The Neumann Family Continues to Battle Over a Basquiat: Late last week, the New York Times covered a lawsuit filed by Dolores Neumann-Donnelly against her father Hubert Neumann who had unsuccessfully tried to stop the sale of her mother’s Basquiat, Flesh and Spirit. It is easy to get caught up in the family dynamics as most of the press has done. But there’s no indication in the art world that any of this was relevant to how the work sold. Here’s the way the Times describes the argument of the suit:

• “Ms. Neumann-Donnelly says in her suit, her father’s legal effort had the effect of raising concerns about the estate’s right to sell the work and scared away potential buyers from the May 16 sale at Sotheby’s. […] In one conversation with her father, secretly taped by Ms. Donnelly-Neumann, according to the court papers, the suit says Mr. Neumann agrees the painting should have sold for at least as much as another Basquiat that sold the next day for $45 million.”

The comparison to other works is the key to the problem with the lawsuit. By most accounts within the trade, the family had outsized expectations based upon the price Sotheby’s achieved for the untitled head last year. But buyers never viewed the Neumann painting as a comparable work. And anyone familiar with the Basquiat market will know that the prices paid by Yasuku Maezawa for two major Basquiats have yet to provoke movement in the rest of the Basquiat market (despite the many breathless stories in the art press anticipating just such a move.) Potential buyers were also concerned about the long-term effects of the way the Neumanns appear to live with some of their art. …

Sotheby’s Turned It Up in Hong Kong: Sotheby’s held a small sale of Contemporary art in Hong Kong late last week that had some big results. The ‘Curated: Turn It Up’ sale made 47.7m HKD or about $6m. The news was the big multiples scored for works by Yayoi Kusama,  Yoshitomo Nara, Kaws and George Condo. All of the 102 works sold with 78% making prices above the high estimate. …

New York Times Loses Its Skepticism When You Add Block Chain to Art: This weekend, the New York Times ran two stories touting the idea there is significant activity involving art and financial transactions through the block chain. The first story centers around an artist who claims to have sold multiple works for huge prices without any outside verification of his claims. The second presents a melange of unrelated issues around auction guarantees, hedge fund collectors, an art investment conference in London and a firm making more unsubstantiated claims about fractional ownership of art works. …

Art Basel’s Marc Spiegler Goes Back to the Gallery Issue: Ever since David Zwirner deflected the issue of competition between global galleries and independent galleries onto art fairs, Art Basel Global Director Marc Spiegler has struggled to figure out a PR strategy. Today, he sat for a long interview with Artnet’s Andrew Goldstein. Spiegler is right on all of the points. Art fairs in general, and Art Basel in particular, are not causing mid-sized and independent galleries to close. But it remains unclear whether devoting a long interview to the subject does anything more than place art fairs back in the center of the conversation.