Considered a prime example of Monet’s skill and power, La Gare Saint-Lazare, vue extérieure sold for an impressive $32 million. Completed over a three month period of intense creativity in 1877, La Gare is one of a series of 12 paintings depicting the oldest railway station in France. Monet’s bold brush strokes capture the bustling energy of the Parisian train station and the vibrant power of the steam engine forging towards the platform. Of the 12 Gare paintings, 9 are in public institutions and 3 are in private hands.
Art News
Opening at Friedman Benda this week, the London-based artist Jonathan Trayte invites you into an alternate universe of bizarre but friendly furnishings. In his first US solo exhibition, Fruiting Habits, Trayte creates a world of his own, filled with idiosyncratic functional objects with multiple uses. With a background in fine arts as well as in food service and as a foundry worker, Trayte brings a sense of humor and a playful interest in texture to this collection.
The Guggenheim Museum hosts the premiere performance of "Primitive Games," a new work by artist Shaun Leonardo, on June 21, 2018. Commissioned as part of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, Primitive Games is followed on June 22 by a symposium investigating how artists and organizations can come together to forge unexpected and revelatory experiences for the public.
Trevor Paglen is an award-winning artist whose work blurs the lines between art, science and investigative journalism to construct unfamiliar and at times unsettling ways to see and interpret the world. Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen is the first exhibition to present Paglen’s early photographic series alongside his recent sculptural objects and new work with artificial intelligence.
Now at the Seattle Art Museum, Double Exposure juxtaposes the work of iconic early American photographer Edward S. Curtis with contemporary Indigenous artists Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector and Will Wilson. Double Exposure contrasts Curtis’s haunting photos of a world he believed would soon be lost with current artistic expressions of Indigenous culture that’s very much alive.
Paul Kasmin Gallery is opening a summer group show this week fit for the solstice. On June 21st, SEED debuts. As its title implies, themes of fertility, the body, sexuality, and the natural world abound. Curated by Yvonne Force, the 29 artists in the show work with variations of these themes in a range of media and styles.
In September 2018, Sotheby’s London will celebrate one of the most extraordinary art world collaborations of our times: that of Damien Hirst and his unstoppable business manager, mentor and ‘partner in crime’, Frank Dunphy.
One of the most valuable illustrated books ever produced, a first edition of John James Audubon’s “The Birds of America,” went up for auction at Christie’s in New York, June 14th, and sold for USD $9,650,000. This is nearly $2 million more than when this particular copy had sold to American collector Carl Knobloch in 2012 for $7.9 million.
A pair of French gilt bronzes sailed past their pre-auction estimates to boost the final total from Heritage Auctions' Fine & Decorative Arts Including Estates Auction beyond $2 million.
The Portland Art Museum is pleased to present Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942–1955. Featuring 100 paintings and drawings from the collection of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, the exhibition opens June 16 and will be on view through September 23, 2018.
