– THE BIG STORY –

Ai Weiwei‘s art has returned to London—though not the dissident artist himself, of course, since he still can’t leave Beijing—in the form of an installation called A Living Sculpture at the diminutive Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. Consisting of an orange crab (and here fans will remember the “River Crab Festival” the artist threw prior to his detention, punning on “river crab” being a homonym for censorship in Chinese) circling a large cactus, it is a sly analogy for Ai’s spikily contentious situation in China, where he faces trumped-up tax charges in return for his outspoken political art. The artist can’t be tied down simply by terrestrial imprisonment, however, as he demonstrated when he appeared via Skype at an odd White Box benefit where he was subjected to speech after genuflecting speech by patrons.

– QUOTE OF THE DAY –

“It’s embracing this thing in my life that haunted me… I don’t know when I’ll do this again. “[But] if this works with me, there are gonna be a whole lot of other ones.” – Art-loving rock star Courtney Love on her first show of her own sex-filled drawings, at New York’s Fred Torres Collaborations

– MUST READ –

Jean Cocteau‘s Forgotten London Mural – Peter Apsden stumbles across a strange crucifixion scene that the great avant-garde poet, filmmaker, and artist made in a SoHo chapel and uses it as an opportunity to look back on Cocteau’s “playful and eclectic approach to art.” (FT)

Thomas Demand Mines the Notorious – Carol Vogel reveals that two documentary images that the artist recreated for next show at Matthew Marks will be of especial interest to followers of lurid headlines: a shot of Whitney Houston‘s final room-service order, and a picture of the secret Paris vault where the Wildenstein art-dealing dynasty kept 30 stolen or otherwise strangely provenance paintings. (NYT)

– ART MARKET –

Artists Space to Host Frieze-Week Nightclub – The nonprofit (and Artspace partner) will preside over a hotspot called NEIN POP at subMercer during the art fair weekend, with a buzzy crew of guest DJs including White Columns‘s Matthew Higgs and artist Cheyney Thompson, so book tickets now. (Artists Space)

Murakami Opens a Berlin Gallery – The artist has opened a gallery branch of his Kaikai Kiki empire in the city that is called Hidari Zingaro Berlin and is the first venue he has opened outside of Asia. (Flash Art)

Tycoon Says Christie’s Sold Him a Pricy Fake – Russian oil oligarch (oiligarch?) Viktor Vekselberg, the 64th richest living human, is demanding that the auction house refund the $2.8 million he paid for a painting by Boris Kustodiev, which Vekselberg says is a fake that was signed years after the artist’s death. (Telegraph)

May NYC Auction Preview – Katya Kazakina gives an overview of the art to be paraded under the gavel next month, from Munch‘s $80 million+ The Scream at Sotheby’s to Barnett Newman‘s superblue Onement zip painting at Christie’s, pegged at $10-15 million. (Bloomberg)

Higher Pictures Gets a New Space – The photo gallery has debuted a location above Gagosian‘s Madison Avenue gallery with a show of young experimental photographers called Photography Is. (Artinfo)

Adam Lindemann Does Too – The collector is also opening a gallery in that same Madison Avenue  building—just a few blocks away from his wife’s gallery, Luxembourg & Dayan—that will be called Venus Over Manhattan and debut next month with a group show of modern to contemporary art from his own collection and that of friends. (Gallerist NY)

– IN & OUT –

The New Museum has selected video artist Ryan Trecartin and Rhizome director Lauren Cornell to be the curators of its 2015 triennial exhibition of emerging international artists, with Cornell stepping down from her post at Rhizome in July to take on the new world-combing duty. (Press Release)

New Orleans’s never-smooth-sailing Prospect biennial will delay its next iteration from 2013 to 2014, with Franklin Sirmans taking the curatorial helm in place of the departed founder, Dan Cameron. (Gallerist NY)

There is a new voice of scholarly authority at the Met, as Philippe de Montebello‘s mellifluous old-world voice has disappeared from the museum’s audio guide to make way for that of current director Thomas Campbell. (NYT)

Posted on: April 27th, 2012 by Andrew
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