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Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:36

The auction of 42 works from the collection of the late New York dealer Allan Stone held at Sotheby’s on Monday evening is one of those events that announce the advent of an era. The antiquities of Contemporary art were on sale.

To drive the point home, Sotheby’s did not use the word “contemporary” on the covers of the two catalogs printed for the occasion.

On volume one, the uncharacteristically small title states merely “The Collection of Allan Stone.” An inside page proclaims in white on black (a discreet hint at Mr. Stone’s death in 2006) “Allan Stone is a Celebration of art collecting and an insight into the sophisticated eye of this renowned New York dealer.” There follows a seven-page chronology of artistic development on the New York scene from the 1940s to 2006 illustrated with pictures in the sale. If you were not absolutely dense, you knew that you were being confronted with Cultural History in capital letters.

The message got across. The attendance was galvanized.

The first lot was a small sheet of paper with additional bits of paper pasted on, and most importantly, the New York artist Franz Kline’s signature followed by a date, 1957. Kline had violently smeared the paper with black paint. Although “Untitled,” as Sotheby’s dubbed it, was only 11 by 83/8 inches, or 27.9 by 21.2 centimeters, the experts had given it a $90,000 to $120,000 estimate plus a sale charge of more than 20 percent. Dazzled, the room sent it flying to $446,500.

Another “Untitled” followed, signed by John Chamberlain in 1961. Scraps of painted steel, crushed and welded, are attached together with discarded shreds of fabric to a sturdy backing board. It made you briefly wonder whether the artist, rummaging in a scrap heap, had tried to pay homage to the victims of some ghastly car accident. Bidders responded to this monument of old Contemporary art. It doubled expectations at $662,500.

That work served as a prelude to Chamberlain’s big jumble of painted and chromium-plated steel fragments that came up moments later. Executed in 1958, it conjured far more realistically the image of a car wreck. Here, the artist had coined a title, “Nutcracker.” The Cleveland Museum of Art had included “Nutcracker” in a brief Chamberlain exhibition in January 1967. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum gave it the ultimate accolade, when the crushed steel jumble was featured in “John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition” in the early 1970s. After that, it was impossible to mistake “Nutcracker” for a haphazard assemblage of scrap metal. Bidders ran it up to $4.78 million.

Other hefty prices followed. Willem de Kooning’s “Event in a Barn,” done in 1947 in oil, enamel and paper collage on board, was likewise reassuringly set in the concrete of art history. It had traveled the United States in 2006 and 2007 as part of the show “Picasso and American Art.” De Kooning’s picture realized $4.56 million.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:34

It will be a singular opportunity to see half of Leonardo da Vinci's extraordinary paintings together at one exhibition and the National Gallery has announced it will attempt to make the experience as joyous as possible by restricting visitor numbers.

The Leonardo show, which examines the artist's years as painter at the court of the ruler of Milan, promises to be one of the most popular art exhibitions ever. Its scale is unprecedented: to get the loan of one of his 14 paintings would be something of an achievement but to get seven is "miraculous", said Luke Syson, curator of the show.

Nicholas Penny, the gallery's director, called the show "a great triumph in diplomacy" with paintings leaving galleries in Italy and France for the first time. But anyone who visited the successful Gauguin show at Tate Modern or Van Gogh at the Royal Academy will know the downside of trying to see incredible art in a crowded gallery.

"There is going to be tremendous demand and we have taken a number of unusual steps to try and ensure people are not too disappointed," said Penny. "It is very important that people study our website before they come to the exhibition. They can download all the information that people stand and read beforehand. The whole experience can be properly prepared for."

The gallery is also reducing the number of people at the show at one time. Instead of the usual health and safety limit of 230, 180 visitors will be allowed each half hour. The show opens in November, but the gallery is giving people plenty of time to book in advance by opening sales on Tuesday. Those hoping to buy tickets on the day are being told they face disappointment. The show will run for only three months because, understandably, the other galleries want their paintings back, but it will be open until 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 7pm on Sundays. Opening times will be extended further in the last two weeks.

The measures are being taken because of the show's unprecedented nature. Leonardo is known for so many things – his inventions, his draughtmanship and, if you read Dan Brown, his role in a religious conspiracy – but this exhibition will be the biggest dedicated to his art and his aims and ambitions as a painter.

"You're not going to be seeing submarines and flying machines and embyros that we, of course, also associate with that great genius," said Penny.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:33

As postwar and contemporary art auctions begin in New York this week, 66 Andy Warhol lots will test the market’s appetite for one of its biggest stars. What’s the best buy?

“As an investor, you’d be better off putting the money into a mid-tier category,” said Anders Petterson, founder of London-based art-market research firm ArtTactic Ltd., speaking at a recent conference in New York. “There’s still a sense of rarity in this segment, but at the same time more liquidity than at the high end.”

Art is a tricky investment, its value influenced by economic cycles, clandestine deals, irregular supply and demand, plus sudden shifts in taste.

