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Thursday, 19 May 2011 03:42

Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, crouched in the pit of a stone quarry in Riverside. Wearing black jeans and a brown sports coat, he dragged a finger through the sandy floor to draw the northern edge of the LACMA campus.

On a key spot in his ad-hoc map, he placed a granite stone the size of an orange, meant to represent a rugged 340-ton boulder standing in the quarry behind him. If all goes according to plan, that boulder will make a seven-day journey in August from the quarry to the museum on a specially designed 200-wheel truck. There, it will rest on two concrete rails lining a 15-foot-deep trough, as the museum's newest sculpture: "Levitated Mass" by Michael Heizer, a famously reclusive artist who has devoted decades to building a "city" of earthworks in the Nevada desert that few outsiders are allowed to visit.

LACMA's director describes the boulder, which visitors will be able to walk under as though it were levitating — as simultaneously contemporary and timeless. "It's ultramodern because it's self-referential and it's about the viewer's experience — it doesn't represent some god," he says. "Yet it has the timeless, ancient overtones of cultures that moved monoliths, like the Egyptians, Syrians and Olmecs."

To hear Govan talk so passionately about this artwork, which is after all one big rock, is to get some sense of what makes him a powerful advocate for artists, an effective fundraiser and an increasingly influential cultural leader in Los Angeles.

"He is a great communicator who makes his ideas and vision for the museum almost infectious," says Ari Wiseman, deputy director of the Guggenheim in New York, who used to hold a similar museum post in L.A.

"I think Michael is to LACMA what Dudamel is to the Philharmonic and Placido Domingo is to the Opera," says Zev Yaroslavsky, the L.A. County supervisor for the district that includes LACMA. "He might not have that kind of celebrity, but he has the same ability to move and inspire people, even people who don't think they're interested in art." Yaroslavsky counts himself among the converts, saying he's become "a nut for these big outdoor pieces of art" under Govan's influence.

Five years into his stewardship of LACMA, having just signed a contract for five more, Govan, 47, has transformed the museum and its reputation. He has overseen the completion of two sleek new exhibition halls by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, grown the collection by about 12,000 objects and helped boost annual attendance by some 40%.

But LACMA also has transformed Govan. When he arrived at LACMA, some viewed him rather reductively as an empire builder: the ambitious, fast-talking protege of his onetime boss Thomas Krens, the controversial Guggenheim Museum director known for trying to go global by opening branches around the world. But by now it's clear that Govan's vision for LACMA is not just to make it bigger and better a la Krens.

It's a museum offering a little something for everyone: art from many centuries inside the galleries and a mix of architectural styles and large-scale artworks like the Heizer outdoors. He has made a point of partnering with other nonprofits in the L.A. film community, art world and beyond, and sees LACMA as an anchor — geographically and also intellectually — for the region's growing cultural community. These days, he is constructing alliances as well as buildings.

"LACMA by its nature could be a great collaborator. We're in the middle of things, we're multidisciplinary, we're multicultural, we're a general art museum," Govan says, "so by definition we can encompass almost everything culturally."

Govan is a "visionary" with a difference, says the artist Jeff Koons, describing realpolitik skills that help the museum leader adapt to economic necessity. "He bridges the impractical and the practical — bringing these vast or grand gestures into the world through his understanding of institutions and the support of businesspeople."

Those skills also are evident in Govan's ability to bounce back from adversity. In what surely ranks as Govan's single biggest setback to date, LACMA's most generous and powerful donor, art patron and philanthropist Eli Broad, announced in 2008 that he would not, after funding a building in his name at LACMA, bequeath his billion-dollar art collection to the museum. Later that year, Broad rode to the rescue of the near-bankrupt downtown Museum of Contemporary Art with a $30-million pledge. Broad's dramatic gesture helped quash a proposal to merge MOCA into Govan's museum.

Thursday, 19 May 2011 03:40

Reynold Levy, president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, earned pay and benefits of $1.5 million in 2009, up from $1.18 million a year earlier.

The pay was disclosed in the New York cultural complex’s 2009-2010 tax return. It includes $877,200 in salary, retirement and medical benefits and a one-time “re-signing contract incentive,” a spokesman, Betsy Vorce, said in an e-mail. Under Levy’s new contract, he will stay through the end of 2013, Vorce said.

The return said the pay also includes money for objectives achieved, including Lincoln Center’s roughly $1.2 billion redevelopment plan.

At Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, President Michael Kaiser earned $1.1 million in 2008. Its budget was two-thirds that of Lincoln Center. At the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, with about a quarter of Lincoln Center’s budget, President Stephen Rountree’s 2008 compensation was $765,485.

Previously chief of the International Rescue Committee, Levy, 66, has run Lincoln Center since 2002. He has written three books, including 2008’s “Yours for the Asking,” a guide to nonprofit fundraising and management.

Lincoln Center’s redevelopment is in its “final stages,” Vorce said. Renovations on the 16-acre Upper West Side campus included rebuilding Alice Tully Hall, creating a new visitors center and revamping 65th Street so the institution’s offerings are more inviting and accessible. Next month, the Film Society of Lincoln Center opens two new cinemas, and Lincoln Center Theater is scheduled to open a new house in 2012.

Thursday, 19 May 2011 03:27

As the swollen Mississippi River threatens residents of the South, a 1951 painting is a reminder of another devastating flood 60 years ago.

