Dissent over proposed gift, new name at @MiamiArtMuseum @MiamiHerald @glljunior #Art

 
Interesting Story...

Posted on Friday, 11.18.11 In Miami Herald

A proposed $35 million gift from developer Jorge Perez to the Miami Art Museum, with naming rights, is raising the ire of several board members who say the institution’s name should not be for sale.

 http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/17/2507449/dissent-over-proposed-gift-new.html#

@AdamLindemann in @NewYorkObserver -The 1% of the 1%: Stratospheric Prices at #Auction Mask the Teeth Grinding of the Real #Art Market

November 16, 2011

Last week’s outrageous auction results have left dealers and savvy collectors giddy, puzzled and mentally exhausted. A number of works soared to stupefying heights, defying the gravity of the euro crisis, the Middle East madness and the unexpected softening of gold prices. How and why, at times like these, can art values continue to peak, and Sotheby’s proudly report that it had the third-highest Contemporary sale results in its entire history?

 

Spending some quality rehash time with sophisticated dealers and collectors revealed that all is not as hunky dory as it appears, and that the market has bifurcated into two distinct price ranges: the items that sell for $4 million and below, and the stuff that brings out the Monopoly money.

 

Let’s start with the Monopoly money art. What is it? It’s the art that sells for prices that no one can imagine or understand, like two large abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, one that made $21 million at Sotheby’s last Wednesday and another that capped out at the same sale at $18 million. Only a year ago a similar and perhaps better one fetched $10 million at auction, a price that seemed awfully high at the time, so how can it be that a 79-year-old artist’s work has doubled in a year of financial crisis? What makes these results even more strange is the rumor that these pictures had been on the market for a while, with no buyers anywhere near these levels. But let’s not forget the early and important black and white photorealist Richter painting that didn’t find any takers in the sale at Christie’s last Tuesday night. The photorealist paintings are the more significant and historic works from Mr. Richter’s oeuvre, and yet the historically “important” art found no buyer while the pretty, colorful abstractions sold for double their presale estimates.

 

Then there was the unusual case of the four rare and handsome Clyfford Stills sold by the artist’s estate to raise money for the Still museum in Denver, Colo. They all sold unbelievably well, but one of them made an outrageous $61 million that night, a number that astounded even the Sotheby’s experts; you could read it on their wide-eyed faces (see them on my website, www.adamlindemann.com). Only two or three years ago, Bob Mnuchin of L+M gallery offered me a similar large Still painting for $20-some million and I thought he was daft, but after these results, am I now supposed to believe that was a bargain?

 

Usually when a group of works by a single artist comes up for sale, you can expect to see some casualties, but in the cases of the Richters and the Stills, the auction house invested in the hype of promotion and marketing, and managed to create a feeding frenzy on the night of the sale.

 

During the Sotheby’s sale hundreds from the art handlers’ union protested raucously outside in Occupy Wall Street style, making the 1 percent (we rich people) feel really weird about the whole art-selling spectacle. But $20 million and $60 million prices are a phenomenon that can spark only among the 1 percent of the 1 percent—those who have seemingly infinite money to spend, and who seem to want to spend it mainly at auction, paying double what they would pay for the same artwork in a gallery. The “real” art market that transacts underneath these inflated, theatrical prices is often struggling and slow, and though things are still moving these days, there’s difficulty, and bargaining, and plenty of teeth grinding.

 

Drop down in price from the crazy-money pictures, and you’ll quickly find that most evening sale lots fall in the $3 million to $5 million range, and though a few outperform, for the most part works sell at the low end of their presale estimates. Far too often the “better,” “smarter” and more historical pieces are the ones that tend to underperform, while the flashy and commercial stuff finds the less sophisticated “bourgeois” audience, the people who like only pretty if inconsequential pictures. Take for example a historic though small 1964 Warhol Car Crash that was rumored to be mine. I watched as it was hammered down at its low estimate of $3.8 million while a decorative but otherwise inconsequential 1981 Warhol Mickey Mouse painting from the “Myths” series made a robust $3.5 million, about the same money one of Warhol’s fashiony Brigitte Bardot portraits would have made. The Car Crash is a piece of art history, but auction buyers aren’t the types to hang “Five Deaths” on their wall. For the same money, they’d rather put up a colorful Mickey Mouse or a big bold Warhol Dollar Sign, one of which went for $3.6 million that night.

