via guestofaguest.com: This being an odd numbered year, about 300,000 art lovers are set to gather in Venice, Italy for the the 2011 Venice Biennale. The tremendous bi-annual (dur) contemporary art exhibition begins this week and we have the all the details on what to expect from this year’s event. MORE>>
Article courtesy of %source%
Go HERE for more photos by Austin Roque and tag yourself and your friends!
Thursday night, the country’s biggest street art collection to date was revealed at the grand opening of new La Brea gallery, LAB ART Los Angeles. Within the last few years, there’s been a rapid movement from subversive to mainstream in street art, between Shepard Fairey’s iconographic images and rise to household name status, an Oscar nomination for Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop, and most recently, MOCA’s controversial Art In The Streets exhibition currently on display. Now, street art earns even further validation as a legitimate art movement with the opening of LAB ART, a gallery solely dedicated to showcasing street art and installation. Read the full story
Go HERE for some more shots by Trevor Penna of JR’s newest L.A. mural!
Yesterday, French street artist and TED2011 winner JR revealed his latest large-scale masterpiece on the L.A. cityscape (conveniently located just down the street from the GofG L.A. office!). Read the full story
Earlier this week, actress and icon Liz Taylor died of congestive heart failure. She had been sick for since 2006 and few on the outside probably could have predicted when she would go. Which is why some of you cynical assholes will surely feel the need to suggest that the auspicious timing of noted art collector Steve Cohen agreeing to put his painting of the actress, Liz#5 by Andy Warhol, on the auction block just two weeks before her passing would have to point to his having been tipped off. That’s because you’re all heartless individuals who just don’t get it.
What the timing more likely points to is Steve being one with Liz Taylor. A lifelong fan for years now, he probably just sensed that she was about to leave us. Knowing he couldn’t bear to have a constant reminder of his spirit animal in the house where he would have to see her every day, he knew it was time to let her go. He lit a few candles, called up his people and said “It’s time. I’m ready now.”
Liz Taylor Portrait To Go On The Block For $20 Million [WSJ]
Article courtesy of Dealbreaker
808 E 3rd Street, Downtown via
While we were all atwitter over the supposed “Banksy” hits popping up all over the city, another artist was busy making his mark around L.A., but not to rally for an Oscar. If you’ve seen large-scale black and white street art portraits around town recently, they’re all part of French street artist JR‘s plan to make the world a better place. Last night in Long Beach, as this year’s TED2011 winner, he accepted his prize of $100,000 and announced his “One Wish To Change The World”: a global street art project that will turn the world inside out. Read the full story
With few exceptions (thinking about how they could do things like buy a random restaurant just to fire the rude waiter who serviced them, having an IHOP built in their bedroom), few things are more satisfying to financiers than buying multi-million dollar pieces of art to hang above their toilets. Every now and then it’s important to recognize who the most important people in this game are; today the Observer has ranked the Top 50 New York buyers who “move the art world.” You’re allowed two guesses as to who comes in at number one but you”ll only need one. Hint: no profile of him shall be written without mentioning that he owns expensive art; his tastes range from Warhols to animals-in-formeldahyde to pieces of ass; if he so much as smells a drop of grease within 200 feet of his pictures he’ll shut down the area and interrogate every suspect; and his greatest gift to the world, upon retirement, will be a self-created multi-media nude, expected to fetch upwards of 9 figures.
50. Werner “Wynn” Kramarsky
49. Ranbir Singh
42. Andrew M. Saul
41. Hubert Neumann
40. Wilbur Ross
39. Michael Alexandre David-Weill
38. Robert Menschel
36. Bruce Kovner
35. Stephen Schwarzman
33. Joseph DiMenna
32. Raymond Learsy
30. Dan Loeb
29. Adam Lindemann
28. Adam Sender
27. David Ganek
22. Donald Marron
19. Glenn R. Fuhrman
16. Michael Steinhardt
11. Noam Gottesman
10. J. Tomilson Hill
4. Henry Kravis
2. Leon Black
1. Steve Cohen
The Collectors: 50 New York Buyers Who Move The Art World [NYO]
Article courtesy of Dealbreaker
Perhaps, you thought, after his hedge fund had received a subpoena from the feds, and the FBI had raided the firms of a bunch of his former employees, and an analyst was asked to wear a wire while having conversations with him, all as part of the government’s effort to behead him on live TV, that Steve Cohen would not be in the best of moods. That he would have retreated to the safe room underneath SAC’s headquarters or cryogenically frozen himself inside a Bob’s Big Boy statue and floated in space for 20-30 years, or until this whole thing blew over. Well- think again! He’s in a great mood and he’s out there, getting after it.
At Wednesday’s private opening of the country’s largest and most prestigious art fair, Art Basel Miami Beach, financier Steve Cohen showed no signs of being affected by the subpoena his $12 billion hedge fund, SAC Capital, received last week as part of a sweeping insider-trading investigation…Mr. Cohen, in jovial spirits and eager to chat about his fresh art acquisitions during the fair’s VIP preview, was one of scores of New York collectors who snapped up works in the fair’s initial hours—or, in his case, minutes.
He’s dropping major coin on, among other things, art made out of cans.
Within five minutes of the 11 a.m. opening, Mr. Cohen had dropped into David Zwirner Gallery’s booth, where he spent about $300,000 on Adel Abdessemed’s “Mappemonde,” a large-scale map of the world made from tin cans collected off the streets of Dakar. Within the next hour, he plunked down $180,000 for Tim Hawkinson’s “Bike,” a work of collaged inkjet prints, from Blum & Poe. “It was like boom—immediately,” said Blum & Poe co-owner Jeff Poe.
