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.”
Banksy may get almost as much publicity as Damien Hirst but his work isn’t inciting the buyers in the same way. A London auction of street art was a dissappointment yesterday as Scott Reyburn describes in his Bloomberg piece. To be fair, Banksy’s work was weak because it wasn’t authenticated. The artist’s authentication committee refuses to sign off on works that have been uprooted from the street. The rest of the sale, however, suggested the dour mood of the financial markets is casting a pall over the art market:
“Things are difficult at the moment,” said Annabel Thomas, an executive director at the London-based dealers The Fine Art Society, who attended the auction. “There’s a definite retreat to the blue-chip material.”
The 74 lots sold went for 300,000 pounds ($553,400) with fees [ . . . ] The presale estimate was at least 1 million pounds. The auction included many items priced in the 1,000-pound to 5,000-pound range.
“Everything was well priced and interesting,” said Ben Hanly, the auction company’s modern and contemporary-art specialist. “But the timing of the sale was difficult. There’s a simple lack of cash at the moment. The market’s not good.”
Banksy Works Go Unsold; Buyers Stay Away From Urban-Art Auction (Bloomberg)
Katya Kazakina reports on Bloomberg from New York’s Chelsea gallery district that business is cautious. Though the story has some very interesting tidbits, it should be pointed out that the buzz from the gallery world–whether in Chelsea or at the Art Fairs–has been steady tone of caution and restraint. The locked-down credit markets surely increase that tendency.
“My clients are sitting tight and they want to see what happens in the next six to eight months,” says Cristina Delgado, a New York-based art adviser. “The prices for young and emerging artists have to come down to adjust to a new economic reality.”
Lisa Spellman, the owner of 303 Gallery, has new videos and light boxes by Doug Aitken on view at two exhibition spaces in Chelsea. Many of her Wall Street and real-estate clients have been noticeably absent recently. “New York money managers and Wall Street collectors are definitely not making sales,” she says. “They are working 80 hours a week. Art is the last thing they are thinking about right now.”
There’s plenty of activity outside of New York, Spellman says. Buyers, including a museum trustee, have snapped up the edition of four Aitken’s light boxes shaped as a word “STAR.” The seductive black work glows with starlight and is priced at $200,000. [ . . .]
While sales may be slower, the economy is yet to affect public interest in contemporary art. On a recent Saturday, hundreds of people quietly watched Aitken’s enigmatic videos in a darkened 303 Gallery. A few blocks north, the opening of Cecily Brown’s show at Gagosian was packed with New York fashionistas and Russian models.
Chelsea Galleries Face Slower Sales as Art Collectors Lie Low (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg reveals that MoMA’s Glenn Lowry makes the top arts salary–though 20% of the eye-popping $1.7 million is rent on his apartment in the Museum Tower. Of course, in the conflicted world of the arts and charities, there is a tension between wanting a world-class institution but believing it should be run by persons who are above the pecuniary pressures of modern life:
“Some people believe that nonprofit managers need to be compensated well because they’re managing complex institutions, and others think this is too excessive,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Washington-based Chronicle. “When people see these salaries, they don’t always think that this is appropriate for a nonprofit institution.”
MoMA Chief Made $1.7 Million in 2007, Tops for Arts Executives (Bloomberg)
How perfectly Princian? Colin Gleadell unearths this catalogue gem from the upcoming photography sales in which it is revealed that Pamela Anderson is selling a Richard Prince photograph. From the story it would appear Anderson is selling in distress but Gleadell is more curious how Anderson came to be a collector in the first place:
How Anderson came to acquire the photograph is not known. “Pamela is a girl friend,” Prince tells me. In 1998, he made a series of works in which he appropriated 8in x 10in publicity photographs of celebrities, Anderson among them, on which he wrote dedications and signed their names.
Why she is selling is also unknown. Her manager [ . . . ] describes her as “a small-scale art collector” and says that she is selling for “complicated reasons”. “I am having to sell this photo and it kills me,” she says.
Pamela Anderson: Art Collector (Daily Telegraph)
Turner prize winner Grayson Perry offers advice to young artists in the Times of London:
I’d advise people who are serious about their careers to come to London, and to meet people. Go to lots of openings if you can, and meet people and hone your personal skills. You can have all the technique and all the originality in the world, but if you’re not much fun to be around then nobody’s going to want to work with you. [ . . . ]
Don’t overprice your work – a lot of students get very cocky, they think they’re the next Damien Hirst. If you put a massive price tag on it nothing happens and there’s only one way for the prices to go. I think it’s better to sell the work and get it out there – you don’t have to store it, it’s doing it’s work on someone’s wall, it’s an ambassador for you, the person who bought it will be an ambassador of yours – especially if you sell to a journalist, I sold several to one very early one. [ . . .]
