Art Market Monitor

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Honey, I Shrunk the Botero

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Whether you love it or love to hate it, there is no avoiding the roly-poly repertoire of the Colombian artist Fernando Botero (see ART’s Latin American ART Report for rankings of Latin American artists by volume, value and single high price).

This week, 23 Boteros are estimated to bring in between $5.4 million and $7.4 million at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The most highly estimated Botero, a 2002 cast of Woman on a Horse that stands more than eight feet tall, is offered at Christie’s on Wednesday with an estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million (pictured above right).

A very similar Botero horsewoman, this one cast in 2000,  is available at Sotheby’s (pictured above far right). Measuring a little more than half the size of the Christie’s Botero, the Sotheby’s lot is a little less than half the price ($350,000-$450,000).

For information about recent trends in Botero’s market,

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Outsider Artist

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snelson_sleeping_dragon_Forbes brings back Kenneth Snelson by reminding us of his show in Chelsea:

In this new era of cleansing and purging, 82-year-old artist Kenneth Snelson’s elegant sculptures, made of shiny metal tubes that appear to float or dance in the air and are held together by aluminum wire, look particularly prescient–never mind he has been doing them for five decades now. They are, with their rational basis in math and science and their clean modernist aesthetic, the perfect antidote to the postmodern, self-referential and celebrity art of the early aughts.

“There’s not a whiff of irony involved in Ken’s work,” says Dale Lanzone, director of the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery in New York, which is currently showing an exhibition of the artist’s work. “There is not an echo of art talking to art. His sculptures are serious things.” The 14-piece exhibition, spanning the artist’s entire career, includes “Wood X-Piece,” started in 1948; the undulating 76-foot-long “Sleeping Dragon” (2003); and Snelson’s impressive model of the atom, a network of stainless steel circles that took him more than 40 years to complete.

Master of Metal (Forbes.com)

Rodin Palace

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The Los Angeles Times reports that the home built to house Gerald and Iris Cantor’s collection of Rodin sculptures is on the market:

Dozens of artisans worked on the home, which was built to house the Cantors’ extensive art and sculpture collections. Sculptures by Auguste Rodin occupy almost every room; the Cantors are believed to have the largest private collection of Rodins in the world — and no, they are not included in the sales price. The rooms, with palatial interiors, include a beauty salon, three kitchens, a staff wing, a formal library, a separate media room, a gym and a billiards room The home also has 12 fireplaces.

La Belle Vie is on the Market for $53 Million (Los Angeles Times)

When Life Gives You Fakes, Hold an Exhibition

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This Hercules is RealBBC News covers the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition of fake coptic and pagan sculptures. The museum has a large collection acquired during the years after World War 2 but recent opinion puts a third of the works beyond bounds. They’re fakes and the museum decided to make a show of it:

Experts say there is no way of knowing exactly who carved the limestone fakes, though one theory suggests they may have been produced by prisoners-of-war in Egypt.

Coptic and Pagan sculpture flooded the Western art market after World War II.

Edna Russmann, curator in charge of the exhibition – entitled Unearthing The Truth – hopes it will prompt galleries to examine their own collections more thoroughly.

“I know that other museums have fakes, (in) all kinds of fields and all kinds of subjects,” she said.

Some of the fakes are easy to spot, but others display a high level of craftsmanship. Set among them are genuine works that have been touched up or re-carved.

The forgeries place a greater emphasis on Christian iconography than many of the real works – a sign, say experts, of them being made to order for European and North American buyers.

Fake Art Stars in New York Show (BBC News)

Czech Satire Comes as 8-ton Sculptural Hoax

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Olivier Hoslet/European Pressphoto AgencyThe EU gets hoaxed by a Czech artist, David Czerny, who created a mosaic of cartoon images representing each of the European nations, according to Sarah Lyall in the New York Times. The 172-square-foot, 8-ton work is called Entropa:

In the case of “Entropa,” Mr. Cerny presented the piece as the work of 27 artists, one from each country. But it was all a huge hoax.

After being challenged by reporters this week, Mr. Cerny admitted that he and two of his friends constructed the whole thing themselves, making up the names of artists, giving some of them Web sites and writing pretentious, absurd statements to go with their supposed contributions.

For example, next to the piece for Italy — depicted as a huge soccer field with little soccer players on it — it says, “It appears to be an autoerotic system of sensational spectacle with no climax in sight.” [ . . . ]

As for Mr. Cerny, on his Web site he said, “We knew the truth would come out.”

He added, “But before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself.”

A Hoax Unites Europe in Displeasure (New York Times)

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