By Andrew Russeth 9/15/11 12:00pm

fall arts preview

The Fall of Relational Aesthetics

The Fall of Relational Aesthetics

Occasionally exhibitions of contemporary art are eerily timely. Curatorial programs click into step with the zeitgeist, and notions that have been floating around in the air coalesce in concrete form, in a museum near you. Such will be the case in New York this fall, as the Guggenheim and the New Museum unveil retrospectives of two midcareer European artists who have never before had surveys in the U.S. The two are old friends and collaborators, and their concurrent shows are almost certain to provoke heated debates about the health and importance of contemporary art.

Meet Italian prankster Maurizio Cattelan and Belgian mad scientist Carsten Höller. Read More

By Will Heinrich 3/15/11 11:51pm

Galleries

Art vs. Real Estate at Marianne Boesky

It’s been centuries since frescoes first became paintings and broke out of church walls, but we’re still looking at them indoors. So the question remains: Can art ever be as interesting as real estate? To confront the question directly, you could, as Marianne Boesky has done, lease a townhouse on East 64th Street with a Read More

By Nate Freeman 9/28/10 10:02pm

Art and Sculpture

Art Star Gives Milan The Finger — In Statue Form

Thanks to artist Maurizio Cattelan — the prankster artist and sculpter who splits his time between the East Village and Italy — an 11-meter installation of a severed hand with its middle finger firmly raised is currently placed in front of the Milan Stock Exchange. The bird-flipping effigy is called “L.O.V.E.”

The decision to direct such a Read More

By Adam Lindemann 7/07/10 1:39am

Art Collector

The Grand Tourist

In the art world, summer is the time to make the pilgrimage: Events in Europe, public and private, afford much to marvel at, to think about-and, possibly, to buy.

FROM BASEL: THE Swiss have a few things to teach us about art collecting, given their appetite for it and the superb way they exhibit their Read More