Art Market Monitor

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About That Kusama …

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Josh Baer caused a ruckus a few weeks ago when he commented in his newsletter upon the business practices of Angela Gulbenkian. Now Katya Kazakina and the Bloomberg team have  reported out one of the stories Baer alluded to:

Mathieu Ticolat, an art adviser based in Hong Kong, claims his firm paid Gulbenkian $1.375 million for the pumpkin, according to papers filed in the High Court in London. Gulbenkian said she represented the anonymous seller. Two money transfers, in April and May of 2017, were made to Gulbenkian’s account at HSBC in London, according to court papers.

Ticolat’s firm says the pumpkin never arrived. After months of pleading and threatening, he filed the civil suit, which included a motion to freeze Gulbenkian’s assets that the judge granted.

“I got fooled by the name,” Ticolat said by phone from Hong Kong.

The work was sold to someone else in late 2017, but Gulbenkian continued to indicate she was trying to get the work to Ticolat, according to the lawsuit. In the the London High Court this month, Gulbenkian produced an email that she said was from the owner: Martin Winterkorn. A separate WhatsApp message viewed by Bloomberg suggests she was referring to the one-time head of Volkswagen. Winterkorn’s lawyer said in an email that was never the case; the former CEO doesn’t even know Gulbenkian.

In Art Deal Gone Awry, A Illustrious Name Faces Claim of Fraud  (Bloomberg)

The Press Loves a Good Instagram Story

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A photo posted by @brettgorvy on


There is something about the art market that makes the world’s best news organizations abandon skepticism in favor of hype. Last week numerous observers were struck by the efforts of one newspaper to promote the idea that the art market is driven by financialization and the blockchain without much in the way of solid evidence.

This week, the Wall Street Journal covers the well-plowed ground of Instagram and the art world. These sort of trend pieces are a staple of slow news months in the Summer. But this particular story opens with an vignette that eerily recapitulates one from Bloomberg published in December of 2016. Here’s the Journal’s lead:

As he boarded a plane for Hong Kong in late 2016, Brett Gorvy, then global head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, posted an image of a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting on his Instagram feed. Upon landing, he found he had three text messages from clients interested in buying the 1982 work, a portrait of Sugar Ray Robinson and part of an upcoming private-sale exhibition. One client swiftly put the painting on hold and purchased it two days later, reportedly for about $24 million. Today, looking back, Gorvy claims it all happened by accident. His post, he explains, “wasn’t about marketing or selling. It was just like, I’ve got something really special, and I’d love the public to share it.” Despite his demurral, this sale—widely regarded as the first major blue-chip Instagram transaction—signaled the power the app had attained in the art world’s upper echelons, where not so long ago dealers staunchly maintained that no true collector would dream of buying from a jpeg.

How long would you have to go back to find anyone in the art market who might claim that “no true collector would dream of buying from a jpeg”? Ten years? Fifteen years? How long would you have to go back to find skepticism about buying from a transparency? 30 years?

More to the point, if that story about the Basquiat sounds familiar that’s because it got a lot of coverage 18 months ago when it first appeared on Bloomberg:

Shortly before his plane took off from New York last month, Christie’s top dealmaker, Brett Gorvy, posted a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting of boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson on Instagram. When Gorvy landed in Hong Kong 16 hours later, he discovered text messages from three clients asking if the painting was available. One immediately made an offer for the 1982 canvas showing Robinson as a squat, scowling figure. The deal was completed two days later for about $24 million — more than triple the $7.3 million the work fetched at auction in 2007.

Kazakina’s original story was picked up by a number of other news outlets. The Journal mentions none of this. But there’s another layer to this. The story that Gorvy told Kazakina (and that the Journal repeats as if it was news) doesn’t comport with what many in the industry observed during the Hong Kong selling event Gorvy recounted.

AMMpro subscribers know that Christie’s sold the work for a price below the $24m claimed. It’s not uncommon in the art market to see sellers claim asking prices as purchase prices. But one might expect the Wall Street Journal would have the institutional knowledge to put the story in context. We should add that there were many market participants who observed the selling of the work. Those witnesses have offered information that puts Gorvy’s claims into doubt. Gorvy is a private dealer cultivating clients. There’s nothing wrong with his trying to put his best case forward for his ability to sell works for clients.

What’s remarkable here is how quickly and without reflection or reporting the press repeats these claims.

