The Wall Street Journal has this think piece on the meaning the Hirst auction for the art market. And The Art Newspaper claims to have an inventory of White Cube’s unsold stock totaling £100 million.

Melik Kaylan’s tart views in the WSJ spare no one. Dealers are haughty but also panderers; Hirst is creature of the vulgar new money being made in Russia, China and the Gulf States; and art is for social climbers.

Because Sotheby’s and Christie’s appear to operate a species of global commodities exchange, with dates and prices instantly disclosed on the Internet, it all feels so much more transparent to, say, a new Chinese millionaire. In the first place, there will be a local office near him co-headed by a Chinese speaker who understands the millionaire’s social sensitivities — so much more pleasant than having to kow-tow to a self-important New York or London gallerist. It puts an end to a long era in which superior dealers could treat outsider clients with the snooty hauteur of a French waiter. Above all, though, the auction houses’ relative transparency — the fact that prices are set and transactions occur out in the open, for all to see — will appeal to the international new money crowd that knows plenty about how money and markets work.

Dealers have always offered clients a higher degree of discretion than the public space of an auction ever can. That has traditionally been their great asset. But let’s be candid: Nobody in Dubai or Shanghai wants a pickled cow to gaze at musingly in solitude for the sheer beauty of its hindquarters. When today’s clients buy such wares, privacy is the last thing on their minds.

The important question is whether the Hirst sale is truly driven by new buyers seeking access to his work that can’t be satisfied by his dealers. Sotheby’s is sending the works to New York (well, the Hamptons) and New Delhi but not to Dubai or Shanghai. But The Art Newspaper turns the equation around by suggesting that Hirst’s volume of production has overflowed what his dealers can place:

the scale of his output requires him to find a steady stream of new buyers; the global reach of the auction house will have proved decisive. “Sotheby’s promotion is not directed at existing collectors. They are targeting new buyers, especially in parts of the world which have only recently started collecting contemporary art,” says a trade source

The Times also picks up the Art Newspaper’s claims and wraps up the whole package including the shows in Bridgehampton and New Delhi:

This will be Hirst’s first show in India. “Until now Indian collectors have primarily shown interest in art from their own culture,” said Oliver Barker, senior international specialist at Sotheby’s. “Now they are thinking global.”

Hirst’s Marketing End Run (Wall Street Journal)

Revealed: the Art Damien Hirst Failed to Sell (The Art Newspaper)

200 Unsold Hirst Works Looking for An Owner at Sotheby’s (The Times of London)

Buying Controversial Art Gets Easier with Time

LACMA’s long history with Ed Kienholz has been filled with controversy–but when it organized a recent $1 million acquisition, no one made a peep. The sculpture in question, The Illegal Operation, (left) about abortion had interest from the Tate. The LA Times speculates that shock art has lost some of it’s impact:

But times have changed. So have sensitivities to “shocking” art as museum audiences have become accustomed to Paul McCarthy’s scatological installations and Damien Hirst’s vitrines of dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. And LACMA’s new acquisition has been burnished by civic pride and art historical gravitas. The artist, who died in 1994, at age 66, established himself in Los Angeles before developing an international reputation. “The Illegal Operation” is widely regarded as a seminal early piece by a giant in the field of socially critical sculpture.

The Times leaves off the fact that abortion–especially this particulary gruesome type of abortion–is no longer the divisive and emotional issue it once was. The sculpture is longer shocking because it depicts an historical outrage instead of a present-day outrage.

LACMA lands Ed Kienholz’s ‘The Illegal Operation’ (Los Angeles Times)

Dara Zhukova profiled in the New York Times

Carol Vogel’s examination of Dara Zhukova (left, in a photo by Jonathan Worth) and her role in the Contemporary art market does a nice job of capturing the young diletante’s appeal. That’s why we call her The Face (of the art market.) The Garage opening party is only part of the equation but an important part:

“It took chutzpah for Dasha to put on an event and attract so many people,” said Oliver Barker, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s in London. “It shows how seriously they’re taking her.” Read the rest of this entry »

What Do Mnuchin and Edelman Know About Markets That You Don’t?

