Art

Pablo Picasso's 1934 painting, Femme a la Montre (Woman with a Watch), just sold for $139m USD via Sotheby's. The work shattered its prior estimate of $120m USD and has become the most valuable artwork to sell globally via auction this year. Created in his signature Cubist style, the painting depicts French model Marie-Thérèse Walter, who Picasso had an affair with from 1927 to 1935, as she's sat in a throne-like chair against a cobalt blue background. While still married to his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, Picasso saw Walter as a muse who would inspire numerous works during the height of his career. Femme a la Montre gave Picasso a “sense of release," wrote Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist & Modern Art for the Americas, giving the Spanish artist "full painterly rein ...

Henry Taylor is showcasing his first major exhibition in France at Hauser & Wirth Paris. FROM SUGAR TO SHIT comprises over 30 works, including recent paintings, sculptures, and installations, providing a comprehensive look at the Los Angeles-based artist's four-decade long career.Defined by saturated applications of paint and gestural brushstrokes, Taylor's work seeks to capture fleeting moments as a way to record a person's history. While often categorized as a portraitist, Taylor is quick to reject labels, using his practice as a way to reflect his daily experiences — from his mundane processes, the family and friends close to him, as well as the historical and pop cultural references that he draws inspiration from. Recently, the artist was tapped by fellow Angeleno Kendrick Lamar ...

Henry Taylor is showcasing his first major exhibition in France at Hauser & Wirth Paris. FROM SUGAR TO SHIT comprises over 30 works, including recent paintings, sculptures, and installations, providing a comprehensive look at the Los Angeles-based artist's four-decade long career.Defined by saturated applications of paint and gestural brushstrokes, Taylor's work seeks to capture fleeting moments as a way to record a person's history. While often categorized as a portraitist, Taylor is quick to reject labels, using his practice as a way to reflect his daily experiences — from his mundane processes, the family and friends close to him, as well as the historical and pop cultural references that he draws inspiration from. Recently, the artist was tapped by fellow Angeleno Kendrick Lamar ...

Enigmatic Spanish artist PEJAC has just cut the ribbon on his his debut solo exhibition in the U.S., titled 6 FEET UNDER. The showcase, which takes over three floors inside a warehouse-like venue located at 18 East 50th Street in New York City, explores the "destruction, dystopia and renaissance of our planet due to global warming, rising seas, and the changing of the earth due to human intervention" through three acts and 19 original works.Curated by Martin Klipp, PEJAC's exhibition flaunts the vastness of his artistic prowess, with mediums spanning sculptural installations to paintings on canvas and techniques including a burning method called pyrography. Notably, the show's name is derived from an installation that nods to Monet's signature Water Lillies inside an emptied, six-feet-deep...

Enigmatic Spanish artist PEJAC has just cut the ribbon on his his debut solo exhibition in the U.S., titled 6 FEET UNDER. The showcase, which takes over three floors inside a warehouse-like venue located at 18 East 50th Street in New York City, explores the "destruction, dystopia and renaissance of our planet due to global warming, rising seas, and the changing of the earth due to human intervention" through three acts and 19 original works.Curated by Martin Klipp, PEJAC's exhibition flaunts the vastness of his artistic prowess, with mediums spanning sculptural installations to paintings on canvas and techniques including a burning method called pyrography. Notably, the show's name is derived from an installation that nods to Monet's signature Water Lillies inside an emptied, six-feet-deep...

Felipe Pantone has touched down in Shanghai for a new solo exhibition at Gallery ALL. Entitled Diagonal Reading, Stroboscopic Attention, and Profound Oneness, the show presents a comprehensive look at the Spanish-Argentine artist's career, including his SUBTRACTIVE VARIABILITY and CHROMADYNAMICA series, as well as newer sculptural explorations. Pantone's latest show explores the way in which contemporary images are consumed, an attempt to mirror the frantic nature of social media feeds, by challenging viewers to engage with the artwork in a unique and dynamic manner. Standout works include AEROSOLID IMPULSE 9S, a resin and lacquer sculpture that aesthetically looks like those old 3D pipe loading screens from the Windows XP days, but freeze-framed into anthropomorphic blob that veers betwee...