Warhol prices this week range from a simple black-and-white photo-booth strip estimated at $10,000 to $15,000 to a stark red self-portrait with spiky hair on black background for $30 million to $40 million.

The mid-tier market falls between $500,000 and $5 million. In 2010, buyers in this category snapped up works from the “Mona Lisa” series, smaller Mao paintings, dollar signs, 24- inch flower paintings and 1963 “Jackie” portraits.

This price bracket accounted for 29 percent of all Warhol lots sold in 2010, versus 8 percent that fetched $5 million or more.

Highlights include a somber round 1964 “Jackie” silkscreen painting from the estate of San Francisco art patron Dodie Rosekrans with an estimate range of $3 million to $4 million at Sotheby’s. (BID)

Small Mao

Phillips de Pury has a small 1973 Mao silkscreen painting with an estimated range of $3.5 million to $4.5 million. Depicted in a green frock on blue background, this Mao was part of a batch of Warhols from the Sonnabend Collection acquired by Larry Gagosian in 2008.

Christie’s has a 90-by-70-inch canvas “Diamond Dust Shoes” (1980-81) in which high-heeled sandals are sprinkled with diamond dust, for $1 million to $1.5 million.

“If you can buy a 90-by-70 Warhol shoe painting for $1 million, it’s better than owning Google, Microsoft and Facebook together,” said Alberto Mugrabi, New York-based collector and dealer in Warhol. “I am not involved in selling this work, but I will be involved in the buying.”

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:29

Sotheby’s (BID), which aims to sell a Jeff Koons sculpture tomorrow of the Pink Panther embracing a topless blonde for $30 million, reported a first-quarter profit.

The New York auctioneer earned $2.4 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with a loss of $2.2 million, or 3 cents, a year earlier, it said in a statement. Revenue increased 17 percent to $119.6 million.

The earnings were in line with estimates. Five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg projected profit of 3.6 cents a share. They had estimated revenue of $119 million.

“This is one of our best first quarters on record,” Chief Executive William Ruprecht said today in an e-mailed statement.

Auction sales increased 23 percent, offset in part by a 16 percent increase in operating expenses.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:09

Not every Dutch artist who came to Paris failed, went mad, sliced off his ear and killed himself.

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), who arrived in 1899, some 13 years after Van Gogh, was tremendously successful and became the portraitist of the Roaring Twenties.

The exhibition at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, which was first seen in Rotterdam, Van Dongen’s birthplace, covers the first half of his career, up to 1931.

Ignoring his later work, which is more conventional and often banal, also spares the organizers the trouble of dealing with the low point of his career -- his trip to Nazi Germany in 1941 as a guest of the regime. After the war, he and his fellow travelers were temporarily excluded from the Salon.

Van Dongen didn’t start out as a society painter. In his young years, he was an avowed anarchist.

Picasso, whose neighbor he was in the legendary cluster of shabby Montmartre studios, nicknamed him -- after the blue- blooded Russian agitator -- “the Kropotkin of the Bateau- Lavoir.” Together they explored Paris nightlife, the cabarets, brothels and watering holes.

Fernande Olivier, Picasso’s mistress, became Van Dongen’s model. In response to Picasso’s five “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” he came up with twice as many “Tabarin Wrestlers,” muscular ladies you wouldn’t want to mess with.

Van Dongen did his best to conceal the fact that he was a brilliant draftsman and that he had worked as a cartoonist for magazines. He preferred to be viewed as having miraculously emerged from nowhere as a painter.

Wild Beasts

In 1905, he appeared with Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and others in the historic Salon d’Automne that led a horrified critic to attack them as “fauves,” or wild beasts.

In a way, Van Dongen was the wildest of the beasts. His deliberate primitivism, crude vigor and strident colors were close to the German Expressionists. No wonder German galleries welcomed him with open arms.

Another scandal broke out at the 1913 Salon d’Automne: The police removed as obscene a nude of his wife Guus with the black triangle of her pubic hair very much in evidence. In 1920, Anatole France, probably the country’s most revered writer, was shocked to find out that his neighbor had portrayed him as a decrepit old man.

At that time, Van Dongen had moved to a chic private street near the Bois de Boulogne where he lived with Lea Jacob, manager of the haute couture house Jenny, who introduced him to Parisian high society.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:06

A racy Jeff Koons sculpture and an assemblage of Jackie Kennedy portraits by Andy Warhol drew tepid bidding last night as Sotheby’s New York saw its lowest tally for an evening contemporary-art auction in two years.

The $128.1 million total was just over the low presale estimate of $120 million. As in last week’s Impressionist and modern-art sales, buyers balked at what they perceived as aggressive estimates and lackluster quality.

“There’s nothing really outstanding here,” billionaire collector Eli Broad said as he left the Manhattan salesroom with his wife, Edythe. “There’s no excitement.”

The top lot was Warhol’s “Sixteen Jackies,” assembled by the seller from 16 individual canvases of the former First Lady on the day of her husband’s assassination. It fetched $20.2 million, or $1.3 million per painting, compared with presale expectations of $20 million to $30 million. Painted with blue, white and gold, some images show Jackie Kennedy smiling, others grief- stricken.

