Previous Posts: articles 2023
Heads, no body
May 12 2011
Ai Wei Wei's absence is felt at the opening of his fantastic new installation of Zodiac heads at Somerset House.
25% off*
May 12 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
*at least.
Jeff Koons' Pink Panther didn't live up to the hype at Sotheby's. The estimate was $20-30m, but it sold to one bidder for $16.8m with premium. This means the hammer went down at $15m. Sotheby's had an irrevocable bid going into the sale.
Still, that's a hefty price, and it was a clever move to lower the reserve by 25% - a failure to sell would have been disastrous.
Christie's $301m vs Sotheby's $128m
May 12 2011
Picture: Christie's
Ouch - Christie's trounced Sotheby's last night in the New York post-war and contemporary evening sales.
Bloomberg has a video about the Sotheby's sale, which they call 'tepid'. It had the lowest total for two years. Contributor Katya Kazakina said that 'the estimates were too aggressive for the quality of works Sotheby's had'.
The patchy results indicate continuing uncertainty at the top end of the contemporary market. At Christie's, some of the big ticket things went at around, or less, than the lower estimate. Warhol's 1986 self-portrait, above, made $27.5m, including premium, which means that bidding in the room didn't exceed the $30m lower estimate. On the other hand, the newly 'discovered' Rothko sold very well at $33.7m, against an estimate of $18-22m. I'd have a Rothko over a Warhol any day.
The Wall Street Journal has a good summary here, but as ever, some reading between the lines is necessary.
Poussin & Hals stopped for export - total £22.75 million
May 11 2011
Picture: Christie's
The government has issued two temporary export bars in two days; one on a Poussin (Ordination, above, one of the seven sacrament series) at £15m, and the other on a Hals (Family Portrait in a Landscape) at £7.75m.
Who are they kidding? How is any museum in this climate supposed to try and buy the pictures when there are no acquisition funds to speak of? The one body that could help, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, has been cut to just £5m - or one third of a Poussin.
We really are facing a potential crisis over the loss of such paintings - more and more are being sold, and museums have less and less money. There is still time to do something about it, but only if the government directs the Heritage Lottery Fund to look more kindly on acquisitions, a move which would cost nothing.
The Poussin belongs to the Duke of Rutland, and was offered at auction in December 2010 at Christie's for £15-20m. It failed to sell on the night, but it seems has been sold since at the reserve.
Yale abolishes reproduction fees
May 11 2011
Picture: Yale Center for British Art, 'Mr & Mrs John Gravenor and their daughters', by Thomas Gainsborough.
Hurrah! Yale University will abolish reproduction fees for everything in its museums and collections. Amy Meyers, the director for the Yale Center for British Art, says:
'The ability to publish images directly from our online catalogues without charge will encourage the increased use of our collections for scholarship, a benefit to which we look forward with the greatest excitement.'
UK museums should really think hard about doing likewise. Our high reproduction fees are a great barrier to effective scholarship. And the small income museums earn from such rights (after the high administration costs) results in silly rules about not taking photos in museums, and secutiry guards jumping on you if you so much as reach for your phone.
So, let's all relax about copyright - it is never going to be the big earner people envisaged. Image reproduction should be viewed as part of a museum's core purpose of spreading knowledge - and be free.
Size isn't everything
May 11 2011
Pictures: Sotheby's
A miniature by Frida Kahlo is to be sold at auction for £800k-1.2m.
Double-dip?
May 11 2011
Colin Gleadell asks if the recent faltering sales in New York signal a double dip in the art market. He concludes 'no'.
A new Lowry record?
May 9 2011
Picture: Christie's
Christie's are aiming for a new record price for a painting by L S Lowry later this month. The Football Match (1949) is estimated at £3.5-4.5m. The current record is £3.7m, paid in 2007 for Good Friday, Daisy Nook.
The Football Match was bought by Lord Walston for £250 in 1951. It was sold from his estate in 1992 for £132,000. Full catalogue details here.