"Flood Disaster" by American painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton is scheduled to be auctioned at Sotheby's on Thursday. The presale estimate is $800,000 to $1.2 million.

The painting was created to highlight the extent of the damage caused when the Kansas and Missouri rivers swelled to 70 times their normal size on July 13, 1951, killing 17 people and displacing more than 518,000 residents.

In a further effort to shed light on the flood victims' suffering, the Missouri artist made a lithograph of the painting and sent a copy to each member of Congress urging them to expand a flood relief appropriations bill. It did not pass, and many of Benton's lithographs wound up in the trash.

President Harry Truman had estimated the damage at more than $1 billion, and reluctantly signed a $113 million flood relief bill.

Thursday, 19 May 2011 03:20

Cranfield University and global arts & antiques auctioneer Bonhams are pioneering new forensic technology to authenticate antique porcelain and ensure fakes don’t find their way to market.

The collaboration combines major advances in the identification of ever-smaller proportions of trace elements with essentially non-invasive sampling.

The technique will be particularly useful in the field of Chinese art which has become one of the hottest sectors of the global art market in recent years, and nowhere more so than in the demand for fine antique porcelain.

While prices for the finest Imperial porcelain have soared, so have the ambitions of highly accomplished fakers, seeking to infiltrate spectacular new fakes into a market feverish for top quality material.

Technology exists to distinguish scientifically the genuine treasures from the fakes, but the technology normally used is over 40 years old, invasive, and no longer entirely trustworthy.

Forensic science often manages to identify small differences in very rare elements in an object. These ‘trace elements’ can often identify an object's place, and sometimes date, of origin if a good database already exists for similar objects.

‘Trace element analysis’ is regularly used in many kinds of detective work, from establishing the original source of premium organic foods to researching ‘scene of crime’ evidence.

It has never been practical in the past to use it systematically in the art market because obtaining samples has often been unacceptably destructive and databases are neither detailed nor specific enough. The Cranfield/Bonhams project aims to change that.

“This is the most exciting art-authentication project I have ever seen,” said Colin Sheaf, chairman of Bonham’s Asia, and the global auctioneer’s senior Chinese art specialist.

Thursday, 19 May 2011 02:24

Thanks to Collectrium, a new "next-gen" mobile technology that recognizes works of art, collectors and collectors-to-be in the country's hotbed of technology will experience art as never before at the San Francisco Fine Art Fair (SFFAF), Thursday, May 19 to Sunday, May 22, 2011.

SFFAF, the top Bay Area art fair returns to Fort Mason in San Francisco for the second year following a decade-long absence with a renewed and innovative presence, where, for the first time ever, a visitor to the fair will be able to point her iPhone or iPad at any registered artwork and instantly receive extensive information on the artist and the piece; add the artwork to her "My Collection" favorites; share with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and email; and contact the gallery about the artwork.

Named one of 'America's Most Promising Start-ups' by Bloomberg BusinessWeek (4/15/11), the Collectrium mobile app has been warmly embraced by gallerists around the world since its launch in New York in March. With Collectrium, art fair visitors no longer have to make scribbled notes on postcards and flyers; the collector can leave the fair with a browsable list of her favorite artworks on her mobile device, complete with detailed information on each work, artist, exhibiting gallery, and personal notes - in effect creating her own personalized virtual gallery and catalogue of the fair. Collectrium also functions as a QR code scanner, so for sculpture, installation, moving image pieces, or any work with a QR code on the label, visitors can use Collectrium to scan the QR code to identify works of art.

"Collectrium enhances the fair experience for both the art collector and the gallerist. For the collector, it makes the art fair more social and provides a tool to manage works of art the collector may be interested in, including a way to contact the gallerist. For exhibitors, it simplifies the inventory process by making it easy to add works on the spot and keep track of work that's being sold using just your iPhone," said Karyn Mannix, Director of the SF Fine Art Fair.

"This is a social art management system, part of the next generation of tools for appreciating art," says Boris Pevzner, the former Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded Collectrium. "Our app makes the experience of visiting an art fair more interactive for the art lover-enhancing the on-site visit, while also allowing visitors to take the fair home with them."

In addition to using the Collectrium app to automatically identify artworks, visitors to the participating fairs will browse the entire art show catalogue on their mobile device; enter images, details and personal notes about works of art not already registered in the system; and view all the programming and scheduling information about the fairs. Pevzner concludes: "We've created a bridge between the physical and virtual art worlds by bringing the power of online technology to that live moment of discovery."

Furthermore, the visitors who manage their own private collections using Collectrium will have easy access to their artworks through the same mobile app, alongside the artworks exhibited at the art fairs.

About Collectrium
Founded by Boris Pevzner in 2009, Collectrium is a New York-based company providing innovative technology for discovering and displaying art on the web and mobile devices, including the revolutionary art identification and art similarity tools. Over time, the Collectrium team-which has extensive expertise in the fields of in technology, finance, and the contemporary arts-will offer collectors and galleries integrated services for art storage, appraisals, financing and other needs.

Pevzner's business ventures are built around a deep understanding of how different kinds of communities can be enhanced and transformed through innovative technology solutions. In 2003 he helped to conceive and develop xfire, a revolutionary social networking online service ($102M exit via a sale to Viacom). He has also co-founded Centrata, a pioneer in cloud computing for enterprise-class datacenters, and conceived and developed Lontra, a leader in service management of Information Technology (IT).