Individual “Jackie” silkscreen paintings sell privately for between $800,000 and $1.2 million, dealers said.

“It’s the perfect example of people willing to pay the market price but no more,” said Todd Levin, director of New York-based Levin Art Group.

“The sale felt overestimated by about 10 to 15 percent,” he said. “If you are going to have aggressive estimates, you’ve got to have masterpieces.”

‘Pink Panther’

A Jeff Koons sculpture depicting a topless blonde hugging the Pink Panther fetched $16.9 million, falling short of the presale estimate of $20 million to $30 million and of the artist’s auction record. The porcelain piece went to a telephone client of Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia.

Described as one of the most important works by Koons, “Pink Panther” (1988) was consigned by publisher Benedikt Taschen, who had been guaranteed an undisclosed amount through a third-party irrevocable bid.

The auction record for a Koons sculpture is $25.8 million paid for “Balloon Flower” at Christie’s in London in 2008. Sotheby’s (BID) priciest Koons was a giant magenta-and- gold “Hanging Heart” that fetched $23.6 million in November 2007.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 00:54

In a move that could boost South Florida’s reach in the international art world, the company that owns Art Basel Miami Beach announced Friday it is expanding into Asia.

Soon, there will not only be Art Basel Switzerland and Art Basel Miami Beach, but also Art Basel Hong Kong — an addition that was welcomed warmly in Miami’s art scene.

MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd., which owns and organizes the Basel fairs, has signed a purchase agreement with Asian Art Fairs Ltd, the owners of ART HK – Hong Kong International Art Fair, the leading art fair in Asia since 2008.

The MCH Group will take a majority ownership stake in Asian Art Fairs Ltd. as of July 1. But the name change will wait awhile.

The Hong Kong show will retain its current name for 2012, but will move from its current late-May time slot to early February, staggering the show between Art Basel’s June fair in Switzerland and its December show in Miami Beach.

In future years, organizers plan to rebrand the Asian show with the Art Basel name. The Basel Switzerland show, dubbed “Basel, Basel” by locals, is considered the largest and most prestigious contemporary art fair in the world.

In an interview with The Miami Herald, co-directors Annette Schönholzer and Marc Spiegler stressed that the Basel presence in Hong Kong was an expansion and that Art Basel planned to stay in Miami Beach, which will be in its 10th year in December.

“We are totally committed to Art Basel Miami Beach,” Schönholzer said. “If anything, we are hoping that the Art Basel brand would strengthen and that we would see more people coming to Miami Beach to see the fair.”

Art Basel organizers have been attentive to the exploding Asian art market for more than 10 years, and have been engaging Asian collectors, galleries and artists, often times bringing them to Art Basel Miami Beach with success.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 00:52

On March 6, dozens of zebra finches were found dead outside the National Arts Club, at 15 Gramercy Park South. They belonged to the club president, O. Aldon James. The ASPCA is investigating the situation, though it's been suggested that Mr. James was likely responsible for their demise.

"The finches, it was absolutely him," said Helga S. Orthofer, an artist and former club member. "He did not know what to do with all the birds, and saw he had too many, and, idiot that he is, he let them out in the most horrendous storm."

Birds have brought Mr. James trouble before. In 2000, renowned biographer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Nancy Milford told New York about Mr. James—a self- professed "bird man" and avid collector—and his problems feeding an endangered infant raptor. While she was staying at the club finishing a biography on Edna St. Vincent Millay (published in 2002), she said, "One night he just opened the window to his bathroom and released the bird, just let it free into Manhattan."

Shortly after the discovery of the dead finches, the club announced that Mr. James would be going on a "well-deserved vacation." Many current and former members of the club, some of whom spoke to The Observer on the condition of anonymity, believe the vacation should have come long ago.

The National Arts Club was founded in 1898 with a mission "to stimulate, foster and promote public interest in the arts." Its members have included three presidents as well as distinguished artists, architects and actors. (Current members include Martin Scorsese, Ethan Hawke, Robert Redford and Uma Thurman.) The club's building, the Tilden Mansion, erected in the 1840s, houses a public space, where events are hosted, and private apartments for some members. (The Poetry Society of America is also a tenant.) Long regarded as a treasured part of the Gramercy Park community, the club has become, under Mr. James' presidency, one of Manhattan's most controversial institutions.

Bizarre stories about the club seem lately to emerge on a monthly basis. In January, hoarding taking place in private suites was exposed by Luis Garcia, Mr. James' erstwhile assistant, who posted photographs of rooms on the Web site Flickr. There were questions, too, about who occupied the rooms. In January, the local news site DNAinfo reported that Mr. James was offering a reduced rate to a former Mr. India New York, Robert "Bobby" Abit, whom Mr. James was said to introduce as "my pharmacist." Most recently, former staffers told Gawker that Mr. James had paraded around calling minority employees words like "Japs" and "Tokyo Rose."

