Coming to New York
Sept 2012
ArtHK 12 Sales
ArtRadar Journal had the most comprehensive sales report from ArtHK12: Francesca Minini: sold two works [...]
Los Angeles Modern Auctions = $2.97m
Regional auction house Los Angeles Modern Auctions sold $2.97m worth of art and furniture earlier [...]
The Artist Who Ran Afoul of the Feds
Good thing Robert Rauschenberg only did one work with an endangered species in it. The Miami Herald reports on Enrique Gomez de Molina who saw his career take off when he started working in taxidermy only to ignore warnings from the Federal Government about his use of endangered species. Now he’s going to jail for nearly 2 years:
As a painter and sculptor who worked primarily in bronze, he was barely getting noticed. But when he switched to working with dead animals, both the run-of-the-mill and the exotic, stitching the head of one onto the torso of another, adding perhaps the wings of a third and the hooves of a fourth, his star started climbing.
His hauntingly beautiful hybrid creatures, which look like they could have wandered out of a fairy tale — or a nightmare, depending on whom you ask — were garnering serious attention from the art world and fetching $12,000, $25,000, in one case $80,000. They sold to big-name collectors and to one museum in Kansas.
ArtHK 12 Sales
- Francesca Minini: sold two works by Giulo Frigo for $4,000 each.
- Ignacio Liprandi Contemporary Art: two collages by Jorge Pedro Núñez for $2,800 a piece.
- Green Cardamom: installations from Pakistani artist Ali Kazim priced £10,000-25,000 ($15,800-39,500). They sold one piece.
- Art Informal: sold their entire installation from Jose Santos III as a whole for $150,000.
- Volte Gallery sold three works, one work by Ranbir Kaleka for $350,000.
- Arario Gallery: smaller pieces with prices ranging from $10,000-50,000.
- GBK sold twenty works for between A$3,000-40,000 ($3,000-39,500). These included a sculpture by Claire Healy and Sean Cordiero for A$35,000 ($34,600); an oil painting by Hitesh Natalwala for A$6,000 ($5,900); and a work by Grant Stevens for A$10,000 ($9,900).
- Ingleby Gallery sold eight pieces with prices in the range of £1,200-50,000 ($1,900-79,100).
- Paul Kasmin Gallery: three works in the range of $35,000-850,000
- Chi-Wen Gallery had sold three to four pieces.
“The layout needs improving,” said Iwan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth, staring at a 20ft mirrored Tatsuo Miyajima installation flashing in front of his stand. “The corridors are narrow, the public projects like this one are confused. But that being said, I have also had a great fair, selling 12 pieces on the first day, mostly to Asian clients.”
- Ingleby Gallery immediately reserved Peter Liversidge’s “Everything is Connected” (2012) for £35,000;
- Rossi and Rossi sold half its stand of paintings by Nortse on the first day
- David Zwirner sold three works in the first half hour, including a Borremans for $900,000.
- Pace Beijing sold a major work by Li Songsong and had a bidding war going on over a Zhang Xiaogang
- Gagosian was attracting equal interest with a magnificent butterfly painting by Damien Hirst, as well as a small painting by its single Chinese artist, top seller Zeng Fanzhi.
POST-COLONIAL CONTEMPORARY ART (Artnet)
- David Juda: David Hockney’s $950,000 painting of a log, “Felled Totem, September 8th, 2009,”
- Stephane Custot: ”Expansion” is a six-foot-long, multicolored abstract created by Chinese painter Chu Teh-Chun in 2006 sold Wednesday to a Chinese buyer for around $900,000.
- Cheim & Reid: sold a Louise Bourgeois drawing for $100,000 and a collage by Donald Baechler for $50,000.
- Hauser & Wirth: made a range of important sales over the night, including Zhang Enli’s canvas “The Curved Wires,” 2012, for $165,000 to a Beijing based collector and Bharti Ker’s mixed media “The Dragon, the Tiger and the Phoenix,” 2012, for $300,000 to a collector from Hong Kong.
- White Cube:Anselm Kiefer show at their Hong Kong space this week. Six canvases had already been sold at prices ranging from $600,000 to just under $1 million.
- de Sarthe Gallery: two oils by modern master Chu Teh Chun, including a superb work from 1969 for $3 million
- Sprüth Magers: Sterling Ruby canvas at $155,000 to an Australian collector and a George Condo — “Toy Head,” 2012, — at $150,000 to an Asian collector
- Galerie Krinzinger with aAngela De la Cruz oil for 43,000 euros and a Hans Op de Beeck sculpture “Butterflies,” 2012, for 30,000 euros.