 

Take the classic Charlie Ray glass sculpture that made a realistic $3.1 million, while Cady Noland’s Oozewald sculpture soared to $6.6 million. I don’t consider myself to be overly stupid, but the facts would seem to point to it: I was offered the same or a similar Noland piece a few months ago for $2.5 million, and I thought it was a joke. Cady Noland has become a hard-to-get, cultish, niche artist. She stopped making work years ago, she doesn’t allow visitors, and she’s supposedly borderline insane, but who cares? That type of result bears no relation to reality—but then again, perhaps auction results don’t have to.

 

A classic and historic 1999 Takashi Murakami DOB in the Strange Forest sculpture barely squeaked by at $2.7 million, but another work from this edition of three made $3.5 million in 2008, which even then was a disappointing result considering its alleged guarantee at a full $5 million: so some good works are definitely still on their way down right now. How about a large and important 1989 Richard Prince monochrome joke painting selling for only $2.7 million, when that same picture in a gallery would be quoted at a minimum of $3.5 million? Confusing as this may seem to the auction market onlookers, the art market has split, with the top, trendy lots selling for funny money, and the “value” pictures struggling in the backwash. You can often see the strong dealers step in to pick up the valuable casualties, but in this time of financial crisis, even the richest of them are nervous about what may or may not happen in the future, and they’ve become more and more conservative, usually dropping out above the $3 million level.

 

Am I predicting a market crash? Absolutely not. I’m a believer in art’s value, but I can’t help but sympathize with the protesters, though my personal protest is a little different: I think outlandish and irrational prices jilt the whole picture out of perspective because I know for a fact that there’s plenty of death and disaster in the market. Contrary to public perception it’s not all peaches and crème. Last week at auction we witnessed “La vie en rose,” a time when in a bad economy a single and beautiful Andreas Gursky photograph made $4.3 million, a world record for a photograph at auction, when for the same money I would have bought Jeff Koons’s iconic 1985 Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank, even though it doesn’t decorate a living room wall. But quality doesn’t always sell well in this environment, and sometimes, as in the case of the 1960s photorealist Richter portrait, it doesn’t sell at all.

 

If last week the art market could speak, it would have cackled and then quoted the great Mark Twain by saying, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” But even putting those spectacular Monopoly money trades aside, the proof was still in the pudding; most of the artworks successfully found new homes at reasonable if not modestly bullish prices. So what’s my advice to those intrepid collectors like myself who are committed to moving forward? These days I’ll take my cue from the wisdom of old Ben Franklin, who once said: “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.”

 

 

 

 

New Art Drives $1 Billion Fall Auctions in @wsj by @kellycrowWSJ #ContemporaryArt #Art

The art market may be entering another Blue Period—as in blue chips. The major fall art auctions that concluded Thursday in New York fell slightly in terms of total sales from a year ago, but collectors and investors looking to store their cash in art found plenty of useful trophies this time around.

New York's chief auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's International, brought in about $1 billion combined from their semiannual sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art, a total short of last fall's $1.1 billion mark but nearly double the tally two years ago. While stocks have been volatile—peaking in April and then experiencing ups and downs amid worries about recession and European debt default—the art market has held relatively steady.

[ICONS auctions]Sotheby's

Gerhard Richter's '92 'Abstract Painting' sold for $14.1 million, over its $7.5 million high estimate, at Sotheby's.

Sotheby's handily won this round by selling $599.8 million, besting Christie's $496.3 million total. Sotheby's secret lay mainly in newer art: On Wednesday, Sotheby's $315.8 million evening sale of contemporary art eclipsed the house's entire two-day sale of older artists like Pablo Picasso held the week before.

Dealers said that with so many Impressionist masterpieces in museums now, collectors seeking marquee pieces must scour 20th-century offerings instead.

With so much demand for contemporary art, here are a few lessons learned:

THE RARER, THE BETTER

Clyfford Still, an Abstract Expressionist known for covering his canvases in serrated strips of color, rarely turns up at auction. That partly explains why collectors lined up to pay Sotheby's $114 million for a quartet of his paintings sold by the city of Denver to raise funds for the artist's new namesake museum there.

The priciest of the Still paintings, "1949-A-No. 1," sold to a telephone bidder for $61.7 million—besting its $35 million high estimate and setting a record for the artist. A phone bidder paid $31.4 million for Still's "1947-Y-No. 2."