Known for his bow ties (which he likes to refer to as "textile butterflies"), pinstriped suits and rose-tinted glasses, Mr. James is said, according to tax filings, to serve as president without pay—save for a ceremonial $1 a year. Yet, those filings report, he ran up a $37,000 tab for club travel expenses alone. He has occupied a duplex apartment with his twin brother, John James, overlooking Gramercy Park. Former residents of the club who had been members since Mr. James' arrival told The Observer it might have rented for $8,000 to $12,000 per month; documents from 2008 and 2009 show that Aldon James paid $1,143 a month and John James $356. The president enjoyed hosting parties at the club for his friends—free of charge, according to Ms. Orthofer. Club newsletters captured Mr. James, a chronic name-dropper, in nearly every photo with his arm slung familiarly around celebrities from Anna Wintour to Betty Friedan.

While Mr. James cultivated a glamorous public persona, he indulged his private eccentricities. Club regulars say that the James brothers engage in frequent fistfights, and the president was frequently seen to be injured. "They get into physical fights with each other all around the neighborhood," said one regular. "Recently, Aldon had his hand and head bandaged. He said he was mugged, but we knew it was them fighting each other again."

Another former member, who also preferred not to be named, confirmed, "They beat each other up. A friend of mine saw Aldon punching John all over the head. This is not just rumor. Aldon's father once said, 'It could have been worse. They could have been triplets.'"

Aldon James is a native of Baltimore whose youthful ambition was to become a physician. He dropped out of Dickinson College in his first year; some claim that the departure followed a nervous breakdown. He's not known for any significant artistic achievement, though he did supposedly spend his early years appraising antiques. One former member said, "When Aldon became president, we were delighted because he'd never had a profession, so we knew he could spend more time than any of us could."

Monday, 09 May 2011 15:50

NEW YORK CITY – The Art Fair Company is taking over the American Antiques Show (TAAS) from the financially ailing American Folk Art Museum, potentially changing the complexion and dynamic of New York’s Americana Week in January.
 
Afanews.com spoke to Mark Lyman, president of the Art Fair Company, from his office in Chicago late last week, hours after an agreement was reached.  Directed by Lyman and his partner, chief executive officer Michael Franks, the Art Fair Company produces the Sculpture Objects and Functional Art (SOFA) contemporary design and decorative arts shows in Chicago, New York and Santa Fe; the Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art; and the new Spring Show NYC, organized by the Art and Antique Dealers League of America.
 
Afanews: What are your plans for the American Antiques Show?
 
ML:   We want to revitalize it. The American Antiques Show has been very good, but we want to incorporate some new disciplines, such as design and photography. We will bring the show up to the Modernist era. We are very interested in adding paintings dealers while still being respectful of the show’s traditional base, which is folk art and American antiques.
 
Afanews: Is it your goal to make the show more youthful?

ML:  Youthful is a key phrase. We are interested in the spirit and energy of things. We want to bring in new clients and present material in a new way. We will upgrade the show’s look and sensibility. It will be very dramatic, charming, interesting and clear.
 
Afanews: What motivated the management change?
 
ML:  The museum makes money on the opening night party but the production of the show itself has not been gainful. We are professionals and work very hard at what we do. On the logistics side, we own all of our walls, which are hard, as well as our lights. They are in a warehouse in southeast Michigan. The Art Fair Company is a national organization with a national marketing effort.
 
Afanews:  How does the museum benefit from the new arrangement?
 
ML:  The agreement is that the Art Fair Company has all the financial responsibility to produce the show. It is our show, but we have committed to have the museum be the opening night beneficiary. The museum will receive every penny of profit from opening night.
 
Afanews: Who is involved in the planning and preparations?
 
ML : The most important thing that we are doing is organizing an exhibitor advisory board. We got to know two American Antiques Show exhibitors, Frank Maresca and Carl Hammer, through the Intuit Show. Frank and Carl are already involved, but we also want to bring in others who have been an important part of the American Antiques Show, plus new people. We hope that the exhibitors are excited about it.
 
Afanews: Why is the Art Fair Company taking this on?
 
ML: It is a very good opportunity for us and we are excited about working with the dealers.
 
The new show will open with a preview benefitting the American Folk Art Museum on Wednesday, January 18, and continue through January 22 at the Metropolitan Pavilion at 125 West 18th Street in New York.
 
The New York Times reported that the museum is currently in default on nearly $32 million worth of bonds that it issued to construct its building on West 53rd Street.  The museum’s director, Maria Ann Conelli, last week announced that she will leave the museum in July to return to academia.
 
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Friday, 06 May 2011 02:11

Christie’s Wednesday evening auction of Impressionist and Modern art will long be remembered by experienced dealers and collectors as the most surprising session they attended in a very long time.

