Back in November, I posted about some recently rediscovered Renaissance altarpiece panels. Here’s the followup:
Word was, a modest Oxford librarian named Miss Jean Preston had hung the tiny gold-leaf panels on the back of her guest room door. She thought them “quite nice.”
Last Thursday, having been discovered to be lost masterpieces by Renaissance master […]
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Sotheby’s Hong Kong
Xu Beihong, Put Down Your Whip, 1939
April 7
Estimate: Not published
Price Fetched: $9.2 million
China has been invaded.
Not only by Western collectors swooping in frantically to buy contemporary art, but by the Western art aesthetic that has driven the market in the last few years. Prices for Chinese oil painting from the earlier part […]
Memory Lane, Inc.
April 13, 2007
1951 Bowman #305 Willie Mays Rookie Card PSA 9
Starting Bid: $10,000
Price Fetched: $79,500
Another example of how condition, rarity and historic importance come together to part a baseball card collector from his money. Because baseball cards were printed in such quantities, it’s condition, condition, condition that makes all the difference. Here’s how […]
Dealers were incensed in March when Sotheby’s and Christie’s took out booths, front and center, at the Maastricht art fair, traditionally a dealer-only showcase. Here’s a thoughtful discourse by Georgina Adam at The Art Newspaper about the shifting sands of the art market:
The Changing Landscape of the Art Market.
I’d love to hear if anyone has […]
What’s in your wallet? If you’re a jet-setting, art-collecting, Grey Poupon-spreading multi-millionaire, Sotheby’s [nyse: BID] hopes it’s their new World or World Elite MasterCard.
In the 1990s, under the leadership of galleria guru Alfred Taubman, Sotheby’s was largely credited with pioneering the auction trade’s shift from a sleepy, dealer-to-dealer business into a super-luxe shopping mall […]
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Eldred’s Auctioneers
March 31
1957 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” left-hand guitar
Estimate: $40,000–$60,000
Price fetched: $253,000
It’s safe to say that this vintage Les Paul was something of a fish out of water in Eldred’s Americana auction on Cape Cod last week, where most buyers came looking for things like hooked rugs, folk portraits, Windsor chairs, nautical pictures, […]
It’s good to be king.
The numbers are pretty staggering. Artprice.com has compiled a list of the top-selling artists of last year. To give you an idea of just how torrentially money rained into the art market in 2006, the total for the top ten artists alone was $1.2 billion, up from $576 million just two […]
Rago Arts and Auction Center
March 10
Folk art three-panel screen from Vancroft Lodge, W. Va.
Estimate: $30,000–$50,000
Price fetched: $180,000
When Joseph B. Vandergrift went to build Vancroft, his hunting lodge-cum-manse on the banks of the Ohio River in 1901, it’s fair to say that the Standard Oil heir was living large. His 500-acre, million-dollar shangri-la included a bowling […]
Where the money flows, fakes will follow.
The Times of London has reported that Christie’s had to pull a work from an upcoming modern and contemporary sale that its experts had attributed to the cross-dressing, Turner Prize-winning Brit artist Grayson Perry.
Seems the artist couldn’t verify its authenticity.
Declaring that forgery is the sincerest form of flattery, […]
ArtInfo.com has this short interview with Colorado contemporary art collectors Kent and Vicki Logan, known particularly for their large holdings of international contemporary art:
My Collection: Vicki and Kent Logan.
I love the quote at the bottom, under Advice for Beginning Collectors. Logan says: “Today, I would say, ‘See as much as you can, but keep […]