Pevzner is a frequent speaker at IT industry conferences, and he often serves as an advisor to senior technology executives of Fortune 500 companies on issues of IT management and security. Pevzner holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was born in St. Petersburg, only a stone's throw away from The Hermitage.

The Fairs
The San Francisco Fine Art Fair (SFFAF) returns in 2011 as one of the highlights in the Bay Area for modern and contemporary art. This year SFFAF presents roughly 5,000 works of art from more than 60 galleries assembled under one roof in the 50,000 sq. ft Festival Pavilon, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco. In 2010, a rousing 15,000 art enthusiasts attended the fair after a decade long absence.

Collectrium technology is powering the art fairs around the globe, including the upcoming Olympia London International Fine Arts Fair (June 10-12), VOLTA7 (June 13-19), SCOPE Basel (June 14-19), Art Hamptons (July 7-10), Art Aspen (August 6-8), and the Houston Fine Art Fair (September 15-18, 2011).

General Information
To learn more about Collectrium, visit www.collectrium.com.
To download the free Collectrium app on iPhone and iPad, go to http://collectrium.com/iphone or at the Apple App Store.
San Francisco Fine Art Fair iPhone app, powered by Collectrium, is also available from the Apple App Store.

Thursday, 19 May 2011 02:15

A pink diamond the size of a SIM card sold last night in Switzerland for 9.6 million francs ($10.9 million) as collectors continued to battle for rare gems.

The price paid by a telephone bidder was the third highest for a pink diamond at auction, said Sotheby’s. (BID) The privately owned diamond, not seen on the market for more than 30 years, was estimated to fetch as much as 14.8 million francs at hammer prices, the most highly valued of 491 items being offered by Sotheby’s in its biannual jewel auction in Geneva.

“It’s difficult to predict what big stones will make,” Sam Taub, director of the Antwerp wholesalers CLS Diamonds, said in an interview. “Each bidder has a different personal reason for wanting to buy. At this level, diamonds aren’t a commodity market.”

Diamonds are selling for higher figures than those achieved before the financial crisis. Rare colored stones continue to command one-off prices. Gems lighter than 4 carats, and some collectors’ items, are now about 10 percent more expensive than they were three years ago, Taub said. Values of smaller white stones have been pushed up by speculative trade buying in India, he said.

The emerald-cut “fancy intense pink” stone sold tonight weighed 10.99 carats and was mounted on a platinum ring.

Tiara Record

Earlier in the evening, an emerald and diamond tiara sold for 11.3 million francs, an auction record for this particular type of jewelry. The winning bid was taken on the telephone by Lisa Hubbard, Sotheby’s New York-based chairman of jewelry, against competition from five other bidders, said Sotheby’s.

The tiara had been estimated to sell for between 4.6 million francs and 9.2 million francs.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 15:52

Kris Charmonde, who founded Palm Beach Show Group with Rob Samuels and Scott Diament 10 years ago, has been bought out by his partners.

He’s going back to his original career - buying and selling estate jewelry - which he abandoned to start the art fairs.

“I decided to take more time for myself,” said Charamonde, who is 51. “I traveled 30 weeks a year. I had a partner who is much younger than me. He has a lot of energy and is very into technology and expanding the company.”

The partner he’s referring to is Diament, 39, who will take over as the face of the company. Samuels, Diament’s partner in Provident Jewelry and a hotel that’s scheduled to break ground at Clematis Street and Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach this fall, will focus on those ventures.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 15:49

“One of the five greatest public libraries in the world” is the boast made at a new exhibition celebrating the centennial of the New York Public Library’s august building on Fifth Avenue. And if we are inclined to question the claim, it is only because the institution’s distinctiveness is scarcely suggested by putting it in a class with the Library of Congress, the British Library, the National Library of France and the Russian State Library.

As we learn in this show, “Celebrating 100 Years,” the New York Public Library is the only one of this group that was not established by a national government. Unlike many Old World museums, it also is not an “imperial” institution, many of whose holdings were gathered through plunder and conquest. In addition, it was not established, as many such libraries were, to reflect the character of a nation; it was actually intended to help shape that country’s character.

Moreover, that public mission gained its force from private visions. The Public Library was built on distinguished collections assembled by individuals of great wealth, discernment or passion. The Astor and Lenox libraries formed the core of this new library in 1895; artifacts gathered by Arthur Alfonso Schomburg in the 20th century’s early decades form the core of the library’s invaluable Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. And many of its other research collections have similar origins.

You can sample the results here. The show’s curator, Thomas Mellins (who created a compelling exhibition about the history of Lincoln Center in 2009), has said that his primary goal was “to show the depth and breadth of the Library’s remarkable collections.”

There are cuneiform tablets and typewriters, a Gutenberg Bible and 1960s political broadsheets; Kepler’s diagram of the structure of the universe and women’s dance cards from 19th-century balls; T. S. Eliot’s typescript of “The Wasteland” with emendations by Ezra Pound, and a Russian translation of Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital.” Also on view are the walking stick of Virginia Woolf’s that her husband found floating in a river four days after she deliberately drowned herself and Beethoven’s sketches as he worked on the Scherzo of the “Archduke” Trio.

