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, Perry confessed that The Children’s Bore, a ceramic sculpture of a boar inscribed with parental nags, was “too well made” to be one of his early works. It had been estimated to sell for £4,000-£6,000.

There’s quite a bit of attention right now on markets like the Russian art trade, where forgeries are churned out with regularity. One hears about it less in the contemporary art market, where the artists are alive to refute the work. But make no mistake—it happens. The question is, how often does it escape notice?

People say that one way to immunize yourself from monkey business is to buy from a reputable source. But the lesson here: even the experts at the most venerable auction houses can be fooled. Another reason to take your time and do your own homework when collecting newer art. If you see something in an auction catalog that you like, the very least you should do is to read up on the artist’s work, try and figure out what period of their career it fits into, then check with their gallery. Play fast and loose and you may get burned.

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 your wallet in your pants.’ I think this art market is overextended. Everything goes in cycles and there will be another cycle soon. Anything you like today will be cheaper in five years.”

Take heed, newbies. Dude’s got a point.

Above: Gottfried Helnwein’s compellingly creepy American Prayer, from the Logan collection. Note the boy’s marionette wrists….

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Shy Boy, She Devil, and Isis: The Art of Conceptual Craft. Selections from the Wornick Collection
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
September 10, 2007 - January 6, 2008

So just after I get my craft rant off my chest (two posts down), I get a press notice for this upcoming exhibition at the Boston MFA:

Shy Boy, She Devil, and Isis: The Art of Conceptual Craft. Selections from the Wornick Collection

The MFA is one of the most thoughtful big museums in the way that it collects and presents studio craft work. Shows in recent years include:

Beyond Basketry: Japanese Bamboo Art
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend
Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century
The Maker’s Hand: American Studio Furniture 1940-1990
Glass Today by American Studio Artists

Above, Michael Lucero’s she-devil, in ceramic.

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 wonder: What am I missing? What is new or compelling about their voice? And….am I the only one who thinks they’re not exactly that facile with the paint?

And I completely support his suggestion to ban all artworks made in the last five years from the major auctions. Especially with the really new artists. It’s kind of like getting the NBA to refrain from drafting teenagers. This stuff ain’t ready for primetime—and bringing it to “the show” will probably do more harm than good to these young artists’ career in the long run.

[more…]

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 being needy, insecure, easily peeved. So with prices for his work and those of his New York School cohorts climbing a stairway to heaven over the last two years, I wonder how the prickly artist would’ve reacted to the news of David Rockefeller selling one of his key pictures for a cool $40 million-plus.

Especially given that he bought it for less than $10,000 in 1960.

So, will Rockefeller wannabes drive the price into the Stevie Cohen stratosphere?

[more…]

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 craft fairs like SOFA and then look at the prices at the contemporary art auctions, and you can understand their frustration. (Especially since photography, which two decades ago occupied its own market ghetto, has successfully crossed over into the big leagues.) Ask contemporary craft dealers how often their galleries get visited by reviewers from The New York Times and you’ll see eyes start rolling faster than pachinko balls. The fact is, most so-called “craft” artists want to be seen as contemporary artists who happen to work in glass, wood, ceramic, metal or fiber. (The double entendre of Freddie Robin’s work Craft Kills, above, seems pretty obvious…) What, after all, differentiates these “craft” media from other sculptural media, in terms of their ability to convey artistic intention?

[more…]

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 let it leak that the billionaire hedge fund manager bought Jeff Koons‘ Balloon Dog, directly from the artist, for the mind-numbing sum of $17 million. (Inquiring minds want to know: Does “directly from the artist” mean that Koons’ dealer, Larry “Go-Go” Gagosian, is cut out of the deal?)

Never mind that Koons’ auction record already hovers around $5.5 million, for that monument to kitsch, Michael Jackson and Bubbles. Or that Koons, a former commodities broker, has perfected the art of puckering up to patrons. Cohen routinely pays triple market value. Or more. The fact is, $17 mil is loose change to Stevie. We’re talking about the guy who reportedly bought a de Kooning woman painting from David Geffen for $137.5 million last fall. And who was on deck to snag Picasso’s La Reve for $139 million—that is, until the seller, hotelier Steve Wynn, poked his pointy elbow through it.

So, what’s behind this latest example of conspicuous collecting?

[more…]

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. I was further floored when, just seven months later, hedge funder Adam Sender convinced Phillips de Pury auction house to chase that aberrational price and put a $2.5–$3.5 million estimate on his Gursky: a 2001 diptych of the same subject (also in an edition of six, meaning that there are a dozen works of this title and subject matter out there on the market). Phillips, which paid Sender an undisclosed guarantee up front, somehow squeaked off the sale at $2.48 million, on the strength of only a single bid.

So then what happens? Some even loonier buyer in London this February shells out $3.3 million for another of the 2001 99 Cent diptychs, setting a world record for a photograph at auction. The previous record ($2.9 million) was set only a year ago by Edward Steichen’s rare and historically important 1904 Pond—Moonlight.

[more…]

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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 mount the first dedicated sale of African-American art.

Frankly, it’s about time.

Credit Swann Galleries for figuring it out. With a decade’s worth of annual Printed and Manuscript African-Americana sales under their belt, and a print department that has been regularly offering works on paper by undervalued 20th-century black artists, this market has been right under their noses. They have the history of establishing prices in a highly fragmented market. They have the clients. They’ve built the secondary-market niche. Having waded in up to their knees, Swann finally decided to take the full plunge.

[more…]

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 picture by contemporary Scottish painter Peter Doig to the obscene price of $11.3 million, more than five times its estimate and a record for a living European artist?

Okay, I get it. Peter Doig’s White Canoe is a pretty picture. It’s big. It’s colorful. It’s twinkly. It’s like a Monet water lily meets van Gogh’s Starry Night. Hey, it’s even said to be inspired by the horror film Friday the 13th, giving it some, er, pop culture resonance, for those who want “more” than an eyeful of color.

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