"Lawyers Fight to Keep Auction Sellers Anonymous" @Nytimes - George Lindemann

New York’s highest court has decided to review a recent ruling that could force the state’s auction industry to end its longstanding practice of keeping sellers’ names anonymous.

Most sellers in the New York auction market remain anonymous, and auction catalogs typically reveal little more than that a work is from a “private collection.” The court did not rule that auction houses had to publicize widely the name of a seller, only that buyers are entitled to know it. Buyers — themselves often people who anonymously sell items at auction — have seldom complained about the practice, while sellers have come to expect their identities to be shielded.

But in October, in a dispute over the sale of a 19th-century silver-and-enamel Russian box, a four-judge appellate-court panel unanimously ruled that state law has long required that buyers be given the names of sellers in postauction paperwork for the deal to become binding.

Many art-law experts say the decision, if upheld, could significantly change the way the auction business is conducted in New York State.

“As of now you can back out of any transaction where the name of the seller is not provided,” said Peter R. Stern of McLaughlin & Stern, a Manhattan lawyer who represents dealers, collectors and auction houses and was an outside counsel to Sotheby’s.

The lawyer for the auctioneer in the case said Christie’s had inquired about submitting a brief when the New York Court of Appeals, which last month announced its intention to review the case, takes it up this spring. The auction house declined to comment.

Jonathan A. Olsoff, director of worldwide litigation for Sotheby’s, said that auction house viewed the decision as “narrow and technical” and that others were overstating its impact. Although fine-arts sales are the highest-profile auctions in the state, the ruling would also affect the sale of other items, like heirlooms, vehicles and livestock, which are also typically auctioned anonymously by hundreds of companies every week.

Anonymity is often prized because it protects personal privacy and allows institutions quietly to sell items from their collections that they no longer need. In some cases it can also cloak the embarrassment of debt or help sellers avoid setting off family conflicts over the disposition of inherited assets.

“Anonymity should not be seen as an abuse of the law,” said Christine Steiner of Sheppard Mullin, a Los Angeles law firm. She is a former Maryland prosecutor who has represented sellers from all income levels.

The ruling came in a case involving an auctioneer in Chester, N.Y., William J. Jenack, who sold a Russian antique in 2008 for $460,000. The piece, a czarist box made by I. P. Khlebnikov, a Fabergé contemporary, depicted aristocrats feasting on a roasted swan. Mr. Jenack said the top bidder, Albert Rabizadeh of Long Island, refused to pay after “grumbling about the price.”

Mr. Jenack sued for payment and won, but the decision was overturned by the appellate court when Mr. Rabizadeh challenged the transaction because the seller had not been identified in the postsale documentation.

In arguments last year before the appellate court lawyers for the auctioneer said that revealing the seller would overturn centuries of commercial practice and badly burden the industry. But the appellate panel, citing New York’s anti-fraud statutes, was unmoved.

“While it may be true that auction houses commonly withhold the names of consignors,” Justice Peter B. Skelos of the appellate division said in his ruling, “this court is governed not by the practice in the trade, but by the relevant statute.” He said the law “clearly and unambiguously requires that the name of the person” selling the item be included in documents provided to the buyer.

If the ruling stands, some experts say, a buyer denied a seller’s name would have the right to walk away from any purchase, as happened in Mr. Jenack’s case.

Through his lawyer, Daniel R. Wotman of Great Neck, N.Y., Mr. Rabizadeh declined to comment, but Mr. Wotman said, “Auction houses and consignors need to comply with the law.”

Benjamin Ostrer of Chester, the lawyer for Mr. Jenack, said the ruling represented “a wholesale invitation to have people renege.”

Mr. Olsoff of Sotheby’s disagreed however. “The decision,” he said, “deals only with the evidence that is required if an auction purchaser defaults in paying and is sued by the auction house.”

Several lawyers said auctioneers could try to resolve issues by having buyers agree to anonymity in writing before bidding. But Leila A. Amineddoleh, an expert on art law at Lombard & Geliebter, said she would discourage buyers from signing such a waiver, especially because the seller’s identity can aid with provenance questions and enhance the future value of an item.

