While the Vassar Haiti Project (VHP) went to Chermaitre for ten days over Spring Break, they did more than check up on their education and medical initiatives and visit with locals in the village. They also accumulated a vibrant collection of Haitian art, which was on view and on sale in the College Center MPR this Friday through Sunday.
“This is our main event, our main source of fundraising,” said Director of International Services and Founder of Vassar Haiti Project Andrew Meade. The money made from the sale will support the cost of operating the initiatives that VHP has already put in place. “It will be sent to help support the lunch program, pay the teacher’s salaries, and buy supplies; just make sure everything continues smoothly throughout the year,” Meade continued. Any additional money made will go into new programs in Haiti.
The Haitian Art Sale will be open Friday, March 30 from noon-8pm, Saturday from 10-4, and Sunday from 10-2. On Saturday the auction will be held from 4-6, with registration beginning at 2 pm.
“All of the art is made in Haiti, often Port-au-Prince, and we have some handicrafts that were made in more rural areas,” said David Bridgman-Packer ’12, who went on the Haiti trip. “We buy some of the art directly from the artists, some from art galleries, and others from art markets, which are unique to Haiti. They are these open-air markets where artists and art vendors bring their selections.”
“In Haiti, and in general in most underdeveloped countries, art is not the top priority. People don’t just go out and buy art, as they have other basic expenses,” said Alex Ciucu ’12, who also went on the trip over break. She emphasized how the art sold this weekend at Vassar will not only benefit VHP’s initiatives, but will support the livelihood of the men and women who created these pieces, allowing them to continue in the profession they love.
The artwork VHP has on display reflects much Haitian art today: the paintings depict natural, outdoor scenes and landscapes in beautiful, vibrant colors, while the metalwork uses these same colors in eye-catching designs and motifs. Everything normally on the walls of the CCMPR will be taken off, and one wall covered entirely in paintings for sale. Said Ciucu,“The tables will be covered in handicrafts like papier-mché and metalwork. We also have larger metalwork pieces for sale, as well as … silk scarves and jewelry, beads.”
VHP has already paid all of the artists and sellers for the works; any profits they make will go into the initiatives. The project currently has four initiatives in place in Haiti: “The main one is education,” said Bridgman-Packer. Since 2002, the group has been funding the lunch program and teacher salaries at Chermaitre’s primary school. “We also have a water initiative, in which we built a spring cistern that brings water to the school and village; a reforestation initiative, as we have planted several thousand trees; and a medical initiative, working to build a health clinic staffed by Haitian doctors,” Bridgman-Packer continued.
To best support the Vassar Haiti Project, the members hope that the students, parents, and members of the community who visit the sale will purchase a painting or handicraft. “Art is something that represents Haiti in a way that most people don’t see in the newspapers,” said Ciucu.
As trip member Charlotte Ong ’14 noted, the 10 days spent in Haiti helps the members of VHP see how their initiatives are working and what needs improvement. “We met with the village leaders, and had a focus group with the women and girls of the village, and had more meetings to assess the progress and needs of the initiatives. This will help us in directing what we do for the rest of the year,” Ong said.
As the members of VHP emphasized, the art show depicts the real Haiti, and not what is painted of the country by Western media. Said Andrew Meade, “Haitian art really speaks to the spirit and resilience of the Haitian people. Despite all of the stuff that people see on TV, or whatever happens to the country in terms of natural disasters, and man-made troubles like political or racial strife, art has just continued to show the true elements of Haiti.”
2012年3月31日星期六
2012年3月30日星期五
Prunella Clough and the art of 'saying a small thing edgily'
The best-known fact about the painter Prunella Clough is that she kept the price of her art low. Once, when moving house, she turned the contents of her studio into a bonanza sale. "PRICES SLASHED!" announced the cards she sent out, ornamented with the clichés of the marketplace, dynamically arranged. "Seconds. Slightly damaged goods. CASH AND CARRY. No reasonable offer refused. RACKS MUST BE CLEARED. TELL YOUR FRIENDS." For six days, people came and went, while she operated a cheap goods stall. For a prolific artist, it was a pragmatic way of reducing the contents of her studio. But it was also a sly dig at the commodification of art. Some of her friends found it embarrassing to see drawings, collages and paintings fast disappearing, at prices that bore no relation to their worth.
There have been various attempts by artists to challenge or subvert the art market. But earlier this year, when a version of Cézanne's Card Players reached the highest price ever paid for a work of art, it was Clough who first came to mind, and then Fernand Léger. If both have relevance in the 21st century, it is in no small part due to their belief that art can be made out of the ordinary and has a place in the everyday world. Léger wanted his mural-size canvases to be the kind of objects against which you could lean your bicycle. Clough in the early 1950s painted a series of pictures based on lorries and their drivers. She went down to London's docklands to draw cranes and pile drivers, but it was the lorries arriving and departing and the labour involved – in this pre-container age – in the loading and unloading of their cargoes that caught her attention. She closed in on the drivers in their cabs, catching moments of waiting, when the driver takes a nap or reads a newspaper, while pressing in on all sides are hints of the larger environment, a coil of rope, ladders, a factory chimney or segment of a crane.
Did Clough know of Léger's work? Almost certainly. She had a highly cultivated knowledge of art, and in the 1950s was an intimate friend of John Berger, who championed Léger. Together Clough and Berger went drawing down by the mainline marshalling yards at Willesden Junction in London. As a critic, Berger was then promoting realism, in whatever form it took, and he liked to compare Léger with Masaccio. Both, in his view, were painters of a new reality and of the new values associated with that reality.
Berger asked of Léger: "In the work of what other artist can you find cars, metal frames, templates, girders, electric wires, numberplates, road signs, gas stoves, functional furniture, bicycles, tents, keys, locks, cheap cups and saucers? Léger in fact forces us to consider a phenomenon which is so widespread that we scarcely notice it – the extraordinary degree to which most 20th-century art ignores any direct reference to the 20th-century environment. It is as though in our paintings we wish to be nowhere."
Clough, like Léger, was unusual in her attention to aspects of urban and industrial life that are mostly overlooked – if not deliberately ignored. She looked at things that bear the residue of use, are blighted by time or fallen into desuetude. Long before the term "edgelands" was coined, she was familiar with those areas where housing estates or factories peter out and the borders between urban and rural are renegotiated, infringed or forgotten.
There have been various attempts by artists to challenge or subvert the art market. But earlier this year, when a version of Cézanne's Card Players reached the highest price ever paid for a work of art, it was Clough who first came to mind, and then Fernand Léger. If both have relevance in the 21st century, it is in no small part due to their belief that art can be made out of the ordinary and has a place in the everyday world. Léger wanted his mural-size canvases to be the kind of objects against which you could lean your bicycle. Clough in the early 1950s painted a series of pictures based on lorries and their drivers. She went down to London's docklands to draw cranes and pile drivers, but it was the lorries arriving and departing and the labour involved – in this pre-container age – in the loading and unloading of their cargoes that caught her attention. She closed in on the drivers in their cabs, catching moments of waiting, when the driver takes a nap or reads a newspaper, while pressing in on all sides are hints of the larger environment, a coil of rope, ladders, a factory chimney or segment of a crane.
Did Clough know of Léger's work? Almost certainly. She had a highly cultivated knowledge of art, and in the 1950s was an intimate friend of John Berger, who championed Léger. Together Clough and Berger went drawing down by the mainline marshalling yards at Willesden Junction in London. As a critic, Berger was then promoting realism, in whatever form it took, and he liked to compare Léger with Masaccio. Both, in his view, were painters of a new reality and of the new values associated with that reality.
Berger asked of Léger: "In the work of what other artist can you find cars, metal frames, templates, girders, electric wires, numberplates, road signs, gas stoves, functional furniture, bicycles, tents, keys, locks, cheap cups and saucers? Léger in fact forces us to consider a phenomenon which is so widespread that we scarcely notice it – the extraordinary degree to which most 20th-century art ignores any direct reference to the 20th-century environment. It is as though in our paintings we wish to be nowhere."
Clough, like Léger, was unusual in her attention to aspects of urban and industrial life that are mostly overlooked – if not deliberately ignored. She looked at things that bear the residue of use, are blighted by time or fallen into desuetude. Long before the term "edgelands" was coined, she was familiar with those areas where housing estates or factories peter out and the borders between urban and rural are renegotiated, infringed or forgotten.
2012年3月29日星期四
Spring Art Auctions Boast All-Star Line-Ups
A number of standout artworks by such modern masters as Cezanne, Munch and Warhol and pioneering women artists from Tamara Lempicka to Cindy Sherman are heading to the auction block in May.
Leading the line-up at the world's two biggest auction houses is the high-profile sale of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” which will take place at Sotheby’s New York on May 2nd. The iconic artwork is expected to bring as much as $80 million.
Also to be sold at Sotheby’s that day is a “lost” work by Polish pioneering female artist, Tamara Lempicka. The painting, entitled “Nu adosse 1” or “Reclining Nude I,” vanished from public view after being shown at the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Milan back in 1925. It is estimated to go for up to $5 million. The current owner didn’t realize until recently what he had on his hands. However, he had appreciated the painting’s aesthetic so had held on to the painting, which embodies the spirit of the Art Deco, according to Sotheby’s.
The following week, Sotheby’s will auction Andy Warhol’s “Double Elvis,” at their post-war and contemporary art sale. The life-size painting, from 1963, epitomizes the Pop Art leaderl's obsession with fame, stardom and the public image, according to Sotheby's. It is estimated to go for as much as $50 million.
Sotheby’s London will be selling the late Gunter Sachs collection, which includes a number of Warhols. Among the standouts is Warhol’s portrait of French actress Bridgette Bardot, ex-wife of Gunter Sachs, as well as another silkscreen painting by that artist entitled “Flowers” from 1964-65. Both images are expected to go for between $6 and $8 million. The auction takes place on May 22 and 23.
Meanwhile, Christie’s New York will be selling a rare work by Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, often hailed as the “father of modernism.” This watercolor has only recently been rediscovered and is a study for Cézanne’s series of five paintings, "Joueurs des cartes” or “Card Players.” The work offered at auction belonged to Dr. Heinz F. Eichenwald, a prominent collector who died in September.
Dr. Eichenwald, a renowned expert on pediatric infectious diseases, inherited the watercolor from his parents who, according to Christie’s experts, are thought to have bought it from a Berlin gallery around 1930, shortly before they fled the Nazi occupation. Cézanne scholars have established the identity of the seated man as Paulin Paulet, who appears in all five paintings of the final series. The watercolor study will be exhibited in Geneva in April before a New York showing ahead of the May 1 sale, and is estimated to go for $20 million.
The Akron Art Museum, in a somewhat controversial move, has decided to put one of their Cindy Shermans up for sale. The 1981 photograph “Untitled #96” is estimated to go for somewhere between $2,800,000-$3,800,000, which would provide an enormous boost to the museum’s $2 million acquisitions endowment. Another copy of “Untitled #96” sold last year for nearly $4 million dollars. The photograph, depicting a young woman in orange lying on the floor clutching a personal ad, will be sold at Christie’s New York on May 8th.
Leading the line-up at the world's two biggest auction houses is the high-profile sale of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” which will take place at Sotheby’s New York on May 2nd. The iconic artwork is expected to bring as much as $80 million.
Also to be sold at Sotheby’s that day is a “lost” work by Polish pioneering female artist, Tamara Lempicka. The painting, entitled “Nu adosse 1” or “Reclining Nude I,” vanished from public view after being shown at the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Milan back in 1925. It is estimated to go for up to $5 million. The current owner didn’t realize until recently what he had on his hands. However, he had appreciated the painting’s aesthetic so had held on to the painting, which embodies the spirit of the Art Deco, according to Sotheby’s.
The following week, Sotheby’s will auction Andy Warhol’s “Double Elvis,” at their post-war and contemporary art sale. The life-size painting, from 1963, epitomizes the Pop Art leaderl's obsession with fame, stardom and the public image, according to Sotheby's. It is estimated to go for as much as $50 million.
Sotheby’s London will be selling the late Gunter Sachs collection, which includes a number of Warhols. Among the standouts is Warhol’s portrait of French actress Bridgette Bardot, ex-wife of Gunter Sachs, as well as another silkscreen painting by that artist entitled “Flowers” from 1964-65. Both images are expected to go for between $6 and $8 million. The auction takes place on May 22 and 23.
Meanwhile, Christie’s New York will be selling a rare work by Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, often hailed as the “father of modernism.” This watercolor has only recently been rediscovered and is a study for Cézanne’s series of five paintings, "Joueurs des cartes” or “Card Players.” The work offered at auction belonged to Dr. Heinz F. Eichenwald, a prominent collector who died in September.
Dr. Eichenwald, a renowned expert on pediatric infectious diseases, inherited the watercolor from his parents who, according to Christie’s experts, are thought to have bought it from a Berlin gallery around 1930, shortly before they fled the Nazi occupation. Cézanne scholars have established the identity of the seated man as Paulin Paulet, who appears in all five paintings of the final series. The watercolor study will be exhibited in Geneva in April before a New York showing ahead of the May 1 sale, and is estimated to go for $20 million.
The Akron Art Museum, in a somewhat controversial move, has decided to put one of their Cindy Shermans up for sale. The 1981 photograph “Untitled #96” is estimated to go for somewhere between $2,800,000-$3,800,000, which would provide an enormous boost to the museum’s $2 million acquisitions endowment. Another copy of “Untitled #96” sold last year for nearly $4 million dollars. The photograph, depicting a young woman in orange lying on the floor clutching a personal ad, will be sold at Christie’s New York on May 8th.
2012年3月28日星期三
Investing in the art market
After losing more than 50 per cent of its value during the recent economic downturn, the global art market saw a robust recovery in 2010.
In the last couple of years, the art market has been enjoying a revival as investors begin to realise the importance of art as an alternative investment to diffuse risk. Auction houses around the world are reporting record sales and investors are showing more knowledge and interest in art pieces. As part of this revival, the Middle Eastern art market has also been steadily attracting interest from collectors and investors worldwide.
"Investing in tangible assets such as gold or jewellery has always been very popular in the region. In the recent past, we witnessed a new trend that started at the beginning of the 21st century and accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis: ‘art investing'. The new concept comes from the fact that on top of being an aesthetic pleasure, art can be a financial asset. Indeed in the past 10 years, art has outperformed equity and bonds giving an average return of close to 8 per cent per annum," said Douglas Azar, investment adviser of wealth management at Liechtensteinische Landesbank.
This renewed interest comes hand in hand with a higher demand for Middle Eastern art.
"There is definitely an increased global attention in Middle Eastern art right now. I think part of that is because of what is happening politically but it's also because globally the price of Middle Eastern art is still quite undervalued when compared to other countries. The other thing is the art that comes out of our region is so different from what collectors are used to so it is exciting for them," said Minna Joseph, gallery director at Ayyam Gallery.
Estimates in a Middle Eastern art sales catalogue can begin as low as $1,500 (Dh5,508) and can range up to $20,000 for a prominent piece of work from a promising artist.
"There are people who have invested earlier on in artist communities [and] have seen the price of their work go up dramatically. There was a boom time and increase in prices particularly for Iranian art. There is also a wave of interest in artists who are from the modern school who are being reappraised," said Antonia Carver, fair director of Art Dubai.
Middle Eastern influence is being seen in major galleries across the world. The London Gallery recently did an exhibition, Unveiled, which exhibited new art from the Middle East featuring 21 new artists from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Palestine. The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in London's Victoria and Albert museum was also recently opened under the patronage of the Saudi royal family.
According to Michael Jeha, managing director of Christie's Middle East, as the supply of works by the great modern Arab and Iranian masters dwindles, collectors, old and new, are taking an increased interest in the rapidly growing young generation of regional artists.
Another area that is in demand is contemporary artwork from emerging markets in Asia. "China is now becoming the largest auction place in the world before New York and London. This is a major shift which will have a long lasting impact on the art market," said Azar.
In the last couple of years, the art market has been enjoying a revival as investors begin to realise the importance of art as an alternative investment to diffuse risk. Auction houses around the world are reporting record sales and investors are showing more knowledge and interest in art pieces. As part of this revival, the Middle Eastern art market has also been steadily attracting interest from collectors and investors worldwide.
"Investing in tangible assets such as gold or jewellery has always been very popular in the region. In the recent past, we witnessed a new trend that started at the beginning of the 21st century and accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis: ‘art investing'. The new concept comes from the fact that on top of being an aesthetic pleasure, art can be a financial asset. Indeed in the past 10 years, art has outperformed equity and bonds giving an average return of close to 8 per cent per annum," said Douglas Azar, investment adviser of wealth management at Liechtensteinische Landesbank.
This renewed interest comes hand in hand with a higher demand for Middle Eastern art.
"There is definitely an increased global attention in Middle Eastern art right now. I think part of that is because of what is happening politically but it's also because globally the price of Middle Eastern art is still quite undervalued when compared to other countries. The other thing is the art that comes out of our region is so different from what collectors are used to so it is exciting for them," said Minna Joseph, gallery director at Ayyam Gallery.
