Art Market Monitor

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Swiss Satellite Action

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Insider sale information from Sarah Douglas’s report on Scope Basel:

Brigitte Schenk

  • Marilyn Manson’s paintings, which range from €36,000–90,000 ($53,000–$133,000), apiece sold out;  Schenk also closed a deal on a Gerhard Richter painting that she did not bring to the fair, for €1.2 million ($1.8 million).

X-ist

  • Sold mixed-media-on-canvas works by Nuri Kuzucan in the €2,000–20,000 ($3,000–30,000) range.

Beck & Eggeling

  • Found buyers for small bronze pieces by Italian artist Gehard Demitz for €5,000 ($7,400) apiece.

Jacob Karpio

  • Sold four works by Luis Barba at $48,000 apiece.

Rain and Exhaustion Keep Scope from Soaring at Basel (Artinfo)

Scenes from the Jo'burg Art Fair

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Artinfo.com‘s reporter on the ground at the Johannesburg Art Fair saw these vignettes:

One conversation, overheard on the April 2 opening night, came to define the restrained buying mood. “It has to stop now,” a business executive from SASOL, the South African petrochemical conglomerate, instructed his company’s art buyer in Afrikaans. It was unacceptable for executives laying off staff and forfeiting bonuses to see new art acquisitions flaunted at their workplace, he said.

While buying wasn’t entirely muted — London’s October Gallery sold (by telephone) a large-scale aluminum-and-copper-wire-textile drapery by Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui for $650,000 to a royal buyer from Abu Dhabi — many of the 26 participating galleries reported sluggish sales.

And here’s another vivid tale:

For first-time exhibitor Henri Vergon, [ . . . ] business was “extremely slow.” By Saturday afternoon, the second full day of trading, the South African dealer’s only major sale had been a work by Mozambican sculptor Gonçalo Mabunda, a metal chair made from recycled weapons, priced at $12,000.

“All the sales I made here were to overseas buyers,” said Vergon, who earlier in the day had asked a South African visitor to leave his booth after he made a racist remark about Mabunda’s work and its pricing. “It is disappointing to see how South Africans are reluctant to even look at African art,” Vergon added. In recent years, Mabunda’s chairs have found increased favor, including in the design world.

Joburg Art Fair Sees Sophomore Slump (ArtInfo)

The Banksy Backlash

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The Times of London reports on the revolt against Banksy that’s been brewing among the graffiti artists and radicals Banksy purports to represent. Someone even defaced one of Banksy’s better known works known as Mild, Mild West:

banksy_vandalizedWhen he first began redecorating walls and buildings in his native city of Bristol in the early 1990s, the graffiti artist known as Banksy was frequently accused of vandalising private property.

A decade and a half later, having won fame and a considerable fortune, he faces a different charge. The graffiti artist – who fiercely defends his anonymity – now stands accused of causing gentrification. His street art is being held responsible for proposed regeneration projects; his aerosol paintings are blamed for raising house prices in formerly deprived neighbourhoods.

The Australian picks up the story and offers a few auction prices to illustrate how far up . . . and down the artist has traveled in the past few years:

Only two years after an acrylic and spraypaint work on canvas called Bombing Middle England fetched £102,000 ($212,000) at auction at Sotheby’s, and a year after a wall mural sold for £208,100 on eBay, Banksy is now being accused of betraying his core audience, England’s working class. [ . . . ] Banksy’s collectability may be diminishing. When Bombing Middle England sold for £102,000 in 2007, it exceeded expectations by more than £50,000. Last October, Turf War, a portrait of Winston Churchill with a mohawk, sold at Bonham’s for £60,000, which was £20,000 below the auctioneer’s expectation.

Banksy Backlash as Acclaimed Work Defaced (Times of London)

Banksy Less Bankable (The Australian)

Jo'burg Art Fair in One Stop

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South Africa’s Mail and Guardian offers a valuable one-stop landing page for all of their stories about this year’s Johannesburg Art Fair. With an estimate of at least 10,000 attendees–up from the previous year’s 6,000–the fair is drawing a lot of traffic. According to Ross Douglas, creator of the fair, this is one reason:

Not one of the world’s 300-odd art fairs focuses on contemporary art from Africa. Our intention with the first fair was to fill this gap. It’s not that easy. Without gallerists managing and promoting art, artists don’t find the market they need to sustain their careers. As with so much talent from the continent, Europe and the United States provided the opportunities for African greats such as Owusu-Ankomah, El Anatsui and, more recently, Romuald Hazoume to exhibit. Our solution last year was to commission Simon Njami, who captured the world’s imagination with his Africa Remix show and to a lesser extent the Africa Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He chose work mainly from younger artists starting to break into the international art scene. Njami’s selection of work, entitled As You Like It, attracted interest but did not sell. By contrast, local galleries sold beyond our expectations. Between R25-million and R30-million passed hands, giving the local contemporary art market a major cash injection.Continue Reading

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