Contemporary art

Hammer Time: Sotheby's picks up the pace during a sluggish art week with $270.7m contemporary art sale

Record prices were set for Charles White, Brice Marden, and Wayne Thiebaud, while a Clyfford Still painting prompted a prolonged bidding war

Hosted and directed by Margaret Carrigan. Filmed and edited by Travis Wood. Produced by Helen Stoilas

Hammer Time: records set but reserves remain low at Christie's post-war and contemporary art sale

Ed Ruscha's visual pun Hurting the Word Radio #2 rose to $46m, a new world record for the artist, but most lots barely reached their estimate in a slow sales season

Hosted and directed by Margaret Carrigan. Filmed and edited by Travis Wood. Produced by Helen Stoilas

Collector Egidio Marzona buys eastern German castle to host design academy

The property was once home to Paul Schultze-Naumburg, a leading proponent of Nazi cultural policy

Moscownews

Austro-Russian project looks beyond Red Square to find the real Moscow

Multi-institution programme aims to introduce contemporary art to the capital's residents

Ragnar Kjartansson re-creates US soap opera for vast GES-2 culture complex opening in Moscow

GES-2 complex is located in a former power plant, built in 1907, located near the Kremlin

As Brexit looms, new gallery on England's south coast promises to be 'outward facing'

Brighton CCA, run by the University of Brighton, launches with exhibitions on German artist Franz Erhard Walther and south London collective Dog Kennel Hill Project

Urs Fischer makes wax portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio and his family for Gagosian show

One edition of the work has already been set alight and will gradually melt away over the course of the exhibition

Cartoonsfeature

Badiucao: meet the Chinese artist illustrating the Hong Kong protests

China’s ‘artful dissident’ has attracted worldwide attention through his drawings of protests, but he is still little-known in the art world

ICA Boston’s Watershed to reopen in May with massive ‘underwater’ installation by Firelai Báez

The Dominican-born New York-based artist will create her largest project yet at the seasonal space on Boston Harbor

Prizesnews

Canada’s largest art prize, the Sobey Art Award, heads west

An exhibition of the shortlisted artists is now on view at Edmonton’s Art Gallery of Alberta

Something in the stars? Art world goes spiritual

With artists and galleries embracing the new age, is there a commercial pull, too?

Elizabeth Peyton on Kurt Cobain, the Twilight films and painting a museum director in his shorts

In her new solo show at London's National Portrait Gallery, the artist connects the past with the present

Auctionsanalysis

New artists to the block bring excitement to Phillips Contemporary evening sale in London

New record set for Alex Katz, but less-familiar names also exceed expectations

Revealed: London's most exhibited artist this millennium

We look at which contemporary artists hold the record for the most shows in the capital over the past 20 years

Leading online database to remove 600,000 images after art project reveals its racist bias

Artist Trevor Paglen and AI researcher Kate Crawford have investigated the troubling ways in which ImageNet classifies people

Diaryblog

On the Road to Marfa with Elmgreen and Dragset

The duo recently visited their Prada Marfa installation for the first time since the work’s unveiling in 2005—and we joined them on the road trip

Norwegian sculpture park does the Twist with Bjarke Ingels extension

Kistefos's dramatic new exhibition gallery also functions as a panoramic bridge

'It was painful, it was hardship': Marina Abramovic on her ill-fated, epic walk towards Ulay across the Great Wall of China

Three decades after the artists made the journey, in the dying throes of their relationship, PhotoFairs Shanghai is showing the work for the first time in the country

Dora Maurer: 'a lack of market was positive for my work'

White Cube announces representation of the Hungarian avant-garde artist with an exhibition of paintings from the past 30 years

This book of essays explores the varieties and definitions of Islamic art

The authors ask “What is Islamic about ‘Islamic’ art?”

Podcastspodcast

Top of the Pods: The best of the Venice Biennale

A look back at our coverage of the contemporary art event, including interviews with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ralph Rugoff

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by Julia Michalska, David Clack and Aimee Dawson

Danger! High voltage: former German power station sparks back to life as green arts centre

E-Werk Luckenwalde will be powered with locally sourced biomass, with excess energy sold back to the grid

Boris Johnson’s Olympic mega-sculpture is £13m in debt

Visitors decline steeply at ArcelorMittal Orbit by Anish Kapoor in east London

Artists demand rethink in rebuilding of Potsdam church where Hitler cemented power

Open letter describes the Garrison Church, damaged in the Second World War, as the symbol of an “unholy alliance” between church, military, and state

Just a 'well-known celebrity': Australian tourism chief doubted Yoko Ono's ability to draw crowds

Letter reveals that 2013 exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art was offered AU$500,000 of state money despite reservations

Scattered over 12 islands, Japan’s Setouchi Triennale offers poignant reflections of local life by the sea

Triennial features more than 200 sculptures and installations scattered across a dozen islands in the region

Gerhard Richter to donate works for a room devoted to his art in new Berlin museum

Announcement comes after the German artist turned down proposals for his own museum in Cologne

As crisis deepens, activists stage pro-democracy exhibition in Hong Kong

Show at WMA Space tells the “story of HongKongers” through protest ephemera