The score, just shy of $156 million, was lower than the $170 million total achieved at Sotheby’s the previous day. But the quality of many of the works seen Wednesday varied from second-rate to downright appalling. That such modest offerings should have allowed the Christie’s team to turn the sale into a roaring success does not merely underline the bullishness of the market. It also points to a fundamental change in the hierarchy of aesthetic values. This modification was spectacularly illustrated by two world auction records set at Christie’s.

The first went to a petit maître of the second Impressionist wave, Maximilien Luce. Luce worked under the influence of Paul Seurat and Paul Signac, the founders of Divisionism, also known as Pointillism. The artist could have his inspired moments, but not when he rigidly applied the Pointillist doctrine and painstakingly juxtaposed colored dots with the tip of his brush. Unfortunately, this is precisely what he did when painting in 1900 his view of “Notre-Dame de Paris.”

The conventional composition gives Luce’s view of the cathedral the appearance of an outsize postcard in the Pointillist taste. The Christie’s estimate, $2 million to $3 million plus the sale charge, seemed wild to connoisseurs. The price it fetched at the end of a long bidding match anonymously fought over the telephone via Christie’s staff was wilder still. It rose to $4.22 million.

Within five minutes, a Fauve picture painted by Maurice de Vlaminck in 1905, “Paysage de banlieue” (Suburban landscape) set another world record at an astounding $22.48 million.

Fauve art with its contrasted colors and vibrant energy has been sought with ever-increasing enthusiasm for more than a decade and de Vlaminck undoubtedly produced some of its masterpieces. But “Paysage de banlieue” is not one of those. The composition is uncharacteristically confused, drowned in small disconnected details.

Friday, 06 May 2011 02:08

The family of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton pledged to give $800 million to his daughter Alice Walton's new art museum in Arkansas, the largest cash donation ever made to a U.S. art museum.

The gift from the Walton Family Foundation trumps the $660 million in oil stocks that J. Paul Getty bequeathed to his namesake Los Angeles museum more than three decades ago. It's also larger than the roughly $500 million cash gift that Texas philanthropist Caroline Wiess Law bequeathed to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Donations of artworks to museums, such as Walter Annenberg's bequest to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, also have been valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The gift reflects the outsized ambitions the retail-chain family has for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a complex of eight gallery pavilions it has helped build around a pair of ponds in the company's northwestern Arkansas hometown of Bentonville (population 35,301). The museum, designed by architect Moshe Safdie, is named for a nearby spring and its bridge-like architectural elements.

The 201,000 square-foot museum, which opens to the public Nov. 11, aims to chronicle the entire story of American art from the Colonial era of the late 1600s to contemporary pieces made by American artists a few months ago—an encyclopedic sweep reminiscent of the ambitions of the robber-baron museum builders in the Gilded Age, but rarely attempted by new museums today. Billionaire Eli Broad, for example, has pledged nearly $340 million to build and endow a new museum for his collection in Los Angeles, but his vast holdings only cover the past few decades of U.S. and international art.

The guiding force behind the museum—and the gift made Wednesday—is Ms. Walton, 61 years old, a well-known player in the art world who conceived the museum six years ago and has spent lavishly to build up its collection from scratch. In 2005, she outbid the National Gallery of Art to buy Asher B. Durand's Hudson River School masterpiece, "Kindred Spirits," from the New York Public Library, paying around $35 million.

Friday, 06 May 2011 02:05

Despite a reputation for reaching for their revolvers at the merest mention of culture, the Nazis were among the most ruthless, avaricious and methodical art collectors ever to cast a greedy eye and thieving hand over other people's property.

"Use every means of transport to get all works of art out of Florence … [save] works of art from English and Americans," ran one of Heinrich Himmler's orders. "In fine get anything away that you can get hold of. Heil Hitler."

That appetite for the most beautiful and precious works of European art saw thousands of pieces stolen from their owners between 1933 and 1945 and entire collections raided, scattered and lost.

The quest to recover them and, where possible, return them to their rightful places has been under way for almost seven decades.

Now, thanks to a deal between some of the world's leading archives and museums, an online catalogue of documents has been created to help families, historians and researchers track down the missing artworks.

Under an agreement signed on Thursday by organisations including Britain's National Archives, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, the US National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) and Germany's Bundesarchiv, the records will be available through a single web portal.

The records include files documenting the systematic expropriation of Jewish property, Adolf Hitler's plans to establish a Führermuseum crammed with looted art in his Austrian hometown of Linz and the interrogation of art dealers.

The British documents, which cover the years 1939 to 1961, also lay out the efforts made to identify the stolen works and reunite them with their owners.

Among them is a report from a British art expert and RAF intelligence officer who was dispatched to Switzerland in 1945. The paper may have faded to yellow, but Douglas Cooper's exasperation with the Swiss authorities remains fresh to this day.

"Until I arrived here five weeks ago, practically nothing had been done," he writes. "And still no steps have been taken by the Swiss government to put the looted pictures in security. This means that it is still possible for any of the present holders to dispose of them."

