Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis
From the New York Times:
Now into its fourth year, the trial of Marion True, a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and an American antiquities dealer resumed on Friday in Rome. Focus shifted to the dealer, Robert Hecht, who has been accused along with Ms. True of conspiracy to traffic in antiquities looted from Italian soil. Both defendants deny the charges.
Trial Resumes for Former Curator (The New York Times)
Bloomberg looks at what New York’s Chelsea art dealers are doing to cut costs. They’re not reducing the price of their artist’s work. But they are offering discounts and payment options to sweeten the deal. On the operationst side, they’re consolidating storage, only fabricating very expensive pieces once they are commissioned and cutting back on Fed Ex, plane fares and, of course, art fairs:
“If you are not making sales to support your habits — to throw parties, do advertising, produce artworks — you have to change your habits,” said Cassie Rosenthal, partner in Goff & Rosenthal gallery. She said her four-year-old gallery will be more selective about art fairs it participates in. In the next 18 months, it is attending Art Dubai and Art Forum Berlin, down from four fairs last year. Just renting a small booth in a fair could cost $15,000 to $25,000, said Rosenthal’s partner, Robert Goff. “If it’s in another country, you have to deal with shipping, airfare, food and lodging,” he said. “By the time you are done with it, it’s $40,000.”
The Los Angles Times’s Christopher Knight, who writes the Culture Monster blog, has this update on LA MoCA’s response to Eli Broad’s offer:
I’ve had conversations with numerous people close to the situation in recent days. Two things are apparent about where MOCA’s board stands right now. First, as a body they are paralyzed. Partly it’s because factions are pointing the ship in several different directions at once. There isn’t yet a unanimity — or even a strong plurality — concerning the institutional goal. The paralysis, it appears, is allowing a drift toward the path of least resistance: an absorption of MOCA into the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Second, many are suspicious of Broad’s challenge. Even those who see it as the best path to resolution are cautious. They fear an ulterior motive or hidden agenda, even though there is no indication of one. Fears are always irrational. In fact, the absence of a hidden motive may be letting imaginations run free, which is keeping full consideration of the challenge off the table.
The Associated Press covers the Matsart auction in Jerusalem. Prices had already been lowered 20-30% from the previous year. But the numbers came down even further. Nonetheless, a Pisarro achieved the highest price for a work of art sold in Israel:
Hopeful buyers carried extra chairs to the room and lined the walls and aisles, spilling out into the lobby of Jerusalem’s old, ornate King David Hotel. The painting that broke the record for highest price fetched in Israel was by French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. According to Antebi, the value of the piece during good economic times would have been more than a $1 million, but because the seller needed cash, the asking price was lowered to $700,000. The painting, of a woman and a donkey, was auctioned more than two hours into the event and got only $580,000.
Since we raised the subject of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s taste in art recently, we thought this story about Sir Andrew’s problems with his art foundation. The Telegraph looks into Weber’s £6.6 million John William Waterhouse painting which is owned by the composer’s foundation which received tax consideration to buy the painting. That consideration is called Gift Aid in the UK:
Gift aid rules state that “if any donor … benefits significantly from their donation, then their donations will not qualify for gift aid”. The composer has each time paid rent on the loan of the Waterhouse to ensure that he is not benefiting from the picture. His foundation argues that it lends the picture to Lord Lloyd-Webber when it is not on loan to a gallery because it would be too costly to store the painting on its own. The painting was hung in the composer’s private property for seven out of the past 29 months, including last year for 109 days when the composer paid £3,847 in rent – £35 a day – to his foundation. This rate is set by auction houses Christies and Sotheby’s. The dispute centres on HM Revenue and Customs’ claim that the peer is not paying enough rent to his foundation.
A little late to the party, The Independent follows Martin Gayford in asking whether the Turner Prize makes sense anymore:
Critics have panned it as the “worst on record” and likened the exhibition at London’s Tate Britain to an “afternoon spent in a Heathrow departure lounge”. The standard of work showcased is so bad that some claim the future of the Turner Prize itself, regarded as one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art awards, is in question. The veteran art critic Brian Sewell has demanded a place on the judging jury to shake up the prize, while others have called for it to be scrapped altogether.
The Miami Herald has more stories from imminent Art Basel. Here’s North Miami getting in on the action:
As swarms of well-to-do art collectors descend upon Miami Beach for Art Basel, one Aventura fine art gallery — and several in North Miami — are hoping they will venture north. Gallery Art — a cavernous 8,000-square-foot space tucked away in the Promenade Shops, next to Circuit City — will play host to an Art Basel Miami Beach spin-off reception Monday, where more than 80 ”Basel-worthy” pieces will be on display.This is the second year that the Aventura art gallery will piggyback on the success of Art Basel Miami Beach, which features work from more than 220 top galleries and 2,000 artists.
Implicit in the many quotes about buying Contemporary art at a discount is the expectation that prices for art will resume their rise . . . eventually. Carol Vogel adds another sign of confidence: museums buying. She details MoMA’s purchase of a Carl Andre and an Arte Povera work, as well as Yale’s purchase of an early American miniature.