A rare, early comic-style painting by Roy Lichtenstein—the 1961 "I Can See the Whole Room … and There's Nobody in It!" sold at Christie's to private dealer Guy Bennett for a record $43.2 million, over its $35 million high estimate.

ArtAuctionjpg

RICHTER RISING

German painter Gerhard Richter has also emerged as a market force to be reckoned with alongside Picasso, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol. Mr. Richter is best known for his quiet, photorealistic depictions of candles, but prices are ticking up now for his "Abstract Painting" series, in which he uses a squeegee to scrape over layers of colorful paint.

On Wednesday, Sotheby's tested his global appeal by offering seven of these abstracts—and sold them back to back. Mr. Richter's fuschia-blue "Abstract Painting," a wall-sized work from 1997, sold for a record $20.8 million, over its $12 million high estimate. His neon-hued "Abstract Painting" from 1992 sold for $14.1 million, over its $7.5 million high estimate. The total haul: $74 million, way over the $16 million the house got for seven Warhols in this sale.

To be sure, Warhol's prices in any sale hinge on rarity and quality, and Christie's got $16.3 million alone for his 1963 "Silver Liz" on Tuesday.

RECORD APPEAL

Besides Mr. Richter, collectors also reset the high bar for at least 22 other artists this time around, including Louise Bourgeois, whose 1996 "Spider" bronze sold at Christie's for a record $10.7 million, and Joan Mitchell, whose untitled abstract sold for a record $9.3 million at Sotheby's. Andreas Gursky's serene river view, "Rhein II," also became the world's priciest photograph when Christie's sold it for $4.3 million, taking over a title long held by Cindy Sherman.

 

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Bitter Departure for @MiamiCityBallet’s Patriarch in @nytimes #ballet

November 13, 2011

By 

Morning class at the Miami City Ballet had just ended one day in late September when the dancers and staff gathered in the main studio for a companywide meeting with their founder, artistic director and patriarch, Edward Villella.

Mr. Villella spoke of his pride in them and his joy at the success of a recent Paris tour. And then, pushing down sobs, he read a news release with stunning news: Mr. Villella would leave the company after next season. The dancers gasped, wept and hugged. At a board meeting later that day they streamed in looking for answers.

For many of them Mr. Villella was the only artistic director they had ever known. For Miami he was the force behind one of the nation’s finest regional companies, a troupe at the height of its renown. For the dance world he was a legend, one of the greatest male dancers produced by the United States.

The company’s board leadership called Mr. Villella’s departure a mutual decision. But although his age — 75 — suggests that retirement was not far off, Mr. Villella was forced out, according to recent interviews with his supporters on the board, friends and others familiar with the company.

“He’s still working like dynamite,” said Bob Avian, a board member. “Personally I’m very upset that Edward’s been relieved.”

Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg, a veteran principal dancer, said Mr. Villella was not leaving of his own will. “All of us felt that he had more to give,” she said.

Mr. Villella’s departure appears to stem from gathering friction with key board members regarding questions of authority, the company’s financial future and who holds ultimate sway over a ballet troupe that was artistically synonymous with Mr. Villella but financially dependent on wealthy Floridians.

Mr. Villella declined to discuss the reason for his departure. He did point out, however, that he was in excellent health and full of energy. “I’m not the retiring type, shall we say,” Mr. Villella said in an interview in New York, where he and his wife, Linda, who runs the company’s ballet school, were looking for a new place to live. “But there are many, many things that I haven’t done, and I shall pursue those.”

They include writing, teaching and working on a multimedia dance project, he added. He will depart in the spring of 2013, but under an unpublicized agreement with the company he will be paid for another year.

“I love what I do,” Mr. Villella said. “I love my dancers. Will I be sad when I leave them? Sure I will be. But that’s a normal thing. These are my guys.”

His supporters argue that meddling by board members in administrative matters reached an intolerable level. Mr. Villella — who has a pugnacious streak — may have stoked resentment by turning his back on his board critics, not even greeting several of them at a gala in Miami last March.

“They don’t want it to be Edward Villella’s company anymore,” Alfred Allan Lewis, a donor, said of influential board members. “They want it to be their company.” He acknowledged that Mr. Villella made enemies. “He is not very good at playing the social games,” he said.

On the other side few board members would speak on the record for fear that controversy would harm fund-raising. Two members, while praising his artistry and contribution, suggested it was becoming difficult to raise money because donors questioned the company’s viability given Mr. Villella’s age and the lack of a concrete succession plan.