Most of being an artist is making art, and the nice fuzzy idea you have in the bath, the hard work and horrible compromises of getting work realised, happen afterwards. Stick at it – even if it blows up in the kiln! Ceramics never turn out exactly like I imagine, and you have to learn to adjust your view of the finished thing, that you’re not comparing it to your fantasy, you have to look at it with a cold eye and think ‘is it any good?’ You have to learn to trust your eye, and having a good idea is not making a good artwork – I can’t emphasise that enough.
Grayson Perry’s advice for aspiring artists (Times Online)
Here’s a strange story from the Daily Telegraph. It suggests that the market mayhem of 1987 and 1997 helped launch the Asian art markets–though no one explains how. It then goes on to tell some hair-raising stories about the behavior of Asian artists and collectors–not to mention bubble worries. With that set-up, here’s how the story brings it home:
But given China’s vast wealth, there is a consensus that Chinese art is here to stay and Singapore is desperate to get a slice of the action.
“The contribution of the arts to GDP is currently one-point-something per cent,” said Low Kee Hong of the National Arts Council. “Within five to eight years we want to raise that to 3.5 per cent, not including tourism.” Insurance companies, expert handlers and arts management companies will all benefit.
Singapore is offering tax breaks and building a new £43million “FreePort” where dealers and collectors can anonymously store, view and sell art in secure, climate-controlled conditions. That, said Mr Low, will “encourage high net worth individuals to park their assets in Singapore”.
Asian Cities Compete for a Slice of the Art Boom (Daily Telegraph)
Phillip Hensher in the Independent tells a story about publicly funded art events that seem to justify Arts administration then pivots to a conclusion against the mandarins by praising Damien Hirst’s guts in going to auction:
Art has to exist within a marketplace, and Hirst is not only brave but honest in exposing the value of his art to what the market thinks of it. Art which exists entirely within the cocoon of public funding, however popular it proves, is only putting off the day of reckoning temporarily.
Brian Sewell shares his remembrances of Francis Bacon in London’s Evening Standard:
Bacon and his images were nourished by his extensive knowledge of paintings by old masters, Cézanne, Degas and Picasso, by his interest in the subconscious development of images, his enquiry into the quasi-supernatural field of the emanations, auras and energies of his subjects, by his interest in crime, violence and disease, by his collection of the horrible in medical publications. He took the vile, the shudderingly visceral, the sexually and politically obscene, and so lifted them with paint that we can contemplate ferociously profane images of sodomy and torment, cruelty and despair, even the vulgar commonplaces of the lavatory, and perceive in them an inheritance from the great Renaissance themes of religious and temporal power, the classical pantheon of ancient gods, the Christian pantheon of martyrs.
While we’re all obsessing over Damien Hirst’s auction, the French are getting in a lather about Jeff Koons. The Guardian does a recap of Francois Pinault’s role in the Versailles Koons exhibition and The Times of London reports on the controversy bubbling up around it:
Detractors say that Koons accepted the invitation only to enhance his notoriety – and the value of his work. The artist said that the exhibition would shed light on the philosophy of his work. “I don’t intend to invade historic rooms, fill them with Jeff Koons and denature them,” he told Le Figaro. “I want to capture the harmony of the place.” A Versailles spokesman said the exhibition would offer new insights into a site “everyone thinks they know”.
We’re a little late on these links but there was some interesting coverage of the Tate’s annual report which revealed a banner year for acquisitions. The FT points out that many artists donate their own works and the bulk of the £63m worth of art came in the form of gifts. Moreover, the museum only spent £1.5m on new work. Here’s Bloomberg on the subject:
Tate, the U.K. museum network, said it acquired 63.1 million pounds ($112 million) worth of art in the year ended March 31, including four works by Damien Hirst, and Louise Bourgeois’s 30-foot-high spider, “Maman” (1999). At a news conference held for the release of its annual report, Tate said it acquired 494 works, 320 of which were given or bequeathed by collectors and artists, making the year a record one for acquisitions.
Terence Koh’s work is the source of a lawsuit filed long after an exhibition in Northern Britain. “Jesus with an Erection” raises hackles a year after the gallery show.
Mapfuwa said she believed in freedom of expression, but was of the opinion that “this statue served no other purpose than to offend Christians and to denigrate Christ.”
Choire Sicha from Radar Online goes through the Christie’s First Open sale and makes his picks:
Sol Lewitt drawings. Are you KIDDING ME? Lot 71 is a 30 by 22.5 inch drawing on paper from 1970, and it is only on for $20,000 to $30,000. There’s two other incredible ones, about the same size, and both just gouache, from 2000 and 2001—that are just on for 10 to 15K. Um YES PLEASE. (AND another from 1995.)
If you want something that’s straight investment, there’s a bit of Yayoi Kusama to be had. You don’t even have to look at it, if you hate it. You can just put it in a closet for 10 years then sell it. For a profit.