But what ties the library’s research collections together? And what themes does the exhibition itself reveal? That is less clear.

Some artifacts are of profound historical importance, like Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten manuscript of “The Declaration of Independence.” Others are of interest because of associations with recent political history, like a collection of condoms distributed by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in the 1990s.

Some are illuminating, like Charles Dickens’s marked-up copy of “David Copperfield,” in which he excised paragraphs and inscribed prompts that he used in public readings from the book. And his letter opener fully merits the adjective “Dickensian” with its quirky peculiarity and demonstrative eccentricity: the handle is made from the paw of Dickens’s pet cat Bob, and the blade is engraved “C. D. In Memory of Bob 1862,” the year of the cat’s death.

But other objects make you wonder not just about the show’s selections, but also about the library’s curatorial strategies. Is Terry Southern’s typewriter of collectible importance given that his most celebrated credit may have been as a screenwriter for “Easy Rider” (1969)? Did curators at the Rare Book Division have anything in mind other than ironic mischief when they preserved a massage-parlor handbill from the 1970s-era Times Square advertising “The Library” and promising “7 beautiful Librarians to service you”? The exhibition explains the handbill as part of the library’s mission of acquiring ephemera, but collecting also makes an assertion that objects will have a future value. Is that the case here? Why?

The exhibition’s own choices can also leave us confused. Two central display cases, for example, are used to emphasize the collection’s variety with playful comparisons, noting that the library has items ranging “from art that changes how we see the world” (a 1936 Picasso etching of a turkey) “to art we see every day” (a swatch of cloth from Wesley Simpson Custom Fabrics); everything “from images that invite us to look” (a magazine about pornographic videos) “to images that cause us to look away” (an 1863 photograph of the dead lying on a Gettysburg battlefield).

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 15:33

Over 60 Consignors and Seven Estates Represented on May 21

Woodbury, CT – On Saturday, May 21st at 11:00 am Woodbury Auction presents its second anniversary auction with a diverse offering of 440 lots of fine and decorative art and American and Continental furniture from seven estates and over 60 individual consignors from Connecticut, New York, Virginia, California and New Jersey.

This anniversary auction is being held at 670 Main Street South, Sherman Village Plaza, in Woodbury at 11 a.m.  Preview times are from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm on Wednesday, May 18th, Thursday, May 19th, and Friday, May 20th. An extended preview with wine and cheese will be open from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm Friday evening. Preview is also available from 8:00 am on the day of sale. In addition, Woodbury Auction experts will be on hand offering free antiques appraisals during the all three days of preview.

Among the furniture highlights of the auction is a fine New Jersey inlaid mahogany tall clock with a silvered dial by Aaron Lane of Elizabethtown, never before offered for public sale. The clock descended in consignor’s family directly from the original owner thought to be John H. Smock (1781-1865), a Monmouth County, New Jersey resident.

Other noteworthy furniture lots are a walnut Queen Anne dressing table which descended in the family of William Pinkney of Maryland, and a very rare set of fourteen Chippendale dining chairs which descended in the Smith family of Derby, Connecticut and Millbrook, New York. Ten of the chairs were sold at Christie’s, Fine American Furniture sale held in January of 1989, and subsequently purchased by the consignor. Those chairs had been exhibited in the Map Room of the White House from 1971 to 1980. The other four chairs were subsequently acquired for the consignor from other members of the family of the original owner.

The sale also features many fine art lots including paintings, prints and drawings by various listed artists including works by Balcomb Greene, Maxfield Parrish, Joseph Henry Sharp, Helen Gerardia, William Castle-Keith, Joseph Pennell, Gordon Grant, Fernand Leger, George Rodrigue, Richard Newton, Jr., Michele Cascella, Frank Moser, Clare Leighton, Lucien Pissaro, L. Bernini, A. Aublet, E. Williams, George Clausen and many others.

Members of a long-standing Woodbury, Connecticut family, who have since moved to Ohio, consigned several Woodbury-related items, including three samplers and two lots of Wallace Nutting photographs of Spruce Brook Farm in Woodbury.

Silver lots to be sold include a Tiffany sterling-rimmed crystal bowl, a four piece tea set of 78 troy ounces, a Lunt “Poppy” flatware service of 188 troy ounces, a Roden Bros. flatware service for twelve of 159 troy ounces, and several lots of silver U.S. coins and other silver items.

Several bronzes are also featured, including a Meiji period bronze elephant, a C. Valton sculpture of two spaniels, and a Bergman cold painted bronze of a praying arab.

Examples of Native American Art are also being offered. Noted among these lots are a plains Indian decorated deer hide, several woven blankets, a rare Northwest Coast rattle, a woven basket and a woods Indian decorated box.

The catalog for the sale is viewable at www.woodburyauction.com. Absentee and phone bidding are available for this live gallery auction, and the sale will be broadcast live through Live Auctioneers.  To register or arrange for absentee or phone bidding, please call Woodbury Auction at 203-266-0323.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 15:23

Two oil paintings by Jasper F. Cropsey, a leading 19th-century artist of the Hudson River School, that hung unappreciated and unrecognized for decades in a basement recreation room in Connecticut, were sold Sunday at auction and fetched prices far higher than anticipated.

