Kenny Schachter has some good gossip from last week’s Contemporary art sale in London. Though it may just be, you know, gossip. Digging down here there’s an interesting observation that Art Agency, Partners’s art fund is a source of auction lots (which really shouldn’t be surprising.) Anyway, here’s the whole of it so you can make up your own mind:
I heard from Deep Pockets that there was some typical mendacious art-world behavior behind the orgy of ciphers attached to the Baselitz lot, illustrating that dealers are great prevaricators, also known as fibbers (or, more colloquially, liars). Art Agency Partners, before Sotheby’s acquisition of the advisory firm, coaxed the painting from the private-dealing previous head of contemporary at Sotheby’s, Tobias Meyer, using a proxy to represent that the work was headed to a committed end-using collector (remember those?). It wasn’t and landed in Art Agency Partners’ speculative investment fund, which became all or part of Sotheby’s property before being ceremoniously dumped into auction at a record for the artist, which equaled a quantum jump from his previous top. It might still be the property of Sotheby’s after the sale, if word on street is credible.
The $14 Million Flip; What London Day Sales Foretell for Art (artnet News)