Estimates in a Middle Eastern art sales catalogue can begin as low as $1,500 (Dh5,508) and can range up to $20,000 for a prominent piece of work from a promising artist.
"There are people who have invested earlier on in artist communities [and] have seen the price of their work go up dramatically. There was a boom time and increase in prices particularly for Iranian art. There is also a wave of interest in artists who are from the modern school who are being reappraised," said Antonia Carver, fair director of Art Dubai.
Middle Eastern influence is being seen in major galleries across the world. The London Gallery recently did an exhibition, Unveiled, which exhibited new art from the Middle East featuring 21 new artists from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Palestine. The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in London's Victoria and Albert museum was also recently opened under the patronage of the Saudi royal family.
According to Michael Jeha, managing director of Christie's Middle East, as the supply of works by the great modern Arab and Iranian masters dwindles, collectors, old and new, are taking an increased interest in the rapidly growing young generation of regional artists.
Another area that is in demand is contemporary artwork from emerging markets in Asia. "China is now becoming the largest auction place in the world before New York and London. This is a major shift which will have a long lasting impact on the art market," said Azar.
2012年3月27日星期二
Strong Sales at TEFAF Silver Jubilee
TEFAF Maastricht celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2012 with 72,000 visitors over the course of the fair, held from March 15 to 24. Of these 44% came from outside the Netherlands with a marked increase in buyers from Russia, China, Hong Kong and Singapore. 85% of visitors describe themselves as private buyers, of which more than 21% were visiting for the first time.
Ben Janssens, Chairman of the Executive Committee commented, “Having participated in the Fair from the outset in 1988, I have been astounded by the number of new clients I have met and sold to this year.”
Collecting interests of visitors were spread almost equally between the three biggest areas of the Fair - Old Master paintings (30%), antiques (36%) and modern and contemporary (34%). More than 34% of all visitors stayed at least one night in Maastricht or the surrounding area.
A major painting by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, a powerful portrait of the English king Henry VIII, a sculpture by Anish Kapoor and an important and historic piece of silver were just some of the sales.
Noortman Master Paintings of Amsterdam had a strong start to the Fair selling two important still lifes by Dutch painters - Flowers in a terracotta vase by Jan van Huysum and Adrian Coorte’s Three peaches on a ledge. The Fine Art Society from London is exhibiting a contemporary take on classic Dutch still lifes with Rob and Nick Carter’s Transforming Still Life Painting, a three hour digitally engineered film of one of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s greatest paintings. Bob Haboldt, an Old Master paintings dealer at TEFAF, bought one of the limited edition films for his private collection leaving just one available for purchase. An unconventional work from a much earlier age, A reversible anthropomorphic portrait of a man composed of fruit by the 16th century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo was sold to a European private collector by French & Company of New York.
Silver sales were also strong with an American private collector buying The Walpole Inkstand for which Koopman Rare Art of London was asking $5 million. This important and historic piece is one of only two made by the great silversmith Paul de Lamerie in 1729 for Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. The other is owned by the Bank of England. John Endlich Antiquairs from Haarlem sold a classic piece of 17th century Dutch silver, a tazza made by the Delft silversmith Cornelis van der Burch in 1604, which was once in the Ritman Collection, for an undisclosed sum.
A rare Egyptian limestone relief depicting Queen Hatshepshut, one of the first women to rule in her own right rather than as the wife of a male Pharaoh, attracted huge interest before the Fair and was quickly sold at the private view to an American private collector for “a substantial six figure sum” by Rupert Wace Ancient Art of London. Very few images of Hatshepshut, who ruled from 1479 to 1458BC, have survived. Another antiquities dealer, Royal-Athena Galleries of New York, sold a Roman bronze torso of Aphrodite 1st-2nd century AD which had an asking price of $375,000, while Kunsthandel Mieke Zilverberg of Amsterdam sold a very early bronze Villanova/Italic two-wheeled model of a chariot from the 8th-7th centuries BC to the Allard Pierson Museum at the University of Amsterdam.
TEFAF Modern also performed well with Gana Art of Seoul, Korea selling an untitled 2011 stainless steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor to a European collector while Daniel Blau of Munich sold more than 20 of his exhibition of 1950s drawings by Andy Warhol for prices in the region of 50,000 to 60,000 each. The drawings proved so popular that he had to re-hang his stand. In TEFAF Paper an American collector bought nine vintage silver prints by Josef Sudek from photography dealer Johannes Faber of Vienna.
TEFAF Maastricht hosted 265 specialists from 19 different countries. Between them they exhibited more than 30,000 works of art, antiques and design objects from pre-history to the present day with an aggregate value of more than 3 billion euros. “At TEFAF you get spoiled foreve,r” commented American collector, Jean Doyen de Montaillou.
TEFAF is often referred to as a museum in which everything is for sale. The displays created by dealers during the Fair are admired by collectors and museum professionals throughout the world. Susan Lynch, Chair of the Board of Directors and Patrons of the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, USA, commented that, “TEFAF is inspiring, educational and a delight.” Over the course of the Fair TEFAF attracted over 238 museums from 21 countries.
Before the Fair opened each object was examined for quality, authenticity and condition by 175 international experts on 29 separate specialist committees. TEFAF Antiques is the biggest section in the Fair with 102 exhibitors. This is followed by the TEFAF Paintings with 59 and TEFAF Modern with 51.
During the Preview and the run of the Fair, visitors consumed 15.000 glasses of champagne; 31.000 wine; 75.000 cups of coffee; 10.000 pastries; 50.000 sandwiches and 11.000 oysters, which were served by 2300 waiters having been prepared by 515 cooks.
It is not only the works of art on display that attracts plaudits, the Fair itself is renowned for its presentation. ” There is no other Fair that looks like TEFAF”, commented Leo Villareal, whose specially commissioned light sculpture welcomed visitors in the entrance hall of the Fair.
Building the Fair is a major construction project that requires 220 men and women to work for 23 days of which 11 days are around the clock. On the Monday before the Fair opened 20 people worked throughout the night to lay 15.000m of carpet in the aisles of the Fair. The entrance hall was decked with 800m of padded panelling. The stand builders drank 30,000 cups of coffee and used 250kg of sugar.
Flowers form an important element of the display at TEFAF Maastricht and the 2012 Fair was no exception. In 2012 over the duration of the Fair, the entrance display used 33,000 Avalanche roses; the corridors, squares and cafés decorated with 40,500 of the most exclusive multi-coloured long-stalked French tulips, augmented by 4,500 branches of magnolia or cherry blossoms while the arrangements in the Place de La Concorde used 24,000 multi-coloured short-stemmed Dutch tulips.
Ben Janssens, Chairman of the Executive Committee commented, “Having participated in the Fair from the outset in 1988, I have been astounded by the number of new clients I have met and sold to this year.”
Collecting interests of visitors were spread almost equally between the three biggest areas of the Fair - Old Master paintings (30%), antiques (36%) and modern and contemporary (34%). More than 34% of all visitors stayed at least one night in Maastricht or the surrounding area.
A major painting by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, a powerful portrait of the English king Henry VIII, a sculpture by Anish Kapoor and an important and historic piece of silver were just some of the sales.
Noortman Master Paintings of Amsterdam had a strong start to the Fair selling two important still lifes by Dutch painters - Flowers in a terracotta vase by Jan van Huysum and Adrian Coorte’s Three peaches on a ledge. The Fine Art Society from London is exhibiting a contemporary take on classic Dutch still lifes with Rob and Nick Carter’s Transforming Still Life Painting, a three hour digitally engineered film of one of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s greatest paintings. Bob Haboldt, an Old Master paintings dealer at TEFAF, bought one of the limited edition films for his private collection leaving just one available for purchase. An unconventional work from a much earlier age, A reversible anthropomorphic portrait of a man composed of fruit by the 16th century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo was sold to a European private collector by French & Company of New York.
Silver sales were also strong with an American private collector buying The Walpole Inkstand for which Koopman Rare Art of London was asking $5 million. This important and historic piece is one of only two made by the great silversmith Paul de Lamerie in 1729 for Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. The other is owned by the Bank of England. John Endlich Antiquairs from Haarlem sold a classic piece of 17th century Dutch silver, a tazza made by the Delft silversmith Cornelis van der Burch in 1604, which was once in the Ritman Collection, for an undisclosed sum.
A rare Egyptian limestone relief depicting Queen Hatshepshut, one of the first women to rule in her own right rather than as the wife of a male Pharaoh, attracted huge interest before the Fair and was quickly sold at the private view to an American private collector for “a substantial six figure sum” by Rupert Wace Ancient Art of London. Very few images of Hatshepshut, who ruled from 1479 to 1458BC, have survived. Another antiquities dealer, Royal-Athena Galleries of New York, sold a Roman bronze torso of Aphrodite 1st-2nd century AD which had an asking price of $375,000, while Kunsthandel Mieke Zilverberg of Amsterdam sold a very early bronze Villanova/Italic two-wheeled model of a chariot from the 8th-7th centuries BC to the Allard Pierson Museum at the University of Amsterdam.
TEFAF Modern also performed well with Gana Art of Seoul, Korea selling an untitled 2011 stainless steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor to a European collector while Daniel Blau of Munich sold more than 20 of his exhibition of 1950s drawings by Andy Warhol for prices in the region of 50,000 to 60,000 each. The drawings proved so popular that he had to re-hang his stand. In TEFAF Paper an American collector bought nine vintage silver prints by Josef Sudek from photography dealer Johannes Faber of Vienna.
TEFAF Maastricht hosted 265 specialists from 19 different countries. Between them they exhibited more than 30,000 works of art, antiques and design objects from pre-history to the present day with an aggregate value of more than 3 billion euros. “At TEFAF you get spoiled foreve,r” commented American collector, Jean Doyen de Montaillou.
TEFAF is often referred to as a museum in which everything is for sale. The displays created by dealers during the Fair are admired by collectors and museum professionals throughout the world. Susan Lynch, Chair of the Board of Directors and Patrons of the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, USA, commented that, “TEFAF is inspiring, educational and a delight.” Over the course of the Fair TEFAF attracted over 238 museums from 21 countries.
Before the Fair opened each object was examined for quality, authenticity and condition by 175 international experts on 29 separate specialist committees. TEFAF Antiques is the biggest section in the Fair with 102 exhibitors. This is followed by the TEFAF Paintings with 59 and TEFAF Modern with 51.
During the Preview and the run of the Fair, visitors consumed 15.000 glasses of champagne; 31.000 wine; 75.000 cups of coffee; 10.000 pastries; 50.000 sandwiches and 11.000 oysters, which were served by 2300 waiters having been prepared by 515 cooks.
It is not only the works of art on display that attracts plaudits, the Fair itself is renowned for its presentation. ” There is no other Fair that looks like TEFAF”, commented Leo Villareal, whose specially commissioned light sculpture welcomed visitors in the entrance hall of the Fair.
Building the Fair is a major construction project that requires 220 men and women to work for 23 days of which 11 days are around the clock. On the Monday before the Fair opened 20 people worked throughout the night to lay 15.000m of carpet in the aisles of the Fair. The entrance hall was decked with 800m of padded panelling. The stand builders drank 30,000 cups of coffee and used 250kg of sugar.
Flowers form an important element of the display at TEFAF Maastricht and the 2012 Fair was no exception. In 2012 over the duration of the Fair, the entrance display used 33,000 Avalanche roses; the corridors, squares and cafés decorated with 40,500 of the most exclusive multi-coloured long-stalked French tulips, augmented by 4,500 branches of magnolia or cherry blossoms while the arrangements in the Place de La Concorde used 24,000 multi-coloured short-stemmed Dutch tulips.
2012年3月26日星期一
Royal Academy opens its doors to art for Summer Exhibition
The Royal Academy opened its doors to a deluge of art today as the first works were submitted for its annual Summer Exhibition. Between 11,000 and 12,000 pieces, ranging from pencil drawings to vast oil paintings, are expected to be brought to the London gallery, which is currently hosting David Hockney's blockbuster show.
"This is the first time I've submitted a piece," said Rowena Ardern, a former primary school teacher, now fabric designer and artist from Lancaster. She was carrying an embroidered drawing called Blackbird and Allium Cernuum into the gallery, where she unwrapped it and handed it over to gallery staff. "I've been to the exhibition before and saw things where I thought, 'I could do as good as that', so I thought I might as well give it a go." She hopes to sell the work for 400 – artists set the prices. "I don't know whether that's too much," she fretted. "It's so difficult to judge."
Now in its 244th year, the Summer Exhibition is the world's largest open-submission contemporary art show. Anyone is allowed to enter work, which is judged by a panel of Royal Academicians – the eminent artists who make up the 80-strong membership of the RA. After looking at every work, in any medium (sculptures are viewed by photograph) they will whittle it down to a shortlist of 1,000 to 2,000. These are then taken into the gallery, where they are sifted again into a coherent exhibition. Only on the final day of the hang are the artists contacted to be told whether their work will be included.
"It's only then we can start cataloguing everything because [the panel] have always got the option of going back to the works they didn't originally select," said Edith Devaney, the RA's head of summer Exhibition and curator. "They might wake up in the middle of the night and say 'I had this recollection of this fantastic oil', give a description and we try and find it – that happens, and it's rather wonderful when it does."
This year's panel is headed by Tess Jaray, the artist who taught at Slade school of art from 1968 to 1999. "She's been encouraging people she's taught over the past decade to enter," said Devaney. "She'll be celebrating the more modestly sized work, but also supporting emerging artists. It's going to have a slightly different feel this year – that's a great thing about having a different co-ordinator every year. They take it in slightly different directions."
At least two of the artists in the queue to submit pictures had had work in previous Summer Exhibitions. Lyndon Douglas, a commercial photographer from London, had an art photograph purchased last year by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, the head of the Royal Academy. "It was great to be able to express my own ideas through my own personal work and for it to be received like that," he said. This year he is submitting a mixed-media piece called Vessel, which commemorates his late mother and includes a real, dried, Jamaican "doctor fish", priced at 3,500.
Greg Genestine-Charlton, also from London, sold a work for 700 two years ago, though he failed to make the cut last year. He was carrying a small painting called Blue, which depicts a mother and child, taken from a newspaper clipping. "The first year when I got in I was over the moon," he said.
Almost all the work will be for sale – the RA takes a 30% cut, much less than a commercial gallerist would take, which is ploughed into the Royal Academy Schools. Prices range from around 100 for a print to hundreds of thousands for work by academicians, which does not need to go through the selection process. Last year's show included work by Anish Kapoor, Martin Creed and Tracey Emin.
Barbara Raimondo, from Milan, unwrapped two photographs, Looking For Myself and Noah, for 350 and 250 respectively, in the hope that the exhibition would mark her London debut.
Clare Caulfield had taken the train from Saltaire in Yorkshire with a large pen and watercolour of Caffe Florian in Venice under her arm, priced 650. She said that getting in to the show would be "a great achievement – I'd love to come down and see it hanging there".
"It's very exciting for us to see the line of work coming through and there's something really special. You haven't seen anything quite like it before and then you think 'that's going ito get in, it will sell in the first week', and they usually do," said Devaney, adding that buyers at the show stretch from complete beginners to hardened collectors.
Though the Summer Exhibition is sometimes lampooned by art critics as the place where amateur watercolourists from the Shires can get their works onto the RA's hallowed walls, Devaney said that most of the artists are professionals. "Artists can be struggling for years, but if they get in, their work will be seen by 250,000 people. Having your name published in a catalogue means people may offer you a show in commercial galleries – it can make a huge difference."
"This is the first time I've submitted a piece," said Rowena Ardern, a former primary school teacher, now fabric designer and artist from Lancaster. She was carrying an embroidered drawing called Blackbird and Allium Cernuum into the gallery, where she unwrapped it and handed it over to gallery staff. "I've been to the exhibition before and saw things where I thought, 'I could do as good as that', so I thought I might as well give it a go." She hopes to sell the work for 400 – artists set the prices. "I don't know whether that's too much," she fretted. "It's so difficult to judge."
Now in its 244th year, the Summer Exhibition is the world's largest open-submission contemporary art show. Anyone is allowed to enter work, which is judged by a panel of Royal Academicians – the eminent artists who make up the 80-strong membership of the RA. After looking at every work, in any medium (sculptures are viewed by photograph) they will whittle it down to a shortlist of 1,000 to 2,000. These are then taken into the gallery, where they are sifted again into a coherent exhibition. Only on the final day of the hang are the artists contacted to be told whether their work will be included.
"It's only then we can start cataloguing everything because [the panel] have always got the option of going back to the works they didn't originally select," said Edith Devaney, the RA's head of summer Exhibition and curator. "They might wake up in the middle of the night and say 'I had this recollection of this fantastic oil', give a description and we try and find it – that happens, and it's rather wonderful when it does."
This year's panel is headed by Tess Jaray, the artist who taught at Slade school of art from 1968 to 1999. "She's been encouraging people she's taught over the past decade to enter," said Devaney. "She'll be celebrating the more modestly sized work, but also supporting emerging artists. It's going to have a slightly different feel this year – that's a great thing about having a different co-ordinator every year. They take it in slightly different directions."