“Because he’s so wonderful, it almost becomes a liability because people say: ‘What do you have without him? Nothing,’ ” said one board member, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid offending Mr. Villella. This board member compared him to an aging corporate titan who created a business but did not have the perspective to know when to leave. “My only motivation is, how does this company thrive and be here for the long term?” the board member said.

The board president, James Eroncig, said he was new to the board and not involved in the negotiation of Mr. Villella’s departure. “It was a fait accompli,” he said.

Another member, R. Kirk Landon, acknowledged that he had given Mr. Villella a book about corporate transitions at a meeting between the two early this year. “It was time to start worrying about succession,” he said.

The announcement of Mr. Villella’s departure was preceded by a change in status. An agreement in April removed “chief executive officer” from his job description, said Pamela N. Gardiner, the outgoing executive director, although the title remained on the company’s Web site as of Sunday.

On Nov. 1 the company announced it had hired Nicholas T. Goldsborough, an experienced administrator and fund-raiser, as the new executive director. He will report directly to the board instead of to Mr. Villella as Ms. Gardiner did. She will remain, with the title of executive vice president for artistic affairs. The shift was an indication of the board leadership’s desire for, as Ms. Gardiner put it, “more of a business model rather than an artistic model.”

Mr. Goldsborough’s arrival signals new ambitions. He said in an interview that he hopes to raise a substantial endowment, perhaps $30 million or $40 million, compared to the roughly $2 million endowment now. Mr. Eroncig, the board president, expressed hope for more televised performances and an annual appearance in New York.

The company has experienced a string of deficits and declining box office earnings in recent years, and, Mr. Villella said, finances remain precarious. Nevertheless, the 43-member Miami City Ballet has established itself as one of the finest regional companies, punching far above its weight, with a $14.5 million budget. A wealth of talented young dancers fill the ranks. It is coming off a recent high: its first nationally broadcast PBS special; critically praised performances at City Center in 2009, the company’s New York debut; and the triumphant three-week visit to Paris in July. In March it will perform a new work by the leading choreographer Alexei Ratmansky in a collaboration with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Mr. Villella cuts a small figure, his hair still jet black, his body manifestly creaky from the ravages of a dance career. He has had three hip replacements. “It became a habit,” he said.

In another era he was a magnetic star at George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet and a personality in the popular culture who oftenappeared on television, a symbol of working-class grit amid ballet-world chiffon. The son of a trucking company owner, he grew up in Bayside, Queens, and attended New York Maritime College, where he was school welterweight boxing champion and lettered in baseball. He danced at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration and was a rare American to give an encore at the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. “I thought it was the moment of my life,” he said. “I thought I would never experience anything like that again — until Paris.”

Mr. Villella brought the Balanchine style to Miami and turned the company into a leading repository of the tradition. He also broadened the repertory to include works by Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor and others, as well as full-length ballets.

The company’s leadership insists that it wants to continue the Balanchine tradition with its next artistic leader, whom the board expects to name by the spring. But the pool of candidates with a depth of Balanchine knowledge is small.

Mr. Villella’s dancing career came to a halt abruptly because of a deteriorated hip, but he managed to return to dance briefly, ensuring that he would go out on his own terms. He declined to draw a parallel between the end of his dancing and artistic director’s phases, only saying: “It’s really about the dancers. I wanted to make a company I would have liked to dance in.”

Mr. Eroncig, the board president, said Mr. Villella would be suitably honored. He did not rule out a statue.


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Art Basel Miami Beach #ABMB @ABMB and @BassMuseum to Present Public #Art Works in Collins Park Nov 30

For the 10th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, the show will collaborate with the Bass Museum of Art on the Art Public sector, which will transform Collins Park with a record number of public art works. Featuring sculptures and performances by renowned artists and emerging talents, the sector will open to the public with a specially curated program of performances by Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi, Sanford Biggers and Moon Medicine, and Alalâo presenting Ronald Duarte.

Curated for the first time by Christine Y. Kim, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Co-founder of the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), this year’s Art Public reflects a shift toward expanded conceptual, performative and temporal works. Focused on a strongly defined but varied exhibition area, the grouping of 24 artworks responds to reflections on the art practices of previous decade, leaning toward Los Angeles and the West Coast.