A winter hunting scene at Niagara Falls sold for $552,000, according to Tom Curran, an appraiser at the Clarke Auction Gallery in Larchmont, N.Y. An autumn view of Mount Washington in New Hampshire sold for $288,000, Mr. Curran said.

The bidding started at $50,000, though Cropseys of the size of the two paintings have sold in a bustling art market for $250,000 to $500,000. The art market has been depressed in recent years.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 15:03

Christie’s is pleased to announce further details of its upcoming auction of Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture on 18 May 2011, at 10 am. A total of 138 lots will be offered, featuring outstanding works drawn from a cross-section of styles and genres, including Hudson River School, American Impressionism, Regionalism, Modernism, and Western Art. The sale is expected to achieve in excess of $29 million total.

Christie’s previously announced that the upcoming sale would include the Westervelt Company Collection (see dedicated press release), widely recognized as one of the best assemblages of 19th and 20th century American art in private hands. Amassed over four decades by Jonathan (Jack) Westervelt Warner, the former chief executive of Gulf States Paper Corporation (now the Westervelt Company), the selection includes masterworks by the leading American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Albert  Bierstadt, William Trost Richards, Childe Hassam, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Marsden Hartley, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Ephraim Burchfield, and Andrew Wyeth, among others. The complete group of 29 Westervelt works is estimated to achieve in excess of US$ 10 million.  
   
A lead highlight of the main portion of the sale is Frank Weston Benson’s Eleanor and Benny (estimate: $3-5 million), an important example of the artist’s highly personal style of American Impressionism. As a leader of the Boston School, Benson was one of the first American artists to introduce figures into Impressionist landscapes, creating a new style of painting that remains among the most beloved genres of early 20th century American art. Painted in 1916, at the height of Benson’s talents, Eleanor and Benny is a tender portrayal of the artist’s daughter and grandson sharing the crisp summer light at the family compound in Maine.  With its refined subject matter and sensitive execution, this superb, large-format painting brilliantly captures the aesthetic of the Boston School and recalls in both subject and style the major masterpieces of Benson’s early career. Offered from a distinguished private collection, Eleanor and Benny was last exhibited publicly more than 15 years ago and has been requested for inclusion in a major museum exhibition in 2012.

Originally commissioned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney for her Fifth Avenue mansion, Parrish’s 18-foot wide North Wall Panel is among the largest American paintings ever offered at Christie’s New York. This fanciful panorama employs a myriad of brilliant hues and patterns to create a captivating and complex multi-figural scene that blends pre-Raphaelite sentiment, Old Master technique and a playful sense of wonder, as though offering a view into an imaginary world. As was his practice, Parrish employed family and friends to serve as models for his works, and the North Wall Panel includes many recognizable faces, including his own and that of his wife’s. In total, Parrish produced four murals for Ms. Whitney, who installed them in her sculpture studio in Old Westbury, Long Island. North Wall Panel is offered from the personal collection of Ms. Whitney’s granddaughter, Pamela LeBoutillier of Old Westbury. To listen to an audio feature describing this mural, click here:  http://tinyurl.com/parrish-audio

A founder of the Taos Society of Artists, Couse sketched Indian subjects from his earliest days as an artist. Impressively scaled at nearly four feet wide, The Love Call exhibits the finest aspects of Couse’s work, portraying an intimate scene of a man serenading a woman in a clearing in the woods.  Depicted with the dignity and quiet spirituality that the artist most appreciated in his subjects, the two Native American figures are portrayed with remarkable attention to detail and accuracy of form, while retaining the romantic and mystical qualities that are the hallmarks of Couse’s style.

Renowned for his portraits, Sargent’s most innovative works were completed outside his studio, during his travels to the European countryside when he felt most inspired and at ease.  During his stays in the Alps in the summers of 1900 to 1914, Sargent produced a body of watercolors celebrated for their freedom, intimacy and modernity.  Painted during his August 1912 visit to the resort of Abriès in the French Alps, Ladies in the Shade is exemplary of Sargent’s work from this period and demonstrates the artist at the height of his abilities. This work was originally offered for sale in 1925 at Christie’s London as part of the sale of the artist’s estate and studio. It was purchased by the Widener family of Philadelphia and has descended within the family collection since. To listen to an audio feature describing this mural, click here: http://tinyurl.com/sargent-audio

Albert Bierstadt's paintings of the untamed American West are some of the most significant historical and artistic accomplishments of the 19th century. While other artists had made expeditions throughout the area as early as the 1830s, few could rival Bierstadt in his ability to convey the grandeur of this wondrous region to the American public.  Painted circa 1887, The Falls of Saint Anthony depicts the only natural major waterfall on the Upper Mississippi River. Before European exploration, the falls held cultural and political significance for native tribes who frequented the area. The Dakota Indians associated the falls with legends and spirits, including Oanktehi, god of waters and evil, who lived beneath the falling water. Filled with vivid light and dramatic elements, the painting embodies Bierstadt's powerful vision of the pristine, unspoiled Western landscape.

The complete e-catalogue for this sale is available online at
http://www.christies.com/eCatalogues/index.aspx?saleid=23053

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 14:57

Mr Ai, the creator of the Tate Modern’s Sunflower Seeds exhibition, was allowed to spend 20 minutes with his wife, Lu Qing, at a secret location on Sunday afternoon, helping to dispel online rumours that he had been tortured.