'Book early to avoid disappointment'
May 9 2011
Picture: National Gallery, London
The National Gallery released further details of their forthcoming exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. It will bring together the largest number ever of Leonardo's surviving paintings. The press' attention has been caught by the warning to 'BOOK EARLY', because of the anticipated crowds. The warning is written in capital letters in the press release, just in case anyone misses it. The exhibition will be open on New Year's day - an excellent idea.
Full details from the announcement below the jump:
In the basement
May 9 2011
Picture: Victoria & Albert Museum
I said recently that I would post the occasional ‘in the basement’ story, to highlight the risks of deaccessioning. Tomorrow (Tuesday), I will be a panelist at a conference on deaccessioning at the National Gallery, London. Speakers include Culture Minister Ed Vaizey MP, Chairman of the National Trust Sir Simon Jenkins, and the director of the National Gallery Dr. Nicholas Penny. My panel is at the end of the day, in the dying-for-a-drink slot.
I suspect most of the day will be spent debating whether deaccessioning is a good or a bad thing – but the fact is that the process has begun. A large number of regional and local authority controlled museums in Britain are already selling off works.
Above is a painting in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. It is catalogued on their website as ‘attributed to Joseph Highmore’, but is undoubtedly by Andrea Soldi. (See J. Ingamells: ‘Andrea Soldi—a Check List of his Work’, Walpole Soc., xlvii (1980), pp. 1–20 for other comparable examples.)
Who's Soldi, you might ask? True, he’s not a well-known artist, and it’s a not a particularly exciting painting (and nor am I suggesting that the V&A would ever sell it). But the point is that you can’t decide to sell something until you know what you have to sell. There are many similar mis-catalogued paintings in museum basements across the country. And we need to have a structure in place to make sure no unfortunate mistakes are made. [More below]
'Pricey Warhols make lousy investments'
May 9 2011
Picture: Christie's, 'Diamond Dust Shoes' by Andy Warhol (1980-81), est. $1-1.5m, 11th May 2011.
So says Bloomberg, in a story which nonetheless contains this piece of financial advice:
“If you can buy a 90-by-70 Warhol shoe painting for $1 million, it’s better than owning Google, Microsoft and Facebook together,” said Alberto Mugrabi, New York-based collector and dealer in Warhol.
So don't buy just 'cos you like it.
In love with a Monet
May 9 2011
Picture: 'Bathers at La Grenouillere' by Monet, National Gallery, London, one of the pictures used by researchers to study the effect of art on the brain.
At last, a link between the study of art history and sex (sort of). From the Daily Telegraph:
The same part of the brain that is excited when you fall for someone romantically is stimulated when you stare at great works of beauty, researchers have discovered.
Viewing art triggers a surge of the feel-good chemical, dopamine, into the orbito-frontal cortex of the brain, resulting in feelings of intense pleasure.
Dopamine and the orbito-frontal cortex are both known to be involved in desire and affection and in invoking pleasurable feelings in the brain.
It is a powerful affect often associated with romantic love and illicit drug taking.
Top tip...
May 6 2011
Google translate have now added Latin to their list of languages. It isn't very good, but handy for a getting the gist of old inscriptions etc.
Royal Collection Diamond Jubilee exhibitions
May 6 2011
Picture: The Royal Collection
The Royal Collection has announced a series of exhibitions for 2012 to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. They've put on a fantastically ambitious programme, and it looks like we're in for some real treats, including:
- the largest ever exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's studies of the human body (Queen's Gallery, 4th May - 7th October);
- a 'highlights' exhibition at Holyroodhouse (16th March - 16th September), with Rapahels Rembrandts, Holbeins etc.;
- an exhibition of diamonds at Buckingham Palace (August & September)
- and a touring exhibition of ten of Leonardo's finest drawings, which will go to Birmingham, Bristol, Belfast, Dundee and Hull.