At least two of the artists in the queue to submit pictures had had work in previous Summer Exhibitions. Lyndon Douglas, a commercial photographer from London, had an art photograph purchased last year by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, the head of the Royal Academy. "It was great to be able to express my own ideas through my own personal work and for it to be received like that," he said. This year he is submitting a mixed-media piece called Vessel, which commemorates his late mother and includes a real, dried, Jamaican "doctor fish", priced at 3,500.
Greg Genestine-Charlton, also from London, sold a work for 700 two years ago, though he failed to make the cut last year. He was carrying a small painting called Blue, which depicts a mother and child, taken from a newspaper clipping. "The first year when I got in I was over the moon," he said.
Almost all the work will be for sale – the RA takes a 30% cut, much less than a commercial gallerist would take, which is ploughed into the Royal Academy Schools. Prices range from around 100 for a print to hundreds of thousands for work by academicians, which does not need to go through the selection process. Last year's show included work by Anish Kapoor, Martin Creed and Tracey Emin.
Barbara Raimondo, from Milan, unwrapped two photographs, Looking For Myself and Noah, for 350 and 250 respectively, in the hope that the exhibition would mark her London debut.
Clare Caulfield had taken the train from Saltaire in Yorkshire with a large pen and watercolour of Caffe Florian in Venice under her arm, priced 650. She said that getting in to the show would be "a great achievement – I'd love to come down and see it hanging there".
"It's very exciting for us to see the line of work coming through and there's something really special. You haven't seen anything quite like it before and then you think 'that's going ito get in, it will sell in the first week', and they usually do," said Devaney, adding that buyers at the show stretch from complete beginners to hardened collectors.
Though the Summer Exhibition is sometimes lampooned by art critics as the place where amateur watercolourists from the Shires can get their works onto the RA's hallowed walls, Devaney said that most of the artists are professionals. "Artists can be struggling for years, but if they get in, their work will be seen by 250,000 people. Having your name published in a catalogue means people may offer you a show in commercial galleries – it can make a huge difference."
2012年3月25日星期日
Former Corsicana man featured in Western Artists Show
Lee Herring, formerly of Corsicana, is one of the 68 professional artists bringing his work to the show and sale of the Western Artists of America at the end of March. Herring lived in Corsicana as a child, attending Sam Houston Elementary.
Although he’s best-known for the historical accuracy of his Western-themed paintings, Herring also paints still lifes, portraits and sculpts. The pieces he’s bringing to Corsicana include one of mustangs being roped, and of some Texas Rangers with a prisoner in custody. His work is currently on display at the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in Waco, as well as in several galleries around the country.
His family’s roots are in Navarro County, having been farmers out near Emhouse, although Herring recalls living on Sycamore in Corsicana for awhile.
“I was always an artist. I was doing it on the wallpaper when I was a kid, and getting whipped for that,” he said. “But that’s how I started out. I’ve always been drawing something.”
Herring participated in the show/sale last year, the first time the Western Artists of America came to the Pierce, and curators were happy to see him return this year.
“We’ve dubbed him the storyteller for the show,” said Holly Beasley, director of the museum. “He did a piece called Britt Johnson, about a man out in West Texas who ‘The Searchers’ movie with John Wayne was based on. Every piece he does now has an in-depth story behind it.”
After leaving Corsicana, Herring continued his training as an artist, and attended East Texas State University, where he played football and earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After graduation, he taught in Australia, earned his pilot's license, and eventually returned to Texas to teach. He turned his hand to Western art in 1975, using both oil and watercolor.
Although he’s probably best known for his paintings of gorgeous scenery and cowboys, Herring has also depicted Bonnie and Clyde, children in bluebonnets, modern portraits, and even painted violins. The Bonnie and Clyde painting came about because of a conversation with a curator at the Rangers Hall of Fame museum.
“I’d been working with the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame guys here in Waco, getting a couple of ideas from them,” Herring explained. “They’ve got a couple of pieces of mine over there on loan. I went to them and said ‘what’s the most popular exhibit?’ and they said ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’”
The depiction of the famous criminal couple will be one of the pieces available at the sale on March 30 in Corsicana.
Herring will also be signing autographs as part of an autograph party being hosted at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Cook Center.
Although the show and sale isn’t officially open until next weekend, the art will be available for viewing starting Monday in the Pierce Museum of Western Art at the Cook Center on the Navarro College Corsicana campus.
Although he’s best-known for the historical accuracy of his Western-themed paintings, Herring also paints still lifes, portraits and sculpts. The pieces he’s bringing to Corsicana include one of mustangs being roped, and of some Texas Rangers with a prisoner in custody. His work is currently on display at the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in Waco, as well as in several galleries around the country.
His family’s roots are in Navarro County, having been farmers out near Emhouse, although Herring recalls living on Sycamore in Corsicana for awhile.
“I was always an artist. I was doing it on the wallpaper when I was a kid, and getting whipped for that,” he said. “But that’s how I started out. I’ve always been drawing something.”
Herring participated in the show/sale last year, the first time the Western Artists of America came to the Pierce, and curators were happy to see him return this year.
“We’ve dubbed him the storyteller for the show,” said Holly Beasley, director of the museum. “He did a piece called Britt Johnson, about a man out in West Texas who ‘The Searchers’ movie with John Wayne was based on. Every piece he does now has an in-depth story behind it.”
After leaving Corsicana, Herring continued his training as an artist, and attended East Texas State University, where he played football and earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After graduation, he taught in Australia, earned his pilot's license, and eventually returned to Texas to teach. He turned his hand to Western art in 1975, using both oil and watercolor.
Although he’s probably best known for his paintings of gorgeous scenery and cowboys, Herring has also depicted Bonnie and Clyde, children in bluebonnets, modern portraits, and even painted violins. The Bonnie and Clyde painting came about because of a conversation with a curator at the Rangers Hall of Fame museum.
“I’d been working with the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame guys here in Waco, getting a couple of ideas from them,” Herring explained. “They’ve got a couple of pieces of mine over there on loan. I went to them and said ‘what’s the most popular exhibit?’ and they said ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’”
The depiction of the famous criminal couple will be one of the pieces available at the sale on March 30 in Corsicana.
Herring will also be signing autographs as part of an autograph party being hosted at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Cook Center.
Although the show and sale isn’t officially open until next weekend, the art will be available for viewing starting Monday in the Pierce Museum of Western Art at the Cook Center on the Navarro College Corsicana campus.
2012年3月22日星期四
Is nothing sacred?
DAMIEN HIRST may be rich and famous, but he does not have everything. The 46-year-old artist has never had a solo retrospective in a modern-art museum. If he is to turn his notoriety into immortality, he needs the backing of public institutions and the praise of serious critics. Mr Hirst and his dealers have favoured fast sales over the art-historical side of his career. But Tate Modern has come to the rescue with an Olympic blockbuster show, which runs for five months from April 4th.
The exhibition consists of 73 works made over a 22-year period, arranged chronologically to convey the evolution of Mr Hirst’s ideas. The general trajectory is from gritty to glitzy, from punk assemblages, such as cabinets filled with pills and cigarette butts, to art that looks like bespoke luxury goods. If viewers cast aside their hostility, what may astonish is Mr Hirst’s ability to transform dry conceptual art into witty, emotionally engaging work.
Six of the works in the show are owned or partially owned by the Tate. This includes two “still lives” which flicker between poignancy and irony: “Away from the Flock” (1994), a white sheep suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, and “Mother and Child Divided” (1993), a cow and calf split between four tanks. Of the 67 pieces borrowed for the show, only three have come from public institutions. The rest are on loan from dealers and a range of private collectors, including Miuccia Prada, Bernard Arnault and Steve Cohen. Luckily for them, works that have been anointed by the Tate command more credibility and a premium upon resale.
Yet the number-one lender to the Hirst retrospective is the artist himself. In addition to some early pieces, a breezy spin painting and a six-tonne bronze sculpture of an anatomical model, he has lent “A Thousand Years” (1991), a glass box that bears witness to the life cycle of flies. It was one of a dozen early works that the artist purchased back from his first patron, Charles Saatchi, in 2003. Mr Hirst suspects the sculpture is his most exciting piece. Many prefer a more beautiful work with a similar theme that he made a few months later, titled “In and Out of Love”. This installation consists of two rooms, one in which live butterflies hatch from pupae embedded in white paintings, and another in which dead butterflies are pressed onto the surfaces of brightly coloured canvasses. The show reunites these two rooms for the first time in 20 years.
The Tate’s turbine hall, a kind of post-industrial cathedral for art, will be given over to Mr Hirst’s diamond skull, “For the Love of God” (2007), which the artist co-owns with his London gallery, White Cube. The small platinum sculpture, which features real human teeth and over 8,000 diamonds, was promoted with an asking price of 50m—a tabloid tactic that clearly missed its target as the work failed to sell. The skull will be dramatically spot-lit in a dark room, much like jewellery at an auction preview. Officially, the display is not a marketing device but a comment on the “belief system” of capitalism.
Money is a theme but also a problem. The retrospective was meant to travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, but it has been put on indefinite hold because the show is so expensive. Works such as Mr Hirst’s famous shark (ie, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” from 1991, pictured) take at least six technicians and a full seven days to install. The price of crating, shipping, installing and insuring Mr Hirst’s works exceeds MoCA’s entire annual exhibition budget of $3m—a sum donated by Eli Broad, a philanthropist. He has lent two works from his substantial collection of Hirsts to the Tate.
There are two conspicuous exclusions from the retrospective. First, it contains no figurative paintings of any kind—no photorealist works, no microscopic views of cancer cells, none of the canvasses that Mr Hirst paints with his own hand in the style of Francis Bacon. As it happens, most critics find these paintings painful to behold. Second, the exhibition omits “The Golden Calf” (2008), a bull with gold horns and hooves in a gold-plated tank, which was the centrepiece of Mr Hirst’s 2008 Sotheby’s sale, “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”. The Wall Street Journal reported that Francois Pinault bought the 10.3m bull, a perplexing move for the owner of Christie’s, a connoisseur with minimalist taste. Certainly Mr Pinault has deep investments in Mr Hirst’s work. He has lent two pieces to the Tate, including an important precursor to the shark, “Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (right)”.
Many collectors of Mr Hirst’s work hope that this show will reinvigorate his market. According to artnet, a firm that tracks the art market, in 2011 one in four Hirst works that came up for auction failed to sell, and his highest price was $1.7m, down from $19m in 2007. Last year total auction turnover in Hirst works was a mere $29.6m, placing him well behind artists such as Gerhard Richter, whose work earned almost $200m in auction sales, and Zeng Fanzhi, a Chinese painter who is probably the richest artist in the world.
The exhibition consists of 73 works made over a 22-year period, arranged chronologically to convey the evolution of Mr Hirst’s ideas. The general trajectory is from gritty to glitzy, from punk assemblages, such as cabinets filled with pills and cigarette butts, to art that looks like bespoke luxury goods. If viewers cast aside their hostility, what may astonish is Mr Hirst’s ability to transform dry conceptual art into witty, emotionally engaging work.
Six of the works in the show are owned or partially owned by the Tate. This includes two “still lives” which flicker between poignancy and irony: “Away from the Flock” (1994), a white sheep suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, and “Mother and Child Divided” (1993), a cow and calf split between four tanks. Of the 67 pieces borrowed for the show, only three have come from public institutions. The rest are on loan from dealers and a range of private collectors, including Miuccia Prada, Bernard Arnault and Steve Cohen. Luckily for them, works that have been anointed by the Tate command more credibility and a premium upon resale.
Yet the number-one lender to the Hirst retrospective is the artist himself. In addition to some early pieces, a breezy spin painting and a six-tonne bronze sculpture of an anatomical model, he has lent “A Thousand Years” (1991), a glass box that bears witness to the life cycle of flies. It was one of a dozen early works that the artist purchased back from his first patron, Charles Saatchi, in 2003. Mr Hirst suspects the sculpture is his most exciting piece. Many prefer a more beautiful work with a similar theme that he made a few months later, titled “In and Out of Love”. This installation consists of two rooms, one in which live butterflies hatch from pupae embedded in white paintings, and another in which dead butterflies are pressed onto the surfaces of brightly coloured canvasses. The show reunites these two rooms for the first time in 20 years.
The Tate’s turbine hall, a kind of post-industrial cathedral for art, will be given over to Mr Hirst’s diamond skull, “For the Love of God” (2007), which the artist co-owns with his London gallery, White Cube. The small platinum sculpture, which features real human teeth and over 8,000 diamonds, was promoted with an asking price of 50m—a tabloid tactic that clearly missed its target as the work failed to sell. The skull will be dramatically spot-lit in a dark room, much like jewellery at an auction preview. Officially, the display is not a marketing device but a comment on the “belief system” of capitalism.
Money is a theme but also a problem. The retrospective was meant to travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, but it has been put on indefinite hold because the show is so expensive. Works such as Mr Hirst’s famous shark (ie, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” from 1991, pictured) take at least six technicians and a full seven days to install. The price of crating, shipping, installing and insuring Mr Hirst’s works exceeds MoCA’s entire annual exhibition budget of $3m—a sum donated by Eli Broad, a philanthropist. He has lent two works from his substantial collection of Hirsts to the Tate.
There are two conspicuous exclusions from the retrospective. First, it contains no figurative paintings of any kind—no photorealist works, no microscopic views of cancer cells, none of the canvasses that Mr Hirst paints with his own hand in the style of Francis Bacon. As it happens, most critics find these paintings painful to behold. Second, the exhibition omits “The Golden Calf” (2008), a bull with gold horns and hooves in a gold-plated tank, which was the centrepiece of Mr Hirst’s 2008 Sotheby’s sale, “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”. The Wall Street Journal reported that Francois Pinault bought the 10.3m bull, a perplexing move for the owner of Christie’s, a connoisseur with minimalist taste. Certainly Mr Pinault has deep investments in Mr Hirst’s work. He has lent two pieces to the Tate, including an important precursor to the shark, “Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (right)”.
Many collectors of Mr Hirst’s work hope that this show will reinvigorate his market. According to artnet, a firm that tracks the art market, in 2011 one in four Hirst works that came up for auction failed to sell, and his highest price was $1.7m, down from $19m in 2007. Last year total auction turnover in Hirst works was a mere $29.6m, placing him well behind artists such as Gerhard Richter, whose work earned almost $200m in auction sales, and Zeng Fanzhi, a Chinese painter who is probably the richest artist in the world.
2012年3月21日星期三
How Damien Hirst tried to transform the art market
In his television documentary The Mona Lisa Curse, the pugnacious and persuasive art critic Robert Hughes argued that traditional values which judge art by its quality have been overridden by marketing and hype, and that, in the present consumer culture, the only meaning left for art is a financial one. Perhaps today, the millions who visit museums do so in order to contemplate art’s financial rather than aesthetic values.
The artists Hughes singled out as being worth so much more than they merited were Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. So will people go to Hirst’s retrospective at Tate Modern to mull over the millions of pounds his art represents? The critics are likely to see the selection, which emphasises his early work, as supporting the view that Hirst had made his best, most original work by the latter half of the 1990s, and everything after that was repetition. But then, even if it has been a bit of a production line, it has been a very successful one, and so in itself a comment on consumer culture.
Warhol also addressed consumer culture, was repetitive, and employed factory workers to make his art, just as Hirst has done. But the difference is that Hirst has enjoyed far more commercial success than Warhol ever did.
Hirst is often cited as the richest artist in the UK, even in the world. In 2009, the Sunday Times Rich List assessed his wealth at 235 million. That may have been an understatement. In 2008, his business manager, Frank Dunphy, said Hirst was “a dollar billionaire”. Dunphy, an accountant who had worked with the artist since the mid-Nineties, was clearly proud of his achievement, turning Hirst from a potential drunken layabout into a number-one bankable asset, and a lot of interesting facts came out.
Hirst employed 160 staff making artworks for him at five studios in England. He owned dozens of properties from Mayfair to Mexico, including the 3 million Toddington Manor, where he planned to put his art collection – then worth about $400 million (252 million) – including a self-portrait by Francis Bacon which he had bought in 2007 for 16 million.
There wasn’t a run-down of gallery sales but, occasionally, some figures would be revealed: Charles Saatchi buying the Humbrol toy sculpture, Hymn, for 1 million, a White Cube sell-out for 11 million, a multi-million sell-out in his first show in Mexico – added to which was the $20 million (12 million) sale of the contents of the Pharmacy restaurant, and the 111 million pound Beautiful sale at Sotheby’s, which took place just before the West’s financial crash.
Adding to the earnings figures has been Other Criteria, Hirst’s retail outlet, which was netting $12 million (7.5 million) a year on brand products like prints and T-shirts. Recently Hirst has announced his plans to build 500 eco homes in Devon – a money-spinner if it takes off – and the opening of a gallery in London to house his own collection.
The popular obsession with wealth and fame has ensured that Hirst’s name is ineradicably associated with something other than his art. The 50 million diamond-encrusted skull he made in 2007 tells us how wealth cannot buy immortality. The Sotheby’s sale in 2008 was a statement of the artist’s superiority over his dealers and, being more of the same but with added bling for the new rich collectors, a work of art in itself.