“He seemed conflicted, contained, his face was tense,” Lu told the Associated Press, “I could see redness in his eyes. It was obvious that without freedom to express himself he was not behaving naturally even with me, someone from his family.”

She added that the people who arranged the visit showed no identification and warned her not to speak about anything except family or health matters.

“We could not talk about the economic charges or other stuff, mainly about the family and health,” she said. “We were careful, we knew that the deal could be broken at any moment, so we were careful.”

The visit came as a relief for other members of his family, including Mr Ai’s elderly mother. “The rumours that we've heard about him being tortured have been too much for us to take, but now seeing is believing,” said Gao Ying.

Fears for Ai’s physical safety had mounted in recent weeks after online reports that he had been coerced into “confessing” after watching a video of another “disappeared” dissident, the human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng being tortured with an electric shock baton.

China has faced mounting international criticism over its detention of Ai Weiwei, who was taken last month during a widespread Chinese clampdown on lawyers, bloggers and artists apparently provoked by the fears that Middle East street revolutions could spread to China.

The novelist Salman Rushdie and the sculptor Anish Kapoor have headed calls from the international artistic community to free Ai Weiwei and urging governments to be more vocal in condemning his arrest.

China has responded by angrily rejected US and European fears that it is “backsliding” on human rights, describing such criticisms as “condescending” and warning strongly against any interference in its judicial sovereignty.

Ai, 53, is officially being investigated for “economic crimes” however his friends, family and colleagues all believe that his detention is because of his outspoken criticism of China’s ruling Communist Party and the failings of the one-party state.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 14:52

Miami Art Museum’s ongoing capital campaign received a big boost today as Miami’s business, civic and cultural leaders gathered to honor the private sector’s collective impact on South Florida’s cultural landscape during the Museum’s Fourth Annual Corporate Luncheon. In accepting MAM’s Corporate Honors Award, Bank of America, one of the world’s largest financial institutions and a mainstay of support in South Florida’s cultural community, announced a $1 million donation to the Museum’s $120 million capital campaign. The gift, to be made through the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, will fund a five-year programming endowment for new artwork, as well as the naming of a focus gallery in MAM’s new Herzog & de Meuron-designed building in Miami’s Museum Park, which is currently under construction and slated to open in 2013.

With Bank of America’s support, MAM has now raised approximately $52 million in cash and private pledges through its capital campaign. With the $31 million fundraising threshold required for constructing its new building exceeded, and $100 million in bond funds approved by Miami Dade County voters, all additional monies raised towards the total $220 million budget will ultimately support the Museum’s operating endowment and programs.

“Bank of America’s generous support for Miami Art Museum continues the bank’s long track record of enacting positive change in South Florida’s arts community,” said Aaron Podhurst, chairman of Miami Art Museum’s board of trustees. “The bank’s gift is a shining example of how our corporate partners are directly impacting the Museum – and our community – for the better. Private sector support will take on added significance leading up to the debut of Miami Art Museum’s new home in Museum Park, and we encourage other members of Miami’s corporate sector to follow Bank of America’s lead.”

This year’s event was the Museum’s largest Corporate Luncheon to date, with more than 300 guests in attendance. All told, MAM raised more than $100,000, exceeding the Luncheon’s fundraising goal. Proceeds from the Luncheon will support The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, an exhibition which MAM will present in 2012 with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge initiative.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 14:48

In the middle of Christie’s “Post-war and Contemporary Art” sale last week, just as bidding for Andy Warhol’s blue photo-booth self-portrait was beginning to heat up (the work eventually sold for over $38 million, including premium), art dealer Larry Gagosian turned questioningly to Warhol collector/dealer José Mugrabi.  According to Artnet.com’s Walter Robinson, Gagosian had just bid $20 million on the piece, and been upped by $500,000.  Mugrabi shook his head,and Gagosian dropped out of the running.

 While I can’t know exactly what was going through each man’s thoughts, I do know that they are two of the top buyers at auction these days. They know what they’re doing. And in this case, they were right.

Ideally, of course, one buys a work of art for love, and not investment. Ideally, the money and the future value of the work are unimportant.

But when you’re talking 20 or 30 million, you care.  Of course you care.

Which is why buying a $30 million Warhol painting is actually a pretty foolish move. And Gagosian and Mugrabi knew it.

Sure, when a Warhol goes for that much, it increases the value of all the other Warhols you own – just as when one fails to sell at a similar price, your collection’s value will fall.  Any investor understands this, which is why, when it comes to stocks and commodities, no one puts all his pennies in the same bucket.

Yet somehow, when social prestige is at stake – and let’s face it, in certain circles, that’s what owning a Warhol self-portrait is all about – perfectly intelligent, savvy investors behave like total idiots.

In truth, as art market expert Anders Petterson told a New York audience recently, “as an investor, you’d be better off putting the money into a mid-tier category” – between $500.000 and $5 million, according to Bloomberg news.   (I would suggest “mid-tier” starts quite a bit lower, but you get the point.)

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 14:43

The images by Chagall, the pioneer of modernism whose paintings sell for up to £10 million, are contained within the pages of a notebook that once belonged to Bella, whose sudden death at the age of 49 devastated the artist.

After his wife died in 1944 from a viral infection, the grieving Chagall kept her notebook, which he illustrated for the next 20 years, sketching on the blank pages and surrounding Bella's writings with colourful and moving posthumous portraits of her and the two of them together.

