Nicolas Carone with "Psychic Blackout," in progress, 84 x 108 in. 2007. Photo: Courtesy Wasburn Gallery

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Abstract Expressionist painter Nicolas Carone died last Thursday at the age of 93.

Born June 4, 1917, in New York, Carone was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey. At age 10, he began commuting to New York for nightly art classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, a small studio school in a church on St. Marks Place. His peers at the Da Vinci School included sculptors Isamu Noguchi, Peter Agostini and Conrad Marca-Relli.

Later Carone worked part-time as a model at the Art Students League, serving as the subject for artists such as William Zorach, Isabel Bishop and Rico Lebrun.

Following a stint in the army, he traveled to Italy where he received a Fulbright Fellowship and held his first ever exhibition in Rome in 1949.

Upon returning to New York, he worked for three years as assistant director of the new 58th street Stable Gallery, owed by Eleanor Ward. He exhibited with the Stable Gallery, and then Staempfli Gallery, until the early 1960s.

Carone was pals with Jackson Pollock, Hans Hoffman and Arshile Gorky. He considered Roberto Matta to be “one…

Henri Matisse "Bathers by a River," 1909-1917, The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection, 1953.158 © 2010 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views, Contributor

Get out your timed tickets. Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917 has arrived at MoMA.

The show includes 110 works characterized by strong geometries and stripped of detail.  The show, the first to hone in on this particular period, is the product of a five-year effort by MoMA’s chief curator emeritus John Elderfield, and Stephanie d’Alessandro, the curator of modern art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

They began with a study of the Art Institute’s Cezanne-inspired Bathers by a River, which Matisse worked and re-worked off and on from 1909 to 1917.  Elderfield and d’Alessandro employed digital technologies, laser scanning and ultraviolet illumination to uncover Matisse’s process.  A video tracing Matisse’s steps in producing “Bathers,” and a bronze sculpture titled “Back,” is on display one of the galleries.

Matisse’s grandson, Paul, attended MoMA’s press conference held earlier today.

Elderfield made his remarks standing at a podium. He expounded on Matisse, noting the artist’s emphasis on process and the radical change in his works over time. He praised Matisse’s openness to the influence of a generation of younger artists and noted…

Zhang Huan's "Three Legged Buddha" at Storm King Art Center

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

New York’s bucolic Storm King Art Center’s newest resident is a twelve-ton, 28-foot tall steel and copper sculpture by Chinese artist Zhang Huan. The artist, along with Pace Gallery, donated the 2007 Three Legged Buddha in honor of the sculpture park’s fiftieth anniversary.

The work resembles a Buddha, eyes closed, mid-back bend. The piece was installed on a grassy field alongside Magdalena Abakanowicz’ Sarcophagi in Glass Houses.

Zhang is a well-known Chinese artist initially known for his endurance performance pieces and photography, recently dabbling in large-scale sculpture. Most of the new sculpture relates to Buddhist culture, inspired by a Tibetan trip.

His 2008 large-scale outdoor work Three Heads Six Arms, on display in a San Francisco park until 2011, also portrays a contorted Buddha.

At the June Art Basel a 32-foot cowhide sculpture sold to Japanese artist Takashi Murakami for $1.8 million, according to reports.

Storm King is located an hour north of Manhattan, in New York’s Hudson Valley.  The park’s collection dates from 1945.

The 500-acre museum contains works by American and European modernist and contemporary…

Victor Pinchuk, left with artist Damien Hirst, right via The Independent

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views contributor

The Kiev based PinchukArtCentre announced today the nominees for the $100,000 Future Generation Art Prize 2010. The award is given to emerging artists up age 35 and provides support to further their career. It was established by the Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk’s foundation. The ArtCentre was founded in 2006.

After an open application procedure via the Internet, the  finalists were chosen by a seven-member selection committee. Those selected were among more than 6,000 applicants from 125 countries. The nominees represent 18 different countries and include 13 men and 8 women.

The shortlist for the Future Generation Art Prize 2010 includes:

Ziad Antar, 32 (Lebanon)
Fikret Atay, 34 (Turkey)
Fei Cao, 32 (China)
Keren Cytter, 32 (Israel)
Nathalie Djurberg, 32 (Sweden)
Simon Fujiwara, 27 (United Kingdom)
Nicholas Hlobo, 34 (South Africa)
Clemens Hollerer, 34 (Austria)
Runo Lagomarsino, 32 (Sweden)
Cinthia Marcelle, 35 (Brazil)
Gareth Moore, 35 (born in Canada)
Mircea Nicolae, 30 (Romania)
Ruben Ochoa, 35 (United States)
Wilfredo Prieto Garcia, 32 (Cuba)
Katerina…

Neville Wakefield, who curated "Drawing Restraint," at Schaulager. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

There’s usually not much time during Art Basel to explore events beyond the convention center, but this year I managed to attend the annual brunch held at the Schaulager, a wondrous Herzog and de Meuron museum and art storage space (the architect team is based in Basel) where Matthew Barney ‘s Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail including Drawing Restraint was installed on the first two floors.

