- Renowned Canadian artist Alex Colville set a new auction record last night. “Harbour” (1975) sold for $1.6 million at the Heffel Fine Art Auction House’s sale of post-war and contemporary art, more than double its $500,000-700,000 estimate. This bests his previous record ($1.1 million for “Man of Verandah” in 2010), and follows the recent news that his National Gallery summer 2015 retrospective attracted the third largest audience to the institution in a decade. [Canadian Art]
- Joel Mesler will close Untitled on Orchard Street so he can focus on Feuer/Mesler and Mesler/Feuer. Rising rents were a contributing factor, he told ARTnews. “We decided to tell the landlord to fuck off and we walked,” Mesler said of the Orchard Street location. Can’t wait to see the new gallery and all—the new space opens in February—but was that bit of real estate dick swinging from Mesler really necessary? [ARTnews]
- Okay, who fed the Times the “Basel is focusing on female artists” story? Because galleries showing mega-established female artists at the fair is not even remotely newsworthy (and certainly not self evident from looking at the site). In a separate section, there’s also a quote from Peter Stevens, the executive director of the David Smith, claiming that Hauser & Wirth offers a new approach to dealing with estates because they try to get exposure for under-known bodies of work in an established artist’s estate. Um, that’s the basic job description. Will art world bullshit ever end? [The New York Times]
- Newly discovered photographs document Abstract Expressionists Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, and Jack Tworkov celebrating Thanksgiving together. The photographs are pretty blurry, but whateves. The photographs provide more evidence that friendship and turkey have a long history together. [Hyperallergic]
- It’s Black Friday. Buy some art online! 20×200 is offering 20 % off framing on all their prints. Artspace is offering 10 % off site-wide, 20 % off artspace editions, and four prints for $99 from the sixties collection. [20×200, Artspace]
- The Arctic Circle Residency, notable for bringing together artists, scientists and educators, is accepting applications for its upcoming summer and autumn expeditions. A previous participant in the programme was Winnipeg artist Sarah-Anne Johnson, whose Arctic Wonderland series stemmed from her 2009 residency. [artrubicon.]
- Like Simon Denny’s reverse spying on NSA, Swiss duo !Mediengruppe Bitnik similarly co-opt the spy’s tech arsenal in creating installations—like hijacking the closed-circuit screens in a London subway station—as a form of counter-espionage. [ARTnews]
- My new favourite aquatic, microscopic invertebrate just might be the “water bear”. They look like the distant cousins of Fraggle Rock’s doozers, can survive in both freezing and boiling temps and is a genetic marvel thanks to its “horizon gene transfer” that could completely re-think that whole “tree of life” genetic metaphor. [Maclean’s]
- Goat refuses to be Siberian tiger’s lunch in a Russian zoo. After chasing him around the enclosure, they become friends. Interspecies love forever. [Telegraph]
- Guilty pleasure: 100 best photographs taken without Photoshop. Pretty much all the claims in this headline are dubious, but the photographs are a good reminder of how awe-inspiring the world’s landscape can be. [Bright Side]