Art + Auction ran two interviews with art dealers–Bob Mnuchin and Asher Adelman–who are better known for their financial skills. That is, their reputations were built on significant careers in finance. We suppose the interviewer hoped to find some wisdom about markets and art as an asset–the interviews were published under the headline, The Wise Men. But the most interesting part of both interviews is the seamless way both men incorporate their financial views into the art market without trying to turn the art market into a financial market. As Edelman points out in discussing art funds–and we would expand to cover the art market as a whole–the art market lacks the structure to be a financial market. Read the rest of this entry »

Artforum Gives Us Scenes from the Gallery Opening

Artforum’s Philip Tinari filed this report (and took this picture of arrayed Pace Wildenstein worthies) from the opening of Pace’s new gallery in Beijing: Read the rest of this entry »

The US Embassy in Beijing Highlights Jeff Koons’s Art

This Jeff Koons sculpture sits in front of the new US Embassy in Beijing that opened today. The choice of Koons as a symbol of America in the country with the most consequence in coming years is implicit recognition of the artist’s stature in world culture–not just the art market. Here the New York Sun profiles the building itself. The Art Newspaper gives more details on the rest of the art in the building. But Felix Salmon at Portfolio points out that the art budget was measley in comparison to accepted guidelines for public art. And New York’s redoubtable Jerry Saltz offers valuable discussion of the artist and his work capping off with this observation: Read the rest of this entry »

Why Does this Ukrainian Strong Man Love Art So Much?

This is Victor Pinchuk looking sophisticated in a James Hill photograph taken for the New York Times. The picture comes from Landon Thomas Jr.’s profile of Pinchuk that runs in today’s business section. The art world tends to view the Oligarchs as simply rich men with money to spend on art. But Thomas shows how their new-found love of art is part of a larger campaign and strategy that seeks not only legitimacy for themselves and their fortunes but also for their own country’s cultural status in the globalized world. You can see in this one quote how the international art world is stand-in for global culture and significant enough to stand on an equal footing with Ukrainian political support and US backing: Read the rest of this entry »

Category Focus update with all of your favorite charts which try to answer that nagging feeling something’s not quite right

If anyone expected the Contemporary Art sales in London to exhaust interest in the subject–at least until the next round of sales in October–they were rudely awakened by the announcement of Damien Hirst’s sale with Sotheby’s. Given the nature of both the artist and the sale, it is worth updating our data on the London Contemporary auction market. Read the rest of this entry »

The “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” auction tests the market

Let’s start with the assumption that the experts at Sotheby’s have made a good survey of the market (see below) and are fairly confident that they can move all of the art Damien Hirst is planning to sell on September 14th and 15th in London. (Though one assumes there are no guarantees here so the auction is relatively risk-free for the house.) With that firmly in mind, Sotheby’s announced today the size and scope of the Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale (including The Dream, left, estimated at between $4-6 million.) The sale will be 223 lots (divided into a day and evening sale) and is estimated at 65 million pounds! (That’s $130 million in funny American money.)

But the estimate isn’t really the issue. Hirst’s market performance continues to be strong despite a few recent failures of spot and spin paintings. Read the rest of this entry »

Was Sotheby’s the Favorite to Win the YSL Collection?

Pinault Steps In and Wins the Contest for Christie’s.

What Will This Do for the Paris Auction Market?

London’s First Post gives us the back story on Christie’s not-so-surprising success in getting the YSL art collection to sell in Paris in the Winter of 2009. The Independent confirms that Sotheby’s was close to a deal and values the collection at more than $500 million, making it the largest single owner sale ever. Those who have seen the collection describe it as “a room full of masterpieces.”

Reuters adds this quote from YSL’s dealer:

Antique dealer Alexis Kugel, who told Le Figaro his relation with the collectors was the closest a dealer could have with his clients, said: “For Yves Saint Laurent art was a vital need, indispensable for his inspiration, like water to survive. It soothed his depressive character.”

The Times tries to pour cold water over the whole affair by turning it into an important market test–which it will be–and using a bitchy quote from Godfrey Barker: “We now learn that Saint Laurent moved stealthily to become one of the biggest buyers in the most overpriced sector of the art market - paintings from 1900-25, which cost £5m to £25m each,” said Godfrey Barker, an art-market expert. Read the rest of this entry »