In one sketch, Bella is depicted in a patterned dress with a bowl of fruit, while another drawing shows her with dark circles around her eyes, possibly depicting her final illness.

The couple also appear together throughout the notebook, with Chagall recalling their wedding day in 1919 in a pen-and-ink drawing of them as bride and groom.

On the opposite page is verse from a popular Second World War French song – "Chant des Partisans" – that Bella had translated into Yiddish in her notebook.

In perhaps the most moving image, Chagall, with a blue face and melancholy expression, is seated at his easel, contemplating a red painting of himself and Bella, one hand reaching out to touch the canvas with his other hand held to his heart.

Another etching captures the artist's vivid imagination, featuring a walking double bass with a flowing mane of hair in the shape of a violin, and a collection of mermaids.

The 85-page notebook, which Chagall illustrated between 1944 and 1965 while he spent time living in New York and the south of France, also includes several self-portraits.

In one, Chagall appears as a drinker, seated next to a bottle labelled with his initials; in another he depicts himself as a satyr with palette and brushes. Chagall, who was Jewish, was also famous for his religious iconography and the sketch book features Christian and Jewish imagery, including a series of portraits of King David and a sketch of angels.

Saturday, 14 May 2011 02:06

There comes a moment in any market when prices rise so high that professionals wonder how much longer the fluke can last. There is a limit to everything, and at times this week, as the Contemporary art sales continued, that limit did not seem to be very far away.

When Sotheby’s held its Monday evening session that dealt with the collection built up by the legendary dealer Allan Stone, the room was carried away. Sotheby’s expected the 42 works of art to bring $46.8 million in the best of cases. The score was $54.8 million. Only three insignificant pieces went unsold.

In the first part of the session, works from the New York school of the 1950s to the 1970s stirred up sentimental emotions in the older generation of Contemporary art fans.

They pounced on the first lot, an “Untitled” essay in Abstract Expressionism signed by Franz Kline in 1957. The tiny piece in oil and collage on paper, only 27.9 by 21.3 centimeters, or 11 by 8 3/8 inches, shot to $446,500, more than triple the upper estimate.

Another small work of art followed, John Chamberlain’s 1961 jumble of crushed steel and torn fabric supported by a thick backing board 30.5 centimeters long. Also untitled, the work looked like a preparatory study and was treated like a master’s relic with bids rising to $662,500.

Until this week, Contemporary art had to be big and colorful to hit the roof. Not any more.

The Chamberlain study paved the way for the real thing, a big jumble of crushed steel with the paint flaking off as if Chamberlain had picked up the material on a scrap heap.

Titled “Nutcracker,” the jumble had been “executed in 1958,” the experts wrote before reeling off the list of shows that had taken it to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and elsewhere. Clearly Chamberlain’s mess of old steel was art. The “Nutcracker” more than doubled the highest expectations and became the most expensive Chamberlain ever at $4.78 million.

The second part of the Allan Stone sale focused on Wayne Thiebaud. It was described in the second volume of the catalog, which played up the “collection” theme, thus giving the paintings an additional aura of respectability. Thiebaud’s works, rarely seen at auction, sold like hot cakes.

No clear connection between style or period and the prices achieved could be detected. The evocation of the simple joys of everyday life was what mattered. “Four Pinball Machines” was a small study of 1962, only 28.3 centimeters high. It ended up at $3.44 million, more than three times the high estimate.

Saturday, 14 May 2011 02:02

The Guggenheim Museum in New York is selling an original BMW M1 art car to raise funds and to make way for other exhibits.

Frank Stella painted the Bavarian supercar in 1979, and it has been part of the Guggenheim collection since 1999.

BMW has commissioned many art cars since the program launched in 1975, including another M1 by Andy Warhol and a 3.0 CSL also by Stella. However, this is the only one the German automaker has sanctioned for a private client, as the others remained in BMW's private collection.

Bonhams will auction the car in August at the Quail Lodge in Carmel, Calif., and it is expected to sell for at least half a million dollars.

In the meantime, the car is on display outside Bonhams's offices in New York. If you want to catch a glimpse, go to the atrium of the IBM Building at 56th Street and Madison Avenue.

Saturday, 14 May 2011 01:23

A yellow jade scepter associated with the court of the Qianlong emperor sold today for 1.3 million pounds ($2.1 million) as Asian buyers chose the most desirable items in a week of auctions of Chinese artworks in London.

The 14-inch-long “ruyi,” acquired by a British military attache in Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, sold at Bonhams for 10 times its 120,000-pound upper estimate with fees. It was bought by a telephone bidder.

Recent multiple-estimate auction prices for Imperial pieces have helped turn the trade in Chinese antiques into a business worth more than $10 billion. The week’s U.K. sales have already raised 41.1 million pounds. Salesrooms were packed with a visiting contingent of more than 100 Chinese dealers and agents, though some high-value pieces failed.

“Chinese bidders have calmed down,” John Berwald, a London-based dealer, said in an interview. “As they’ve become more knowledgeable, they’ve become more selective. And they know there will always be another auction. Sometimes a high estimate was paired with condition issues.”

Christie’s International and Sotheby’s (BID) both achieved record totals for auctions of Chinese antiques at their London salesrooms that were about double presale low estimates.