Both of these are featured in the Tate show – the skull in the Turbine Hall, and an installation from the Sotheby’s sale upstairs to support the “whole work of art” idea. But if they are about money, neither is quite complete.
The skull has never been sold properly, so doesn’t have a real value – only the price attached to it. And the effects of the Sotheby’s sale are still being played out, as works that were bought there (perhaps with the extended credit terms that were offered) resurface on the market, selling for half or two-thirds of the price they sold for initially.
This fits well with Hirst’s intentions to reverse the normal pattern of accruing value – to buy the new work from the artist or his dealer for, say, 1,000, wait for the value to go up, and then resell for 10,000 – excluding the artist from any profit.
Hirst objected to that process, saying he believed artists should make their work more expensive at the first point of sale. “The first time you sell something is when it should cost the most,” he said. It means treating a work of art like a new car or a piece of furniture, but it is the way an artist, who does not profit from auction resales, can make the most money.
If this is what happened at the Sotheby’s sale, with Hirst pocketing the lion’s share, it has been the buyers who have suffered a loss at the point of resale, not Hirst. Nor has Hirst been perturbed by the downturn in his auction prices. “What goes up must come down,” he says. “It’s like when John Lennon went to get his long hair cut and was asked why. 'What else can you do after you’ve grown it long?’ he answered.”
The artists Hughes singled out as being worth so much more than they merited were Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. So will people go to Hirst’s retrospective at Tate Modern to mull over the millions of pounds his art represents? The critics are likely to see the selection, which emphasises his early work, as supporting the view that Hirst had made his best, most original work by the latter half of the 1990s, and everything after that was repetition. But then, even if it has been a bit of a production line, it has been a very successful one, and so in itself a comment on consumer culture.
Warhol also addressed consumer culture, was repetitive, and employed factory workers to make his art, just as Hirst has done. But the difference is that Hirst has enjoyed far more commercial success than Warhol ever did.
Hirst is often cited as the richest artist in the UK, even in the world. In 2009, the Sunday Times Rich List assessed his wealth at 235 million. That may have been an understatement. In 2008, his business manager, Frank Dunphy, said Hirst was “a dollar billionaire”. Dunphy, an accountant who had worked with the artist since the mid-Nineties, was clearly proud of his achievement, turning Hirst from a potential drunken layabout into a number-one bankable asset, and a lot of interesting facts came out.
Hirst employed 160 staff making artworks for him at five studios in England. He owned dozens of properties from Mayfair to Mexico, including the 3 million Toddington Manor, where he planned to put his art collection – then worth about $400 million (252 million) – including a self-portrait by Francis Bacon which he had bought in 2007 for 16 million.
There wasn’t a run-down of gallery sales but, occasionally, some figures would be revealed: Charles Saatchi buying the Humbrol toy sculpture, Hymn, for 1 million, a White Cube sell-out for 11 million, a multi-million sell-out in his first show in Mexico – added to which was the $20 million (12 million) sale of the contents of the Pharmacy restaurant, and the 111 million pound Beautiful sale at Sotheby’s, which took place just before the West’s financial crash.
Adding to the earnings figures has been Other Criteria, Hirst’s retail outlet, which was netting $12 million (7.5 million) a year on brand products like prints and T-shirts. Recently Hirst has announced his plans to build 500 eco homes in Devon – a money-spinner if it takes off – and the opening of a gallery in London to house his own collection.
The popular obsession with wealth and fame has ensured that Hirst’s name is ineradicably associated with something other than his art. The 50 million diamond-encrusted skull he made in 2007 tells us how wealth cannot buy immortality. The Sotheby’s sale in 2008 was a statement of the artist’s superiority over his dealers and, being more of the same but with added bling for the new rich collectors, a work of art in itself.
Both of these are featured in the Tate show – the skull in the Turbine Hall, and an installation from the Sotheby’s sale upstairs to support the “whole work of art” idea. But if they are about money, neither is quite complete.
The skull has never been sold properly, so doesn’t have a real value – only the price attached to it. And the effects of the Sotheby’s sale are still being played out, as works that were bought there (perhaps with the extended credit terms that were offered) resurface on the market, selling for half or two-thirds of the price they sold for initially.
This fits well with Hirst’s intentions to reverse the normal pattern of accruing value – to buy the new work from the artist or his dealer for, say, 1,000, wait for the value to go up, and then resell for 10,000 – excluding the artist from any profit.
Hirst objected to that process, saying he believed artists should make their work more expensive at the first point of sale. “The first time you sell something is when it should cost the most,” he said. It means treating a work of art like a new car or a piece of furniture, but it is the way an artist, who does not profit from auction resales, can make the most money.
If this is what happened at the Sotheby’s sale, with Hirst pocketing the lion’s share, it has been the buyers who have suffered a loss at the point of resale, not Hirst. Nor has Hirst been perturbed by the downturn in his auction prices. “What goes up must come down,” he says. “It’s like when John Lennon went to get his long hair cut and was asked why. 'What else can you do after you’ve grown it long?’ he answered.”
2012年3月20日星期二
Art market news: Serge Lifar’s estate sold for 7.3 million
Buyers were on a high at the Geneva sale last week of dancer Serge Lifar’s estate. The sale was estimated to fetch 1.5 million Swiss Francs (1 million), but realised 7.3 million SFr. Top lot was a set of 48 drawings by Jean Cocteau for his book Opium, which sold for 912,000 SFr – nearly 10 times the estimate – to Paris book dealer Jean-Claude Vrain. The Musée des lettres et manuscrits de Paris was extremely active, spending nearly 1 million SFr on autographed manuscripts and drawings by Cocteau and his friend Raymond Radiguet. One of the most extraordinary results was the 430,000 SFr paid for two inscribed photographs of Lifar with Coco Chanel, and a letter from Chanel. The estimate was 300 SFr.
The art critic and curator Andrew Renton made his first appearance as a commercial gallery director at Maastricht last week, where Marlborough Fine Art has hung a number of paintings by younger artists selected by Renton, who has been head-hunted from Goldsmith’s College of Art to bring the gallery into the 21st century. The paintings by Renton’s contemporaries, Koen van den Broek, Jason Brooks, Pam Golden and Graham Gussin, were priced between 7,000 and 55,000. Marlborough will officially open its London gallery extension for the contemporary art programme which Renton will direct, in October, to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair.
A highlight of the British Antique Dealers’ Association fair, which opens in Chelsea on Wednesday, is the display of watercolours by the 19th-century artist William Callow. Assembled over two decades by art consultant Julia Korner, and presented on the 200th anniversary of his birth, the collection shows Callow as a classical, plein-air watercolourist, who has perhaps unjustly been overshadowed by Girtin, Sandby and Bonington. Prices range from 900 to 40,000.
The best collection of paintings ever auctioned by north country artist Alan Lowndes is to be presented by Tennants in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, on Friday. Lowndes, who died in 1978 aged 57, was unfairly described a “the poor man’s Lowry”, but is currently being recognised as a highly individual artist. Highest estimate for the group is 12,000 for March Fair (pictured), which had been owned by Hollywood film star Rod Steiger. Expect Tennants’ conservative estimates to be left in the dust.
When London dealer Johnny van Haeften could not fly to Vienna to inspect a rare masterpiece by the Flemish painter Frans Francken, because of the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruptions, he bought it on the strength of internet reproductions for a staggering 7 million ($9.5 million). Last weekend, the dealer’s judgment was endorsed at TEFAF in Maastricht, when he sold the painting, Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma – the Choice Between Vice and Vertu, to an American collector for close to $14 million.
The art critic and curator Andrew Renton made his first appearance as a commercial gallery director at Maastricht last week, where Marlborough Fine Art has hung a number of paintings by younger artists selected by Renton, who has been head-hunted from Goldsmith’s College of Art to bring the gallery into the 21st century. The paintings by Renton’s contemporaries, Koen van den Broek, Jason Brooks, Pam Golden and Graham Gussin, were priced between 7,000 and 55,000. Marlborough will officially open its London gallery extension for the contemporary art programme which Renton will direct, in October, to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair.
A highlight of the British Antique Dealers’ Association fair, which opens in Chelsea on Wednesday, is the display of watercolours by the 19th-century artist William Callow. Assembled over two decades by art consultant Julia Korner, and presented on the 200th anniversary of his birth, the collection shows Callow as a classical, plein-air watercolourist, who has perhaps unjustly been overshadowed by Girtin, Sandby and Bonington. Prices range from 900 to 40,000.
The best collection of paintings ever auctioned by north country artist Alan Lowndes is to be presented by Tennants in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, on Friday. Lowndes, who died in 1978 aged 57, was unfairly described a “the poor man’s Lowry”, but is currently being recognised as a highly individual artist. Highest estimate for the group is 12,000 for March Fair (pictured), which had been owned by Hollywood film star Rod Steiger. Expect Tennants’ conservative estimates to be left in the dust.
When London dealer Johnny van Haeften could not fly to Vienna to inspect a rare masterpiece by the Flemish painter Frans Francken, because of the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruptions, he bought it on the strength of internet reproductions for a staggering 7 million ($9.5 million). Last weekend, the dealer’s judgment was endorsed at TEFAF in Maastricht, when he sold the painting, Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma – the Choice Between Vice and Vertu, to an American collector for close to $14 million.
2012年3月19日星期一
Art for mart’s sake
Britain is bust but sharp ironies beset its bankruptcy. The government proposes cutting taxes for the rich, the summer Olympic Games are costing billions of pounds and last week, the National Galleries of England and Scotland, with added money from government and patrons, bought a single painting
from the Duke of Sutherland for 45 million (approximately R3,600 million). They said they were “saving the painting for the nation”.
The Duke of Sutherland, though richer through the sale, has been lauded for resisting the temptation to sell it on the open market. He patriotically, it is said, sacrificed twice or more of that sum through this sale.
The painting is Titian’s Diana and Callisto, acknowledged as one of the great works of the Renaissance and one of a pair, its twin being Titian’s Diana and Actaeon. Together they have fetched 95 million and have been valued at three times that price — hence the praise for the Duke’s patriotic sacrifice.
The paintings are not in any sense part of Britain’s heritage. Titian was born Tiziano Vecelli in the state of Venice and his paintings were commissioned mostly by the Italian church and nobility. In later years, he was patronised by Phillip II of Spain who married Queen Mary of England, but Titian’s works didn’t come to Britain through such an alliance, though the Diana paintings were commissioned for the Escorial in Madrid.
Classical and Renaissance artefacts were acquired by the aristocracy of Europe through the ages and changed hands through coercion or commerce.
The joke that circulated in Britain after the urban riots and open looting in British cities in the summer of last year was: Question: “Where did these young looters get the idea that you could break in and take stuff that didn’t belong to you?” Answer: “Er... have you ever been to the British Museum?” .
The price of art has always been bewildering, but then so has the fact that boys and girls who sing songs can become billionaires overnight as their offerings climb the charts. In the same bracket of annoyance are the wages of professional footballers who, with an enviable skill and luck, can earn in a week more than billions of people earn in a lifetime.
In a higher bracket of indignation — causing frustration — are the bonuses that bankers and controlling capitalists pay themselves for fooling around with other people’s money and living off the sweat of other people’s labour while maintaining the pretence that they are in some unfathomable sense the ‘creators’ of wealth.
Even so, I would agree that Titian’s Diana and Callisto is in the top rank of civilisation’s artefacts and though judgement of a painting is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, few would equate a Titian or a Tintoretto with the efforts of, say, a contemporary Indian artist who illustrates horses in a faux-modern style.
Even so, I was till recently pleasantly surprised by the prices that the work of hundreds of Indian painters was fetching. An old friend, a dealer who lives and works in Dubai, attempted, after a few rum cocktails, to give me an explanation for this sudden popularity of Indian art. It’s bought, he said, for a price in India and then finds its way to a tax-haven such as Dubai where it is publicly auctioned. The agents of the owner clandestinely bid for the artefact, raising their paws to indicate very large multiples of the original price thus acquiring the painting. A receipt for the sale changes hands and legitimises the large sum of money transferred, possibly turning what we call ‘black money’ into ‘white’. The art laundry?
That such a mechanism enriches artists or puts higher and higher premiums on their work is fine. In a sense it’s a more ‘honest’ and purposeful inflationary device than the snobbery, fakery and emperor’s-new-clothes-ism that infests the sale of fraudulent western ‘artists’ who subsist without the least mastery of craft on ‘installations’ of empty echoing rooms, stuffed dead animals or dirty ruffled beds strewn with the detritus of a vain life.
The sin of envy is based on comparison and on a perception, through some unfair vicissitude of fortune, on missing out. On hearing of the sum paid for the Diana I couldn’t help but recall a persistent family legend:
In my father’s childhood, his grandfather Jamshedji Saklatwalla had acquired from a French collector in Paris a painting which was arguably the ‘missing’ one of a trio of Titian Venuses. Jamshedji’s expensive acquisition was titled Venus Reclining to Music and portrayed the nude figure of the goddess doing just that. Jamshedji had framed and mounted it in the sitting room of the ancestral home in Byculla, Mumbai.
One story goes that a visiting Parsi priest, who wasn’t very up on Renaissance art, was mesmerised by the nude figure as he waited for my great-grandfather to emerge and when he did asked in as polite a way as Parsi Gujarati would allow, “What induced Jaiji to indulge this fancy?”
Jamshedji travelled with his Venus through the length and breadth of Europe trying to get her authenticated as a Titian but, despite being not openly discouraged by the art experts of the time, never got a definite endorsement. ‘Of the school of’ was as far as the experts would go.
from the Duke of Sutherland for 45 million (approximately R3,600 million). They said they were “saving the painting for the nation”.
The Duke of Sutherland, though richer through the sale, has been lauded for resisting the temptation to sell it on the open market. He patriotically, it is said, sacrificed twice or more of that sum through this sale.
The painting is Titian’s Diana and Callisto, acknowledged as one of the great works of the Renaissance and one of a pair, its twin being Titian’s Diana and Actaeon. Together they have fetched 95 million and have been valued at three times that price — hence the praise for the Duke’s patriotic sacrifice.
The paintings are not in any sense part of Britain’s heritage. Titian was born Tiziano Vecelli in the state of Venice and his paintings were commissioned mostly by the Italian church and nobility. In later years, he was patronised by Phillip II of Spain who married Queen Mary of England, but Titian’s works didn’t come to Britain through such an alliance, though the Diana paintings were commissioned for the Escorial in Madrid.
Classical and Renaissance artefacts were acquired by the aristocracy of Europe through the ages and changed hands through coercion or commerce.
The joke that circulated in Britain after the urban riots and open looting in British cities in the summer of last year was: Question: “Where did these young looters get the idea that you could break in and take stuff that didn’t belong to you?” Answer: “Er... have you ever been to the British Museum?” .
The price of art has always been bewildering, but then so has the fact that boys and girls who sing songs can become billionaires overnight as their offerings climb the charts. In the same bracket of annoyance are the wages of professional footballers who, with an enviable skill and luck, can earn in a week more than billions of people earn in a lifetime.
In a higher bracket of indignation — causing frustration — are the bonuses that bankers and controlling capitalists pay themselves for fooling around with other people’s money and living off the sweat of other people’s labour while maintaining the pretence that they are in some unfathomable sense the ‘creators’ of wealth.
Even so, I would agree that Titian’s Diana and Callisto is in the top rank of civilisation’s artefacts and though judgement of a painting is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, few would equate a Titian or a Tintoretto with the efforts of, say, a contemporary Indian artist who illustrates horses in a faux-modern style.
Even so, I was till recently pleasantly surprised by the prices that the work of hundreds of Indian painters was fetching. An old friend, a dealer who lives and works in Dubai, attempted, after a few rum cocktails, to give me an explanation for this sudden popularity of Indian art. It’s bought, he said, for a price in India and then finds its way to a tax-haven such as Dubai where it is publicly auctioned. The agents of the owner clandestinely bid for the artefact, raising their paws to indicate very large multiples of the original price thus acquiring the painting. A receipt for the sale changes hands and legitimises the large sum of money transferred, possibly turning what we call ‘black money’ into ‘white’. The art laundry?
That such a mechanism enriches artists or puts higher and higher premiums on their work is fine. In a sense it’s a more ‘honest’ and purposeful inflationary device than the snobbery, fakery and emperor’s-new-clothes-ism that infests the sale of fraudulent western ‘artists’ who subsist without the least mastery of craft on ‘installations’ of empty echoing rooms, stuffed dead animals or dirty ruffled beds strewn with the detritus of a vain life.
The sin of envy is based on comparison and on a perception, through some unfair vicissitude of fortune, on missing out. On hearing of the sum paid for the Diana I couldn’t help but recall a persistent family legend:
In my father’s childhood, his grandfather Jamshedji Saklatwalla had acquired from a French collector in Paris a painting which was arguably the ‘missing’ one of a trio of Titian Venuses. Jamshedji’s expensive acquisition was titled Venus Reclining to Music and portrayed the nude figure of the goddess doing just that. Jamshedji had framed and mounted it in the sitting room of the ancestral home in Byculla, Mumbai.