The Geneva gem and Jewelry sales were mixed. Sotheby’s came through with 60% of their lots sold and just under $15 million. Christie’s had two sales with a lower sell-through of 50% but a higher total of $22.6 million. The red-hot diamond market has stalled suddenly. Here’s Bloomberg:
The Rapaport Diamond Trade Index dropped 9.4 percent in the five weeks through Nov. 18. “The diamond market is currently in a phase of transition and it will probably not be clear where it is headed until the end of the year,” David Bennett, Sotheby’s chairman for its European and Middle Eastern jewelry business, said in the statement.
The Dallas Morning News reports:
Suzanne Weaver, the DMA’s Nancy and Tim Hanley associate curator of contemporary art since 1995, has been named curator of contemporary art at the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville, Ky. And William Rudolph, the Pauline Gill Sullivan associate curator of American art for the last four years, will become curator of American art at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts.
Buried in Alexandra Peers’s Wall Street Journal story is this little tidbit about Takashi Murakami:
Since last spring, Sotheby’s and Japanese art star Takashi Murakami have been negotiating and structuring a solo sale of his works, similar to the Damien Hirst blowout in September. Now, those plans have been canceled, Sotheby’s insiders say.
The LA Times reminds readers that Michael Crichton was as a canny art collector. He wrote the catalogue essay for a Jasper Johns retrospective in 1977 but people forget that Crichton was a very wealthy man. The books, the movies and his ownership stake in the television series, ER, made him the kind of collector Museum directors chase. Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Michael Govan certainly did: “Govan said that Crichton was one of the first people he hoped to target as a possible board member when Govan took over the directorship of the county museum in 2006 [ . . . ] “It’s a great loss; I have to say it’s very, very sad,” Govan said. “He was a very private person and a very creative person. He really was just getting started to be involved in the museum; he had a tremendous interest and curiosity.”
The Scotsman looks at the Gerhard Richter retrospective in Edinburgh: “Richter’s star status, confirmed once more in this wide-ranging retrospective covering 44 years, is based not only on his persistence but on his ability to face off painting’s biggest competitors – the camera, the mass media and the computer – not by ignoring or competing with them, but by quietly assimilating them into all that he does.” and “Similarly one senses a certain marketing anxiety to the framing of this show in Edinburgh. The gallery and curatorial team intimately understand Richter’s pivotal importance, particularly for generations of younger artists, but the associated materials feel the need to keep proclaiming Richter’s status and importance as though the work can’t quite speak for itself”
First Post is enjoying the flap over how the Tate has hung a few Rothkos.
From the NY Times obit: “In nearly 20 books and scores of articles, Professor Boime explored the social and political contexts in which art is produced. His work did not neglect issues of style and form, the traditional province of art criticism. But it focused on art as a cultural product — for good or ill — of the society in which it is made. He also sought to rehabilitate one of the most famous madmen of Western art”
Time covers the rise of Indonesian artist I Nyoman Masriadi: “Masriadi has come to prominence so quickly that there has been little critical analysis of his work. “The art critics haven’t caught up with the art market,” says Ahmad Mashadi of Singapore’s NUS Museum. And with about a week left to run on “Black Is My Last Weapon,” his solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum, www.singart.com, you have a chance to see what the collectors have been fussing about. Expect to be amused and provoked”
The Financial Times has this mention of Stella Kesaeva’s plans to open her own gallery: “Kesaeva is opening her own art space in Moscow. It, too, will be sited in a garage also designed by the modernist Konstantin Melnikov. Due to open in 2014, it will be a joint private-public venture with the Russian Culture Ministry, and will show the 600-odd works from Kesaeva’s Stella Art Foundation. The Foundation has a long-term agreement to work with the Dorotheum, Austria’s leading auction house.”
More Canadian artists are expected to join the $1 million club, according to Canwest news service: “We are seeing new collectors across the country,” said Joyner vice-president Rob Cowley, “and it’s not just the celebration of Canadian culture and art but also the investment opportunity. People are seeing this as a real avenue for investment.” Cowley says certain “blue-chippers” – particularly Harris, Thomson and Riopelle (six of whose paintings have topped $1 million) – “are clearing the million-dollar mark regularly now.”
The NY Times calls Tel Aviv a professionally run gallery center yet still non-chalant: “But one thing the city’s art boosters are not laid back about is their plan to make Tel Aviv’s art scene, and Israeli artists in general, known to the world. Art TLV, started by a cadre of art dealers and curators [ . . . ] was a rigorous five-day marathon that included lectures, openings, dinners, museum and home tours, private screenings and hourlong jaunts to Jerusalem. [ . . . ] MANY galleries are clustered along Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv’s most elegant street, lined with Bauhaus buildings, banks and the former mansions of the city’s founders. Running down the middle is a shaded pedestrian path dotted with tiny cafes and boules courts where old men play. As the art events got under way, it became a veritable runway for gallery-hopping curators and collectors.”