She predicted that if the ruling is upheld, some auctioneers would lobby in Albany for legislation to exempt them from disclosing the seller.

Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a lawyer with Sullivan & Worcester in Boston who writes that firm’s Art Law Report, said the ruling also allowed winning bidders to sue auction houses for sellers’ names. “Once the gavel falls there is a binding agreement that cuts both ways,” he said. “The implications are very far-reaching.”

Mr. Jenack said fellow auctioneers worry that their clients would sell in other states where privacy is protected.

Lawyers said they had not heard of court rulings in other states that appeared to restrict the granting of anonymity to sellers at auction.

One person with a strong interest in the case is the box’s seller, Jonathan A. Thompson, 70, of Greenwich, Conn. He said anonymity was the last thing he cared about when he put the family heirloom up for sale in 2008.

He ended up with $50,000, he said, when the box was resold at auction in 2010, not the money he once stood to make, but far more than the $5,000 value first put on the box when Mr. Jenack originally advertised it.

“I didn’t ask to be anonymous,” he said. “I didn’t think at all about it.”

 

Robin Pogrebin contributed reporting.

By TOM MASHBERG

Writing About Not Writing About the Art Market @adamlindmeann

NOT PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

 

 

Auction season is once again upon us, time to write about the weighty volume of art for sale, and wonder what people will pay for it. I’m simply overwhelmed by the quantity of valuable artworks that need to sell (though much of it has essentially been pre-sold, through third party guaranties). Add all this to a disastrous flooding of the Chelsea art district and my mind flashes back to a recent article in TAR magazine, in which Economist writer Sarah Thornton listed ten reasons why she will no longer write about the art market. Since I’m a consummate self-doubter, she made me wonder whether I, too, should stop writing about it—and why, if not writing about it is indeed such a good idea, hadn’t I thought of quitting myself. Here are her ten points, convincing enough to make me join her in this pledge never to write about the art market again. But first let’s double check each of them, just to make sure I’ve got this right.

 

1. It gives too much exposure to artists who command the highest prices. 

Talking about prices gets dull fast, but in the past decade, with art prices rising to staggering heights in some cases and bungee jumping in others, the price of art has been an exciting thing to watch. Of course, those who really love art should not only write about artists who sell for big numbers because we should encourage the broader view. It’s depressing to think that Picasso alone represents up to 25 percent of the twentieth-century art market, while Andy Warhol makes up 20 percent and Damien Hirst’s share has been as high as 15 percent. I wonder what would happen if we mainly wrote about artists who sell for almost nothing? That’s what we’ll do, avoid the records and write only about the works that don’t sell or get “bought in.” Genius!

 

2. It enables manipulators to publicize the artists whose prices they spike at auction.

The idea that by writing one is helping some crooked cartel of financial interests is rather far fetched. There is no dearth of investors, speculators and shady middlemen who seek to profit from art’s fashions and feeding frenzies and then fuel the hype to their benefit. She’s right I guess, and why should I help them unless I’m in on the scam? (Oh, right—I am!) Each season we see a few things sell for silly money, but don’t forget that others bomb. I don’t think art prices are any different than some stock prices. Do you really think Facebook is worth more than McDonald’s? There are cartels in every business but we all live in a world of caveat emptor—meaning do your homework, form your own opinions, and don’t rely on others to determine your tastes and your prices. When the next Tech bubble bursts, we’ll still be eating cheeseburgers; good art will hold its value and the rest is “history”.

 

3. It never seems to lead to regulation.

Who needs to regulate a little market in which no two items are alike? People who don’t understand art collecting, that’s who! Believe me, innocent moms and pops don’t buy art. Forget the smart sounding conspiracy theory, there’s no victim here. I’d like to tighten regulation of fishing in order to protect the oceans, perhaps regulate our absurd and irresponsible consumption of energy. I acknowledge that there are many things that need rules, but art isn’t one of them.