Friday, 06 May 2011 02:01

The latest pieces to leave the Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art, at 8 on Tuesday morning, include a rare historical work by Edward Hopper, Daniel Garber's luminous 'Tanis,' one of Mary Cassatt's Denise paintings and a landscape that overflows the cover of the book 'An American Odyssey.'

'An American Odyssey' is the coffee-table book about Jack Warner's pursuit of what's been called one of the finest privately held collections of American art in the world. Frederic Edwin Church's airy 'Above the Clouds at Sunrise' illuminates its cover.

The other titles being removed today are Hopper's 'Dawn Before Gettysburg' and Cassatt's 'Denise in Hand Mirror.'

With the earlier removal of such keystone works as Asher B. Durand's 'Progress (The Advance of Civilization)' and Thomas Cole's 'The Falls of Kaaterskill,' this marks the loss of 25 paintings considered core to the collection.

'As if many of the seminal works haven't been taken already, (‘Above the Clouds at Sunrise' is) the one you most quickly associate with the Warner collection,' said Graham Boettcher, William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, and a frequent visitor to and student of the Westervelt-Warner Museum.

The Westervelt Co., owner of the artworks, declined to comment. Of 42 paintings previously removed this year, 29 go on auction at Christie's on May 18. The others presumably have been or are being sold privately.

The Westervelt Co. is taking advantage of a law under which it can make greater profits by selling art, considered a non-core asset, in 2011. In past weeks, the company has declined to discuss how works have been selected, or what dealer is handling the sales.

Friday, 06 May 2011 01:59

Last week I visited the greatest art museum you have never heard of. It is called the Barnes Foundation and contains one of the most amazing collections of Impressionist, post-Impressionist and early modern paintings on earth, valued conservatively at over $25bn. That figure, of course, is largely meaningless, except in one respect. It confirms beyond all doubt that what is about to happen to the Barnes is the biggest art heist in history.

Nothing quite prepares you for the Barnes experience. Part of the shock is the sheer richness of what is on display. On wall after crowded wall are pictures you have seen time and again in glossy art books, but assumed were housed in the National Gallery, the Hermitage or some other great public institution – not in a neo-Palladian villa, monument to the foibles of an eccentric early 20th-century inventor, educator and aesthete, tucked away unsignposted in the wealthy Lower Merion Township on the western edge of Philadelphia.

There you will find, inter alia, 181 works by Renoir, 69 Cezannes (more than in all the museums of Paris combined), 59 Matisses, 16 Modiglianis, 46 Picassos and seven Van Goghs, as well as a smattering of Old Masters, and decorative and native arts from China, Europe, Africa, and America. But no less astounding is the way they are displayed.

Albert Barnes made his fortune from developing a hugely successful antiseptic and then used his money to indulge his love of art. He was a self-made scholar, convinced that the techniques of art, its use of space, shapes and forms, are timeless and universal. So only here will you find an El Greco flanked by a couple of Cezannes, a luscious Renoir hanging next to a crucifixion by a late 15th-century Dutch master.

Barnes himself insisted on the exact layout of the paintings. He saw his collection not as a museum but as a school, for the cultural edification of the humble – to open to great art the minds of "men and women who gain their livelihood by daily toil in factories, shops and schools".

His special genius, however, was to recognise the importance of the modern art movement long before others. He went on constant buying missions to Paris, befriending the likes of Henri Matisse and bringing these unconventional and unfamiliar works back to Philadelphia.

The City of Brotherly Love was not impressed. In April 1923 Barnes put on a show of 75 paintings by Picasso, Modigliani and others at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, asking merely for "the simple justice of educated and unbiased attention". Alas, he did not get it – and in retrospect the seeds were sown for the controversy whose sad denouement, eight decades later, seems at hand.

Spurned by the Philadelphia cultural establishment, Barnes from that moment on had nothing but contempt for the self-appointed elite of the arts world. Instead he had a brilliant French-born architect called Jean Philippe Cret design a villa in Merion to house his collection.

Barnes ran the collection in his idiosyncratic fashion until his death in 1951; in his will bequeathed it to the foundation, stipulating that it should remain for ever at Merion, with the pictures arrayed exactly as he had organised. And for a while things continued much as usual. But the explosion in the popularity and value of modern art, and the recognition accorded it, came to change the equation entirely.

Friday, 06 May 2011 01:51

A cityscape by Egon Schiele valued at a record $50 million will be auctioned to pay for the settlement of one of the world’s longest-running art restitution cases.

The Leopold Museum, Vienna, is selling the 1914 work in London with a top estimate of about 30 million pounds on June 22 after agreeing to end an ownership dispute over another of the Austrian Expressionist’s paintings, the U.S.-based auction house Sotheby’s (BID) said in an e-mailed statement today.

Schiele’s “Hauser mit bunter Waesche, ‘Vorstadt’ II,” showing houses with washing lines, has a low estimate of 22 million pounds and is guaranteed a minimum price by a third- party “irrevocable bid,” Sotheby’s said. The valuation exceeds the $22.4 million paid in 2006 for a cityscape at Christie’s International. Sales of museum-quality oils by the short-lived artist (1890-1918) are becoming increasingly rare.

