Judd Tully is prowling the Art Basel floor looking for deals. The million-dollar deal is proving elusive (unless you’re a Nahmad who claims he sold a Miro $6 million) but the rest of the mid-six figure action reveals a “nuanced” market, in the words of Richard Gray:
- Madrid’s González gallery: showcased six Donald Judd wall reliefs, “Progressions – 1960’s/1970’s.” Only one of the works had sold — the largest, a stainless-steel Untitled (1976), for more than $1.5 million, according to dealer Fernando Mignoni.
- Luhring Augustine: The gallery had already sold a new Christopher Wool painting from 2009, Untitled (P575) in enamel on linen, to a European collector for $370,000 and several untitled works at $18,000 and $24,000 by 33-year-old gallery artist Josh Smith, currently showing in the New Museum’s “Younger Than Jesus” exhibition. It also sold Albert Oehlen’s large abstraction Nachthimmel (2006) for approximately $250,000.
- Sperone Westwater: 2008 Surrealist-toned painting in acrylic on canvas by Liu Ye, Miss, featuring a standing woman in bowler hat, trench coat, and umbrella, bookended by two valises. It went for a high-six-figure price to a German collector with his own museum, according to Leiber.
- Anthony Meier Fine Arts: Sigmar Polke’s impressive Untitled (Interior) (1984), a gelatin-silver print with paint, sold to a European buyer for $500,000. The gallery also saw some action with fresh-from-the-studio watercolors by Barnaby Furnas, including Mummers Day 9 (We hopi you likey) and Mummers Day 6 (Fancy Brigade), which went for $21,000 apiece.
- Paula Cooper: sold Robert Gober’s A Pair of Basinless Sinks (1986) — each sink measuring 27 by 25¾ by 2 3/5 inches and made of plaster, wood, wire, lathe, semi-gloss, and enamel paint — for some $1 million. The gallery sold a beautiful new Rudolf Stingel painting, Untitled (2009), measuring 95 by 76 inches and depicting a hurricane fence pattern across a silver background, for just above $300,000
- Galerie Gmurzynska: sold two David Smith paintings from 1964, both called Untitled (Nude), at $200,000 apiece, as well as Alexander Calder’s vivid gouache Striped Man: Striped Sweater (1953) for just under $200,000 and Alexander Rodchenko’s Untitled (Spiral) (1919), in pencil on thin cardboard, for around €50,000. The large stand featured a small but well-focused exhibition of the two 20th-century titans, who both pioneered a new language with their hanging sculptures.
Recession Creeps Up on Basel (ArtInfo)