 

4. The most interesting stories are libelous. 

Ms. Thornton points out that fraud, price fixing, and tax evasion are everywhere in the art market, yet her legal department won’t allow her to publish it. But are these illegal practices endemic to the art world alone? Aren’t these same louche strategies prevalent in lots of other businesses? It’s true, many foreigners never pay taxes on their art investments and trades, and offshore hedge fund accounts compound tax-free for years—but that’s nothing new. Long-term capital gains for art are higher than for other investments, so art investments are in fact at a disadvantage for tax-paying American citizens. Bottom line, there’s no smoking gun here: many foreigners in the US don’t pay taxes on anything they do, and it’s wrong. In fact, silly me, what have I been thinking? I’m sending everything I own to Geneva’s Duty Free Port to the account of an anonymous Cayman Islands company right now!

 

5. Oligarchs and dictators are not cool.

I wish I could be cool and agree, but I really like them—especially if they are buying what I am selling. Sadly, they usually are not. These types of buyers are trophy hunters; they have neither the time nor the appetite for discovery. Art, for them, is strictly one of the spoils of their pecuniary success. Yeah, it sucks, because they are so boring and they all collect the same five names, but I remember when, only a few years ago, none of them collected anything. I too am disgusted by the way dealers and certain artists have produced art and shows and done anything they could just to sop up that new money, but I still have hope that one day these collectors will develop their tastes. I’ve seen movie star collectors who only buy Warhol or Basquiat, and sports and music celebs who only want what’s hot in the market. Are they any better? That’s why I don’t care if I’m not cool because it’s no longer “cool” to be cool.

 

6. Writing about the art market is painfully repetitive. 

I…I suppose one could say that about most things, and so, so I agree, I agree. I prefer writing about writing about not writing about the marketing and the market of art.

 

7. People send you unbelievably stupid press releases.

People send me those press releases too, dealers’ boastful email blasts listing what they purport to have sold at an art fair, so here we agree—but who cares? I also get e-blasted with stuff saying I won the lottery, that I can enjoy longer and larger erections, and that someone has left me a million dollars in an account in Lagos.

 

8. It implies that money is the most important thing about art. 

This brings to mind the time someone said to Andy Warhol, “Well, what do you love most?” To which he replied, “That’s how I started painting money.”

 

9. It amplifies the influence of the art market.

Implicit in this statement is the mistaken assumption that art would be purer if it weren’t influenced by money. Artists need money—and most of them don’t read about the art market. Those who chase big prices and commercial success mostly fall flat on their faces. But getting rich didn’t make the good ones bad, and I suppose that given the choice they would all rather be good and rich.

 

10. The pay is appalling.

No argument here. It’s a bit tragic, but, then again, no one has forced us to write.

 

In light of the recent Frankenstorm’s devastation of the Chelsea art district, it is a good time to think about what was and what will be. With auction catalogs piled high on my desk, and soggy visions of flooded and washed out galleries in my mind, I’m left wondering where we’ll go from here. Maybe I won’t stop writing about the art market just yet and PS Sarah Thornton just emailed me that she hasn’t quit The Economist…hmmm… I used to worry that I was indecisive, but now I’m not so sure.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mystery Buyer Revealed! "Munch's 'The Scream' Sold to Financier Leon Black" in @wsj

By KELLY CROW

New York financier Leon Black paid Sotheby's nearly $120 million for Edvard Munch's masterpiece, "The Scream," according to several people close to the collector.

 

imageReuters
An auctioneer takes bids for the sale of "The Scream" painted by Edvard Munch at Sotheby's in New York in May.

The identity of the buyer—who set a record for a work of art sold at auction—has been one of the art world's most closely guarded secrets since the dramatic, 12-minute sale in May.

 

 

Now that the buyer has been identified, the new parlor game surrounding the iconic artwork will be guessing where it will end up. Mr. Black's long-term intentions for his Munch remain unclear. He sits on the boards of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, setting up a potential tug of war between two of the country's most powerful art institutions. Neither owns a "Scream," aside from lithograph-print versions of it.

 

Few artworks have the world-wide celebrity of "The Scream," and it would immediately become a merchandising bonanza and huge attendance draw for any museum that displayed it.