“This is a great opportunity,” said Eberhard Kohlbacher, partner in the Vienna dealership Wienerroither & Kohlbacher. “You have a few restitution cases, then it will be finished.”

The museum was founded in 1994 by the Viennese ophthalmologist and collector Rudolf Leopold, who died in 2010. It owns more than 220 works by Schiele, including another eight cityscapes.

Friday, 06 May 2011 01:47

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei began his second month of detention this week, and still the Chinese government has given an increasingly outraged and anxious world no satisfactory answers to questions about his whereabouts, his condition or the charges against him.

But business as usual can sometimes be its own quiet form of defiance. Despite Mr. Ai’s absence, his plans for exhibiting his art in the West have been proceeding on schedule. Last weekend an exhibition of new work opened at the Neugerriemschneider Gallery in Berlin, which displayed an immense white banner printed in black with the words “Where is Ai Weiwei” on the front of its building. (It was designed by the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija.) A larger exhibition will open next week at the Lisson Gallery in London. And in Manhattan “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads,” which is being termed Mr. Ai’s first public sculpture, was proclaimed open on Wednesday morning in a drizzle at the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel.

The ceremony was overseen by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and attended by dozens of members of the press and the New York art world, including 12 artists and arts officials who represented the absent Mr. Ai by reading short pertinent sentences from his interviews and blog posts. Citing New York as a city that “fiercely defends the right of all people to express themselves,” Mr. Bloomberg called Mr. Ai “one of the most talented, respected and masterful artists of our time.” “Circle of Animals” is a series of 12 heads of the creatures of the Chinese Zodiac, for which years are also named: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, boar. Each head is cast bronze, roughly four feet high and set on a slender six-foot bronze base that suggests an abstracted lotus stem and leaves. Among the most sculpturally distinctive parts of the project, the bases also resemble stakes, which adds a slight touch of gallows humor. (The work will be on view through July 15 and will later travel to Los Angeles, Houston, Pittsburgh and Washington; another edition will go on view next week outside Somerset House in London.)

Contrary to the title the heads at the Plaza are not placed in a circle, as they were when they were displayed at the São Paulo Biennale last year. Sited on two tiers of the fountain and all facing the north, they suggest more a kind of reviewing stand. Taken at face value they are universally familiar animal heads, like the characters in Aesop’s fables. They are also slightly generic. They could have been made by any number of artists of different nationalities over the past several decades. Yet a few of them — notably the rooster, dragon and tiger — are distinctively ferocious looking and bristle with ornate detail and texture. Others are more docile and plain; the horse could almost be an oversize My Little Pony toy.

“Zodiac Heads” is a Conceptual work bodied forth as bronze sculpture that my colleague Holland Cotter rightly predicted would look “winsome” if you didn’t know the back story, but that becomes more subversive if you do. The heads are enlarged versions of those that were designed in the 18th century by European Jesuits for the Manchu emperor Qianlong as part of a famous fountain clock in the European-style gardens of the Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, near Beijing. (Each of the originals spouted water for two hours a day, which may explain why the mouths of Mr. Ai’s copies are open, as if they are noisily expressing themselves.)

Friday, 06 May 2011 01:44

Sarah Jessica Parker left early for the opening of “The Normal Heart” on Broadway, but other guests stayed for the Brooklyn Museum’s “Brklyn Artists Ball” last night and then departed with table decorations.

Criterion Collection President Peter Becker grabbed a brick covered in a green fabric with an aquatic scene and signed by Shinique Smith.

Smith and 15 other artists with Brooklyn roots were recruited to decorate the dinner tables. Her contribution involved colorful bricks.

“When you’re a host, you display wealth and generosity,” Smith said earlier in the evening, standing next to one of the mushroom sculptures by Situ Studio in the museum’s Great Hall. “My guests can take what they want. It’s social sculpture.”

The table decorations were the talk of the event as guests sat down for a dinner including timbale of avocado and quinoa, and grilled hanger steak with fingerling and purple Peruvian potatoes.

Ball Chairman Stephanie Ingrassia and her husband, Tim Ingrassia, co-chairman of global mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), sat at the center table. Artist Brian Tolle had decorated it with patches of Astroturf.

“We got to meet the artists at a reception at our house three weeks ago. It was wonderful,” said Tim Ingrassia when he entered the dining room. He had stopped to admire the work of Dustin Yellin: rows of boxes made of acrylic, paint and collage, consisting of images cut out from old books.

Thursday, 05 May 2011 05:00

Christie’s International sold $156 million of Impressionist and modern art last night in New York, less than half the year-ago total, as collectors and advisers lamented a scarcity of masterpieces.

“This time around, the auction houses don’t have any great estates,” said Suzanne Gyorgy, head of Citi Private Bank’s art advisory service, before the sale. “They don’t have the iconic great work.”