One story goes that a visiting Parsi priest, who wasn’t very up on Renaissance art, was mesmerised by the nude figure as he waited for my great-grandfather to emerge and when he did asked in as polite a way as Parsi Gujarati would allow, “What induced Jaiji to indulge this fancy?”
Jamshedji travelled with his Venus through the length and breadth of Europe trying to get her authenticated as a Titian but, despite being not openly discouraged by the art experts of the time, never got a definite endorsement. ‘Of the school of’ was as far as the experts would go.
2012年3月18日星期日
New York Art's Asia Week Set for Big Sales
New York art dealers might need to pull out marker pens and add zeros to their price tags during Asia Week sales starting this week in auction houses and galleries across the city.
Once a backwater of the international market, Asian art -- particularly Chinese -- has boomed in popularity.
Asia Week, which opened Friday and runs through March 24, will see leading rivals Sotheby's and Christie's, as well as smaller houses and individual galleries, focusing on everything from bold contemporary Indian paintings to classical Chinese ceramics.
"Our last five years we've seen an astonishing boom, a push into a new price level," Henry Howard-Sneyd, vice chairman for Asian art at Sotheby's, told AFP.
He pointed out that in 2011 the highest grossing artists at auction in the world were not the long-predictable top dogs Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, but Zhang Daqian, with nearly $507 million in sales, and Qi Bashi, with $445 million -- far ahead of their Western rivals.
That two Chinese painters barely known to the Western public should outperform artists synonymous with modern art does not surprise Sotheby's, which in this year's Asia Week is for the first time dedicating a distinct sale to classical Chinese works.
Among those works is a Qi Bashi painting of an eagle, somewhat similar to another of his paintings that last year sold for $65.5 million -- the most expensive painting at any auction in 2011.
The version offered by Sotheby's has an estimate of a modest $1.2-1.5 million. But Howard-Sneyd doesn't think estimates will survive once the red hot Chinese collectors take their seats.
Gesturing at galleries filled with Chinese ceramics, paintings, fans, and furniture, he said: "I think there'll be fireworks."
The head of Asian art at Christie's, Hugo Weihe, also has strong hopes for Asia Week.
Last year, sales of Asian art at Christie's saw a double-digit percent increase and are now the second place category behind overall contemporary art, but ahead of impressionist and modern.
Weihe pointed to wealthy, patriotic Chinese looking to their pre-revolutionary past for the ultimate status symbol.
"Chinese buyers are very interested in their heritage -- anything that has imperial marks. You've truly arrived in China if you can have something that belonged to an emperor," Weihe said.
Better known, but entirely different, is the Indian art market.
India has produced a string of top-notch modern and contemporary artists like Subodh Gupta, whose works are still considered relatively cheap.
"Indian art is underpriced, particularly contemporary," Weihe said. But that market will change as increasingly well educated Indian collectors think beyond simply decorating their living rooms and instead start building great national museums and collections.
"It's going to be private individuals and enterprises, rather like it was in America 100 years ago," Weihe said.
And the next artistic goldmine in Asia?
Pakistan is only just beginning to stir, says Deepanjana Klein, at Christie's.
"In Southeast Asia it's not yet that cool to be an artist, in Pakistan especially. In India, it's taken off, but in Pakistan it's still in its nascent phase," she said.
Then there's Bangladesh. The country "is having its first international art show next month, which is a huge step," Klein said.
Ironically, many of the available classical Asian works have long been in the hands of elite, private collectors in the West, such as the recently deceased Doris Weiner.
Once a backwater of the international market, Asian art -- particularly Chinese -- has boomed in popularity.
Asia Week, which opened Friday and runs through March 24, will see leading rivals Sotheby's and Christie's, as well as smaller houses and individual galleries, focusing on everything from bold contemporary Indian paintings to classical Chinese ceramics.
"Our last five years we've seen an astonishing boom, a push into a new price level," Henry Howard-Sneyd, vice chairman for Asian art at Sotheby's, told AFP.
He pointed out that in 2011 the highest grossing artists at auction in the world were not the long-predictable top dogs Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, but Zhang Daqian, with nearly $507 million in sales, and Qi Bashi, with $445 million -- far ahead of their Western rivals.
That two Chinese painters barely known to the Western public should outperform artists synonymous with modern art does not surprise Sotheby's, which in this year's Asia Week is for the first time dedicating a distinct sale to classical Chinese works.
Among those works is a Qi Bashi painting of an eagle, somewhat similar to another of his paintings that last year sold for $65.5 million -- the most expensive painting at any auction in 2011.
The version offered by Sotheby's has an estimate of a modest $1.2-1.5 million. But Howard-Sneyd doesn't think estimates will survive once the red hot Chinese collectors take their seats.
Gesturing at galleries filled with Chinese ceramics, paintings, fans, and furniture, he said: "I think there'll be fireworks."
The head of Asian art at Christie's, Hugo Weihe, also has strong hopes for Asia Week.
Last year, sales of Asian art at Christie's saw a double-digit percent increase and are now the second place category behind overall contemporary art, but ahead of impressionist and modern.
Weihe pointed to wealthy, patriotic Chinese looking to their pre-revolutionary past for the ultimate status symbol.
"Chinese buyers are very interested in their heritage -- anything that has imperial marks. You've truly arrived in China if you can have something that belonged to an emperor," Weihe said.
Better known, but entirely different, is the Indian art market.
India has produced a string of top-notch modern and contemporary artists like Subodh Gupta, whose works are still considered relatively cheap.
"Indian art is underpriced, particularly contemporary," Weihe said. But that market will change as increasingly well educated Indian collectors think beyond simply decorating their living rooms and instead start building great national museums and collections.
"It's going to be private individuals and enterprises, rather like it was in America 100 years ago," Weihe said.
And the next artistic goldmine in Asia?
Pakistan is only just beginning to stir, says Deepanjana Klein, at Christie's.
"In Southeast Asia it's not yet that cool to be an artist, in Pakistan especially. In India, it's taken off, but in Pakistan it's still in its nascent phase," she said.
Then there's Bangladesh. The country "is having its first international art show next month, which is a huge step," Klein said.
Ironically, many of the available classical Asian works have long been in the hands of elite, private collectors in the West, such as the recently deceased Doris Weiner.
2012年3月15日星期四
Portrait of Middle East as hub for collectors
Sales of paintings, sculptures and other works set records in the Middle East last year as the region's art market became more firmly established.
At Christie's Middle East, which is based in Dubai, 38 per cent of the works of art sold through the auction house last year topped their highest pre-sale estimates, while 85 world auction records were set as interest in contemporary Middle Eastern art continued to grow.
One wood-and-copper piece, called Message/Messenger, sold for US$842,500 (Dh3.1 million) - 10 times its original estimate.
"We had probably one of the best years for Christie's, because we're seeing not only investors coming into the market but collectors investing more into their collection," said Isabelle de la Bruyère, the director of Christie's Middle East.
Overall, the company has sold about $220m worth of art since it launched in Dubai in 2006.
"The market is healthy and good for buyers, because they can see this is a market that is sustainable and attracting more and more interest," said Ms de la Bruyère.
Five galleries have recently opened in Dubai, in time for Art Week, which officially began in the Emirates yesterday and runs until next Sunday.
The event is expected to attract even more buyers to the region, and experts say that more purchasers are coming not only from the UAE and Saudi Arabia but also from other emerging markets.
More collectors from Pakistan are basing themselves in the Emirates, as are buyers from South Asia, said Antonia Carver, the fair director for Art Dubai, a festival featuring 75 galleries that begins on Wednesday at the Madinat Jumeirah hotel.
"The market is becoming more and more diversified, and Dubai is becoming more and more a global hub for the arts," said Ms Carver.
Globally, the art market has been buffered and, in fact, bolstered thanks in large part to a surge of buyers from China. Buyers from China accounted for 41.4 per cent of last year's global art auction revenue of $11.5 billion.
The total art market now represents about $90bn, according to data released last month by Artprice, a French company that monitors sales in the industry.
"The art market has ridden the global financial crisis … in a way that people had not predicted necessarily," said Ms Carver. "Auctions have held up, and particularly in the Gulf."
Next month in Dubai, Christie's plans to hold a sale of modern and contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish art.
The company is also continuing with a programme launched last year to appeal to younger, less affluent investors who are interested in starting art collections. Prices for works in this tier tend to range from $2,000 to $3,000.
"We realise our auctions are intimidating and people do have a tendency to think you need to be a millionaire to come to Christie's," said Ms de la Bruyère. "But that is not actually the case.
"Art is not for the elite. Art is for absolutely everybody."
Through the Art Dubai fair, Ms Carver aims to increase exposure and sales for local galleries by bringing museum directors, curators, boards of patrons and major donors to the Emirates. This year, more than 70 groups are set to attend Art Dubai, including some from the British Museum, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Asia Pacific Contemporary Society of Australia.
At Christie's Middle East, which is based in Dubai, 38 per cent of the works of art sold through the auction house last year topped their highest pre-sale estimates, while 85 world auction records were set as interest in contemporary Middle Eastern art continued to grow.
One wood-and-copper piece, called Message/Messenger, sold for US$842,500 (Dh3.1 million) - 10 times its original estimate.
"We had probably one of the best years for Christie's, because we're seeing not only investors coming into the market but collectors investing more into their collection," said Isabelle de la Bruyère, the director of Christie's Middle East.
Overall, the company has sold about $220m worth of art since it launched in Dubai in 2006.
"The market is healthy and good for buyers, because they can see this is a market that is sustainable and attracting more and more interest," said Ms de la Bruyère.
Five galleries have recently opened in Dubai, in time for Art Week, which officially began in the Emirates yesterday and runs until next Sunday.
The event is expected to attract even more buyers to the region, and experts say that more purchasers are coming not only from the UAE and Saudi Arabia but also from other emerging markets.
More collectors from Pakistan are basing themselves in the Emirates, as are buyers from South Asia, said Antonia Carver, the fair director for Art Dubai, a festival featuring 75 galleries that begins on Wednesday at the Madinat Jumeirah hotel.
"The market is becoming more and more diversified, and Dubai is becoming more and more a global hub for the arts," said Ms Carver.
Globally, the art market has been buffered and, in fact, bolstered thanks in large part to a surge of buyers from China. Buyers from China accounted for 41.4 per cent of last year's global art auction revenue of $11.5 billion.
The total art market now represents about $90bn, according to data released last month by Artprice, a French company that monitors sales in the industry.
"The art market has ridden the global financial crisis … in a way that people had not predicted necessarily," said Ms Carver. "Auctions have held up, and particularly in the Gulf."
Next month in Dubai, Christie's plans to hold a sale of modern and contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish art.
The company is also continuing with a programme launched last year to appeal to younger, less affluent investors who are interested in starting art collections. Prices for works in this tier tend to range from $2,000 to $3,000.
"We realise our auctions are intimidating and people do have a tendency to think you need to be a millionaire to come to Christie's," said Ms de la Bruyère. "But that is not actually the case.
"Art is not for the elite. Art is for absolutely everybody."
Through the Art Dubai fair, Ms Carver aims to increase exposure and sales for local galleries by bringing museum directors, curators, boards of patrons and major donors to the Emirates. This year, more than 70 groups are set to attend Art Dubai, including some from the British Museum, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Asia Pacific Contemporary Society of Australia.
2012年3月14日星期三
Garage sale to foster unity among neighbours
THE Rukun Tetangga of Section 6 hosted a garage sale on a Sunday morning recently to foster better neighbourhood ties.
The sale did not take place in any of the residents' garages, but held at the RT beat base there instead.
Residents sold items such as clothes, children's toys, second-hand books, paintings, accessories, as well as food and drinks.
The RT was revived three years ago after years of dormancy.
The event, held for the first time, managed to attract about 150 residents who took the opportunity to mingle and chat.
Section 6 RT chairman Rajesh Mansukhlal said the objective of the garage sale was to get to know the neighbours living in their section and those from neighbouring sections.
"Residents who sold some of their items were happy over the support shown.
"We will try to host this event more frequently. The garage sale was not profit-orientated.
"Instead, it was to encourage residents to familiarise themselves with one another," said Rajesh.
Residents who took part in the sale were also encouraged to donate a small sum to the RT. The fund will be channelled towards a charitable body.
Section 6 RT vice-chairman K. Chandrashekaran said some of the RT members went door-to-door to drop leaflets in mail boxes to inform residents of the event.
"We used to feel like strangers, but an event such as this allows us to bond better," said Chandrashekaran.
Section 6 RT secretary Sheila Kuppusamy said despite the school holidays, many turned up for the event. She added Unity Petaling district officer Shaik Zaiful Nizam Shaik Mansoor's presence was a morale booster for residents.
Shaik Zaiful represents an umbrella body under the Department of National Unity and Integration.
He said the objective of his department was to foster unity among all races.
"Section 6 residents have set a good example. Festive celebrations and sports activities are among the other types of events that can help bring a community closer," he said.
Shaik Zaiful added the department has a yearly allocation of RM4,800 for each of the registered RTs, which will also be offered incentives for events organised.
He also cited the example of the Taman Gasing Indah RT which managed to reduce its neighbourhood's crime rate since their active involvement to unite residents.
"In 2009, the neighbourhood recorded a high number of crimes.
"However, since its RT became active, the crime rate had dropped by 90 per cent. We have the police records to prove this," he said.
Section 6 RT assistant treasurer Datuk Dr Johnny Chai said he does not like the idea of private security as practiced in some neighbourhoods.
"We need to promote unity instead of opting for private security to safeguard our houses. Not many can afford private security.
"But when the residents are close and stay connected, we can look out for one another," he said.
The sale did not take place in any of the residents' garages, but held at the RT beat base there instead.
Residents sold items such as clothes, children's toys, second-hand books, paintings, accessories, as well as food and drinks.
The RT was revived three years ago after years of dormancy.
The event, held for the first time, managed to attract about 150 residents who took the opportunity to mingle and chat.
Section 6 RT chairman Rajesh Mansukhlal said the objective of the garage sale was to get to know the neighbours living in their section and those from neighbouring sections.
"Residents who sold some of their items were happy over the support shown.
"We will try to host this event more frequently. The garage sale was not profit-orientated.
"Instead, it was to encourage residents to familiarise themselves with one another," said Rajesh.
Residents who took part in the sale were also encouraged to donate a small sum to the RT. The fund will be channelled towards a charitable body.
Section 6 RT vice-chairman K. Chandrashekaran said some of the RT members went door-to-door to drop leaflets in mail boxes to inform residents of the event.
"We used to feel like strangers, but an event such as this allows us to bond better," said Chandrashekaran.
Section 6 RT secretary Sheila Kuppusamy said despite the school holidays, many turned up for the event. She added Unity Petaling district officer Shaik Zaiful Nizam Shaik Mansoor's presence was a morale booster for residents.
Shaik Zaiful represents an umbrella body under the Department of National Unity and Integration.
He said the objective of his department was to foster unity among all races.
"Section 6 residents have set a good example. Festive celebrations and sports activities are among the other types of events that can help bring a community closer," he said.
Shaik Zaiful added the department has a yearly allocation of RM4,800 for each of the registered RTs, which will also be offered incentives for events organised.
He also cited the example of the Taman Gasing Indah RT which managed to reduce its neighbourhood's crime rate since their active involvement to unite residents.
"In 2009, the neighbourhood recorded a high number of crimes.
"However, since its RT became active, the crime rate had dropped by 90 per cent. We have the police records to prove this," he said.
Section 6 RT assistant treasurer Datuk Dr Johnny Chai said he does not like the idea of private security as practiced in some neighbourhoods.
"We need to promote unity instead of opting for private security to safeguard our houses. Not many can afford private security.
"But when the residents are close and stay connected, we can look out for one another," he said.
2012年3月13日星期二
100 Unearthed Lots and Asian Art Headline Clarke Auction's March 18th Auction
The last 100 lots of Clarke Auction’s March 18th sale include a variety of American and International oil paintings, drawings, and prints that the Auction had unearthed from a storage unit, earlier this week, but the discovery of the fine art is not the only conquest of Clarke Auction for the upcoming auction. The day’s auction, starts at 2:00pm, will include a worldly collection of art, furniture, and silver.
Just as Mark Antony adored Cleopatra, so too does Clarke have a fondness for Egyptian beauty, as exemplified in the oil and sand on masonite painting, entitled “Le Menestral,” by Egyptian artist Omar El Nagdi. The work portrays a faceless minstrel, layered atop the textured sand and masonite that recalls the dunes of the Egyptian Sahara. It is an undoubtedly magnificent piece that explores the 1961 modernity of Egyptian artistry and should stir some incredible bidding interest.
Directly across the Mediterranean from Egypt, Italy yields some rare works for the March 18th auction, including two landscapes by Guido Trentini. Trentini, who is most renowned for his portraits “Velia” and “Madonna,” also lent his talents to a few select landscapes. His featured paintings at the auction are the 1929 oil on panel of an Italian farmhouse and the 1927 Vienna landscape. Among other Italian works in the auction, a signed and dated oil on panel of a watermill by Pio Solero also stands out.