 

It's easy to understand the work's appeal: Munch created four versions of "The Scream," but Mr. Black's is the only one not in an Oslo museum and the first to come up at auction. The work depicts a bald, skeletal figure in a blue shirt standing at a popular suicide spot on Oslo's horseshoe-shaped bay where people could often hear screams from a nearby insane asylum, according to art historians.

 

A spokesman for Mr. Black, 60 years old, declined to comment.

 

image
Reuters
Apollo Management LP Managing Partner Leon Black speaks at a panel discussion in May 2011.

 

Mr. Black is one of a handful of billionaires whose lavish art spending has transformed the international art market in recent years, fueling the proliferation of art fairs and ratcheting up prices for all sorts of artworks. His $750 million art collection already includes drawings by Raphael and Vincent van Gogh, watercolors by J.M.W. Turner, Cubist paintings by Pablo Picasso and ancient Chinese bronzes. Three years ago, he paid Christie's $47.6 million for a Raphael chalk drawing, "Head of a Muse," a record auction price at the time for a work on paper.

 

The seller of "The Scream" was Petter Olsen, a Norwegian real-estate developer and shipping heir whose father was a neighbor of Munch's in the small Norwegian town of Hvitsten. Mr. Olsen said he sold the work in order to fund a hotel and museum of Munch's work near the Norwegian fjord where the artist painted.

 

Mr. Black gleaned an early interest in art from his mother and his aunt, Grace Borgenicht Brandt, a Manhattan art dealer who represented painter Milton Avery. In the late 1970s, Mr. Black became a buyout executive for Drexel Burnham Lambert and rose to become the billionaire chairman and chief executive of New York firm Apollo Global Management. His fortune, which Forbes said tops $3.4 billion as of March, increased when Apollo went public in March 2011. Apollo said it manages $105 billion in assets.

 

In 2006, Mr. Black teamed up with collector Ronald Lauder to buy a $38 million Ernst Ludwig Kirchner work, "Berlin Street Scene"—a record for that artist as well. In 2001, he and Mr. Lauder jointly paid Sotheby's $22.5 million for Max Beckmann's 1938 "Self Portrait with Hunting Horn." On Wednesday, Mr. Lauder said he has "always had great respect for Leon's taste and knowledge."

 

Unlike Mr. Lauder, who has put much of his collection on public display in his New York museum, the Neue Galerie, Mr. Black has always kept his art close to home. Dealers who have visited the Park Avenue apartment he shares with his wife, Debra, say it brims with art from an eclectic variety of styles and periods—from archaic Chinese vessels to Constantin Brâncuşi's sleek sculpture, "Bird in Space."

 

[image] 
Getty Images
Edvard Munch

Mr. Black began collecting drawings as a teenager, and his walls are still dotted with clusters of framed sketches by Honoré Daumier, Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne and van Gogh, dealers say. He also has purchased a few contemporary works by artists like Andy Warhol. (In March he and his wife gave his alma mater, Dartmouth College, $48 million to build a new visual arts center adorned with an Ellsworth Kelly wall sculpture.)

 

 

"I wish museum directors knew as much about art as Leon Black does," said Richard Feigen, an Old Master dealer who said he has known the collector for several decades and has sold him art. "Nobody has his wingspan."

 

Until recently, Mr. Black was still primarily known in the art world as a collector of drawings, a field that's been largely overlooked by the recent influx of billionaire art buyers because these works tend to be smaller and harder to instantly identify than a colorful, wall-power painting. In some ways, "The Scream" represents a perfect hybrid because it is a pastel on board—containing all the chalky immediacy of a work on paper—and yet its imagery is well known by the masses.

 

Whatever his reasons for wanting "The Scream," Mr. Black competed hard to win it. During Sotheby's May 2 sale in New York, auctioneer Tobias Meyer kicked off the bidding for the work at $40 million, and five bidders from the U.S. and China joined in. Among them was Mr. Black, who fielded his telephone bids through Charles Moffett, Sotheby's executive vice president and vice chairman of its world-wide Impressionist, modern and contemporary art department. As the price topped $80 million, the fight came down to Mr. Black and another telephone bidder, whose bids began to waver and lag as the price climbed higher still. Mr. Black's bids came quickly, suggesting less hesitation.

