There’s a lot of heavy breathing in the Wall Street Journal today concerning Art Basel Miami. Some of the worst fears are focused on Design Miami:

This year, the glow has faded from the fair, which opened Tuesday and runs through Saturday. The number of participating galleries has shrunk by half a dozen to 23, leading organizers to consider adding dealers of antique furniture next year. [ . . . ] Some dealers say that the go-go price inflation of the past few years hurt the category because it attracted speculators who snapped up a piece only to resell at a profit. The frequent trading dumped too much work on the auction block, says Mr. Schachter, the London dealer. By last summer, sales were falling flat. Sotheby’s failed to sell 40% of its lots at its summer design auction.

Now this once hot category is suddenly facing a less certain future. Dealers are cutting back on fairs, laying off workers, shopping for smaller warehouse spaces, and of course, offering discounts.

The Master, Judd Tully, tells a different story. Business is slow but sales are taking place:

“Everything we’ve sold so far is under $100,000,” said partner Suzanne Demishch. “But I think the overall mood is positive.”

That assessment was echoed by Franklin Getchell, co-owner of Moss gallery, which has branches in New York and Los Angeles. “It’s been slow but not as slow as we thought it could be,” he said.

$1 Million Chaise? Not This Year (Wall Street Journal)

Careful Buying and a Controversial Eviction at Design Miami (ArtInfo)

The AP runs a touching story about the growing importance of art in Saudi Arabia:

Saudis and foreigners crowded into a gallery at the French Embassy, checking out the paintings and sculptures of seven Saudi women artists, the latest opening in a growing art scene in the conservative kingdom.

One artist took advantage of the venue to hang an abstract painting of a woman, with one breast clearly depicted — a hint of nudity still taboo outside the diplomatic confines of the embassy, where Saudi Arabia’s religious police cannot enter.

The Wednesday night showing in a small hall was packed with expatriates and, more significantly Saudis, whose presence was a reflection of the surge of interest in the arts in the kingdom in the past few years. Local arts shows have been on the rise, more Saudi artists are participating in overseas exhibits, and more universities and schools are offering arts degrees

Still with Taboos, Saudi Art Scene Grows (Associated Press)

The Irish Times looks at a Dublin exhibition that brings together the work of artists that died young. Basquiat, Matta-Clark, Haring, Kippenberger, Chadwick and more. The review of the show makes up an interesting list of talent cut short.

The Shining Stars Who Burned Out Too Soon (Irish Times)

The New York Times looks at artists and their newfound means of support:

Rather than seeing art as something to pursue in the hours when they are not earning a living, these artists are developing businesses around their talents. These artists are part of a growing movement that has caught the attention of business experts and is being nudged along by both art and business schools. Living in the Internet era has certainly helped.

Claudine Hellmuth, for example, said that when she graduated from the Corcoran College of Art in Washington in 1997, career options for artists were limited. “You could teach, or do outdoor festivals, maybe get into a gallery,” she said. [ . . . ]

Ms. Hellmuth’s success stems in part from the way she has created multiple revenue streams. She has an online store on Etsy.com, a Web portal where artists sell their work. She does custom illustrations for customers using photographs they provide. She licenses her artwork for greeting cards, calendars and other products. She has written two books about her techniques and has a third one coming out. She tours the country teaching both business and art workshops. And last summer she partnered with Ranger Industries to manufacture a line of products including paintbrushes, paints and canvases.

Transforming Art Into a More Lucrative Career Choice (New York Times)

The New York Times has a little fun with the Punk memorabilia sale at Christie’s:

Mr. Alexander, 47, groused that the New York Dolls were under-represented. Still, he said, sounding a bit surprised: “Punk has finally made it into acceptability. It’s just as important as Elvis and the Beatles.”

(Sober reality after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »

Martin Gayford is tired of the Turner prize:

The glory days, in retrospect, were from the mid- to late 1990s. That is, from 1995 — when Damien Hirst triumphantly won with a sculpture consisting of a calf and mother cow divided into sections — to 1999 when Tracey Emin failed to bag it with her unmade bed, though she did garner gobs of publicity.

Those two, whatever you think of them as artists, were worth having an argument about. Since then, though, it has been a trundle down hill and this year we’ve reached a shortlist containing no shock, pizzazz or novelty, nothing but a series of pulse-lowering installation/video works. The winner is to be announced on Dec. 1, though only a career art bureaucrat — a Tate curator, perhaps — could get excited about it.

Turner Prize Is Getting Boring, Let’s Retire It: Martin Gayford (Bloomberg)

Where the LA MOCA Money Went

The New York Times reports that stories about the MOCA’s need to raise money have drawn the attention of the attorney general’s office in California which oversees non-profit organizations:

The museum said it received a letter from the attorney general’s office, which oversees nonprofit institutions in the state, requesting “information and documents related to the museum’s finances.” People who have been briefed on the museum’s financial situation said its endowment had fallen to less than $10 million, about half the level of a year ago.

Alexandra Peers tries to plot the future of the art market post-crash in the Wall Street Journal:

The art market’s crash — for that is what it is — threatens to remake the art world. In the past few weeks, auctioneers, dealers, artists and collectors have changed strategies and policies, and it’s likely that future changes will be even more sweeping. [ . . . ]

It’s all been a reality check for art collectors. Noted one West Coast art dealer: “Their houses are worth less, their stocks are worth less, but they thought their Rudolph Stingel was still priced the same? No.”

In the wake of the auctions, says Tobias Meyer, a vice chairman of Sotheby’s: “The price disparity between good and great has widened to humongous.” The problem for the trillion-dollar global art industry is that most of the art it has for sale is, by definition, just average. [ . . . ]

(More lessons from the “crash” after the jump.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Baer reports through his Baerfaxt newsletter that Pace Wildenstein has laid off 12% of its staff:.

PaceWildenstein has officially confirmed to us that last week they laid off 18 employees out of a total of 146 staff members. “as painful as this process was, it was necessary and necessary to do right at the  start of difficult economic times. Just as it was necessary in the early 80’s and the early 90’s when we underwent layoffs at the start of those recessions.”

Matthew Marks confirmed to Baer that they had laid of only 4 of their 24 employees.

BaerFaxt Subscription Page

Maybe Not. Then, Again, Maybe.

The New York Times follows the LA museum soap opera with a story about Eli Broad’s plans to erect his own museum. They seem to be back on. But the Times questions why now when the MOCA faces real funding problems:

The confluence of events once again raises a question that came to the fore as far back as 2003, when Mr. Broad first announced his vast gift to the county museum for construction of the $56 million Broad Contemporary: How many institutions devoted to contemporary art might the Los Angeles area need?

The answer is not an easy one for a city that is relentlessly devoted to seeking out the next new thing. The contemporary art market has boomed in recent years, and local museums like the Hammer, the Getty and the Huntington Library, in addition to the county museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, have expanded their contemporary programming at the same time. [ . . . ]

All this comes at a time when museums are increasingly competing for capital:

“I wish people were throwing money at the museum,” Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, said in an interview on Wednesday. “But that’s not happening.”

Eli Broad Plans Another Art Space (The New York Times)