Worldly connoisseurs of the ancient world found the exotic and the intriguing in the Far East, and this week’s New York auction scene is not much different. Clarke Auction, along with Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams’ Auction houses, in New York City, embraces Asia Week New York 2012. Clarke’s Asian highlights for the March 18th auction include a signed Chinese ivory carved covered censor and a mixed media work entitled “Autumn Evening” by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The censor is complete with removable top adorned with foo dogs, carved dragon handles, and a wood base. The Kusama is watercolor and spray paint on paper. Other Asian highlights include a Famille Verte export bowl, a bronze Chinese warrior, a pair of carved Chinese hard stone plaques, a jade and brass inkwell, and a pair of Chinese hardwood carved chairs. Along with the Asian works, there is an exceptional highlight from Eurasia in the form of a Russian silver, possibly Faberge, bowl. The signed “plique-a-jour” enameled sugar bowl is estate fresh and intricately designed.
An American addition to the March 18th auction comes from the American Realist, Eugene Speicher. The Buffalo, New York born artist was well known for his affiliations with Hopper, Henri, and Rockwell Kent. Two lots from Speicher are available in the upcoming auction. The two Speicher lots are a 1912 oil on canvas of a spring landscape, as well another beautiful 1912 oil on canvas spring landscape with distant mountains. Both paintings are estate fresh from an Oyster Bay, Long Island location. Other notable American art highlights in the auction include three lots from Alexander Calder. The three lithographs are entitled, “McGovern,” “Seahorse,” and “Butterflies and Spiral,” respectively. Also, a lot of four plaster chess pieces by Tom Otterness will be featured. Finally, from the United States territory of Puerto Rico, expertly painted oil optical entitled “Point” by Paul Camacho is to be auctioned off as well.
Clarke Auction also features several Midcentury Modern furniture lots in the upcoming auction. The Midcentury highlights include some rare and worldly pieces. There is an early Eames lounge chair and ottoman, a Horst Bruning day bed, two Paul McCobb chests, and the rare "Cityscape" desk and "Cityscape" credenza by Paul Evans. The Evans twin pedestal desk is made of burl walnut with seven drawers and mirrored chrome. The "Cityscape" cabinet is also burl walnut and displays matte chrome. Both Evans' pieces came from the same New Rochelle estate and are in prime condition.
The Decorative Art highlights include 3 lots of stunning life-sized signed bronzes, marked "Houdan" and "H. Rouard Fondeur" on the base. All three pieces are of superior quality and condition from an Oyster Bay, Long Island estate. A 17th century tapestry of a lion and his prey is also featured in the sale from the same estate. The most abundant lots from the Decorative Art selection are porcelain. There are over 30 individual porcelain and collection lots that include seven lots by Belleek that make up almost 25 reticulated and polished porcelain items. Also among the porcelain lots, there are several beautiful examples of porcelain art from Meissen and Sevres. Meissen porcelin lots feature a lot of 4 porcelain figures, a pair of unusual candlesticks, a lot of porcelain lamps, a pair of porcelain covered urns with gilt bronze bases, and a porcelain grouping that includes a large Mottahedeh cache pot and stand. The Sevres lots feature a pair of Napoleonic Urns, and a teapot featured in the porcelain grouping previously mentioned.
Silver has always been a global symbol of prestige and wealth, and the featured lots at Clarke reinforce that belief. Highlights in the silver lots include an extremely heavy Tiffany Tray, a fine Mexican tea set, and a Tiffany reticulated silver filigree tazza and bowl. The Mexican tea set includes a Coffee Pot, creamer, open bowl, sugar, and server, weighing approximately 173 troy ounces as a set. Also for sale is an accompanying Mexican silver "Joyerian Reel" jug, weighing approximately 36 troy ounces. The tea set and jug were both consigned from a Park Avenue estate. Additional highlights among the silver lots are a 7 troy ounce sterling cup and saucer by Gustav Klingert, a Tiffany & Co. Chippendale style tray, and several sterling flatware lots.
Just as Mark Antony adored Cleopatra, so too does Clarke have a fondness for Egyptian beauty, as exemplified in the oil and sand on masonite painting, entitled “Le Menestral,” by Egyptian artist Omar El Nagdi. The work portrays a faceless minstrel, layered atop the textured sand and masonite that recalls the dunes of the Egyptian Sahara. It is an undoubtedly magnificent piece that explores the 1961 modernity of Egyptian artistry and should stir some incredible bidding interest.
Directly across the Mediterranean from Egypt, Italy yields some rare works for the March 18th auction, including two landscapes by Guido Trentini. Trentini, who is most renowned for his portraits “Velia” and “Madonna,” also lent his talents to a few select landscapes. His featured paintings at the auction are the 1929 oil on panel of an Italian farmhouse and the 1927 Vienna landscape. Among other Italian works in the auction, a signed and dated oil on panel of a watermill by Pio Solero also stands out.
Worldly connoisseurs of the ancient world found the exotic and the intriguing in the Far East, and this week’s New York auction scene is not much different. Clarke Auction, along with Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams’ Auction houses, in New York City, embraces Asia Week New York 2012. Clarke’s Asian highlights for the March 18th auction include a signed Chinese ivory carved covered censor and a mixed media work entitled “Autumn Evening” by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The censor is complete with removable top adorned with foo dogs, carved dragon handles, and a wood base. The Kusama is watercolor and spray paint on paper. Other Asian highlights include a Famille Verte export bowl, a bronze Chinese warrior, a pair of carved Chinese hard stone plaques, a jade and brass inkwell, and a pair of Chinese hardwood carved chairs. Along with the Asian works, there is an exceptional highlight from Eurasia in the form of a Russian silver, possibly Faberge, bowl. The signed “plique-a-jour” enameled sugar bowl is estate fresh and intricately designed.
An American addition to the March 18th auction comes from the American Realist, Eugene Speicher. The Buffalo, New York born artist was well known for his affiliations with Hopper, Henri, and Rockwell Kent. Two lots from Speicher are available in the upcoming auction. The two Speicher lots are a 1912 oil on canvas of a spring landscape, as well another beautiful 1912 oil on canvas spring landscape with distant mountains. Both paintings are estate fresh from an Oyster Bay, Long Island location. Other notable American art highlights in the auction include three lots from Alexander Calder. The three lithographs are entitled, “McGovern,” “Seahorse,” and “Butterflies and Spiral,” respectively. Also, a lot of four plaster chess pieces by Tom Otterness will be featured. Finally, from the United States territory of Puerto Rico, expertly painted oil optical entitled “Point” by Paul Camacho is to be auctioned off as well.
Clarke Auction also features several Midcentury Modern furniture lots in the upcoming auction. The Midcentury highlights include some rare and worldly pieces. There is an early Eames lounge chair and ottoman, a Horst Bruning day bed, two Paul McCobb chests, and the rare "Cityscape" desk and "Cityscape" credenza by Paul Evans. The Evans twin pedestal desk is made of burl walnut with seven drawers and mirrored chrome. The "Cityscape" cabinet is also burl walnut and displays matte chrome. Both Evans' pieces came from the same New Rochelle estate and are in prime condition.
The Decorative Art highlights include 3 lots of stunning life-sized signed bronzes, marked "Houdan" and "H. Rouard Fondeur" on the base. All three pieces are of superior quality and condition from an Oyster Bay, Long Island estate. A 17th century tapestry of a lion and his prey is also featured in the sale from the same estate. The most abundant lots from the Decorative Art selection are porcelain. There are over 30 individual porcelain and collection lots that include seven lots by Belleek that make up almost 25 reticulated and polished porcelain items. Also among the porcelain lots, there are several beautiful examples of porcelain art from Meissen and Sevres. Meissen porcelin lots feature a lot of 4 porcelain figures, a pair of unusual candlesticks, a lot of porcelain lamps, a pair of porcelain covered urns with gilt bronze bases, and a porcelain grouping that includes a large Mottahedeh cache pot and stand. The Sevres lots feature a pair of Napoleonic Urns, and a teapot featured in the porcelain grouping previously mentioned.
Silver has always been a global symbol of prestige and wealth, and the featured lots at Clarke reinforce that belief. Highlights in the silver lots include an extremely heavy Tiffany Tray, a fine Mexican tea set, and a Tiffany reticulated silver filigree tazza and bowl. The Mexican tea set includes a Coffee Pot, creamer, open bowl, sugar, and server, weighing approximately 173 troy ounces as a set. Also for sale is an accompanying Mexican silver "Joyerian Reel" jug, weighing approximately 36 troy ounces. The tea set and jug were both consigned from a Park Avenue estate. Additional highlights among the silver lots are a 7 troy ounce sterling cup and saucer by Gustav Klingert, a Tiffany & Co. Chippendale style tray, and several sterling flatware lots.
2012年3月12日星期一
UNE plans sale of five most valuable paintings
The University of New England will offer five works by noted South African artist Irma Stern at auction in June in an attempt to raise money to help conserve its existing collection of art and to supplement that collection with strategic new purchases.
The international auction house Christie's will offer the art work - four paintings and a charcoal drawing - at its spring impressionist and modern art sale in London. The works could fetch between $2.1 million and $3.1 million, according to Christie's estimates.
The paintings are by far the most valuable pieces in the UNE collection, said gallery director Anne Zill.
The university deemed them expendable because they have little to do with Maine, do not fit within the gallery's collecting mission and are not related to any of the museum's curriculum offerings.
"They just do not fit in the collection, which is why they have been in storage for so many years," Zill said.
The works have been exhibited twice in 36 years - by Westbrook College in 1978 and by UNE in 2009. UNE acquired the Stern art work as part of its merger with Westbrook in 1996.
The journey of the work from South Africa to UNE is an interesting story with minor Maine ties. They were part of the collection of Rebecca Hourwich Reyher, an American writer from New York. Dorothy Healy, founder of the Maine Women Writers Collections, was friendly with Reyher, and instrumental in arranging Westbrook College's purchase of the Reyher art collection in 1976.
In addition to a portrait of Reyher, the colorful paintings and charcoal drawing are of Cape Town and African women. Stern painted them in the 1920s, at the very beginning of what became an illustrious art career.
Reyher hung them in her New York apartment, where they remained on view only to her visitors and guests.
For UNE, the timing of this sale couldn't be better, said Andrew Golub, dean of library services. UNE only discovered the value of these paintings a few years ago.
"We knew they were the most valuable paintings in our collection, but we didn't know realize by how much they had increased in value until three years ago," he said.
The university has spent the better part of two years researching the art work, exploring options to accommodate and satisfying internal concerns about the sale, Golub said. Other institutions have received criticism in recent years for selling art work for the betterment of the bottom line.
But Golub said UNE's decision is motivated by a desire to improve the collection by making it more accessible with art that targets the education needs of its students and the aesthetic desires of the larger community.
"The proceeds from this sale are staying in the art program. We see this as an opportunity to grow our collection in ways to better serve the university and to take better care of the art that's still in our collection," he said.
Stern, who died in 1966, is better known in Europe than in the United States, Zill said. That is why Christie's opted to hold the sale in London instead of New York. But the paintings - two are double-sided, with images on the front and back - and drawing will be on view at Christie's at Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan April 27 to May 1. UNE is planning an event at Christie's in New York as a way to honor the art work and the artist.
The international auction house Christie's will offer the art work - four paintings and a charcoal drawing - at its spring impressionist and modern art sale in London. The works could fetch between $2.1 million and $3.1 million, according to Christie's estimates.
The paintings are by far the most valuable pieces in the UNE collection, said gallery director Anne Zill.
The university deemed them expendable because they have little to do with Maine, do not fit within the gallery's collecting mission and are not related to any of the museum's curriculum offerings.
"They just do not fit in the collection, which is why they have been in storage for so many years," Zill said.
The works have been exhibited twice in 36 years - by Westbrook College in 1978 and by UNE in 2009. UNE acquired the Stern art work as part of its merger with Westbrook in 1996.
The journey of the work from South Africa to UNE is an interesting story with minor Maine ties. They were part of the collection of Rebecca Hourwich Reyher, an American writer from New York. Dorothy Healy, founder of the Maine Women Writers Collections, was friendly with Reyher, and instrumental in arranging Westbrook College's purchase of the Reyher art collection in 1976.
In addition to a portrait of Reyher, the colorful paintings and charcoal drawing are of Cape Town and African women. Stern painted them in the 1920s, at the very beginning of what became an illustrious art career.
Reyher hung them in her New York apartment, where they remained on view only to her visitors and guests.
For UNE, the timing of this sale couldn't be better, said Andrew Golub, dean of library services. UNE only discovered the value of these paintings a few years ago.
"We knew they were the most valuable paintings in our collection, but we didn't know realize by how much they had increased in value until three years ago," he said.
The university has spent the better part of two years researching the art work, exploring options to accommodate and satisfying internal concerns about the sale, Golub said. Other institutions have received criticism in recent years for selling art work for the betterment of the bottom line.
But Golub said UNE's decision is motivated by a desire to improve the collection by making it more accessible with art that targets the education needs of its students and the aesthetic desires of the larger community.
"The proceeds from this sale are staying in the art program. We see this as an opportunity to grow our collection in ways to better serve the university and to take better care of the art that's still in our collection," he said.
Stern, who died in 1966, is better known in Europe than in the United States, Zill said. That is why Christie's opted to hold the sale in London instead of New York. But the paintings - two are double-sided, with images on the front and back - and drawing will be on view at Christie's at Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan April 27 to May 1. UNE is planning an event at Christie's in New York as a way to honor the art work and the artist.
2012年3月11日星期日
Hopes high for this year's Western Art Week
Organizers of art shows and sales are feeling bullish about Western Art Week in Great Falls this year. The events begin Wednesday and will spread to a variety of locations around the city through the weekend.
The shows and auctions this week are expected to sell as much as a combined $6 million worth of art in Great Falls.
Several officials with some of the bigger Great Falls shows and auctions say there is a general feeling that the economy in Montana — and the country — is improving. There also is a sense among some artists and galleries that they may be over the hump from the 2008-2009 nationwide recession and its aftermath.
"In general sense, I have seen actual results trending upwards," said Sarah Burt, chief curator at the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, which will hold The Russell: The Sale to Benefit the C.M. Russell Museum this week. "It's rebounding from the terrible times of 2008 and 2009. I think it's pretty good right now."
Prices for work by one of the masters of Western art, Charlie Russell, "are pretty strong right now," Burt added.
On Saturday, 21 of Russell's works will be in The Russell Live Auction at the Best Western Heritage Inn — the final museum event of the week.
"It's fantastic," Burt said of the museum's Russell offerings, including three watercolors that may fetch $230,000 or more each.
Russell works also will be offered for sale at other locations around the city, including the March in Montana show.
Bigfork's Steve Cawdrey, who helps run the Western Masters Art Show and Sale at the Heritage Inn, said he believes the economy is looking up.
"We've seen a change the last six months," Cawdrey said. "People are buying art. My sense is the mood in the country is more positive, and our artists have been very upbeat."
Burt noted that there were "really strong" prices at last year's Reno, Nev., and Jackson Hole, Wyo., art auctions, which took place after Western Art Week in Great Falls. The July Coeur d'Alene Art Auction in Reno sold more than 300 works for about $17 million, up from $9.2 million in sales in 2010, and $11.7 million in 2009, but less than the $37 million in sales it had in 2008 — before the recession hit.
Meanwhile, the fifth-annual Jackson Hole Art Auction sold a record $9 million worth of art in September.
Great Falls' results from a year ago did not produce chump change, either.
The C.M. Russell Museum's three events grossed $1,499,690 in 2011, edging out the March in Montana auctions, which sold $1,451,400 at its pair of events.
"It's going to be much better this year," predicted Cheyenne's Bob Nelson, owner of Manitou Galleries, which teams with the Coeur d'Alene Art Auction to run the March in Montana show.
Nelson is less bullish on the national economy, which he calls "problematic." But he said art buyers with oil interests or rising stock market holdings have helped bring the Western art market around closer to where it was before the recession. Some art buffs have decided to part with their money even if the economy in general "isn't that good," Nelson said.
Manitou has galleries in Wyoming and Santa Fe, N.M. He said the art market in New Mexico remains slightly depressed, although his shops are seeing improved sales.
"We were cut in half in 2008," Nelson said. But even with improvements in sales the last two years, "we're still not back to where we were."
However, Western Art Week in Great Falls has a specific market, one that comes to the events to buy, and Nelson said he believes the week "is going to be great."
"The Russell has got some nice Russell material for sale," he said.
Nelson said March in Montana has fine pieces, too, particularly a large number of bronzes by living and deceased sculptors, as well as paintings and Western collectibles. Nelson said Great Falls art buffs may be especially interested in works by late artists Joe Abbrescia and Arlene Hooker Fay.
Nelson also praised the support area residents give Western Art Week.
"I think they're very involved," he said. "We have tremendous numbers of people walking through our show."