The director of the Royal Collection, Jonathan Marsden, said:
‘Our exhibitions celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee through many of the finest works of art in the Royal Collection, and we are particularly delighted to be sharing, on behalf of The Queen, some of these great treasures with museums and galleries across the UK. This is a fitting tribute to Her Majesty’s commitment over the past 60 years to the care and conservation of the Collection and to increasing public access.’
'The Old Masters' at The Met
May 6 2011
This looks like fun; a staged reading at The Metropolitan Museum in New York of Simon's Gray's play 'The Old Masters', on 20th and 27th June. Sam Waterston and Brian Murray star.
The play examines the controversial relationship between the art dealer Joseph Duveen (above left), and the art historian Bernard Berenson (right). The two fell out over The Adoration of the Shepherds, which Duveen wanted Berenson to authenticate as a Giorgione for his client Samuel H. Kress. Berenson, however, insisted the work was by the young Titian. Today, the picture hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington - as a Giorgione.
The Met has 124 european paintings which at some point passed through Duveen's gallery.
Yikes - an 'art market slowdown'?
May 5 2011
A work by Egon Schiele will be offered at Sotheby's next month in London with an estimate of £22-30m. More interesting, perhaps, is the headline The Guardian has given the story:
'Rare Egon Schiele painting could buck art market slowdown'.
The auction houses will be hoping for better results than have been seen in the equivalent big sales in New York over the past week. At Christie's on 4 May, $156m of impressionist and modern art was sold, below the total pre-sale estimate of $162m-$232m, with 10 lots failing to sell, including Monet's Iris Mauves.
It was a similar situation at Sotheby's on 3 May, which sold lots for $170m, above the low estimate of $159, but with some notable disappointments. There were 15 unsold lots and the top lot, Picasso's Femmes Lisant (Deux Personnages), sold for below its estimate price.
It seems to only take a few high-profile failures, and suddenly everyone is rushing for the exit. If only the auction houses would learn - if you live by the hyped estimate, then so, according to the inexorable rule of fate, you must die thereby.
Henry Moore goes to Russia
May 5 2011
As part of the commemorations for the 70th anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad, the Hermitage Museum is putting on an exhibition of Henry Moore's 'shelter drawings', done in London during the Blitz. It will run from May 7th to August 28th. From the Henry Moore Foundation's press release:
The use of the Hermitage basements as shelters during the Siege adds an unusual poignancy to the display. As well as five galleries of Moore drawings, one room will be dedicated to the drawings of Soviet architect Alexander Nikolsky. They record images of people sheltering in the basement during the bombardment.
During the Blitz, Henry Moore made numerous sketches and a series of worked-up drawings of people sheltering from the German bombing in the London Underground. As evocations of suffering and endurance, these have atteined an almost mythic status in the artist's work, and were widely exhibited during and after World War Two.
Royal Society of Portrait Painters
May 5 2011
Picture: RSPP
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters' annual exhibition opens tomorrow. Famous faces include the Queen (above, by James Lloyd), Boris Johnson, and David Starkey. See highlights here.
"I'll pay for that"
May 5 2011
The Guardian has a good interview with the artist Michael Craig-Martin, the 'godfather of the YBAs'. As a tutor at Goldsmith's College, he had a significant influence on Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst. The Guardian asks him:
Didn't you feel jealous of their success? "Of course! I remember Damien showing Charles Saatchi his idea for a shark in his notebook, and Saatchi saying, 'I'll pay for that.'
Craig-Martin also (gasp) says that artists should actually make their art:
"People call me a conceptual artist, as if the idea was all, but actually what interests me is what happens when the idea becomes a thing. Ideas are by their nature generalisations, something that can be applied to lots of things. But making art is about making particulars, and that particular something can be the generator of a generalisation."
A new exhibition of Craig-Martin's drawings is at the Alan Cristea Gallery in London.
Weiwei's New York sculpture finally unveiled
May 5 2011
Picture: Ben Davis
Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads were unveiled yesterday by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The artist was of course absent. The delay, it seems, was due to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