Art Public will open on November 30 with a selected program of performances. The Art Public Opening Night will feature Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi, who will respond in song and verse to the works of Art Public in an art-historical and monastic manner. The evening will also include an evocative experimental performance by Sanford Biggers and Moon Medicine combining images of punk, funk, film noir, sci-fi, with traditional Samoan dance, Buddhism and original video content and music. The Alalâo collective, founded in January 2011 by Marcio Botner and Ernesto Neto of A Gentil Carioca and the artist Marcus Wagner, will present ‘Nimbo Oxalà’ by Brazilian artist Ronald Duarte and will bring the Carioca spirit of Rio de Janeiro to Miami Beach. The additional performances as part of Art Public – ‘Transformer Display of Community Information and Activation’ by Andrea Bowers and Olga Koumoundouros, ‘Iemanjá’ by Jen DeNike, and ‘Levitating the Fair (The Flying Merchant Ship)’ by Glenn Kaino – will open on Wednesday and continue throughout the duration of the fair. These performances will be complimented by works in a variety of media, ranging in date from Bruce Conner’s ‘LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS’ (1959-1965) to the present.

List of Art Public artworks:
*Darren Bader: my aunt’s car / Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
*Nina Beier: The Demonstrators, 2011 / Standard (Oslo), Oslo
*Chakaia Booker: Holla, 2008 / Marlborough Gallery, New York
*Andrea Bowers & Olga Koumoundouros: Transformer Display of Community Information and Activation, 2011 / Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles
*Bruce Conner: LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS, 1959-1965 / Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles
*Kate Costello: Untitled, 2011 / Wallspace, New York
*Jen DeNike: Iemanjá, 2011 / Mendes Wood, São Paulo
*Gardar Eide Einarsson: Untitled (Apparatus), 2011 / Team Gallery, New York
*Rachel Feinstein: Gargantua, 2011 / Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
*Theaster Gates: Stand-Ins for a Period of Wreckage, 2011 / Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago
*Antony Gormley: Strain, 2011 / Sean Kelly, New York
*Damien Hirst: Sensation, 2003 / L&M Arts, New York
*Thomas Houseago: Rattlesnake Figure, 2011 / L&M Arts, New York
*Zhang Huan: 49 Days No. 1, 2011 / Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
*Richard Hughes: If I was where I would be, here I would be not, 2011 / Anton Kern Gallery, New York
*Robert Indiana: ART, 1972-2001 / Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich
*Glenn Kaino: Levitating the Fair (The Flying Merchant Ship), 2011 / Marlborough Gallery, New York
*Anish Kapoor: Black Stones, Human Bones, 1993 / L&M Arts, New York
*Robert Melee: It Sitting, 2008 / Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
*Anthony Pearson: Untitled (Transmission), 2011 / David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles
*George Rickey: Two Lines Oblique Gyratory II, 1989 / Marlborough Gallery, New York
*Eva Rothschild: Living Spring, 2011 / Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London
*Eduardo Sarabia: Snake Skin Boots with Snake Head. White Quarry Stone 21st Century. Northern Mexico, 2011 / Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City
*Banks Violette: Not yet titled, 2011 / Team Gallery, New York

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The Fever Bubbling in #ContemporaryArt Sales @nytimes - Art Sales Still Humming...

November 11, 2011

NEW YORK — Billionaires worried about plunging stocks are feverishly looking for alternative assets, the pundits told us this week. They want solid, tangible stuff. Luckily, these days contemporary art is becoming incredibly tangible.

Take Christie’s sale on Tuesday, which began with 26 “Works From the Peter Norton Collection.”

One glance at a color spread adorning the Christie’s catalog was enough to tell buyers that those assets with a physical reality that some badly wanted were there. It showed a group of white fiberglass dogs with big floppy ears set up on wooden stilts. Called “Dogs From Your Childhood,” the assemblage was produced by Yoshitomo Nara in 1999 in an edition of three with two artist’s proofs.

Behind the fiberglass pets, an aluminum plate hung on a panel. Four lines in big block lettering read, “Want/To Be/Your Dog.” That was Christopher Wool’s contribution to art in 1992.

Further to the right of the color spread, a tall figure with a tomato in lieu of a head and goggle eyes stared down, pondering the deeper meaning of the scene. The creature dubbed by its maker, Paul McCarthy, “Tomato Head (Green),” was executed in 1994 in an edition of “three unique variants.” Tomato Head solemnly gazing at the droopy white dogs with a panel proclaiming in the background “Want to Be Your Dog” gave the whole installation photographed by Kate Carr in the Milk Studio, Los Angeles, a sense of gravity that touched a chord with bidders.