The tally fell below Christie’s presale estimate of $162.3 million to $231.9 million, with 10 of the 57 lots failing to sell. Leonardo DiCaprio, sitting near the front of the room with a baseball cap obscuring his face, was among the onlookers as Claude Monet’s 1914-17 floral painting “Iris mauves” failed to sell.

Estimated to fetch as much as $20 million, it was the sale’s biggest casualty. DiCaprio declined to comment.

The top lot was a tie. A Maurice de Vlaminck landscape owned by hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen fetched a record $22.5 million, as did Monet’s 1891 painting of poplars, “Les Peupliers.”

The 1905 Vlaminck canvas, “Paysage de banlieue,” is a view of the small town of Chatou in the suburbs of Paris. Yet its palette of bright yellow and deep blue seems more Mediterranean.

“For Vlaminck it’s a pretty key composition,” said Michael Findlay, director at Acquavella Galleries in New York, before the sale. “It couldn’t be a better date, it couldn’t be better colors.”

The seller bought the work from Acquavella in 2002 and according to Christie’s, Acquavella bought it back last night.

Records in 2010

In May 2010, Christie’s achieved records for Picasso and Jasper Johns while auctioning the estates of Frances Brody and Michael Crichton. Its Impressionist and modern sale was a $335.5 million spectacle starring a 1932 Picasso that went for $106.5 million.

Thursday, 05 May 2011 04:53

The 31st annual Art Chicago shared it 12th-floor perch with the Next fair devoted to emerging art in the Merchandise Mart from 29 April-2 May reflecting the fast changing nature of the event.

Last year, the main fair took up the entire floor. For this edition, over 40 dealers did not return and the exhibitor roster was down to 128 from 155 participants the year before. Not returning were the Helsinki Galerie Forsblom, London galleries Haunch of Venison and White Cube, and Pace Prints and Nyehaus, both from New York. Even longtime Art Chicago stalwart Rhona Hoffman skipped the fair and opted to take in the gallery scene in Berlin instead. New exhibitors included smaller dealerships like 101/exhibit of Miami and art company Misoolsidae of Seoul, giving the fair a more contemporary edge and post-war art having far less of a presence.

Although a horrific storm ground air traffic in New York to a standstill the day of the vernissage, the fair was packed solid and attendance was up 27% to 7,500 visitors. Longtime Chicago collectors like Larry and Marilyn Fields and Manfred and Fern Steinfeld took in the fair. And with artist Shephard Fairey clad in a Sex Pistols t-shirt deejaying at Next, that portion of the fair pulsated.

Museum groups hitting the fair included the Contemporary Art Museum St Louis donors led by director Paul Ha; Milwaukee Art Museum trustees with director Dan Keegan; as well as visitors from the Baltimore Museum of Art, Miami Art Museum, Walker Art Center and Grand Rapids Art Museum.

With the fair shrinking some dealers like Carl Hammer of Chicago had larger stands. “I would never get this much space in the Armory Show or Art Basel Miami Beach,” said Hammer who was showing a Bill Traylor drawing, Red Dog, 1942, for $350,000, the highest price noted in the fair. “New Yorkers are in an extreme minority but I’m hoping this is a turnaround time for the fair,” he said.

Thursday, 05 May 2011 04:50

Sotheby’s is seeking approval from its shareholders for a $15.3m pay package for five of its executive officers for 2010. Details are given in the firm’s proxy statement, issued in advance of its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 5 May.

The total compensation, up 125% from $6.8m in 2009, includes base salaries, plus other annual remunerations such as cash incentive bonuses and awards of Sotheby’s shares. These additional perks take the total level of pay to at least five times these executives’ base salary, and nearly nine times for the chief executive William Ruprecht.

The breakdown of total remuneration for 2010 is: $6m for Ruprecht, up from $2.4m in 2009; $2.5m for William Sheridan, chief financial officer (2009: $1.1m); $3m for Bruno Vinciguerra, chief operating officer (2009: $1.5m); $2.1m for Kevin Ching, chief executive of Asia (2009: $1.1m); and $1.7m for Robin Woodhead, executive vice president and chairman of Sotheby’s International (2009: $775,000).

Also included in the AGM proxy are details of “other compensation”. These include “automobile-related expenses, including driver’s compensation” for Ruprecht of $59,952; “club dues” of $29,329 for Sheridan and “parking fees” of $5,874 for Woodhead.

Sotheby’s management “pays itself relatively well compared with companies with similar revenue”, said Wall Street analyst Aaron Mo at JMP Securities (Sotheby’s 2010 revenue was $774.3m). Other US chief executives at the $6m total compensation level for 2010 include David Mackay, chief executive of Kellogg (2010 revenue: $12.4bn); Mark Pigott, chief executive of truck manufacturer Paccar (2010 revenue: $10.3bn) and Michael McCallister, who heads up US health insurance group Humana (2010 revenue: $33.9bn). The average increase on 2009 pay for top executives at 200 major US companies was 12%, according to a study conducted by US compensation consulting firm Equilar. All the named Sotheby’s executives saw an increase of over 90%.

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