He’s making jokes (about himself).
By the time he got to the booth for Gagosian Gallery, where he inquired about the price of Takashi Murakami’s “Yo Hakuin,” Mr. Cohen couldn’t help joking about his habits. “Let me ask you a question,” he said to a reporter, turning around. “Do I have a bull’s-eye on my back?”
Today, he’s handpicking Cubans to fly up to CT to roll cigars for the SAC Holiday Party. Tonight? Salsa dancing. Never given it a try but why not? He’s loving life right now. Tomorrow, if he’s not too hungover, he’s checking office space on Ocean Drive for a Miami outpost. Who knows what the rest of the weekend will bring, but he’s open to anything (e.g. swinging by Miami Ink for his first tat). This insider trading investigation bull shit is the best thing you people could’ve done to him.
Art Basel Miami Off To Fast Start [WSJ]
Article courtesy of Dealbreaker
Another week is coming to an end, and like clockwork I (Alexis) will bring you another list of the best art-related things to see and do in our great town and all the news you need to know to sound informed and cultured at any cocktail party you attend! Shall we begin?
1. LACMA has[...]
Article courtesy of %source%
While the financial crisis has wreaked havoc on the lives, careers and bank accounts of many, it’s actually been pretty sweet for former Goldman executive Peter Kraus. After leaving Goldman in March 2008 he collected $25 million for a few months of work at Merrill Lynch and then took his current job as chairman and CEO of AllianceBernstein. He also bought a five-bedroom apartment at 720 Park Avenue for $37 million and by all accounts seems to be having a pretty good time. Still though, there’s one thing that likely plagues him. Not the public flogging he took for an eight-figure paycheck around the time the economy was having its ass torn out but something so much worse. His rejection by 2008 Banker Of The Year, Ken Lewis.
In FT reporter Greg Farrell’s new book, Crash Of The Titans, he writes that “one thing was clear to Lewis”– that “the ‘Goldman Guys’– Thain, Kraus and Montag– had been in the process of taking over Merrill Lynch when he struck the deal to buy the Wall Street bank [and] that Peter Kraus would not fit into the organization.” Why didn’t K-L like Pedro? Specifically, in one particular meeting, Kraus “turned himself into the center of attention in the conference room, talking nonstop and continually flashing his bright green BlackBerry,” and in general? Ken Lewis hated Peter Kraus because he’s fabulous.
Fabulousness in dress:
Kraus, with piercing blue eyes and a neatly trimmed beard, donned pink and lavender shirts as well as ties sporting splashy colors and patterns. He wore plaid suits and a wristwatch that looked like it had come from the Museum of Modern Art. He took great care and attention on his own presentation and appearance. He looked more like the creative director of a large advertising agency than an investment banker. The women who worked directly for Thain– Margaret Tutwiler and May Lee– admired their boss’s fierce intellect but were absolutely taken with Kraus’s presence. He was the epitome of urban sophistication and taste.
Fabulousness in his eye for design:
Kraus was above having a simple office. Just as Thain and his wife had recoiled at O’Neal’s decor, Kraus was repelled by the contours and confines of a plain four-walled space with a desk. An avid collector of modern art, Kraus knew exactly what he wanted to do with his space…Most striking of his objects was a plasma screen that featured a group of French street cleaners sweeping sand in the desert. On a continuous loop, figures swept the sand, forming small mounds. The sand piles would then be dispersed by the wind forcing the figures to start sweeping all over again…Then there was “the bookcase.” People entering Kraus’s office immediately noticed the stunning art on the walls and out of the corner of their eyes, they’d also note the fact that Kraus had a large bookcase, about 30 feet long by 6 feet high. But either while speaking to Kraus, or walking across the office, visitors would do a double take when they got to the bookcase and realized that it was a piece o art itself and that the “books” were constructed from the same material as the “shelves.” Greg Fleming ran afoul of Kraus one day when he dropped by for a casual chat and sidled up against the bookcase. “Please don’t lean on that,” Kraus said. “Why not?” Fleming asked. “It’s a bookcase.” “No,” Kraus said. “It’s art.
Fabulousness in vanity photoshoots:
Over the weekend, most of the executives going to and coming from the Federal Reserve accessed the building from the parking garage and the employee entrance on Maiden Lane. To accommodate requests for media access, the police designated an area across Maiden Lane as a special zone for cameramen and TV producers as well as reporters.
As the MER group made its way slowly out of the rear of the Fed onto Maiden Lane, Kraus noticed the photographers. He took out his phone, as if he were answering a call, and walked toward the media scrum. He paused in front of the photographers and stared ahead into the distance, portentously, as though contemplating an issue of great significance, one that could affect the course of financial history. A dozen or so photographers snapped pictures furiously, capturing this indelible image of Wall Street, poised at the brink. Slowly, Kraus turned away from the photographers, put the phone back in his pocket and rejoined his colleagues from Merrill Lynch.
Article courtesy of Dealbreaker
Hey guys and gals, Alexis here, ready to share with you all the things you need to know to get to see the good shows, and talk the good talk. This week I am playing it a little different—I am going to give you a round-up of shows to see and news to know. The news is pretty internation[...]
Article courtesy of %source%