How Instagram Became the Art World’s Obsession (Wall Street Journal)

Want to Sell a $24 Million Painting Fast? Instagram for the Win (Bloomberg)

 

Ropac Brings Rauschenberg Combine to Art Basel

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Robert Rauschenberg, Slug, 1961

Thaddaeus Ropac has what he believes to be the only Robert Rauschenberg combine work available on the art market priced at $8.5m, the assemblage was on loan to a major German museum for many years prior to this. In addition, Ropac will bring a Georg Baselitz work, A Fractured Dog, Upwards, with an asking price of $3.5m, as well as, Robert Longo’s Death Star II priced at $1.5m. Here are Ropac’s descriptions of the works:

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is proud to present at this year’s Art Basel a rare work from Robert Rauschenberg’sradically inventive and much sought-after Combine series (1954-64), in which his compositions are a synthesis of sculpture and painting. ‘Slug’ of 1961, from this celebrated series, was previously on loan for four decades at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Germany.

Alongside new works by Georg Baselitz, a historic painting from the artist’s seminal Fracture series will feature. Ein zerrissener Hund, aufwärts [A Fractured Dog, Upwards], painted in the revolutionary year 1968, exemplifies the series that heralded the artist’s typical inversion of the motif.

Marking a rare appearance for works by Joseph Beuys at Art Basel, the artist’s early sculpture Junges Pferdchen [Young Horse](1955/86) comes directly from the artist’s estate and has only recently been exhibited for the first time as part of our London gallery’s current show Joseph Beuys: Utopia at The Stag Monuments. The wax figure of a horse in one half of an opened plaster cast was completed by Beuys shortly before his death.

From a news series of works by American artist Elizabeth Peyton, her painting Hanyu (Yuzuru Hanyu) will debut at Art Basel. Her portrait of the Japanese figure skater captures the perceptible intimacy with which she depicts individuals to whom she is particularly drawn, whether friends and acquaintances, individuals she finds interesting, or historical figures who have made a strong impression on her.

Robert Longo is represented with a powerful new work Death Star II (2017/18), his large-scale planet-like sculpture consisting of 40,000 glinting bullet-cartridge cases – the number of deaths by shooting in the USA over the last year. The statistic assumes a poignant form, addressing the crucial debate about gun violence today. With Death Star II Longo takes a position both as an artist and a citizen, pledging to give 20 per cent of the sales of this work to the movement to end gun violence Everytown for Gun Safety.

German artist Wolfgang Laib presents a site-specific installation of his work. You will go somewhere else (1997/2005). Seven enigmatic wax boat-like forms, perched on wooden battens, almost as out of reach seem to file through the space. Reflecting Laib’s temporal exploration of how the present holds the future, his vessels float in the air and invite the viewer to detach themself from earthly preoccupations and to meditate on the voyage to unknown destinations.

Gorky, Mitchell Lead Hauser + Wirth Art Basel Stand

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Hauser + Wirth has released its packing list for Art Basel ahead of next week’s fair. The dealers will set up in booth D10 where works by Joan Mitchell, Composition (1969), above, will be on display. This example from her Sunflower series has a $14m asking price. It will hang alongside Louise Bourgeois‘s Three Graces from 1947 which has a $4.75m asking price. Arshile Gorky‘s 1929 still life is on offer for $8.5m

At the Unlimited sector, Hauser & Wirth will present major, large-scale works and installations by Dan Graham, Rashid Johnson, Guillermo Kuitca,and Lygia Pape. At Parcours, Pierre Huyghe’s installation ‘Exomind (Deep Water)’ (2017) includes elements both living and inanimate, chaotic and confined; various flora and fauna comprise Huyghe’s environment, with a centerpiece a concrete cast of a Japanese sculpture.

Hauser + Wirth 2018 Art Basel Catalogue (Downloadable PDF)

Massive Motonaga Stars at Carel & Seroussi Booth at Art Basel

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Alexandre Carel is working with Natalie Seroussi at Art Basel next week to offer a booth that surveys postwar abstraction from a global perspective under the title, Lands of Abstraction. Their booth will hold works by Francois Morellet, Hans Hartung, Salvatore Scarpitta, Enrico Castellani, Jean Fautrier, Chung Sang-Hwa, Atsuko Tanaka, Nicolas de Staël, Zao Wou-ki and Sadamasa Motonaga.