51 years ago today, Led Zeppelin IV was ushered into the world, forever changing rock music. The record featured some of the band's seminal hits, including "Black Dog" and "Stairway to Heaven," along with a now iconic cover, which depicted an old man hunched over carrying a bale of twigs on his back. According to the New York Times, Brian Edwards, a research fellow at the University of the West of England, was routinely browsing the internet for auction finds in March, when suddenly, he spotted a remarkably similar image of the old man in a Victorian photo album. "There was something familiar about it straight away,” he told the Times. After contacting the Wiltshire Museum, who previously bought the photo album, Edwards determined that Ernest Howard Farmer was the photographer behind the w...

Later this week in Singapore, Jahan Loh will be presenting an immersive installation entitled “Golden Chamber,” as part of his and ACU’s Live Long & Prosper exhibition.The space centers around a large LED display with a backdrop of perpetually rolling golden ingots. For this installation, Loh draws inspiration from the auspicious Chinese expression “黄金满地,” which literally translates to “floor covered in gold.” In a complementing gold hue, the side walls are also fitted with reflective materials that extend and amplify the richness of the display. Highlighted in the space are 1,888 inflatable ingots, all packed into the center and reminiscent of a children’s ball pit where visitors can indulge in the feeling of “rolling in gold.”A sequel to Loh and ACU’s God of Fortune BE@RBRICK series,...

Later this week in Singapore, Jahan Loh will be presenting an immersive installation entitled “Golden Chamber,” as part of his and ACU’s Live Long & Prosper exhibition.The space centers around a large LED display with a backdrop of perpetually rolling golden ingots. For this installation, Loh draws inspiration from the auspicious Chinese expression “黄金满地,” which literally translates to “floor covered in gold.” In a complementing gold hue, the side walls are also fitted with reflective materials that extend and amplify the richness of the display. Highlighted in the space are 1,888 inflatable ingots, all packed into the center and reminiscent of a children’s ball pit where visitors can indulge in the feeling of “rolling in gold.”A sequel to Loh and ACU’s God of Fortune BE@RBRICK series,...

Several Just Stop Oil activists were arrested yesterday for using hammers to break the glass protecting the 17th century painting The Toilet of Venus by Diego Velázquez, held at the National Gallery in London. The incident joins a long list of recent attacks that have transpired across European art institutions, where protesters — many of them students — are going to extreme measures to raise awareness to the climate emergency. Nicknamed The Rokeby Venus, the painting depicts Venus, the goddess of love, reclined against bed sheets looking into a framed mirror held up by her son Cupid. In antiquity, Venus symbolically represented absolute female beauty, one to which Velázquez purposefully blurs in the reflection, so that she isn't an identifiable person and only pieced together in the viewe...

Belgian sculptor Eric Croes has released a new series of bronze sculptures via Case Studyo. The Brussels-based artist is best known for creating ceramic characters that straddle the line between relics found across art history and the curious workings of his own imagination. In WAX BOX, Croes utilized the Bronze Age technique of lost wax casting, where the same mold is used to create lightweight metal copies of an existing sculpture as a way to save on the cost of material, which in antiquity was often made in marble, and easier for the user to transport. Available in green, black, and a natural patina, each bronze WAX BOX has a mystic backstory that "stands as a culmination of the artist’s mental universe, a vibrant fusion of chance, fantasy and marvelous mastery," according to Case Study...

The Power of Color is a dynamic and vibrant group exhibition taking place at VILLAZAN Madrid, featuring the works of three internationally acclaimed artists: Bibi Lei, Sun-Kyo Park, and Wahab Saheed. This compelling exhibition brings together a collection of ten striking artworks, each of which encapsulates the artists' distinct approach to color and artistry, resulting in a harmonious visual narrative.Bibi Lei, a Portuguese-Chinese artist residing in Tokyo, is renowned for her unique self-taught techniques, including finger painting and untethered brushstrokes. Her art reflects her unwavering love for painting and the profound influence of motherhood on her creative expression. Lei's works exhibit a sense of speed and directness, characterized by raw, unfiltered emotions and intuition. He...