Posts from March, 2009

Bernie and Larry: Soon to be cellmates?


Larry Salander has been newly dubbed the Bernie Madoff of the art world. He now sits in prison awaiting trial for a 100 count indictment. It is alleged that Salander would sell 50% interest in paintings to multiple parties even though he did not own the paintings, use paintings he didn’t own for collateral for … Continued


Andy’s Beemer


In 1979, Andy Warhol hand-painted a BMW M1 and decided that it was “much better than a work of art”. The car, which Warhol covered with red, blue, green, and yellow strokes that blur together to suggest speed, is currently on display in Grand Central Terminal, along with three other artist designed cars, including ones … Continued


Pierre Obando at Rush Arts Gallery


Pierre Obando at Rush Arts Gallery


Yale Art Loot


A 53 year old as yet unidentified heroin addict stole upwards of 39 paintings from various locations, including Yale’s Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale and the New Haven Free Public Library. The accused would steal the paintings by stuffing them under his clothes and then bring them to a drug house, where he … Continued


The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum


Like some earlier Guggenheim exhibitions, Mark Rosenthal’s 1996 splendid, mindless history of abstraction and the more recent survey Russia! are two examples, The Third Mind presents much great art without a convincing visual premise.


Serban Savu: The Edge of Empire at David Nolan Gallery


Although the architecture’s physical decay reflects its economic uselessness, such romantic titles as The Guardian of the Valley and Mountain of Nostalgia lend emotional value to these dour and severe scenes. These paintings speak to the failed utopian ideas in Communism.


Jack Bush: Works on Paper at the New York Studio School


What most truly characterizes Bush’s mature work is a seriousness, even a gravitas that amounts to a truly Olympian detachment.


March 2009: Michael Brenson, Carol Diehl, and David Ebony with moderator David Cohen


Kamrooz Aram at Perry Rubinstein, Siah Armajani at Max Protetch, Alfredo Jaar at Galerie Lelong, and Susan Rothenberg at Sperone Westwater


Leon Kossoff: From the Early Years 1957-1967 at Mitchell-Innes & Nash


Commensurate with their disconcerting depth, Kossoff’s early paintings are literally and metaphorically heavy. The defiant sweeps of brush resemble nothing so much as tire tracks on a sodden road.


Artist Working in Oils


There is a new twist in the corpse as art material thread of contemporary art history. Russian artist Andrei Molodkin, whose work will appear in this year’s Venice Biennale, and whose current exhibition at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery (through April 11), has developed a technique to transform corpses into crude oil that can be turned into … Continued