Art Market Monitor

Katya Kazakina previews FIAC on Bloomberg with this focus on The Modern Project, a fair within the fair that has brought in some of the world’s leading galleries and their best work while allowing them to keep a lid on their costs:

“Since last year every gallery, no matter how big or small, takes a very sharp pencil and looks at the costs versus the possible rewards,” said Michael Findlay, director of Acquavella. The gallery skipped the Maastricht fair in the Netherlands this year because it was too long and expensive. In the case of FIAC, he and others decided the risk was worth it. Findlay wouldn’t specify typical art-fair costs, saying only that with FIAC, “you are talking about less than $100,000 versus many times more than $100,000.” Noting that each of the big galleries was showing only two or three paintings, he added: “It’s a very minor cost compared to participating in an art fair, when you are basically moving a substantial part of the operation to another location.”

Kazakina itemizes some of the 25 works on display at The Modern Project:

• Andy Warhol’s 1963 “Green Disaster,” created the same year as his “Green Car Crash,” which fetched $71.7 million at Christie’s New York in 2007;
• Bacon’s 1966 “Portrait of George Dyer Talking,” priced around $40 million
• a 1921 Fernand Leger “Le Grand Dejeuner,” priced between $20 million and $25 million (a larger version of the work is in New York’s Museum of Modern Art)
• Bacon’s “Head III” (1949) will be offered at about $20 million
• Pablo Picasso’s “Maternity” (1921) around $25 million
• a 1934 Picasso portrait of his lover Marie-Therese, “Femme Ecrivant”
• Piet Mondrian’s narrow vertical canvas, “Composition With Blue, Red and Yellow” (1935-42)

Warhol Disaster; $40 Bacon Star in French Fair (Bloomberg)

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