Feed

Adam Lindemann

By Adam Lindemann 6/11 3:14pm

adam lindemann

Milla Jovovich with her purchases, in 'Future/Perfect.'

La Serenissima’s Circus of Art: Milla Jovovich in a Box Took the Tiramisù, but Manet Beat the Biennale

The opening of the 55th Venice Biennale two weeks ago was the third leg of a month-and-a-half-long art marathon that started with the young and fun Frieze New York in early May, followed by Art Basel Hong Kong, which I’ve called “the fortune cookie art fair,” and continuing on through the four-day Art Basel, Switzerland’s well-established mega-art fair (the one that motivates most dealers to finally pull out their good stuff) and the London auctions at the end of June. Venice’s fabled and, this year, ill-timed Biennale welcomed jaded and jet-lagged dealers, collectors and curators with a week of cold and rain and spiffy water taxis that had tripled their regular rates. With a perky “ciao” and “prego,” taxi pilots ferried well-heeled passengers to swanky restaurants like Harry’s Bar for €90 plates of pasta. Read More

By Adam Lindemann 2/05 4:49pm

adam lindemann

Bidding at Christie's New York. (Emmanuel Dunand/AGP/Getty Images)

Inside Out, Round and Round…: From Out-of-Whack Values to Artist Defections, This Art World Is Looking Topsy-Turvy

Hey, do you feel like the art world is upside down? In her disco standard “Upside Down,” Diana Ross sings about how her boyfriend is unfaithful, but she looks the other way because “no one makes me feel like you do.” Unlike Diana, I’m not comfortable when things are upside down, and I never look the other way. New year, new beginning, time to think about what doesn’t make sense. Here are just a few of the sundry art-market realities that just don’t add up. Read More

By Adam Lindemann 12/10/12 1:17pm

art basel miami beach 2012

lindemann

He’s Baaack! Adam Lindemann Visits Art Basel Miami Beach and Its Satellites

As in years past, my trepidations about Art Basel Miami Beach began days before my departure. This time it started in the waiting room of my uptown doctor’s office, when one patient called out to another: “Hey Freddie, when d-y’a get ta Miami?” Freddie replied, “Can’t make it till Thursday—we’ll rock.” I knew then that the art world had changed irrevocably—there would be no turning back. Read More

By Adam Lindemann 10/16/12 6:37pm

adam lindemann

Frieze Masters, Regent's Park London. Photo by Linda Nylind. 09/10/2012.

Frieze Has the Art Fair Mastered: The British Brand Hits a Home Run With a New Event for Older Art

Last week, London hosted three major art fairs and several smaller and younger ones, enough to make any sane person wonder: have we reached the point of art fair overkill? I’ve often thought—and written—that the art fair scene has gone overboard, and now I’m not alone. On his Facebook page New York magazine’s art critic Jerry Saltz recently lamented the explosion of art fairs and the new custom among hungry galleries to send out email blasts from them announcing how many works they’ve sold. “We’ve built a worm into the system,” Mr. Saltz wrote. “The system is self-supporting and draws its power from everyone.” The point is timely, because London’s annual Frieze art fair—the highlight of a week of art parties and hobnobbing in British style—has sprouted a second fair, Frieze Masters, for more “historical” artworks. I was there for the opening of Masters, and it forced me to change my tune. And so, in the words of the great Marcel Duchamp, I will now “force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.” Read More

By Adam Lindemann 9/25/12 4:55pm

adam lindemann

'Big Campbell’s Soup Can, 19¢ (Beef Noodle)' (1962) by Warhol. (© 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

Mmm, Meh, Not So Good: The Met’s ‘Regarding Warhol’ May Help Pry Open a Can of Patron Dollars

The Metropolitan Museum’s “Regarding Warhol” exhibition groups artworks by 60 artists around works by Andy Warhol, as an homage to his far-reaching influence in the art world. The result is closer to a mob scene than to any semblance of meaningful dialogue, and it wasn’t hard to predict that critics would slam the show—slamming this show was, from the beginning, an easy layup. By this point, it’s almost de rigueur in New York’s smarty arty circles to wrinkle your nose at “Regarding Warhol,” which, as you can imagine, makes me want to like it. And so I do … but still, I don’t. Read More

By Adam Lindemann 8/07/12 2:38pm

adam lindemann

Deitch

Deitch-quake in Los Angeles: Jeffrey Deitch Has Become a Lightning Rod for Criticism of MOCA but Is the Former Dealer Really to Blame?