Mr. Wool’s “Want to Be Your Dog” made $1.53 million, beating by nearly half the high estimate. “Tomato Head (Green),” enthusiastically fought over, climbed to $4.56 million, setting the first of the week’s several world auction records.

Mr. Nara’s droopy dogs were the only work of contemporary art sold at a bargain price — they cost a mere $422,500, well below the low estimate. Perhaps the underprivileged millionaires who go in for the cheaper varieties of contemporary art lacked the vast residences with suitable display space for Mr. Nara’s beasts.

Soon, the works that were physically tangible rose to levels that Christie’s experts themselves never dreamed of.

Mona Hatoum’s “Silence,” made of glass in an edition of five dating from 1994, bears an uncanny resemblance to a piece of furniture. A nursery crib springs to mind. The impracticality of the fragile device alone warns you that this is art. “Silence” climbed to $470,500, three and a half times the high estimate.

The Norton collection neatly sold without a single failure for $25.8 million, substantially exceeding the high estimate of $16 million. This must have made Mr. Norton a happy man, even if he did not spend many years contemplating his beloved artists’ contraptions — there are just so many times you can rapturously gaze at a panel proclaiming “Want to Be Your Dog.”

After the Norton collection, the really, really serious works turned up.

A gigantic bronze Louise Bourgeois “Spider” cast in 1998 in an edition of six made $10.72 million. That was a world auction record for Bourgeois, who died last year. Even if you are insensitive to art, you cannot miss the monstrous arachnid. Having it on the grounds of your residence conveniently allows you to state your wealth without having to spell it out. Instant recognition is guaranteed by the public display of another cast at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in 2001, and various exhibitions of other casts in such exalted institutions as the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

Indeed, the impact of the invaluable insurance policy provided by such museum credentials to investors in search of safe havens for their millions cannot be overstated. It was verified again and again in the course of Christie’s two-hour session.

Roy Lichtenstein’s early Pop Art picture of 1961 “I Can See the Whole Room ... and There’s Nobody in It!” resembles the cartoon on which it is based. Its importance in contemporary art is demonstrated by its various appearances at the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fort Worth Art Museum and other great institutions. Accordingly, the outsized comic-strip-style picture set one more world record at $43.2 million.

Consecration over time is the other selling argument that sways those seeking safety. “Contemporary art” never does as well as when it is no longer contemporary — that is, made by living artists.

Andy Warhol has been hailed for so long that doubts concerning the artistic nature of silkscreen ink work based on snapshots would hardly ever arise these days. Add the name of a famous showbiz character and triumph ensues.

“Silver Liz” in acrylic, silver-screen ink and spray enamel on canvas was painted by Warhol in 1963. It looks like a poster for a movie featuring Elizabeth Taylor, which is no surprise: Advertising was Warhol’s thing before he turned to art. The poster-like portrait made $16.32 million.

By the end of Tuesday evening, believers in contemporary art had spent more than $247 million on sundry works. Whether the low 10 percent failure rate reflected their love of white dogs or their monetary worries is a moot question.

On Wednesday, Sotheby’s rode to sweeping victory with a $315.8 million score, its third highest total realized in a contemporary art sale.

Perhaps the most extraordinary prices had as much to do with distrust in the financial markets as with pure passion for art. They invariably greeted artists long sung in the media.

Within the first half hour, a world auction record was set for Clyfford Still with an abstract composition titled “1949-A-No. 1.” The canvas had in its favor monumental size, museum approval — in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1979-1980 retrospective — and its six-decade-long career on the national scene.

The next abstract picture by Still also had a cryptic title, “1947-Y-No. 2.” Artists who paint nothing in particular, using the “abstract” label, prefer it that way. So do newcomers.

Abstractionism, easy to look at, does not require meditation, and buyers to whom time is money do not waste it by looking too long at what they settle for. The second Still, while smaller, was vastly superior in its composition and color scheme, but made only $31.4 million. By comparison, the enormous price seems almost modest.

That evening, Abstractionism was propelled to unmatched heights, regardless of school and period. Yet another world record was set when one of Gerhard Richter’s “Abstract Pictures,” dating from 1997, went up to $20.8 million. Huge, the canvas displays a sense of rhythm and color nuances in purplish reds and blues that possibly helped it to rise so high.

