Displaying items by tag: john baldessari

When Fredric Brandt, the plastic surgeon to the stars, took his own life earlier this year, he left behind a trove of artworks that might have surprised those who thought his tastes were purely cosmetic. His collection, scattered between his homes in New York and Miami, includes works by Wool, Baldessari, Stingel, and Oehlen, and when it came time to find an auction house for the estate, Phillips emerged victorious after a fairly competitive jostle. It began readying the sale of 200 works, valued at $15 million in total, and 18 of these works went on sale tonight, at the house’s contemporary art evening sale in London.

John Baldessari, the celebrated Los Angeles visual artist, will be among the 11 recipients of the 2014 National Medal of Arts that President Obama will present in a White House ceremony later this month, organizers announced on Thursday. 

Baldessari will be honored along with musician Meredith Monk, tenor George Shirley, actresses Sally Field and Miriam Colon, novelists Stephen King and Tobias Wolff as well as fellow artists Anna Hamilton and Ping Chong.

The Getty Research Institute announced Tuesday that it has acquired the complete archives of the Margo Leavin Gallery, the influential Los Angeles gallery that represented such artists as John Baldessari, Alexis Smith and William Leavitt, among others, over the years from its opening in 1970 until it closed in 2013.

The Leavin gallery was known as the go-to place to see cutting-edge contemporary art from notable or up-and-coming artists from New York and Los Angeles.

“The end of boring art, the pelicans in the desert… Carrots. And parrots. Green peas… The art historian Clement Greenberg. All the drugs driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. God. God's nose."

What do all the things in this odd-sounding inventory have in common? Artist John Baldessari, of course. This list is a distillation of MOCA director Philippe Vergne's enthusiastic tribute speech at Saturday night's edition of the museum's annual fundraising gala, this time with Baldessari as its guest of honor.

Sotheby’s has announced that its upcoming spring auctions of Contemporary Art in New York will feature a selection of works donated by artists in support of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. While the list of donations has not yet been finalized, approximately 35 works will be offered in Sotheby’s evening and day sales on May 12, 2015, and May 13, 2015. Proceeds from the auction will benefit MOCA’s endowment.

All of the artists who have donated works to the sale, including John Baldessari, Mark Bradford, Mark Grotjahn, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, and Ed Ruscha, have strong ties to MOCA.

Photographer Louise Lawler will be the next artist to fill the billboard located at the base of the High Line -- New York’s elevated, linear park. The image, which depicts a room at Sotheby’s that contains works by Minimalist and Conceptual art icons Frank Stella, Sol Lewitt, and Donald Judd, is the 15th installation in the High Line’s billboard series. Other artists who have participated in the public art project include the Conceptual artist John Baldessari, photographer Robert Adams, and the British artist David Shrigley.

In the early 1970s, Lawler began looking critically at the ways in which art was displayed outside of the artist’s studio. She began photographing other artists’ works on view in collectors’ homes, in storage spaces, and on view at auction houses, challenging the viewer to think about the context in which works of art are displayed and documented.

The legendary art dealer Marian Goodman will open a London outpost this fall. Located in an 11,000-square-foot Victorian warehouse on Golden Square in Soho, the Marian Goodman Gallery will join a number of U.S.-based galleries in the neighborhood, including Gagosian Gallery, David Zwirner Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace Gallery. Goodman, who has well-established galleries in New York and Paris, represents a bevvy of influential artists, including conceptual artists John Baldessari, Dan Graham, and Lawrence Weiner; photographers Jeff Wall, Rineke Dijkstra, and Thomas Struth; installation artists Annette Messager and Danh Vō; and painters Julie Mehretu and Gerhard Richter.

The London-based architect David Adjaye has helmed the renovation of the gallery space. Adjaye, who designed Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum for African American History and Culture, which is currently under construction, is known for his ingenious use of materials and his ability to showcase light.

Anyone looking to meet the director of the tiny but highly regarded Museum of Contemporary Art here has two choices. Head into the museum, where its interim director, Alex Gartenfeld, has an office. Or go next door to City Hall, where the mayor’s appointee to the same position, Babacar M’Bow, is essentially working in exile.

The dueling directors are just part of the chaos emanating from a bitter showdown that has erupted between MoCA, as the museum is known, and the city that founded it.

The museum’s board wants to leave this working-class city and merge with the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, its wealthier and more glamorous neighbor. It says that North Miami has neglected the museum building and failed to support a needed expansion.

After closing his firm Exis Capital Management Inc., hedge-fund manager Adam Sender announced that he will sell nearly half of his contemporary art collection at Sotheby’s. Since 1998, with guidance from New York-based art adviser Todd Levin and various Chelsea gallerists, Sender has amassed a collection of approximately 800 works by 139 artists.

Over the course of 18 months, Sotheby’s will sell about 400 works from Sender’s collection, including pieces by Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, John Baldessari and Dan Flavin. The collection is expected to fetch over $70 million.

The first selection of works from Sender’s collection will be offered on May 14 at Sotheby’s important evening sale of contemporary art.

Three of the four artists who resigned from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ board in 2012 are returning in support of the institution’s new director, Philippe Vergne. John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, and Catherine Opie will be joined by the board’s newest member, the Los Angeles-based artist Mark Grotjahn. Ed Ruscha, who also resigned in 2012, is currently serving on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s board. Ruscha did join Baldessari, Kruger, and Opie as a volunteer on the search committee that MOCA formed to find a successor to Jeffrey Deitch, the former New York City art dealer who announced his resignation from his post as the museum’s director in July 2013.

Deitch’s tenure at MOCA was plagued by criticism. After firing longtime chief curator Paul Schimmel in 2012, Baldessari, Kruger, Opie, and Ruscha resigned from the board, leaving it void of artist representation. While the museum was in poor financial standing when Deitch came on board, the museum continued to fall into financial despair during his time as director.

Vergne, who comes to MOCA from the Dia Art Foundation in New York, has an extensive background in museum administration both in the U.S. and Europe. When the museum announced Vergne’s appointment back in January, Baldessari, Kruger, Opie, and Ruscha all expressed enthusiasm for the hire. In addition, his appointment came on the heels of the museum’s announcement that it had reached its goal of a $100 million endowment, most of which was raised in the past year.

Vergne said, “For me it is extremely important to have artists represented on the board. MOCA was founded by artists, patrons and civic leaders as the artist’s museum, and its incredible collection and record of groundbreaking exhibitions pay testament to that. It is a privilege to join MOCA with our new and returning trustees at the moment when MOCA is stronger than ever before.”

MOCA has included artists on its board since 1980, a year after the museum’s founding.