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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…