Vase Repair

Their failures included a pair of 18th-century blue and white Imperial vases valued at as much as 800,000 pounds, which failed to sell at Christie’s, and a Song-dynasty crackle-glazed vase estimated at 3 million pounds, which went unsold at Sotheby’s. Buyers were put off by high estimates and a repair to the neck of the vase, dealers said.

The yellow color of the Bonhams’s perfectly preserved jade scepter was highly prized by Chinese bidders, as was the object’s resemblance to another example in the Palace Museum, Beijing, said dealers. Bonhams estimated that it would raise at least 7 million pounds from today’s 550-lot auction.

Bonhams also sold a pair of Imperial teapots for 1.3 million pounds, surpassing an estimate of 20,000 pounds to 30,000 pounds. Their phone buyer beat at least four Asian bidders in the room.

The melon-shaped porcelain teapots of the Qinglong dynasty were rediscovered recently in a Scottish collection where they had been for 50 years, Bonhams said.

“If you accept them, they are the rarest of the rarest high Imperial taste,” Roger Keverne, a London-based dealer, said in an interview.

Brush Washer

Christie’s raised a total of 20.3 million pounds in its May 10 sale. Seventy-six percent of the 329 lots were successful.

The top price was the 1.7 million pounds paid by a Chinese dealer in the room for a Qianlong-dynasty jade “double-gourd” brush washer valued at just 100,000 pounds to 150,000 pounds. It was offered by a Scottish family that acquired it in the 1960s.

Saturday, 14 May 2011 01:20

This vulnerable and volatile city, stuck on the downside of a boom-and-bust cycle for decades, could be one of the most peaceful places on earth for the next few days.

Beginning on Friday, a three-day meeting called the Newark Peace Education Summit convenes at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, near the city’s struggling commercial downtown. The convention’s theme is “The Power of Nonviolence.” Its roster is crowded with celebrity pacifists. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the keynote speaker.

In the atrium of the nearby Newark Museum, monks from the Drepung Gomang monastery, once in Tibet, now in India, have created, literally grain by grain, entirely from colored sand, a large, intricate mandala. And the museum’s collection of Tibetan art, one of the oldest and finest anywhere, has been reinstalled in a suite of galleries surrounding a Buddhist altar that the Dalai Lama consecrated more than 20 years ago, and that he will revisit this week.

The reappearance of the Tibetan collection is by itself occasion for hoopla. From gilded sculptures of deities to silver filigree chopsticks, this is astonishing stuff. And almost as astonishing is how few New Yorkers are aware that these treasures exist just across the Hudson, or know the story of how they landed in Newark a hundred years ago.

Not long after the museum was formed in 1909, one of its founding trustees, Edward N. Crane, struck up a friendship with a fellow passenger on a steamship traveling to the United States from Japan. The passenger was Dr. Albert L. Shelton, a Christian medical missionary, originally from Indianapolis, who was returning home from six years of service in China and Tibet.

The missionary’s stay had coincided with a period of devastating border wars between the two countries, during which many Buddhist monasteries were destroyed and their contents scattered. Under these circumstances, objects previously all but unseen by outsiders — ritual instruments, religious paintings, sacred books — came into his hands.

Shelton’s plan was to sell them as one collection to an American museum and put the proceeds toward his mission. And in Crane he found, if not an institutional customer, an ardent and well-connected viewer. Once back home, Crane persuaded the museum — this was not an easy sell — to borrow the Tibetan material as a special exhibition.

The show, which opened in early 1911, was a hit.

When Crane suddenly died later that year, his family bought everything Shelton had on hand — about 150 items — and donated them to the museum, which in its turn commissioned Shelton to scout out more art when he was back in Tibet. He agreed, and between 1913 and his death in 1922 (he was murdered by bandits in the country’s interior), he shipped hundreds of additional items to Newark.

Saturday, 14 May 2011 01:19

The exhibition presents 64 prints from Audubon’s first edition, plus four large animal prints from his later Imperial Quadrupeds edition and prints from later editions and several of Audubon’s contemporaries. This exhibition also features several original oil paintings by Audubon, as well as personal belongings such as the silver cup presented to his engraver upon completion of the publication of volume two of “The Birds of America.”

John James Audubon (1785-1851) is known today for his remarkable work “The Birds of America.” He led a complex life, starting as the illegitimate child of a French sea captain in what is now Haiti, traveling to France and then to Pennsylvania to start anew after the French revolution, and embarking on a lifelong study of birds and other animals that would eventually bring him fame and fortune. A chance encounter with ornithologist Alexander Wilson in 1810 led Audubon to embark on a vast project, a life-sized color folio of all the birds of North America.

His project would take 28 years to come to fruition. He spent 16 years studying and drawing birds, pioneering a lifelike portrayal of them, unlike the stiff and awkward bird portraits of his contemporaries. Unable to find a publisher in the U.S., he traveled to England, and after a strike halted work at his first engraver, began a partnership with the English engraver Robert Havell Jr. In June of 1838, his magnum opus, “The Birds of America,” was published to wide acclaim.

Audubon’s legacy is remarkable. By drawing attention to the majesty of the birds and mammals of North America, he inspired a conservation movement. The Audubon Society was founded in his honor, and his name remains synonymous with conservation and bird preservation to this day.

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