Displaying items by tag: dealer

The children of the New York art dealer, Ileana Sonnabend, have donated Robert Rauschenberg’s mixed media assemblage, Canyon (1959), to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While the acquisition is a welcomed addition to MoMA’s existing Rauschenberg collection, the work wasn’t always so warmly regarded.

The Sonnabend heirs received Canyon after their mother’s death in 2007 and the work was soon at the center of a battle between MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the piece had been displayed intermittently since 2005. MoMA ramped up its efforts and promised to add Ms. Sonnabend’s name to the Founders Wall in the museum’s lobby. Officials also vowed to mount an entire show devoted to Canyon as well as Sonnabend, an important player in the modern art movement. While the Met made offers of their own, the Sonnabend family ultimately decided that MoMA was the right home for the work considering the expansive Rauschenberg collection already in the institution’s possession.

Sadly, this is not the first dramatic episode Canyon has been involved in. When the Sonnabend children inherited the work five years ago, appraisers valued the assemblage at $0. The presence of a stuffed bald eagle, a bird that is protected by federal laws, halted any possible sales of trades involving the work. The I.R.S., on the other hand, shrugged this off and claimed that Canyon was worth $65 million and demanded that Sonnabend’s family pay $29.2 million in taxes and another $11.7 million in penalties.

Eventually, a settlement was worked out and I.R.S. dropped all tax charges. In order for this to happen, the Sonnabends were required to donate Canyon to a museum where it could be put on public display. Canyon will be on view at MoMA beginning today, November 28.

The Contemporary art auction that took place at Sotheby’s Tuesday night made up for any disappointment stemming from last week’s Impressionist and modern art sale. Profits from the Contemporary sale reached $375.1, the highest total for any auction in Sotheby’s history. The previous record of $362 million was set in May of 2008.

The biggest sale of the night, Mark Rothko’s No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue) (1954) stirred up some competition and ended up selling to a telephone bidder for $75.1 million after the auction house’s fees. Other impressive sales included Jackson Pollack’s Number 4, 1951 that brought $40.4 million with fees, a record for the artist, and Francis Bacon’s Untitled (Pope) (1954) that sold for $29.7 million with fees. A number of high-quality works on paper by Andy Warhol also sold well. Green Disaster (Green Disaster Twice) (1963) sold to newsprint tycoon, Peter Brant, for $15.2 million and Suicide sold to the Manhattan art dealer, Philippe Ségalot, for $16.3 million, a record for a Warhol work on paper.

Out of 69 works offered at the auction, only 11 went unsold.

David Hickey, one of America’s foremost art critics is known for his acerbic commentary, but his latest tirade against the world of modern art is downright scathing. Hickey, a professor, curator, and author, told the Observer that he will be walking away from contemporary art, a genre he says has been ruined by rich collectors who are more concerned with money and celebrity than quality.

Hickey claims that art editors and critics have lost their edge, spending more time catering to the wealthy people who hold the reigns on the contemporary art market than surveying the actual work (which he says is also lacking). Hickey is not alone in this claim. A number of contemporary art curators, museums, and galleries have deemed the work of such artists as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and Antony Gormley bloated and empty – the result of too much fame and not enough criticism. While the notion of the artist as celebrity is not new, today’s market is saturated with it and gaining status has taken precedence over making revolutionary, ground-breaking art.

A former dealer, Hickey is attuned to considering art in monetary terms but his objections stem from his belief that contemporary art has become too broad, too elitist, and lacks discretion. Hickey’s retirement will remove an important critical voice from the equation. He plans to complete a book on the pagan roots of America, aptly titled Pagan America, as well as a book of essays titled Pirates and Framers.

In 1961, art dealer Leo Castelli bought a painting by Roy Lichtenstein for $750. One of the founding fathers of Pop Art, this particular piece was one of Lichtenstein’s first. In 1970, when Castelli sent the painting to be cleaned by art restorer, Daniel Goldreyer, he didn’t know it would be the last anyone would see of the work for a long time.

Goldreyer soon contacted Castelli to tell him that Electric Chord had gone missing from his office. Efforts to locate the painting went on for decades. The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation even put an image of the work on its holiday greeting card in 2006 to remind people of the ongoing search. This past July, Electric Chord turned up in a storage facility in New York. Goldreyer’s widow had found the painting in a locker belonging to a former employee after her husband’s death in 2009. Ms. Goldreyer tried to sell the painting to Quinta Galeria in Colombia using an assumed name. She claimed she was selling it on behalf of a friend. The gallery decided to send the work back to New York.

Leo Castelli’s widow, Barbara, picked up Electric Chord on Tuesday, October 16^th. Valued at $4 million, she plans to hang the painting in her home.

After two years in beta, Art.sy’s public version went live this past Monday. Using intuitive sites such as Pandora and Netflix as guides, Art.sy gets to know its users and presents them with suggestions and recommendations based on their individual likes and dislikes. Art.sy offers a free repository of 20,000 and counting digitized fine art images as well as an art appreciation guide. Art.sy can already count 275 galleries, private collectors, and 50 museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, SFMoMA, and Fondation Beyeler as partners.

A start-up backed by millions of dollars in venture capital from art world giants such as Larry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova, Art.sy already has 600,000 registered users. The site is moving past mere image sharing and has begun partnering with major art fairs, serving as the exclusive online platform for Design Miami/ in December and the Armory Show in March.

Art.sy offers a unique experience to collectors, allowing them to speak with a specialist, connect directly to a gallery, or submit offers on works remotely. A different feature on the site will allow collectors to buy outright as long as the dealer chooses to utilize the e-commerce option. Art.sy plans to bring in most of its revenue from sales commissions on works sold through the site.

The case involving a congregation of Catholic nuns headquartered near here, which sued a Santa Fe, N.M., art dealer and a local appraiser for fraud in the sale of a painting by Nineteenth Century genre artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, has ended, with the sisters unsuccessful in their attempt to be made whole on the painting's true value.
The case went to jury trial in December. Before Justice Michael C. Lynch of the Albany County Supreme Court on January 6, closing arguments were presented to the jury after a brief hiatus during the New Year's holiday. The case went to the jury on Monday, January 9, and by Monday afternoon the verdict came back — the two men on trial for "scamming" the sisters, Mark Zaplin and Mark LaSalle, were found not guilty.

"I'm shaking! It's been a three-year nightmare," said a relieved Zaplin when contacted after word of the jury's decision came down. "There was no fraud here and the jury found 100 percent in our favor."

In August 2008, the Daughters of Mary Mother of Our Savior and St Joseph's Chapel, based in Round Top, N.Y., claimed that the dealer, Zaplin, and Mark LaSalle, a New York State art appraiser, colluded to defraud them of the $1.7 million they believe they could have gotten for selling "Notre Dame des Anges," an 1889 work by Bouguereau that depicts Mary standing in the clouds with the Christ Child surrounded by angels. (See Antiques and The Arts Weekly, March 30, 2009.)