WEBB’S
NEW CONTEMPORARY ART SALE AT CHRISTIE’S Loic Gouzer (right), a young contemporary art expert at Christie’s, remembers the moment during last November’s big sale when Apocalypse Now by Christopher Wool, referred to as the “essential image of our times”, sold for US$26.4 million, well above its highest estimate. “It was one of the first times a work from the 1980s sold for more than $20 million,” says Gouzer. “It broke the ice. Suddenly that painting became as important as a de Kooning.” Now, hoping to capitalize on a new booming market, Mr Gouzer is creating his own separate auction at Christies. Titled If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday, Gouzer’s auction will be filled with artworks that capture the raw angst intended to appeal to his generation of wealthy nascent collectors. Mr Gouzer has included around 30 handpicked artworks estimated to sell for total of nearly $70 million. As a way of shaking things up even more his auction will commence at 6pmjust one hour before Philip’s, a rival auction house, begins its evening contemporary sale. When 12 May at 6pm Where Christie’s, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York
NEW YORK IN SPRINGTIME It is technically spring in New York and, therefore, open season for public art. The city’s parks are quickly filling with art as 11 outdoor exhibitions have opened in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. There is something for everyone in every area. Of particular note is Swiss-born, New York-based artist Olaf Breuning’s playful installation Clouds in Central Park, hovering some 35 feet above the entrance to the park. Like a child’s drawing of clouds made real, Breuning’s intervention manages to be at once endearing and absurd. Katharina Grosse has radically
jazzed up one of Brooklyn’s most drab plazas with Just the Two of Us (above), an explosively colourful installation of abstract objects coated with her trademark range of riotous hues and graffiti-like dribbles. Los Angeles-based artist Ed Rusha’s mural Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today, looms on the High Line at West 22nd Street, Manhattan, and makes for an appropriately Californian expression of road rage despite its bucolic setting. When Spring 2014 Where New York
NEW YORK’S 9/11 MEMORIAL MUSEUM OPENS The National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which has been under construction on the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks, will open to the public on 21 May. The institution will open its doors to relatives, survivors, rescue workers and first responders, who will have exclusive access to the solemn site for 24 hours a day during a dedicated period from 15 to 20 May. “The museum is built on their incredible stories,” says Michael Bloomberg, New York’s former mayor and the memorial’s chairman. The 110,000-square-foot gallery spaces house thousands of objects pertaining to that day’s attacks, and many more artefacts are stored seven stories below ground level. Where New York, USA When 21 May 2014 CATALOGUE 381
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