 

When the bidding crossed the $100 million mark, an auction first, Mr. Meyer adjusted his tuxedo jacket at his rostrum and said, "Can I say I love you?" The hundreds of people packed into the house's York Avenue saleroom chuckled. When the gavel finally fell, Mr. Moffett smiled, whispered his congratulations to Mr. Black and hung up.

via online.wsj.com

A Week of Roller-Coaster Art Sales

via online.wsj.com

The current art market can be summed up in a single word: volatile.

"The upshot: Dealers say that while the art market has bounced back from the days of recession, collectors are still unpredictable and can be easily spooked, particularly if they think a top-billed work doesn't merit its blockbuster asking price."

Art's New Pecking Order - WSJ.com

Picasso and Warhol are being outsold by Chinese painters as a new wave of wealthy buyers reshapes the global market. Inside China's high-rolling art world.

On the outskirts of Beijing in a private club house called Paradise, there is a large, windowless room where Yang Bin displays his collection of modern and contemporary art.

"Sit down and get ready," Mr. Yang recently told a few friends visiting from Taiwan. Grabbing a remote control, he turned to a set of wall panels that, with a click, began to slide apart. Each panel revealed a few of his recent acquisitions, from Chairman Mao-era portraits of revolutionaries to brightly colored abstracts by China's rising stars. As his friends applauded the slide-show, Mr. Yang grinned and lit a cigar.

  

Purchases by Chinese collectors accounted for roughly a fifth of Christie's global sales last year, Eben Shapiro reports on Lunch Break. Photo: Liu Wei, "Outcast No. 2." Courtesy of the artist.

The art market is being transformed by Chinese collectors willing to pay top dollar for everything from Ming vases to contemporary Chinese abstracts. In some cases, these works are outstripping prices paid for blue-chip Western artists like René Magritte and Clyfford Still...

via online.wsj.com

"Art World Star Doesn't Change His Spots - Hirst’s Spot Paintings Will Fill All 11 Gagosians" in @nytimes #art #contemporaryart #damienhurst

via nytimes.com

Damien Hirst with one of his spot paintings. He is reviving this earlier genre with a bang.

By CAROL VOGEL
Published: December 13, 2011

LONDON — Just as the financial markets were heading for disaster in 2008, the British artist Damien Hirst snubbed his dealers and persuaded Sotheby’s here to sell 223 primarily new artworks. There were dead animals — sharks, zebras, piglets and even a calf — floating in giant glass tanks of formaldehyde; cabinets filled with diamonds; and cigarette butts. And paintings galore: spin paintings, spot paintings, paintings with butterflies pinned under glass...

@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.”

 

 

 

via adamlindemann.com

 

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

  • NOVEMBER 12, 2011

By KELLY CROW

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

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

November 11, 2011
By 

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.

an example of selective appropriate "prunning" of collection for the greater good

Denver Museum
The work was one of four Stills consigned by the City of Denver that raised a total of $114.1 million for the endowment of the Clyfford Still Museum, which opens in Denver next week. The reclusive artist died in 1980.
Three of the works were completed in the 1940s and one in 1976. The top lot, in deep reds and velvety blacks, more than doubled its presale low estimate of $25 million.
During his life, Still sold very little and frequently rejected exhibition opportunities. His will stipulated that the estate be given in its entirety to a U.S. city willing to establish a permanent museum housing his work alone.Denver Museum
The work was one of four Stills consigned by the City of Denver that raised a total of $114.1 million for the endowment of the Clyfford Still Museum, which opens in Denver next week. The reclusive artist died in 1980.
Three of the works were completed in the 1940s and one in 1976. The top lot, in deep reds and velvety blacks, more than doubled its presale low estimate of $25 million.
During his life, Still sold very little and frequently rejected exhibition opportunities. His will stipulated that the estate be given in its entirety to a U.S. city willing to establish a permanent museum housing his work alone.