In addition to Western Art Week's two big auction events, which grossed about $3 million combined last year, Cawdrey said the Western Masters Art Show and Sale sold about $1.5 million worth of art in exhibition rooms and through the Western Master's Off the Wall Auction and related events.
That's nearly $5 million generated by three major Western Art Week shows, not to mention other popular shows, including the Western Heritage Artists Show at the Holiday Inn, the Jay Contway & Friends Art Show at Montana ExpoPark, the Wild Bunch Art Show at the Hampton Inn, and several other shows selling antiques, guns and collectibles.
The shows and auctions this week are expected to sell as much as a combined $6 million worth of art in Great Falls.
Several officials with some of the bigger Great Falls shows and auctions say there is a general feeling that the economy in Montana — and the country — is improving. There also is a sense among some artists and galleries that they may be over the hump from the 2008-2009 nationwide recession and its aftermath.
"In general sense, I have seen actual results trending upwards," said Sarah Burt, chief curator at the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, which will hold The Russell: The Sale to Benefit the C.M. Russell Museum this week. "It's rebounding from the terrible times of 2008 and 2009. I think it's pretty good right now."
Prices for work by one of the masters of Western art, Charlie Russell, "are pretty strong right now," Burt added.
On Saturday, 21 of Russell's works will be in The Russell Live Auction at the Best Western Heritage Inn — the final museum event of the week.
"It's fantastic," Burt said of the museum's Russell offerings, including three watercolors that may fetch $230,000 or more each.
Russell works also will be offered for sale at other locations around the city, including the March in Montana show.
Bigfork's Steve Cawdrey, who helps run the Western Masters Art Show and Sale at the Heritage Inn, said he believes the economy is looking up.
"We've seen a change the last six months," Cawdrey said. "People are buying art. My sense is the mood in the country is more positive, and our artists have been very upbeat."
Burt noted that there were "really strong" prices at last year's Reno, Nev., and Jackson Hole, Wyo., art auctions, which took place after Western Art Week in Great Falls. The July Coeur d'Alene Art Auction in Reno sold more than 300 works for about $17 million, up from $9.2 million in sales in 2010, and $11.7 million in 2009, but less than the $37 million in sales it had in 2008 — before the recession hit.
Meanwhile, the fifth-annual Jackson Hole Art Auction sold a record $9 million worth of art in September.
Great Falls' results from a year ago did not produce chump change, either.
The C.M. Russell Museum's three events grossed $1,499,690 in 2011, edging out the March in Montana auctions, which sold $1,451,400 at its pair of events.
"It's going to be much better this year," predicted Cheyenne's Bob Nelson, owner of Manitou Galleries, which teams with the Coeur d'Alene Art Auction to run the March in Montana show.
Nelson is less bullish on the national economy, which he calls "problematic." But he said art buyers with oil interests or rising stock market holdings have helped bring the Western art market around closer to where it was before the recession. Some art buffs have decided to part with their money even if the economy in general "isn't that good," Nelson said.
Manitou has galleries in Wyoming and Santa Fe, N.M. He said the art market in New Mexico remains slightly depressed, although his shops are seeing improved sales.
"We were cut in half in 2008," Nelson said. But even with improvements in sales the last two years, "we're still not back to where we were."
However, Western Art Week in Great Falls has a specific market, one that comes to the events to buy, and Nelson said he believes the week "is going to be great."
"The Russell has got some nice Russell material for sale," he said.
Nelson said March in Montana has fine pieces, too, particularly a large number of bronzes by living and deceased sculptors, as well as paintings and Western collectibles. Nelson said Great Falls art buffs may be especially interested in works by late artists Joe Abbrescia and Arlene Hooker Fay.
Nelson also praised the support area residents give Western Art Week.
"I think they're very involved," he said. "We have tremendous numbers of people walking through our show."
In addition to Western Art Week's two big auction events, which grossed about $3 million combined last year, Cawdrey said the Western Masters Art Show and Sale sold about $1.5 million worth of art in exhibition rooms and through the Western Master's Off the Wall Auction and related events.
That's nearly $5 million generated by three major Western Art Week shows, not to mention other popular shows, including the Western Heritage Artists Show at the Holiday Inn, the Jay Contway & Friends Art Show at Montana ExpoPark, the Wild Bunch Art Show at the Hampton Inn, and several other shows selling antiques, guns and collectibles.
2012年3月8日星期四
The Art of the Tablet
In London, Museum visitors are dashing through the Tate Modern, taking in works of art—on their smartphones. During the latest Art Basel art fair in Switzerland, a collector agreed to buy a $250,000 painting—while sitting in a hair salon in Los Angeles, looking at the work on her tablet. These days, anyone with an iPad can create their own Damien Hirst painting, thanks to an app from the Gagosian Gallery, which recently showed the artist's work at its 11 global outposts.
Digital tools are changing the way that art is bought, sold and simply looked at. Collectors who once traveled across the world to art fairs and auctions are buying more works without seeing them in person, relying instead on digital views. Galleries now have the ability to show many more works to interested collectors than they have in their showrooms, simply by swiping through digital inventories. Museums are encouraging visitors to download digital apps to get more information about works on display. Some museum and gallery apps allow visitors to zoom in on a work for a closer look than they would get with the naked eye—a development that will likely be bolstered by Apple's introduction this week of a new iPad with a sharper display screen.
"We're in the midst of a sea change in the way museums relate to their audiences," says Peter Samis, associate curator of interpretive media at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "There's this booming demand at the highest level, like trustees are all saying, 'Where's our iPad app?' at every museum, large and small, across America."
Officials at Christie's and Sotheby's say they're seeing more iPads and other devices filling the room during sales. Christie's, which already offers absentee bidding via its website, expects to extend absentee bidding to its iPad app next month, along with new features like access to condition reports on works. Sotheby's just updated its iPad catalog app to allow collectors to take notes in digital catalogs during sales.
Tablets are also increasingly a staple of art fairs. At Art Basel in Switzerland last June, dealer Adam Sheffer, a partner at the New York gallery Cheim & Read, met with a client interested in a work by Ghada Amer, an Egyptian painter whose labor-intensive pieces are filled with intricate embroidery. The gallery's works were inventoried on the iPad using ArtBinder, an app that is swiftly replacing the use of physical binders at art fairs. The Los Angeles-based collector was ready to buy the work, but he wanted the signoff of his wife, who was more than 5,800 miles away in a hair salon in Los Angeles. Mr. Sheffer emailed a close-up of the work to the wife, an art enthusiast, who agreed to the $250,000 sale. "The whole thing took an hour," Mr. Sheffer says.
Miami Beach collector Dennis Scholl says photography and video art are a natural fit when he's considering buying an artwork based on a digital image; for sculpture, with its scale issues, and drawings, with their subtle gradations of shading, he likes to see the works in person. Mr. Scholl recently pulled the trigger on a work by Tamy Ben-Tor, using his iPad to view the video of the Israeli artist as an old woman in a forest. "The iPad, because of the beauty of the images and the clarity of the reproduction, it makes you braver as a collector," he says.
Digital tools can also help collectors organize large inventories they may have stored in locations around the world. Curator Laura J. Mueller tracks more than 700 Japanese works scattered across two homes and a warehouse for a private New York collector by organizing digital images of the pieces using an iPhone and iPad app, Collectrium.
In May, the next edition of the Gagosian app will feature photographer Taryn Simon. A tap on any of roughly 200 photographs by Ms. Simon will take users deeper into the backstory of images from one of her series. Gagosian isn't currently showing Ms. Simon's pieces in its brick-and-mortar galleries, but the app will expose her work to potential buyers.
Digital tools are changing the way that art is bought, sold and simply looked at. Collectors who once traveled across the world to art fairs and auctions are buying more works without seeing them in person, relying instead on digital views. Galleries now have the ability to show many more works to interested collectors than they have in their showrooms, simply by swiping through digital inventories. Museums are encouraging visitors to download digital apps to get more information about works on display. Some museum and gallery apps allow visitors to zoom in on a work for a closer look than they would get with the naked eye—a development that will likely be bolstered by Apple's introduction this week of a new iPad with a sharper display screen.
"We're in the midst of a sea change in the way museums relate to their audiences," says Peter Samis, associate curator of interpretive media at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "There's this booming demand at the highest level, like trustees are all saying, 'Where's our iPad app?' at every museum, large and small, across America."
Officials at Christie's and Sotheby's say they're seeing more iPads and other devices filling the room during sales. Christie's, which already offers absentee bidding via its website, expects to extend absentee bidding to its iPad app next month, along with new features like access to condition reports on works. Sotheby's just updated its iPad catalog app to allow collectors to take notes in digital catalogs during sales.
Tablets are also increasingly a staple of art fairs. At Art Basel in Switzerland last June, dealer Adam Sheffer, a partner at the New York gallery Cheim & Read, met with a client interested in a work by Ghada Amer, an Egyptian painter whose labor-intensive pieces are filled with intricate embroidery. The gallery's works were inventoried on the iPad using ArtBinder, an app that is swiftly replacing the use of physical binders at art fairs. The Los Angeles-based collector was ready to buy the work, but he wanted the signoff of his wife, who was more than 5,800 miles away in a hair salon in Los Angeles. Mr. Sheffer emailed a close-up of the work to the wife, an art enthusiast, who agreed to the $250,000 sale. "The whole thing took an hour," Mr. Sheffer says.
Miami Beach collector Dennis Scholl says photography and video art are a natural fit when he's considering buying an artwork based on a digital image; for sculpture, with its scale issues, and drawings, with their subtle gradations of shading, he likes to see the works in person. Mr. Scholl recently pulled the trigger on a work by Tamy Ben-Tor, using his iPad to view the video of the Israeli artist as an old woman in a forest. "The iPad, because of the beauty of the images and the clarity of the reproduction, it makes you braver as a collector," he says.
Digital tools can also help collectors organize large inventories they may have stored in locations around the world. Curator Laura J. Mueller tracks more than 700 Japanese works scattered across two homes and a warehouse for a private New York collector by organizing digital images of the pieces using an iPhone and iPad app, Collectrium.
In May, the next edition of the Gagosian app will feature photographer Taryn Simon. A tap on any of roughly 200 photographs by Ms. Simon will take users deeper into the backstory of images from one of her series. Gagosian isn't currently showing Ms. Simon's pieces in its brick-and-mortar galleries, but the app will expose her work to potential buyers.
2012年3月7日星期三
For sale: picture of city jeweller’s home
A TRANQUIL Victorian oil painting with a fascinating Sheffield link is for sale from a West End art dealer – priced at more than 150,000.
The 14x9 inch moonlit view is of Yew Court, which in the early 1900s was home to retired watchmaker and jeweller William Tingle Brown.
Tingle Brown was so well-off he retired in his early 30s, having spent his 20s helping to run his family’s watchmaking and jewellery business in High Street, Sheffield, with younger brother Edward and sisters Charlotte and Ann.
By 1881, when he was 35, Tingle Brown described himself as a ‘retired jeweller’ living in a house called Oaklands – possibly on Collegiate Crescent, off Ecclesall Road – in Sheffield, with wife Jane, 39, and daughter Edith, one. His sister Fanny, 21, and two live-in servants – Emily and Alice Tudbury, 19 and 25 – lived with them.
Sadly, between 1881 and 1891, Jane died – and by the next Census in 1901 Tingle Brown had remarried. Still ‘living on own means’ he was then 53 and second wife, Clara, was 38. He, Clara, and Edith, by then 21, had moved to Yew Court in Scalby, near Scarborough, with three live-in servants.
The picture of their home had been produced some time in the 1870s by artist John Atkinson Grimshaw, who painted at least three pictures of the property. One is owned by Scarborough Art Gallery.
The picture for sale is offered by London dealers MacConnal-Mason, whose chairman David Mason is a former Antiques Roadshow expert and a close friend of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lord Lloyd Webber is known to own 14 paintings by Grimshaw, who specialised in moonlit views.
A spokesman for the dealers said: “Grimshaw portrays the house and high street by the bright silvery moonlight of a full moon as a mother and child make their way home.
“It is a beautifully observed scene, the mother tilting her head towards the child as they converse holding hands.
“The light from the unseen moon gleams on the windows and bathes the road and garden walls. It is a particularly serene and tranquil scene, characterised by Grimshaw’s extraordinarily detailed technique, unique quality of light and acute observation.”
The 14x9 inch moonlit view is of Yew Court, which in the early 1900s was home to retired watchmaker and jeweller William Tingle Brown.
Tingle Brown was so well-off he retired in his early 30s, having spent his 20s helping to run his family’s watchmaking and jewellery business in High Street, Sheffield, with younger brother Edward and sisters Charlotte and Ann.
By 1881, when he was 35, Tingle Brown described himself as a ‘retired jeweller’ living in a house called Oaklands – possibly on Collegiate Crescent, off Ecclesall Road – in Sheffield, with wife Jane, 39, and daughter Edith, one. His sister Fanny, 21, and two live-in servants – Emily and Alice Tudbury, 19 and 25 – lived with them.
Sadly, between 1881 and 1891, Jane died – and by the next Census in 1901 Tingle Brown had remarried. Still ‘living on own means’ he was then 53 and second wife, Clara, was 38. He, Clara, and Edith, by then 21, had moved to Yew Court in Scalby, near Scarborough, with three live-in servants.
The picture of their home had been produced some time in the 1870s by artist John Atkinson Grimshaw, who painted at least three pictures of the property. One is owned by Scarborough Art Gallery.
The picture for sale is offered by London dealers MacConnal-Mason, whose chairman David Mason is a former Antiques Roadshow expert and a close friend of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lord Lloyd Webber is known to own 14 paintings by Grimshaw, who specialised in moonlit views.
A spokesman for the dealers said: “Grimshaw portrays the house and high street by the bright silvery moonlight of a full moon as a mother and child make their way home.
“It is a beautifully observed scene, the mother tilting her head towards the child as they converse holding hands.
“The light from the unseen moon gleams on the windows and bathes the road and garden walls. It is a particularly serene and tranquil scene, characterised by Grimshaw’s extraordinarily detailed technique, unique quality of light and acute observation.”
2012年3月6日星期二
Shock and bore: is 'traditional' art making a comeback?
It wasn't your usual London street party. On this balmy 1990s afternoon, a group of young artists were part of a bizarre get-together called A Fete Worse than Death.
The most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown's costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he'd spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215m [$321m] later, over 300 of Hirst's rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian's galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London's flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art's biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst's trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say he still divides opinion would be an understatement. "Detestable and f------ dreadful" is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. "Simple-minded and sensationalist" is Australian critic Robert Hughes's verdict on an entire career.
Last month David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC's Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, "All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally", was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art's enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 "assistants" to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: "I only made five spot paintings myself . . . And the spots I painted are shite." But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. "It's a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen," he told Marr. "I used to point out . . . you can teach the craft, it's the poetry you can't teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft."
Hockney's views are echoed by the artist George Shaw. "I became incredibly frustrated at art school . . . that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one," he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, won acclaim last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that "an art historian and his mother could both enjoy . . . But that wasn't what [the tutors] were looking for."
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year's Turner Prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s. In the 1960s - under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism - art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
The painter Gabriella Boyd can't see what the fuss is about. "Drawing's still taught and it's still popular," she says.
In hard times, we might even expect to see a return to old-school disciplines on cost-grounds. Paints and pencils are a darn sight cheaper than tanks of formaldehyde. There's already talk of a new austerity aesthetic, one wholly at odds with Hirst's $100 million, diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God (2007).
Gregor Muir, director of the ICA, isn't sure. "Often in times of trouble, you see the rise of fantastists, surrealists and other artists looking to escape it all. In the film world, The Artist is a good example, a light-hearted movie perfectly timed to cheer us all up." Muir insists Hirst hasn't cloned a generation of artists. "Categorically not. Damien's a unique case. A brand unto himself, really."
Hirst's sales figures confirm this. At the now infamous 2008 Sotheby's sale, when Hirst auctioned off 223 works, his Golden Calf sold for 10.3m. Now the plentiful supply of spot paintings , one of which sold last year for 1.8m, ensures Hirst keeps himself within the price range of not-quite-so-rich buyers too.
In spite of global economic meltdown, Sotheby's sales in contemporary art shot up by 34 per cent in 2011 as investors increasingly turn to art to hedge against volatile markets. But how much of this rise is down to Hirst-style installations? "We tend not to take on too many big installation works nowadays," says James Sevier of Sotheby's. "The top lots in our recent sale were abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, for instance. I wouldn't say Damien has brought about a seismic shift." The three canvases by the 80-year-old German painter sold for over 4m. Evidence that things are looking up for lovers of traditional painting?
The most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown's costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he'd spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215m [$321m] later, over 300 of Hirst's rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian's galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London's flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art's biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst's trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say he still divides opinion would be an understatement. "Detestable and f------ dreadful" is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. "Simple-minded and sensationalist" is Australian critic Robert Hughes's verdict on an entire career.
Last month David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC's Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, "All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally", was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art's enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 "assistants" to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: "I only made five spot paintings myself . . . And the spots I painted are shite." But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. "It's a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen," he told Marr. "I used to point out . . . you can teach the craft, it's the poetry you can't teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft."
