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 […]
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 […]
Private dealer Richard Polsky has just written one of the more clear-headed discourses on the state of the current contemporary art market that I have read in a long while.
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/polsky/polsky04-02-07.asp
I, like Polsky, scratch my head at the crazy auction prices for artists like Marlene Dumas and Peter Doig. These are painters I look at and […]
The Abstract Expressionist painters were a moody lot. Jackson Pollock had a penchant for belting back prodigious amounts of liquor and then brawling. Willem de Kooning, no slouch himself in the juice department, womanized and shared gutters with Bowery bums. Arshile Gorky was a stormy, temperamental loner. And Mark Rothko? He had a rep for […]
Craft in America
A three-part PBS documentary (in HD) airing May 30,2007
Includes companion book and traveling national exhibition
How many times have I heard a glass, wood, ceramic, metal or fiber artist lamenting that their work is too often only relegated to the ghetto of craft?
Too many.
Take a look at the prices at high-end studio […]
Private sale
Jeff Koon’s Balloon Dog
Reported price: $17 million
Above: Balloon Dog belonging to the Eli Broad Foundation
Right now it’s just a rumor. But if it’s true, Steven Cohen is at it again, doing what he seems to do best: overpaying for another trophy artwork.
According to a mention in today’s Baer Faxt newsletter, several sources have […]
Back in May of this year, Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers sold a lovely flower picture by French realist Henri Fantin-Latour for an impressive price of more than $1 million. Now, however, authorities have announced that the work, titled Bouquet d’Hiver, was stolen property.
Before coming to Shannon’s, the painting was reportedly sold to […]
Readers of the Forbes Collector newsletter may remember that E. Forbes Smiley made our 2005 list of top scandals that rocked the collecting world. Why? Back in June, the former rare map dealer, a resident of Chilmark, Mass. (seen in his booking photo, above), pleaded guilty to a federal charge of major artwork theft, after […]
Woe to the Stevie’s. Who knew that an errant elbow would send a colossal art deal into the crapper?
Looked to me like a fight for bragging rights. Two of the biggest “Look at me! I can spend obscene amounts of money on art!” collectors—hotelier Steve Wynn and hedge funder Steven Cohen—appeared ready to best Ronald […]