I took a few photos of the building’s exterior where a pair of giant screens broadcast Barney’s video. Visitors were even able to watch the video as they waited for the tram across the street, a sort of high-brow drive-in. For moving pictures, Vernissage TV has great footage, found here.

Warhol panel at New York Public Library June 23, 2010. From right: Steve Watson, Bibbe Hansen, John Wilcox, Taylor Mead, Gretchen Berg, Gerard Malanga. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Last night at the New York Public Library, a jam-packed room of Warhol acolytes, disciples and aging Superstars assembled for a panel on the occasion of re-release of John Wilcock’s enticingly titled 1971 book, The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol.

The rollicking panel was moderated by Factory Made author and Warhol buff Steven Watson, who chatted up members of Warhol’s inner circle about sex, drugs and even Andy’s preferred diet pills: Oberol.

The panel included the Ray-Ban wearing Factory actress Bibbe Hansen, the soft-spoken photographer and journalist Gretchen Berg, who kept referring to Warhol as “the zen master,” cussing actor Taylor Mead, Warhol’s former right-hand man Gerard Malanga, and journalist John Wilcock, who proceeded to videotape the proceedings from his seat on stage.

Though Wilcock admitted the book is not an autobiography and contains nothing about Andy Warhol’s sex life, the gang didn’t hesitate to share stories about their encounters with the seedy going-ons at the famous Factory.

Malanga reminisced about the “amphetamine sub-culture” and the so-called “dawn-patrol’s” stumble to their hangout at the former…

Veteran figurative painter Lester Frederick Johnson died on May 30th at the age of 91 of natural causes. He was a member of the second generation of the New York School and former chair of the art department at Yale University Graduate School of Art.

During a career that spanned over five decades, Johnson garnered an international reputation with over 100 one-man shows. His work belonging to the Smithsonian American Art Museum can be found here. A New York Times review of his 2004 show at James Goodman Gallery is here and a review of the same show in the Brooklyn Rail is here.

Johnson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1919 and attended the Minneapolis School of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York in 1947 where he shared studio space with artists Larry Rivers and Philip Pearlstein. He moved to Connecticut in 1964 with his wife Josephine Valenti. He taught at Yale University’s Graduate School of Art and was named chair of the art department in 1979. He retired from Yale in 1989.

Johnson’s work…

Fischer's "Untitled (Hole)" surrounded by "Dust Paintings"

I already posted a video about the opening of Urs Fischer’s solo show Oscar the Grouch at Peter Brant’s Greenwich art center, but found a bunch of photos I took at the opening and wanted to share those as well.

Times Square rendering. Photo: Hendershot Gallery

Brooklyn painter Molly Dilworth has been selected to adorn nearly a half mile of Times Square real estate with her artwork.

She beat out 150 other artists who submitted proposals to the reNEWable Times Square Design Competition. She will cover seven city blocks — from 42nd to 47th street on Broadway — with reflective blue-hued paint in an abstract composition, inspired by by NASA’s infrared satellite data of Manhattan. The area is traversed by 350,000 pedestrians a day, according to the city’s RFP for the competition. The installation will be completed in July and is temporary.

The project is intended to “revive the streetscape designs currently at the Times Square pedestrian plazas,” according to a press release from Hendershot Gallery, the artist’s dealer.

Dilworth is accustomed to a large canvas. Since 2009 she has been painting rooftops. A semi-permanent installation is on view at Hendershot at 547 West 27th Street.

Jeff Koons, on right, with student working on 'Head of Zeus'

Jeff Koons’  is famous for outsourcing his paintings to a team of skilled employees who toil for months on precise, labor-intensive canvases.

But one painting created by the hand of  Koons (see photos for evidence) will be sold tonight at the annual ‘ARTrageous’ benefit dinner and auction. The event benefits the Edwin Gould Services for Children and Families.The Head of Zeus, which relates to Koons’ series of mythological paintings, is a gouache on paper estimated to sell for $25,000.

Koons worked on the painting, along with seventeen pint-size and teenage collaborators in late April. I swung by his West Chelsea studio for a peek.  His wife Justine was also hard at work on a collage-based piece, inspired by their recent travels to Southeast Asia.

Francesco Clemente and Chuck Close are among artist guests expected to attend tonight’s festivities. These events have raised $15 million over the past 10 years. Tonight’s honorees include painter Ross Bleckner and framer Eli Wilner.