Immediately after, though, another of Mr. Richter’s abstract compositions, “Gudrun,” done 10 years earlier, aroused almost as much excitement and made a thumping $18 million. Confused, it does not remotely compare with the record picture.

This week, such differences were evidently irrelevant. Mr. Richter is a true master of the brush, perhaps the only one among the officially acclaimed living artists. But the consecration that his oeuvre has received through the retrospective now at Tate Modern in London is what matters to safe haven seekers.

Names, not art, were the targets this week. Warhol’s “Mickey Mouse” close up, which could not be more different, did well at $3.44 million. With it, however, came a warning. This is perhaps not quite enough to satisfy the consignor who paid $1.91 million for the cartoon painted seven years ago to the day, also at Sotheby’s, New York. With the charges to buyer and vendor, and taking into account the loss of buying power incurred by the dollar, “Mickey Mouse” may not have paid the interest on the capital outlay in real terms.

Add that 11 works were unsold out of the 73 that were offered at Sotheby’s, despite the bullish market, and the alternative assets of contemporary art seem a lot less safe than one might assume.

The recent steep rises in contemporary art are linked to perception. And if one thing is apt to change without warning, that is what the eye can see — or imagines it sees.

Beth Katleman (@rococobabe) on Her Ceramic Curiosities in @nytimes

January 12, 2011

Beth Katleman on Her Ceramic Curiosities

By PENELOPE GREEN

Beth Katleman is a ceramic artist who plays with dainty forms and techniques, subverting traditional shapes to her own mischievous ends. Her delicate earthenware reliefs in wild colors recall the 18th-century porcelain rooms of European royalty — except when you look closely, you might see the Campbell Soup kids brandishing a safety razor among the rococo flowers and vines, or the Pillsbury Doughboy tucked inside an ornate doorway.
 In the late 1990s, Ms. Katleman was invited by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center to be an artist in residence. She performed her work at Kohler, the kitchen-and-bath company that is a major funder of the center, embellishing sinks, bidets and toilets with an explosion of earthenware reliefs in Jordan Almond colors. In 1998, one toilet made its way into the Christmas windows at Barneys New York; that same year, another was included in a show called “Bathroom” at the Thomas Healy Gallery, nestled in between work by Andy Warhol and John Waters.

Recently, she has been working in porcelain, casting cheap toys and curios — grinning snails, fake Barbies from China, thumbnail-size pencil sharpeners molded into world monuments — in ghostly white ceramic, and creating tiny tableaus from them. Next week, she is installing “Folly” at the Jane Hartsook Gallery on Jones Street, setting 50 miniature landscapes on a wall painted bright turquoise. It looks like the wallpaper in an English country estate, pastoral and graphic, except that the three-dimensional landscapes cast spooky shadows and, as your eye adjusts, you find all of Ms. Katleman’s favorite kitschy objects rendered as precisely as Lladro figurines.

I know this is old history, but before the Kohler center’s invitation, had you ever worked in toilets before?

I had not! For a while, these were the things I was best known for. I thought, Oh no. I’ll be forever known as the toilet artist. I have one set in our apartment. Sammy and Natasha, my 8-year-olds, think everyone’s mom makes toilets.

To clarify, Kohler invites a few artists a year to use their factory to make sculpture; it’s called the Arts/Industry program. It doesn’t have anything to do with their product line, but I just really wanted to make a toilet.

I’ll bet toilets pose special challenges as a medium. What were they?

Well, when they are fired, they are like liquid glass. I think they fire at 2,500 degrees. They hand it to you right out of the mold, and I just piled stuff on. They told me none of it would come out, that the toilet would warp or bend. When it didn’t, the Kohler engineer brought his boss to the studio. They couldn’t believe it hadn’t collapsed. Yes, it’s a challenging medium.

Your new medium puts you in terrific company, with artists who mess around with wallpaper and also with toile, which your landscapes recall. I am remembering when Virgil Marti made wallpaper from the school photos of boys who had bullied him in junior high, and the toile embroidered by Richard Saja, a Brooklyn textile artist, who stitches cockroaches and flames and other impish images onto pillows and sofas.

There’s been a tradition of artists inspired by wallpaper. It’s so polite. It’s domestic and cozy. You think, English country houses. You feel comfortable. You are used to feeling like it’s in the background, and that it’s safe. So, as an artist, you can use that to mess with people’s heads. Wallpaper puts people’s defenses down, and you can exploit that a little bit.

