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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 […]

Sotheby’s London
Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II, diptych
Estimate: $1.8 million–$2.4 million
Price fetched: $3.3 million
Warning to readers: I feel a rant coming on. As you may have read in an earlier post, I was incredulous when Andreas Gursky’s mural-sized 1999 photo 99 Cent sold for $2.2 million last May at Sotheby’s, nearly four times Gursky’s previous record. […]

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Swann Galleries
African-American Fine Art Sale
Feb 6, 2007
Above: Romare Bearden color screenprint Martin Luther King, Jr.—Mountain Top, 1968
I don’t know why no one thought of it before. The market for African-American art has been on a quiet, steady rise for the last decade or so. But not until last month did any auction house think to […]

Sotheby’s London
Peter Doig, White Canoe, 1990-91
Estimate: $1.5 million–$2.3 million
Price Fetched: $11 million
At left: Sotheby’s Tobias Meyer orchestrating the bidding on Doig’s White Canoe
Call it contemporary impressionism, at vintage impressionist prices. Or call it uninformed buyers with too much money. But will someone please tell me what inspired bidders at Sotheby’s London to drive a 1990-91 […]

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Rago Arts and Auction Center
March 10, 2007
Frederick Rhead ceramic Arts & Crafts vase
Estimate: $40,000–$50,000
Price fetched: $516,000
Quick. Name the father of Fiesta ware.
Yeah, ok. Neither could I.
Well, his name is Frederick Rhead and one of his rare, earlier (non-Fiesta) vases just broke the world record for American art pottery at the Rago Arts and […]

Rago Auctions
Marie Zimmerman carved wooden box, c. 1920
estimate: $30,000-$50,000
realized: $117,500
Remember interiors of the 90s? The Stickley and Tiffany knockoff businesses were booming. From movie sets to mall stores, Craftsman-style furniture and decorative arts were everywhere. These days, even though the winds of interior design fashion are blowing more in the direction of midcentury modern (think […]

Photography has been on a tear this week. At Christie’s, twelve new world auction records were set for artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Horst P. Horst, Brassai and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Since his death last year, Avedon’s prices have started to climb, with three of his more bankable commercial images making the top […]