Potrait d'homme de profil (Roger Bernard), 1946 Charcoal © 2010 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York courtesy, NYU website / press release

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

The first exhibition devoted to Henri Matisse’s drawings of men opened this week at NYU’s Maison Française.

Several works in Henri Matisse – Writers on Paper: Selected Drawings and Prints from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation are being shown for the first time.

Though better known for the female form, the show’s 1937-1946 prints and drawings chronicle the male writers who were part of Matisse’s world.

The show includes seven large pen-and-ink portraits of French Surrealist poet, and zealous Matisse biographer, Louis Aragon. Other drawings and lithographs portray novelist Henri de Montherlant, dramatist Paul Léautaud, and Matisse’s reclusive neighbor, Franz Thomassin, a writer who published under the pseudonym Franz Viller.

The show, curated by Martin Fisher and Martin Mullin, will be on view from Nov. 2 to Dec. 21. La Maison Française, located on the cobblestoned Washington Mews in Greenwich Village, is NYU’s French cultural center. The gallery is open Monday through Friday 10am – 6pm.

Picasso's 1921 so-called "Homme et Femme," which sold at Sotheby's on Nov. 2 for $5.3 million.

Evidently two pairs of breasts weren’t a dead give away.

Sotheby’s sold Picasso’s 1921 pastel semi-cubist drawing of two figures titled Homme et Femme last night for $5.3 million. The catalog declares the work was completed soon after the birth of Picasso’s first son when all was harmonious with wife Olga.

A cataloguer writes: “The present work is a rare instance of Picasso returning his focus to the male-female couple in this intense period of familial redefinition.”

Not so fast, according to art critic and scholar Phyllis Tuchman, who suspects that the work is actually two seated women, not a man and a women.

For one thing there is matter of dome-like breasts on both figures. Next, both appear to have flowing coiffures.

Tuchman also explained there is a related, fairly famous 1920 painting at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dusseldorf of two female nudes.

Tuchman says the title, Homme et Femme,  probably dates to 1951 when Christian Zervos wrote the catalog raisonne, working from a black and white reproduction, which may have obscured the work-or at least the breasts.

Sotheby’s, evidently clued in to Picasso’s renderings of female pairs in…

Image via Curbed

Fancy this! Jeff Koons wants to live larger than most hedge fund moguls and gazillionaires.

His architect filed plans to gut and combine a pair Upper East Side townhouses, according to real estate website Curbed, which would result in a sprawling 21,500 square foot single family home.

Here’s the deal: Koons wants to  join 11 East 67th Street, which the artist acquired last years for $12 million, with 13 East 67th Street, which he bought last year for $20 million.

The plans include a pool, exercise room and four maids’ rooms, according to Curbed. See plans here. The renovation application was rejected, but Curbed suspects some tweaking will occur and the documents will be refiled.

Photo courtesy National Academy Museum and School

New York’s National Academy Museum and School has inducted 18 American artists and architects as members of the 185-year old institution.

The freshman class of Academicians, as they are called:

Janine Antoni, Adam Anuszkiewicz, Willard Boepple, Donna Dennis, Carroll Dunham, Garth Evans, Nancy Friese, Ann Gale, Ann Hamilton, Glenn Ligon, Melissa Meyer, Dana Schutz, Shahzia Sikander, Amy Sillman, Lee Tribe, Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, and Don Voisine.

Kiki Smith perfume bottle, via Artware Editions

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Kiki Smith loves the whiff of cat pee and plant sex.

These unusual scents helped inspire Kiki, her new limited-edition fragrance. She collaborated with French perfumer Christophe Laudamiel to create a scent that reflects her eccentric style, requesting a perfume which smelled like “plant sex” according to an article in W magazine.

(Laudamiel is also responsible for Elton John’s Black Candle aroma.) The limited edition 1.5 fl oz. bottles (4,000 total) are going for $175 each, nearly double the price of Chanel’s No.5 eau de parfum.

The fragrance combines woody scents like musk, sandalwood, and patchouli with splashes of warm fruity flavors such as fig and black currant. Smith’s favorite component? The boxwood shrub – which she fondly describes in November’s W magazine as a faint cat-pee odor that reminds the artist of her grandmother’s garden.

