Quick study

According to Hauser & Wirth, abstract painter Jack Whitten has died�at 78. In 2013 NYTimes review, Holland Cotter�praised Whitten for his restless energy:

With a career grazing the 50-year mark, Jack Whitten is still making work that looks like no one else�s, which is saying something, given the flood of abstract painting in New York in the past few years. He invented new forms of abstraction and standards of beauty to match them. Even more to his credit, he�s still restless enough to make every picture a complex one-off formal event. And he�s stayed invested enough in art as an intimate medium to make those events personal.

Here are links to our�past posts about Whitten and his remarkable work.
1.�Jack Whitten: Ready-nows
2.�Quote of the Day: Jack Whitten
3.�Jack Whitten and Robert Storr in conversation

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According to BBC News, Kurt Schwitters’ Merz Barn, a�modern art landmark in Cumbria, is up for sale. Schwitters�fled German to the UK in 1937 to escape the Nazis and had hoped to turn the stone building�into a �Modernist grotto.� Unfortunately�he died in 1948 before completing�the project. Read more.

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Naomi Rea�at�Artnet has noticed that Damien Hirst�s Instagram feed changed recently. “The voice became more first-person. The former�enfant terrible�s�Instagram feed took on the form of a personal diary, looking back on his career.”�Read more.

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I love sleep�(and all artwork associated with beds) so if I were in Toronto I�d definitely check out�”Figures of Sleep,”curated by Sarah Robayo Sheridan�Opening�at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto on January 25, the exhibition “considers the cultural anxieties manifest in the popular and critical imagination around the collapsing biological function of sleep under economic, social and technological transformation.� Works by�Francis Al�s, Rebecca Belmore, Louise Bourgeois, Chris Burden, Sophie Calle, Chris Curreri, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Rodney Graham, Tehching Hsieh, On Kawara, Hassan Khan, Liz Magor, Ron Mueck, Bruce Nauman, Gabriel Orozco, Jasmeen Patheja, Jon Sasaki, Mladen Stilinovi?.

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Have you ever wondered what happens when they erase Sol LeWitt’s��site-specific wall drawings? According to Swamplot, a Houston Real Estate journal, a LeWitt drawing has recently been rediscovered in a house in Houston. Here�s the story:

An architect commissions a�famous artist�to create a�site-specific drawing�in a house he has built for himself. The artist, who never touches his own works, creates exacting instructions that installation artists follow to create the�30-ft.-tall artwork�in the living room of the home. The artist dies. A few years later, the architect dies, offering his home and the majority of his extensive art collection to a�local but world-famous museum�of which he was a trustee. The museum decides to�sell the home�and add much of the art to its collection, but there�s a�problem�with the wall drawing. It�can�t be moved,�and the museum is stymied by a�restriction:�It is�not allowed to sell any artwork�that has been bequeathed to it.Here�s where the plot � and the drywall mud � thickens: the museum, unable to remove the artwork from the home without destroying it, comes up with an alternative plan. It will�plaster over�the drawing, rendering it�unrecoverable. Years later, the purchaser of the home is telling this story to a houseguest � who in a fit of curiosity grabs a dull knife and�starts chipping away at the wall.�The white coating�flakes off.�To his and his host�s surprise, a tableau of blue, red, and yellow appears: a fragment of the�original drawing�underneath…

Read more.