Motonaga is represented by the massive almost 9-ft. Work 145, a 1964 painting last shown at the Guggenheim’s Gutai retrospective in New York in 2013. The work carries an asking price at $5m:

One of the most celebrated members of the Gutai Art Group along with Kazuo Shiraga, Motonaga emphasized the performative aspect of artistic production by utilizing his own body and its physicality as a creative agent and unfiltered expressive tool. A remarkable example of the artist’s early output and style – which would shift after his departure for New York in 1966 – Work 145 was produced during a period of intense artistic innovation and experimentation.

Lands of Abstraction, Carel/Seroussi (Downloadable Art Basel Catalogue)

Edward Tyler Nahem Brings Rosenquist, Wesselmann & Calder to Art Basel

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Television or the Cat’s Cradle Supports Electronic Picture, 1988-89

Edward Tyler Nahem will exhibit James Rosenquist’s seminal Television or the Cat’s Cradle Supports Electronic Picture, 1988-89, an expansive, 20-foot long painting at Art Basel Unlimited. The gallery will also have on their stand at the main Art Basel fair works by Sam Francis, Alexander Calder, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Christopher Wool and Tom Wesselmann.

Television or the Cat’s Cradle Supports Electronic Picture, 1988-89, by James Rosenquist Unlimited is Art Basel’s unique platform for showcasing monumental projects that transcend traditional art-fair stands. Curated by Gianni Jetzer, Curator-at-Large at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., Unlimited includes 71 works from both renowned and emerging artists.

On the gallery’s stand in the main fair will be:

  • Towards Disappearance III, 1957-58, by Sam Francis. It is the sister painting to works of the same title that are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  • Joan Mitchell’s Untitled, 1966-67, has never been exhibited publicly.
  • A rare Alexander Calder, Mobile de Bretange, c. 1950, will also be exhibited. The work has been in the same family collection since 1951.
  • Tom Wesselmann’s Bedroom Painting #22, 1971, has been quietly tucked away since 1994 and will also be on the gallery’s stand.

Even Galleries Dabble with the Blockchain Now

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There’s a been a great deal of controversy within the art trading community about the fate of smaller galleries. Much of the conversation takes on the tone of mis-directed arguments about income inequality. Others talk about structural changes to art’s peculiar retail environment (gallery going has declined.) A select few go to conferences and talk about innovation without offering much in the way of practical guidance.

Enid Tsui, in her round up of blockchain and art-related developments in art, finally has an example of a medium-sized gallery that is trying something different, an Initial Coin Offering.

Traditional art galleries are also setting up blockchain-enabled platforms as a way to raise capital. Whitestone Gallery, which moved its headquarters from Tokyo to Hong Kong in 2015, wants to raise 5 billion yen (US$46 million) through an initial coin offering (ICO) to fund its expansion.

In January, the 50-year-old gallery invited members of the public to buy its cryptocurrency, called WHS and initially priced at 1,000 yen a unit. The gallery has various plans for the funds raised: building an art trading and verification platform using cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and opening more bricks-and-mortar galleries in New York and London to promote Japanese artists abroad. Early investors have been promised dividends paid in WHS.

Chief executive Koei Shiraishi says the gallery has not yet achieved its fundraising target, and plans for public trading of WHS on cryptocurrency exchanges have been delayed because Asian governments have begun to enact laws to regulate the market.

Buying art with bitcoin, authenticating it with blockchain – art world cottons on to cryptocurrencies (South China Morning Post)

Joaquin Torres-Garcia at Acquavella Galleries

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Just two years after New York’s Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective of Joaquin Torres-Garcia’s art, Acquavella Gallery has gotten a hold of the family’s collection of the Uruguayan painter’s art. 

The show, which opened late last week, contains a number of works that have been loaned to major museums in Europe and South America. This will be the first time the works have been presented as a whole.

This show represents the largest and most comprehensive survey in an American gallery since Joaquín Torres-García curated his own exhibition at The Sidney Janis Gallery in 1950.

At times treated as a Latin American artist, Torres-Garcia was a contemporary of—and mentor to—Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. Born in Montevideo, raised in Barcelona, Torres-Garcia lived in New York and Paris during his long career. While in Paris he was inspired by indigenous art from the Americas, Africa, and Oceania which reinforced his vision of symbols and cosmic order. Through his career, he had strong relationships with a wide range of artists including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Stuart Davis, Hans Arp, Wassily Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Kurt Schwitters.