You too can smell like the quirky Kiki. The black and white bottles, adorned with Smith’s trademark star doodles (and adorn a Lower East Side synagogue) are available for sale via Artware Editions.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins with 2010 "Untitled" at London's Timothy Taylor on Oct. 13, 2010

Jessica Jackson Hutchin’s newest work was showcased at London’s swank Timothy Taylor Gallery Tuesday night.

The show titled Champions, which remains on view until Nov. 6 showcases Hutchins potent sculpture and wall pieces. A star of the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Hutchins employs ceramic with cheap, found materials,  resulting in raw, demanding objects.

Nara's Park Avenue Armory studio. © Photo Mackie Healy

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s retrospective has just opened at the Asia Society, and a pair of his spooky milky white statues overlook a fancy stretch of Park Avenue. But before this Nara invasion was mounted, I was invited to watch the man in action.

It didn’t turn out quite that way.

On the appointed August afternoon, I was given a yellow hardhat and guided through the Park Avenue Armory where workers were wielding power drills, part of a restoration of the soaring ceiling of the drill hall.

Nara, known to be reclusive, was MIA. The PR folks were apologetic.

The Neo-Pop meister had rigged a makeshift studio on site. Disorder reigned. Paper litter abounded. Pencil shavings and errant pieces of clothing tossed about indicated that Nara had indeed been hard at work–at least before I arrived.

The temporary workspace was visible through the glass where I was able to view his pencil drawings of youngsters pinned up on the walls.

An electric guitar sat on a refrigerator-sized wooden table. Nara is a rock music fiend and borrows titles from…

George L. K. Morris' studio, with works by Juan Gris and Fernand Leger on view. © Image: Lindsay Pollock

One of the summer’s high points was a visit to the Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio in Lenox, Massachusetts, a Bauhaus-inspired 1930s-40s time capsule preserving the bohemian upper-crust summer retreat of abstract painters, and wife and husband, Suzy Frelinghuysen and George L.K. Morris.

Kinney Freylinghuysen, the foundation’s director and Suzy’s nephew, guided us through the  house, filled with a dazzling array of artworks, personal artifacts and period furnishings by designers including Donald Deskey and Paul Frankl.

Later in the summer, I saw Kinney Freylinghuysen at Larry Salander’s sentencing. The dealer had robbed the estate of several million dollars.

To read more about Morris and Freylinghuysen, go here. Photos from my visit follow below.

via Freshness

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Forget about the measly soup can. Andy Warhol’s Pop aesthetic is being used to hawk bottles  of Dom Perignon in a promotional gambit done with the Warhol Foundation.

The champagne wizards commissioned the folks at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art & Design’s Design Lab to reinterpret its bottle with a Warholian twist.

Dom Perignon claims Andy was a big fan of their pricey bubbles and favored it as his beverage of choice at Studio 54.

The Warholesque bottles are vintage 2002 champagne, and will come in three hues – red, blue and yellow.

Each bottle is $150 and will be available for sale beginning October 15th at wine retailers nationwide.

Click here to watch a promo video.

Christy MacLear, new head of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has named Christy MacLear, former executive director of the Philip Johnson Glass House, to head the late painter’s foundation. The appointment was confirmed by David White, the foundation’s vice-president.

[UPDATE: MacLear has been appointed executive director of the Rauschenberg Foundation. Christopher Rauschenberg, the artist's son, is the foundation's president and chairman.]

MacLear resigned her position at the Glass House earlier this week, according to sources. She oversaw the public launch of Johnson’s transparent New Canaan, Connecticut, architectural landmark in 2007. The Glass House is owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The 47-acre property, with 14 structures, is maintained with a $1.9 million annual budget.

MacLear’s prior work experience includes positions as manager of strategy for the Walt Disney Company’s project called Celebration and director of the Museum Campus project in Chicago.

Rauschenberg died in May 2008. His estate is represented by Gagosian Gallery. A fall exhibition is planned.

The foundation had assets of $15.9 million as of the fiscal year 2008-2009, according to tax filings.