Where do you find all the gewgaws for your pieces? Do you have a favorite flea market?

Since the 26th Street flea markets are no longer, I shop online. I get immersed in these weird subcultures, like the fairy garden Web sites where little old ladies who make fairy gardens find the tiny bridges and such.

The World War II diorama sites are good, and ones for souvenir miniatures — there are whole Web sites devoted to miniature buildings. My miniature buildings are from pencil sharpeners. Friends will e-mail me, “There’s a sharpener of Mount Rushmore on eBay!”

I also collect vintage Playmobil plants. I find contemporary ones in my kids’ toys, and at kids’ birthday parties. You don’t want to invite me over.

“Folly” runs from Jan. 20 to Feb. 17 at the Jane Hartsook Gallery, at Greenwich House Pottery, 16 Jones Street, second floor; Ms. Katleman’s “Folly” sculptures will be for sale ($2,400 to $4,500 each). Information: (212) 991-0003, greenwichhouse.org or bethkatleman.com.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 20, 2011

 

An article last Thursday about Beth Katleman, a ceramic artist, misidentified the group that provided her with an artist-in-residence position in the late 1990s. It was the John Michael Kohler Arts Center — not Kohler, the kitchen and bath company, which helps finance the arts center.

 

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2011

 

A Spare Times entry in some editions on Friday about a display of 50 miniature landscapes by the ceramic artist Beth Katleman at Greenwich House Pottery in Manhattan misstated the address. It is 16 Jones Street, not 16 Great Jones Street.

 

U.S. Dept of @Interior Approves #Christo ‘Over the River’ #Art Project in #Colorado. #Eco impact?

Fascinating and challenging art project with serious environmental challenges.

The artist plans to install fabric over the Arkansas River.


DENVER — Federal regulators on Monday approved a $50 million installation of anchored fabric over the Arkansas River in southern Colorado by the artist Christo, whose larger-than-life vision has divided environmentalists, residents and politicians for years over questions of aesthetics, nature and economic impact.

Christo

The artist's drawing of the project, which will include eight suspended panel segments totaling 5.9 miles along a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River.

The project, “Over the River,” will include eight suspended panel segments totaling 5.9 miles along a 42-mile stretch of the river, about three hours southwest of Denver. Construction could begin next year, pending final local approvals, with the goal being a two-week display of the work as early as August 2014.

“Drawing visitors to Colorado to see this work will support jobs in the tourism industry and bring attention to the tremendous outdoor recreation opportunities,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said. “We believe that steps have been taken to mitigate the environmental effects of this one-of-a-kind project.”

Christo, 76, said in an interview that the project had already made history for its interconnection of art and public participation, with a federal environmental impactstatement that drew thousands of comments.

Christo’s projects — from the wrapping of the ReichstagParliament building in Berlin in 1995 to “The Gates,” a meandering path of orange awnings through Central Park in New York in 2005 — have often generated heated debate in advance of their creation.

“We are elated,” Christo said. “Every artist in the world likes his or her work to make people think. Imagine how many people were thinking, how many professionals were thinking and writing in preparing that environmental impact statement.”

Permits are still needed from Fremont and Chaffee Counties, the Colorado Department of Transportation and the State Patrol. But Christo emphasized that those agencies had been working with the federal government all through the environmental impact study and were involved in shaping the mitigation measures included in Monday’s decision.

Federal officials said that “Over the River” could generate $121 million in economic output and draw 400,000 visitors, both during the construction — which could become its own tourist event — and the display itself.

Points of contention and controversy ranged from road safety in the narrow canyon highway through the installation zone, which extends from the towns of Salida to Cañon City, to potential impacts on wildlife, especially on the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that habituate the Arkansas River canyon and are Colorado’s state mammal.

In May, the Colorado Wildlife Commission, an advisory panel to the state’s Division of Parks and Wildlife, urged federal officials to reject Christo’s proposal, specifically citing its concerns about the sheep, and whether the chaos and traffic of construction could keep them from crucial water sources. A local opposition group complained in August that federal regulators were being unduly swayed by Christo, and that phrases like “artistic vision” in the impact study, rather than neutral terms like “proposed project,” suggested a predisposition to let him have his way.

The decision announced Monday spelled out measures to protect the sheep, including restricting activity in lambing season and a Bighorn Sheep Adaptive Management Fund, paid for by Christo, who is covering the full cost of the project via the sale of his work.