Hockney's views are echoed by the artist George Shaw. "I became incredibly frustrated at art school . . . that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one," he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, won acclaim last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that "an art historian and his mother could both enjoy . . . But that wasn't what [the tutors] were looking for."
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year's Turner Prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s. In the 1960s - under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism - art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
The painter Gabriella Boyd can't see what the fuss is about. "Drawing's still taught and it's still popular," she says.
In hard times, we might even expect to see a return to old-school disciplines on cost-grounds. Paints and pencils are a darn sight cheaper than tanks of formaldehyde. There's already talk of a new austerity aesthetic, one wholly at odds with Hirst's $100 million, diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God (2007).
Gregor Muir, director of the ICA, isn't sure. "Often in times of trouble, you see the rise of fantastists, surrealists and other artists looking to escape it all. In the film world, The Artist is a good example, a light-hearted movie perfectly timed to cheer us all up." Muir insists Hirst hasn't cloned a generation of artists. "Categorically not. Damien's a unique case. A brand unto himself, really."
Hirst's sales figures confirm this. At the now infamous 2008 Sotheby's sale, when Hirst auctioned off 223 works, his Golden Calf sold for 10.3m. Now the plentiful supply of spot paintings , one of which sold last year for 1.8m, ensures Hirst keeps himself within the price range of not-quite-so-rich buyers too.
In spite of global economic meltdown, Sotheby's sales in contemporary art shot up by 34 per cent in 2011 as investors increasingly turn to art to hedge against volatile markets. But how much of this rise is down to Hirst-style installations? "We tend not to take on too many big installation works nowadays," says James Sevier of Sotheby's. "The top lots in our recent sale were abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, for instance. I wouldn't say Damien has brought about a seismic shift." The three canvases by the 80-year-old German painter sold for over 4m. Evidence that things are looking up for lovers of traditional painting?
2012年3月5日星期一
Serge Lifar's Ballets Russes archive on sale in Geneva
The last remnants of one of the greatest private collections of Ballets Russes material goes on view in Geneva this week, prior to being sold on March 13. The sale includes more than 300 drawings, paintings and prints by the likes of Picasso, Max Ernst and Juan Gris, 3,000 vintage photographs of celebrities from Coco Chanel to Charlie Chaplin, and a rediscovered trove of drawings and manuscripts by Jean Cocteau; all owned by Serge Lifar, the principal dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes during its final years in the late 1920s.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
The last remnants of one of the greatest private collections of Ballets Russes material goes on view in Geneva this week, prior to being sold on March 13. The sale includes more than 300 drawings, paintings and prints by the likes of Picasso, Max Ernst and Juan Gris, 3,000 vintage photographs of celebrities from Coco Chanel to Charlie Chaplin, and a rediscovered trove of drawings and manuscripts by Jean Cocteau; all owned by Serge Lifar, the principal dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes during its final years in the late 1920s.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
The last remnants of one of the greatest private collections of Ballets Russes material goes on view in Geneva this week, prior to being sold on March 13. The sale includes more than 300 drawings, paintings and prints by the likes of Picasso, Max Ernst and Juan Gris, 3,000 vintage photographs of celebrities from Coco Chanel to Charlie Chaplin, and a rediscovered trove of drawings and manuscripts by Jean Cocteau; all owned by Serge Lifar, the principal dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes during its final years in the late 1920s.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
2012年3月4日星期日
Damien Hirst: has shock art lost its bite?
It wasn’t your usual London street party. There were no children playing, Victoria sponges or Union Jack bunting. Instead, on this balmy early Nineties afternoon, a group of young artists were taking part in a bizarre get-together in Hoxton called A Fete Worse than Death.
At one stall, Tracey Emin did palm readings; at another, Gary Hume sold tequila slammers. Yet the most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown’s costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he’d spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215million later, over 300 of Hirst’s rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian’s art galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London’s flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art’s biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst’s trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising young Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say that he still divides opinion would be an understatement. “Detestable and f------ dreadful” is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. “Simple-minded and sensationalist” is Australian critic Robert Hughes’s verdict on an entire career.
Then, last month, David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally”, was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art’s enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 “assistants” to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: “I only made five spot paintings myself… And the spots I painted are s----.” But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. “It’s a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen…” he told Marr. “I used to point out at art school, you can teach the craft, it’s the poetry you can’t teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.”
Is he right? Did “conceptual” art take such a stranglehold in Hirst and his compatriots’ wake that technique was sacrificed? Just what has Hirst’s influence been on British artists? And might there, finally, be a swing away from the form he made so famous and infamous all at once?
Hockney’s views are echoed by the artist George Shaw, who graduated from Hockney’s own alma mater, the Royal College of Art, in 1998. “I became incredibly frustrated at art school… that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one,” he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, was Turner-nominated last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that “an art historian and his mother could both enjoy... But that wasn’t what [the tutors] were looking for.”
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year’s prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths College in Camberwell in the late Eighties. In the Sixties – under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism – art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
“Damien didn’t create this milieu, but he thrived in it,” says Michael Archer, director of Goldsmiths’ BA in fine art. And Hirst needed little encouragement from Goldsmiths’ Dean at the time, Jon Thompson, who led this break with tradition. “Our philosophy remains the same today,” Archer says. “We don’t break our course down into rigid components of compulsory disciplines.” But doesn’t this encourage following the path of least resistance? Who can be bothered with the 10,000 hours mastering their craft? “If a student wants to learn how to weave or weld, we have the staff to teach it,” he says. “But we don’t force them.”
The painter Gabriella Boyd, a recent graduate from Glasgow School of Art, can’t see what the fuss is about. “Drawing’s still taught and it’s still popular,” says the 24- year-old. “I used to love life-drawing class at college and I wasn’t the only one.” A quick look around Boyd’s website, indeed, is like being taken in a time-machine back to a Hockney show in the early Sixties.
At one stall, Tracey Emin did palm readings; at another, Gary Hume sold tequila slammers. Yet the most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown’s costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he’d spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215million later, over 300 of Hirst’s rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian’s art galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London’s flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art’s biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst’s trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising young Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say that he still divides opinion would be an understatement. “Detestable and f------ dreadful” is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. “Simple-minded and sensationalist” is Australian critic Robert Hughes’s verdict on an entire career.
Then, last month, David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally”, was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art’s enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 “assistants” to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: “I only made five spot paintings myself… And the spots I painted are s----.” But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. “It’s a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen…” he told Marr. “I used to point out at art school, you can teach the craft, it’s the poetry you can’t teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.”
Is he right? Did “conceptual” art take such a stranglehold in Hirst and his compatriots’ wake that technique was sacrificed? Just what has Hirst’s influence been on British artists? And might there, finally, be a swing away from the form he made so famous and infamous all at once?
Hockney’s views are echoed by the artist George Shaw, who graduated from Hockney’s own alma mater, the Royal College of Art, in 1998. “I became incredibly frustrated at art school… that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one,” he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, was Turner-nominated last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that “an art historian and his mother could both enjoy... But that wasn’t what [the tutors] were looking for.”
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year’s prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths College in Camberwell in the late Eighties. In the Sixties – under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism – art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
“Damien didn’t create this milieu, but he thrived in it,” says Michael Archer, director of Goldsmiths’ BA in fine art. And Hirst needed little encouragement from Goldsmiths’ Dean at the time, Jon Thompson, who led this break with tradition. “Our philosophy remains the same today,” Archer says. “We don’t break our course down into rigid components of compulsory disciplines.” But doesn’t this encourage following the path of least resistance? Who can be bothered with the 10,000 hours mastering their craft? “If a student wants to learn how to weave or weld, we have the staff to teach it,” he says. “But we don’t force them.”
The painter Gabriella Boyd, a recent graduate from Glasgow School of Art, can’t see what the fuss is about. “Drawing’s still taught and it’s still popular,” says the 24- year-old. “I used to love life-drawing class at college and I wasn’t the only one.” A quick look around Boyd’s website, indeed, is like being taken in a time-machine back to a Hockney show in the early Sixties.
2012年3月1日星期四
A Sale of Knives by an Eccentric Maker
The reclusive blacksmith William W. Scagel lived off the grid in the woods near Muskegon, Mich. From the 1920s to the ’60s, he manufactured luxury knives there, with ergonomically curved horn and antler handles, powering his home and workshop with a windmill, old submarine batteries and a Cadillac engine.
He sold his products through a few urban outlets, including Abercrombie & Fitch. Customers also stopped by, but warily, partly because of dark rumors about what had happened to Scagel’s two ex-wives.
Area residents gossiped that one or the other woman had been killed: that she was gored by an animal while on safari with Scagel, or that he stabbed or shot her or shoved her over Niagara Falls. Dr. James R. Lucie, a retired physician in Fruitport, Mich., has published a new biography, “Scagel Handmade,” explaining that the knife maker was simply twice divorced from incompatible spouses.
Dr. Lucie spent hours as a young doctor interviewing Scagel, who died in 1963 at 88. Dr. Lucie has acquired dozens of Scagel knives and axes, including table cutlery and Marine weaponry, and has consigned them for a March 12 auction at James D. Julia in Fairfield, Me.
Dr. Lucie, 83, said in a recent phone interview that selling the collection made sense once the book came out. He is widowed, with four daughters. “I don’t want to leave a mess on their hands,” he said.
The blades are expected to bring up to $30,000 each. Scagel weathervanes, cooking pots and workshop tools have estimates up to a few thousand dollars apiece. Dr. Lucie has defaced Scagel’s hallmarking dies with deep scrapes, so they cannot be used to create fakes.
The book describes Scagel’s daily life, tempering and sharpening steel over coal flames and wooden wheels. Once a week he relaxed for an evening at a local tavern, drinking beer alone. He would often rant about crooked politicians and unions. “He was an extreme right-wing conservative,” Dr. Lucie said.
Paperwork from Scagel’s divorces in 1902 and 1917 has turned up. The first wife, Rosetta, ran off with her married lover. The second, Alice, called her husband “sullen and morose” and accused him of scaring away visitors with a pet wolf in the yard. Scagel retorted that Alice was “exceedingly distrustful and jealous,” and that the wolf was “tame and harmless.”
Scagel had a little-known warm and fuzzy side. He made free leg braces for children who needed them because of polio, and gave knives to people who helped him. For a Democratic Party official who drove him home on a winter night, Scagel created a knife with a handle plated in ivory on one side and pink mother of pearl on the other. The different materials, he later admitted, represented his conviction that “Democrats are two-faced.”
In the Julia sale the “Democrat knife” is expected to bring up to $5,000.
The American Museum of Natural History often poses dinosaur skeletons in attack mode, based on the latest paleontological research. But some nearby vintage paintings have an anachronistic trace of pulp fiction and Art Deco.
Amid the bones, the museum displays dozens of tableaus of prehistory by the artist Charles R. Knight. Starting in the 1890s, he freelanced for museums around the country from his studios in Manhattan and Mount Vernon, N.Y.
“He just knocked out one painting after another after another,” even as his astigmatic and cataract-impaired eyes deteriorated into blindness, said Richard Milner, the author of a new monograph, “Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time” .
Mr. Milner has tracked down scattered Knight works, including elephant sculptures on Bronx Zoo buildings, sloth portraits at the Field Museum in Chicago and a scene of a rhinoceros fending off wolves at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He pored through Knight’s correspondence and an image archive that belongs to his granddaughter, Rhoda Knight Kalt.
The letters are so eloquent that Mr. Milner suspects that Knight, who died in 1953, and his friends expected future historians to appreciate the prose. “They knew one day we’d be picking over their bones, like the vultures in the dioramas,” he said during a recent tour of the New York museum’s galleries.
The painter’s handwriting deteriorated as his vision failed. He also constantly battled with clients who delayed payments and tried to edit his mural proposals.
“My own ideas from an artistic standpoint are the only ones to which I can subscribe,” Knight sternly wrote to Henry Fairfield Osborn, the museum’s president.
Knight was disciplined about refusing to collaborate, but hopeless with money. Unless his wife, Annie, and daughter, Lucy, watched over him, he would forget to ask for change at grocery stores. “You are a very good painter but a very bad mathematician,” a magazine editor wrote when Knight undercharged for an illustration.
In a stairwell at the museum, a Knight mural shows cavemen painting woolly mammoths by torchlight. Mr. Milner believes that one craggy face in the scene was a self-portrait. “The central figure is Knight,” he said. “There’s no question in my mind.”
Another caveman in the tableau wears an elegant collared robe and stands back skeptically to watch the work; he may represent forebears of Knight’s more difficult patrons. In prehistoric times, Mr. Milner said slyly, “The first occupation was artist, and the second was art critic.”
He sold his products through a few urban outlets, including Abercrombie & Fitch. Customers also stopped by, but warily, partly because of dark rumors about what had happened to Scagel’s two ex-wives.
Area residents gossiped that one or the other woman had been killed: that she was gored by an animal while on safari with Scagel, or that he stabbed or shot her or shoved her over Niagara Falls. Dr. James R. Lucie, a retired physician in Fruitport, Mich., has published a new biography, “Scagel Handmade,” explaining that the knife maker was simply twice divorced from incompatible spouses.
Dr. Lucie spent hours as a young doctor interviewing Scagel, who died in 1963 at 88. Dr. Lucie has acquired dozens of Scagel knives and axes, including table cutlery and Marine weaponry, and has consigned them for a March 12 auction at James D. Julia in Fairfield, Me.
Dr. Lucie, 83, said in a recent phone interview that selling the collection made sense once the book came out. He is widowed, with four daughters. “I don’t want to leave a mess on their hands,” he said.
The blades are expected to bring up to $30,000 each. Scagel weathervanes, cooking pots and workshop tools have estimates up to a few thousand dollars apiece. Dr. Lucie has defaced Scagel’s hallmarking dies with deep scrapes, so they cannot be used to create fakes.
The book describes Scagel’s daily life, tempering and sharpening steel over coal flames and wooden wheels. Once a week he relaxed for an evening at a local tavern, drinking beer alone. He would often rant about crooked politicians and unions. “He was an extreme right-wing conservative,” Dr. Lucie said.
Paperwork from Scagel’s divorces in 1902 and 1917 has turned up. The first wife, Rosetta, ran off with her married lover. The second, Alice, called her husband “sullen and morose” and accused him of scaring away visitors with a pet wolf in the yard. Scagel retorted that Alice was “exceedingly distrustful and jealous,” and that the wolf was “tame and harmless.”
Scagel had a little-known warm and fuzzy side. He made free leg braces for children who needed them because of polio, and gave knives to people who helped him. For a Democratic Party official who drove him home on a winter night, Scagel created a knife with a handle plated in ivory on one side and pink mother of pearl on the other. The different materials, he later admitted, represented his conviction that “Democrats are two-faced.”
In the Julia sale the “Democrat knife” is expected to bring up to $5,000.
The American Museum of Natural History often poses dinosaur skeletons in attack mode, based on the latest paleontological research. But some nearby vintage paintings have an anachronistic trace of pulp fiction and Art Deco.
Amid the bones, the museum displays dozens of tableaus of prehistory by the artist Charles R. Knight. Starting in the 1890s, he freelanced for museums around the country from his studios in Manhattan and Mount Vernon, N.Y.
“He just knocked out one painting after another after another,” even as his astigmatic and cataract-impaired eyes deteriorated into blindness, said Richard Milner, the author of a new monograph, “Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time” .
Mr. Milner has tracked down scattered Knight works, including elephant sculptures on Bronx Zoo buildings, sloth portraits at the Field Museum in Chicago and a scene of a rhinoceros fending off wolves at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He pored through Knight’s correspondence and an image archive that belongs to his granddaughter, Rhoda Knight Kalt.
The letters are so eloquent that Mr. Milner suspects that Knight, who died in 1953, and his friends expected future historians to appreciate the prose. “They knew one day we’d be picking over their bones, like the vultures in the dioramas,” he said during a recent tour of the New York museum’s galleries.
The painter’s handwriting deteriorated as his vision failed. He also constantly battled with clients who delayed payments and tried to edit his mural proposals.
“My own ideas from an artistic standpoint are the only ones to which I can subscribe,” Knight sternly wrote to Henry Fairfield Osborn, the museum’s president.
Knight was disciplined about refusing to collaborate, but hopeless with money. Unless his wife, Annie, and daughter, Lucy, watched over him, he would forget to ask for change at grocery stores. “You are a very good painter but a very bad mathematician,” a magazine editor wrote when Knight undercharged for an illustration.
In a stairwell at the museum, a Knight mural shows cavemen painting woolly mammoths by torchlight. Mr. Milner believes that one craggy face in the scene was a self-portrait. “The central figure is Knight,” he said. “There’s no question in my mind.”
Another caveman in the tableau wears an elegant collared robe and stands back skeptically to watch the work; he may represent forebears of Knight’s more difficult patrons. In prehistoric times, Mr. Milner said slyly, “The first occupation was artist, and the second was art critic.”
订阅：
博文 (Atom)