There’s a totally hot little Jules Olitski painting from 1972, except it’s not so little, it’s 95 by 60 inches, and it is only on for $20K-$30K—and a bigger one, that’s cheaper but also not as good! Look, just like Lewitt, he died last year. It’s buy it now or buy it never, man.
And there’s an “early” (ha, 2002) Inka Essenhigh on for $10K-$15K, which is like, yes please, get it WRAPPED TO GO, right now.
Colin Gleadell’s column returns from the Summer holiday with news of the weak showings in Scotland and Australia and the effects of the new Bacon exhibition that has just opened in London.
Gerard Malanga thinks his painting is worth $250,000 but wants $5 million from sculptor John Chamberlain because that’s what Chamberlain received for a Malanga canvas that was authenticated as a Warhol. Kate Taylor in tries to straighten the story out in the NY Sun:
The dispute is between Mr. Chamberlain and a former Warhol assistant, Gerard Malanga. Mr. Malanga claims that Mr. Chamberlain misappropriated and then misrepresented a work, titled “315 Johns,” as a Warhol, when actually it was created by Mr. Malanga in 1971, with the help of two other artists, Jim Jacobs and Irene Harris.
Mr. Malanga alleges that Mr. Jacobs stored the work at the apartment of Mr. Chamberlain and his then wife, Lorraine, and that after the couple’s
divorce it made its way into Mr. Chamberlain’s hands. Around 2000, Mr. Chamberlain submitted the work to the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, which declared it to be a genuine Warhol. In 2004, Mr. Malanga claims, he ran into Mr. Chamberlain, who told him that he had sold the work as an authentic Warhol, for $5 million.
(. . . )
Mr. Malanga demands that Mr. Chamberlain either return the work, if he has it, or compensate Mr. Malanga for it, if it’s been sold. (The third artist, Harris, is no longer living; according to the amended complaint, Mr. Jacobs assigned his interest in the work to Mr. Malanga in 2005.) The complaint alleges that the work is worth at least $250,000. In the event that the work has been sold, Mr. Malanga asks the court to award him punitive damages “in excess of the amount by which Defendant defrauded an innocent third party.” In other words, if Mr. Chamberlain did sell the work for $5 million, Mr. Malanga wants at least that much in damages.
The International Herald Tribune focuses on the Singapore as it makes a bid to become the Asian art center. With Indonesian art heating up and the establishment of the right infrastructure, Singapore has a real shot at becoming the art entrepôt of the East.
“We’re no longer talking about China as a separate market or Indonesia as a separate market, and no artist wishes to be referred to as an ‘Asian’ artist. They just want to be part of the international art community.”
While the partners considered several locations, including Shanghai and Hong Kong, they say they finally decided on Singapore because of its central geographical position in the region and its wide use of English. But most importantly, it is a financial hub for private wealth and is setting up a port with what Rutkowski called a “Fort Knox-like,” state-of-the-art facility to house works from all over the world.
Right now, the only other art free ports are in Zurich and Geneva, he explained. With a gross floor area of approximately 22,500 square meters, or more than 242,000 square feet, for Phase 1 (and an additional 24,000 square meters for Phase 2, to be completed in 2011), the Singapore FreePort will include showrooms, workshops, photo studios and private offices. Due to be completed toward the end of next year, it will be directly accessible to Changi Airport.
“The FreePort is a huge asset to the development of the art market here,” Rutkowski said. “There will be huge, secure warehouses, with no duty or taxes paid; a place for people to park their art safely for as long as they want and in total confidentiality.
The colored diamond market has been overheating with huge prices for blue and pink diamonds. Now Pallinghurst announces that it wants to do for emeralds, rubies and sapphires what de Beers has done for diamonds. Here’s a trade report:
Brian Gilbertson’s Pallinghurst Resources (JSE:PGL, BSX:PALLRES) is planning to exploit the neglected non-diamond coloured gemstone sector by lavishing production and marketing with attention to create steady, ethical supply of coloured gemstones. The coloured gemstone sector is already delivering higher margins than the loved diamond sector.
(. . . )
Recent auctions by Sotheby’s and Christie’s International indicated that per carat prices for emeralds, rubies and sapphires can exceed per carat prices for diamonds.
The August doldrums are almost over. But we’d like to reach back to July and small piece that ran in the Art Newspaper to add something more to the very one-sided debate taking place over the University of Iowa’s Pollock. This story criticizes fees for exhibitions but we can’t help wonder whether the globalized art world doesn’t demand a new economic basis for owning and loaning art. We’ve already seen a move toward private museums and endowed collections whose sole purpose is to lend art. Shouldn’t the value of that art be reflected in fees? Wouldn’t the University of Iowa and Pollock’s Mural both benefit from the work being loaned out? And if it is loaned, shouldn’t there be a fee?