The Worlds of Joaquín Torres-García (Acquavella Galleries)

Mapping a Career in the Art World

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Michael Reid is a featured speaker in a Christie’s Education course being held in Sydney Australia at Reid’s gallery next week. The subject is Mapping a Career in the Art World. Reid is a longtime Sydney gallerist also has an outpost in Berlin. He’s a frequent commentator on the art market. Here are his own notes on what it takes to have a career in the art world (slightly edited to make them globally relevant.)

Practical skills are the keys to being at the top of the arts pack.

A good education, with a major in fine arts, is simply expected. Everyone in the arts is well educated. So what?

Learn and be willing to do what others are reluctant to do.

  • Be able to read a balance sheet and to prepare budgets.
  • Master accounting software.
  • Become a champ at MailChimp or any other newsletter service.
  • Learn to use graphic-design programs such as Photoshop, GIMP, Illustrator, etc.
  • Learn to use software programs to manage collections and hire help.
  • Become proficient in the various methods of art shipping, both domestic and international.
  • Become familiar with commercial printing for postcards, flyers andcatalogues. Know your GSM (grams per square metre) from a galley proof.
  • Undertake a short, postgraduate course in Project Management. That’s essentially what a gallery does: it manages art projects.

Remember: Tunnel vision won’t help your career in the art world, and it’s bad for business.

Consider alternative art-world career paths.

  • PR / marketing
  • Fundraising
  • Art shipping
  • Designer / framer / printer / art insurer
  • Interior designer or interior architect
  • Conservator
  • Archivist
  • Valuer
  • Librarian

Not everyone in the industry has to be a curator or an auction-house specialist, or work in an art gallery. The art world is a big business. Try to gain experience within the industry and across a wide range of possible aligned art careers. This may mean working in advertising and then the arts; in interior design and then the arts; in architecture and then the arts; in graphic design and then the arts. See the pattern? Do something skillful and practical, and then take the knowledge you gain from it to the arts.

Remember: You can achieve victory by circling your intended prize. Do as Chairman Mao Zedong did in seizing control of China: take the countryside first, and then the encircled cities will fall.

Choose carefully who you work with
Be as selective about who you work with, as you are about the job you want to do. Create or seize opportunities to work with someone you can learn from.Continue Reading

Patrick Painter Icarus of the Eighties Art World

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Last week, the Los Angeles Times had a profile, really a look back at the career, of Patrick Painter whose transformed himself from the epitome of the 1980s art buyer into the most compelling gallerist in Los Angeles … for a time.

Michael Slenske writes, “in Painter’s prime, […] he lorded over the L.A. scene like the bastard son of P. T. Barnum and Suge Knight, a street-styled autodidact art savant who was mentored by a Who’s Who of legendary dealers, including Leo Castelli and Walter Hopps, by day and by night scandalized cities from L.A. to Berlin alongside art gods like Mike Kelley and Martin Kippenberger.”

Read the profile but here are some indelible excerpts:

  • The New York-based gallerist and former MOCA director was one of the first art-world players to meet Painter back in the late 1980s, when he was “a hunky guy in a tweed jacket” who collected big-ticket works—Sigmar Polke, On Kawara and Ed Ruscha paintings; Robert Gober, Donald Judd and Bruce Nauman sculptures—by the bunches from the world’s top galleries and auction houses with the backing of his then-girlfriend Winnie Fung, whose father founded the Hong Kong financial services giant Sun Hung Kai & Co. The couple even commissioned Julian Schnabel to make plate paintings of themselves. In the wake of their 1989 breakup, however, Painter and Fung attempted to offload a portrait of Schnabel’s old flame Ahn Duong for an estimate three times higher than what they had purchased it for just four years prior. When it failed to sell at a 1990 Sotheby’s auction, the couple—and by default, Schnabel—were skewered in multiple articles, as well as in Anthony Haden-Guest’s 1996 art-world tell-all True Colors, as arbiters of the eighties bubble.
  • “For many years Patrick was the show, or as much of the show as the artists were,” says Dean Valentine, who collected heavily with Painter when he was the president of Walt Disney Television. “That matters, because when you’re living in Los Angeles and you have to drive twenty miles to get to a gallery, you want the tour to have been worth it. Patrick added an entertainment value that was really helpful.”
  • Tim Blum, of Blum & Poe, sees Painter as a classic Icarus figure. “He blew up and had a gallery that was second to none with a future as bright and endless as he wished,” he says. “He flamed out brutally and quickly but forever left an imprint on the art world globally, and definitively in Los Angeles.”

The rise and fall and rise of Patrick Painter (Los Angeles Times)

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