In early 2010, when the news broke that a respected art dealer, Jeffrey Deitch, had been named director of the financially struggling Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the museum’s decision was widely considered a controversial one. This had, of course, happened before: back in the early 1960s, Walter Hopps left his partnership in Los Angeles’s fabled Ferus Gallery to head up the Pasadena Art Museum, where he went on to a successful museum career that included a now-famous Marcel Duchamp exhibition. But who ever said the art world has a long memory? In fact, there have been many role changes in the past few years, including Guggenheim Museum director Lisa Dennison’s departure from the museum to work for Sotheby’s, and Picasso guru John Richardson and, more recently, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus John Elderfield joining the ranks at Gagosian Gallery. As well-financed galleries regularly put on blockbuster shows that are ballsier and more spontaneous than slow-moving museums could ever manage, the role of today’s art institution—and its staff—is at risk and thus up for grabs. Veteran curators are not immune to the smell of money, so it’s no surprise that some of them deservedly want to cash in a few chips. What made the MOCA appointment unusual in this context was that Mr. Deitch went in the opposite direction, giving up his eponymous commercial gallery in order to run a nonprofit institution that needed reinventing. Ironically, instead of receiving praise for his decision to focus on art instead of art commerce, he has been dogged by suspicion, accusations and mistrust from the beginning of his tenure. Read More

By Adam Lindemann 7/10/12 7:59pm

adam lindemann

'How I Roll' (2012) by Paola Pivi. (Courtesy the artist and Public Art Fund)

How Paola Pivi Rolls: Her Spinning Airplane Is the Most Daring Public Artwork New York Has Seen in Years

New York is, famously, a city whose seen-it-all citizens are above doing double takes when celebrities walk by. Neither, as it turns out, do some of them raise an eyebrow at a six-passenger, 35-foot-long twin-engine airplane spinning above their heads. How I Roll, which has been somersaulting above Fifth Avenue at 60th Street for a few weeks now, is a monumental kinetic sculpture by the Italian artist Paola Pivi and, jaded New Yorkers notwithstanding, it’s remarkable. Read More

By Adam Lindemann 6/12/12 6:17pm

adam lindemann

(Courtesy Getty Images)

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble: Journalists Brood on an Art Market Crash

On the eve of this summer’s annual Art Basel fair in Basel, Switzerland, I’ve noted that some art writers have eagerly predicted the demise of the so-called “art bubble”; a few of them are persuasive enough to instill real fear and a loss of confidence. It almost makes you wonder if their doomsday predictions could actually come true. Well, fear not, they won’t. Read More

By Adam Lindemann 5/15/12 5:02pm

Art

Karen Kilimnik Opening at The Brant Foundation Art Study Center - [ EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ]

Karen Kilimnik’s Teenage Dream

I’ve always favored  macho art, art that packs a solid dose of testosterone. My art collecting alter ego, whom I’ve dubbed Duc Jean des Esseintes, and who has curated the inaugural exhibition at my new gallery, Venus Over Manhattan, also preferred big, bold statements—large outdoor sculptures, super-sized paintings, almost anything oversized and impractical. Des Esseintes’s exhibition, called “À Rebours,” is named for and based on a 19th-century novel that describes Des Esseintes’s strange life of art collecting and indulgence, as well as his obsessions with poetry, absinthe and decadence. In his/my show, artworks by French 19th-century symbolist masters are intermingled with those of contemporary artists young and old, in ways both tasteful and tasteless. Read More