The Italian branch of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has just produced a paper denouncing the practice of charging money to lend a work. This is not about wide-ranging projects such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, where the Gulf state is paying e1bn over 30 years into an endowment fund for French museums not just to lend works of art but effectively create a whole museum culture. It is about the renting out of works to pot-boiler exhibitions to bump up the lending institution’s finances, and worse—refusing to lend a work, even to a good show or deserving museum, unless a fee is paid.
We understand that the exhibitions are meant to be for the benefit of the public and scholarship. But all exhibitions involves substantial costs–and often charge substantial admission fees–so the economic underpinning already exists. The step that’s decried is allowing the owners of the works to benefit from their value. At the same time, the owners are told that they either must sell their works to realize some of that value–or, if the institution is public–that they cannot sell their works to realize some of the value.
Jay Akasie features Sotheby’s Scottish paintings sale at the Gleneagles Hotel in the New York Sun. Despite the temptation to move the sales to London, Sotheby’s has kept this quirky sale thriving. Akasie makes a good case for what’s signficicant about Scottish painting:
The Glasgow School was a pioneering group of painters who broke away from their salons and infused their landscapes with hints of Impressionism. They helped lay the groundwork for the Scottish Colorists — men such as Samuel John Peploe, Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, John Duncan Fergusson, and George Leslie Hunter — in the early 20th century. “The colorists spent time in Paris and got to know the techniques of Matisse and Monet. Their paintings have huge appeal to the international set,” Mr. Zlattinger said.
But the real star of these sales is the Contemporary illustrator, Jack Vettriano, the UK’s most popular artist by poster sales. While buyers are in Scotland, they can also think about getting some of the firearms so popular among Wall Street types.
CNBC picks up on the “The Mei Moses Fine Art Index, which tracks repeat sales of all art sold at the leading auction houses, gained more than 20 percent in 2007, dramatically outpacing the 5.5 percent gain for the S&P 500. The most recent five- and ten-year compound annual returns for the art index, 16.3 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively, also exceeded the return of the benchmark stock index, 12.7 percent and 5.9 percent during those periods.”
The Telegraph looks at artists who’ve designed chess sets: “Duchamp is not the only artist to have designed a chess set. In 2001, a newly formed art company called RS&A commissioned five prominent artists, including Damien Hirst and the Chapman brothers, to create bespoke sets that were then exhibited at Somerset House in London two years later. Japanese-born Yayoi Kusama adapted an 18th-century design with her trademark painted polka dots. The mischievous Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, best known for his 1999 waxwork mannequin of the Pope being squashed by a meteorite, replaced traditional chess figures with delicate porcelain figurines depicting recognisable people and characters associated in his mind with good and evil. Martin Luther King takes the role of the white king, with Superman as one of his pawns, while his opposite number is Adolf Hitler, standing beside his black queen, Cruella de Vil.”
Kate Taylor reports in the NY Sun that Philippe de Montebello, already consulting for Abu Dhabi through NYU, is thinking about working with Qatar on their museum projects.
The Independent explores the synergy between restaurants for the well-heeled and the art on display:
Pierre Gagnaire’s rue Balzac restaurant in Paris works with the Galerie Lelong and has shown works by stars such as Richard Serra and Antoni Tapies. Michel Besmond, director of the trendy Restaurant Alcazar on Paris’s Left Bank, reveals that all their spectacular photographs, including those by the likes of Martin Parr and Nobuyoshi Araki, are from the Kamel Mennour gallery, located nearby.
Pittsburg art reporter Kurt Shaw showcases the American art market. It isn’t clear why he’s covering that market in the middle of August but Christie’s Eric Widing’s enthusiasm knows no news peg:
“Our wealthiest clients are putting money into the art market at levels that we haven’t seen before,” Widing says, “and that’s driving these record prices that we see in many categories. It certainly is driving prices in the American market.”
According to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, local dealer Steve Mendelsohn holds a Salon des Refusées for those who could not get into the 98th Associated Artists of Pittsburgh annual show.
Tania Buckrell Pos is taking her star turn after purchasing Christie’s $80 million Monet water lilies. The previously unknown adviser calls her practice “small but successful” as well as “small and flexible” and says she’s at the forefront of a new business. In addition, she’s sure her client can sell the water lilies if they have to: “I know that there are two other people in the world who would like to own that picture if my client ever needs to sell it, so I feel quite confident at this point that we made a good purchase,” she says.
All-Star Baseball catcher Ted Simmons gets button-holed about his art and antiques collection. He does everything he can to drop the subject, “why talk about it? All it does is bring everybody and their brother into it because they’re interested in my art collection, whether it’s contemporary prints or American furniture. It’s something that takes up a lot of time (to discuss) and I’m here for baseball.”
ArtInfo gives us a tour of the four types of art crime and comes away with some very big numbers. $6 billion a year?!
