). It is a reenactment of a well-known 1912 Mother Earth magazine cover featuring Emma Goldman, which depicts an armored female figure holding a flag reading “PATRIOTISM” stepping on another female who is on the ground and clutching a flag reading “LIBERTY.” The original cover is radically feminist, and Bowers’s remake of it on its centennial is monumental. This is a giant re-drawing of the original lithograph cover, executed with black marker and using cardboard boxes as a canvas. The boxes evoke homemade protest signs as well as the idea of recycling — itself a method of political protest.
"Leonardo DiCaprio's Eco Charity Art Auction Aims to Top $45m," by Nicholas Forrest, Blouin Artinfo
The features 42 artworks as well as a variety of unique items and experiences. The collection of artworks is curated by Lisa Schiff, founder of SFA Advisory, and includes works by the likes of Paul McCarthy, Rashid Johnson, Sanya Kantarovsky, Adrian Ghenie, Damien Hirst, Jonas Wood, Sean Scully, Lynda Benglis, Andrea Bowers, Cecily Brown, Urs Fisher, Rudolf Stingel, Richard Prince, as well as a special commission by Lawrence Weiner. Many of the artists made new works for the auction.
"Billionaire Basquiat Collector Yusaku Maezawa Went Shopping at Leonardo DiCaprio's St. Tropez Art Auction," by Eileen Kinsella, Artnet News
Meanwhile, DiCaprio’s auction raised a cool $30 million for his eponymous environmental foundation. A spokesman told artnet News that “it was an important night for female artists who for the first time figured largely in the auction.” The sale included work by Andrea Bowers, , Paola Pivi, and Lynda Benglis.
"New commissions by nine artists for DiCaprio Foundation sale," by Sarah P. Hanson, The Art Newspaper
For the past four years, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation auction—organised by the actor and art collector—has played a starring role on the St. Tropez summer calendar. Last year, the event raised some $45m on behalf of the “long-term health and wellbeing of all of Earth’s inhabitants”, per the foundation’s mission.
This year’s gala and live auction, conducted by Simon de Pury, will take place on 26 July—at an undisclosed location, for security reasons—following an online preview and absentee bidding period on 40 works of art, beginning 20 July. One hundred additional online-only lots will launch on 27 July, with bidding open from 10-23 August.
To date, the actor's foundation has awarded $80m in grants to 125 organizations working to conserve land and marine life, protect indigenous rights, and address climate change. Art has been key to DiCaprio’s fundraising strategy; in 2013, the foundation’s Eleventh Hour sale at Christie’s set 13 records. This year participating artists include Darren Bader, Lynda Benglis, Cecily Brown, Sam Durant, Tracey Emin, Urs Fischer, Donna Huanca, Pope.L, Oscar Tuazon, and Wang Guangle, among others.
Nine artists—Andrea Bowers, Adrian Ghenie, Max Hooper Schneider, Rashid Johnson, Sanya Kantarovsky, Ben Quilty, Julian Schnabel, Yukimasa Ida and Camilo Restrepo—have created new commissions specifically for the sale. (No prices are listed on the site for the live auction lots; however online lots will carry starting bids and estimates are available upon request.)
"'The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin' at Jewish Museum, New York," Blouin Artinfo
The Jewish Museum is hosting an exhibition “The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin” at the museum’s New York location.
The German Jewish writer Walter Benjamin, one of the most important philosophers and cultural critics of the 20th century, began ‘The Arcades Project’ in 1927 as a short piece about Paris's 19th iron-and-glass vaulted shopping passages, offering an ideal prism examining the era’s capitalist metropolis and the phenomenon of modernity that had its origins there. The exhibition explores the project and its ongoing relevance through works of contemporary art by artists including Walead Beshty, Andrea Bowers, Chris Burden, Lee Friedlander, Andreas Gursky, Mike Kelley, Collier Schorr, Cindy Sherman, Taryn Simon, and Mungo Thomson and others. The exhibition combines archival material from the Walter Benjamin archive in Berlin, architectural models, and artworks evoking the elaborate structure of Benjamin's text, consisting photography, video, sculptures and paintings. The exhibition also includes new works by Nicholas Buffon, Haris Epamanimoda and Daniel Gustav Cramer, Sanya Kantarovsky, and Adam Pendleton.
The exhibition will be on view through August 6, 2017 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Avenue at 92nd Street, New York, NY 10128, USA.