Artelligence for June 1, 2018

Gunther Förg Estate to Hauser + Wirth: The Financial Times‘s Melanie Gerlis reports that the artist who died in 2013 only to see his market become quite active in the following years has seen his estate sign with a global gallery:

• Hauser & Wirth gallery now represents the estate of the outspoken German conceptual artist Günther Förg (1952-2013) and plans its first show of the artist in the US in spring 2019. Förg’s retrospective at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum opened this week (A Fragile Beauty, until October 14) and emphasises the artist’s experimental and radical approach, from his early monochrome paintings (in the 1970s Förg worked only in grey and black) to his later, colourful dot works. …

AMMpro Subscribers Can Read About Förg’s Growing Market Here Non-subscribers are invited to join AMMpro for a free month.

Grisebach Sells Max Beckmann Portrait for €5.5m: The sale of Female Head in Blue and Gray (The Egyptian) at Villa Grisebach last night is the highest price paid for a work of art at auction in Germany beating Beckmann’s own previous record of €3.9m set in 2005. The Art Newspaper‘s Catherine Hickley says the work was bought by a private Swiss foundation. …

Aboriginal Art Sells Best When It Questions Itself: The Conversation has an interesting look at the Australian Aboriginal art industry. Inspired by Richard Bell’s comment almost two decades ago that Aboriginal art is “a white thing,” The Conversation took a look at “three of the most successful organisations selling Indigenous art in Australia today (measured by dollar value of sales):”

• In 2002 Bell decried how the white-controlled Aboriginal art industry privileged art from remote areas as more “authentic” than that from urban areas. Vernon Ah Kee, another successful artist in Milani’s gallery, agrees: urban Aborigines “are as much Aboriginal as anybody else” and, adds Bell, “we paid the biggest price” for colonisation. The genius of Ah Kee and Bell is to leverage this immense loss into a return. “When I started working with Richard [in 2003], we were selling paintings for $2000,” recalls Milani. But “the more … he offended [my white clientele], the more I put his prices up!” And the more they sold. …

Hedge Fund Employees Don’t Like Round Art, Steve Cohen Does: Bloomberg’s Amanda Gordon hung out at the MoMA party last night with Steven Cohen and Sandy Heller. The subject of what art is hanging in Cohen’s offices came up. Cohen couldn’t remember what’s there. He’s been too busy to look. But he does know what his employees don’t like:

“They like the art that’s square or rectangular,” the hedge fund billionaire said. “Anything circular they hate.”

“He’s being cryptic,” art adviser Sandy Heller interjected as they dined on pan-seared chicken with sweet pea pesto. “He means geometric abstraction.”

“No, I’m serious,” Cohen said. “They don’t like circles. I like circular things.”