ArtHK Opens with Strong Sales (Artinfo)
Paul Kasmin Likes Animals
The Wall Street Journal asked Paul Kasmin a bunch of questions about his life and work. Here are three of the answers:
If I could own any work by the Lalannes it would be two—the “Babouin” fireplace by François-Xavier, and the “Choupatte” by Claude. And if I could build a museum for the Lalannes’ work, Markus Dochantschi of Studio MDA is the architect I would choose.
A collector whose taste I admire is Tom Ford. Nobody tells him what to think. He has very sophisticated and individual taste. Everybody would say that about him as a fashion designer, but I mean as an art collector. He and I commissioned Claude [Lalanne] to make a crocodile desk.
An art collection I covet is the Beyeler Foundation.
Gallerist Paul Kasmin (WSJ)
Sotheby’s Says Mainland Chinese Throttled Back in Hong Kong
The Financial Times reports that Sotheby’s Asia head revealed lower participation in their recent Hong Kong sales from Mainland buyers:
Kevin Ching, chief executive officer of Sotheby’s Asia, said on Friday that mainland Chinese buyers accounted for only 20-25 per cent of the $316m sales from last month’s spring auctions, which he blamed on the country’s moves to tighten access to credit. Just six months ago, mainland buyers accounted for 44 per cent of the $411m sales recorded in Sotheby’s autumn auctions in Hong Kong.
Chinese desert Hong Kong art market (Financial Times)
New York Contemporary Evening Sales Reach $4.5m Avg Price
Arttactic, the London art market consultancy, has released a report on New York’s Contemporary art sales last week where they say the Contemporary market is now only 5% below its peak in May 2008:
The overall auction total for the three Post-war and Contemporary Evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury came to an impressive $633,795,000 against a pre-sale estimate of $528,550,000 – $740,070,000. This was the second highest Post-war and Contemporary Evening sales total ever, and came in 37% higher than May 2011 and 14% more than November 2011.
The average auction price for the three sales was $4,559,676, which is the highest average price achieved for a New York Contemporary Evening sale, and was 24% higher than the peak of the market in May 2008.
Contemporary art market only 5% below previous peak in May 2008 (Arttactic)
Irving Penn Still Life Waiting for Action
A year ago, Artnet auctions sold another one of these Irving Penn still lives for $158,500, five years before that, one sold for $84,000. Perhaps that’s why the specialist sent us a note pointing out that the work would close on Tuesday, May 22nd. So far the bidding is at $127,000. That’s not enough to meet the reserve price and the estimate of $140-160k which would put this print on par with last year’s sale. Will it make it? If it doubled in five years, what should the price be after this year? Check back with Artnet on Tuesday to find out!
Rarely seen at auction, After Dinner Games, New York (1947) is only available until Tuesday, May 22, at 10:45 a.m. (EST).
This color photograph—one of an edition limited to 13 dye transfer prints of the image made between 1959 and 1960—employs all the stylistic and formal devices that characterize Penn’s work. As is typical of his still lifes, the scene is composed of carefully, yet casually arranged food and found objects, which tell their own story through their physical and metaphorical autonomy. Like a Baroque vanitas, this work is laden with symbols that remind us of the transience of life; it says that we are all players in the game of life, an unpredictable game of risk and chance.
Date: 1947
Print/Casting Year: 1959-1960This stunning print is an early example of Penn’s meticulously arranged and photographed still lifes. Printed no later than 1960, it is one of no more than 13 prints of this image in dye-transfer. Penn’s still lifes often included food and found objects, which Penn would skillfully arrange to create odd, sometimes surreal compositions. In addition to conveying a sense of whimsy, Penn’s still lifes employ his trademark style of clean, clear images with an articulated expression of line and volume.
Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009) studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) in the late 1930s. His immensely successful career spanned the next six decades.
Kiefer’s Watercolors Continue to Light Up Market as Artist Shows in Hong Kong
The Kiefer watercolor saga continues at auction. Here are the recent New York day sale results. Driving the market is the anticipation of the Met showing it’s rare set of Kiefer watercolors in its own room someday when they take over the Breuer building.
- Anselm Kiefer, Die Etsch ($100-150k) $254,500
- Anselm Kiefer, Heliogabal ($80-120k) $242,500
- Anselm Kiefer, Margarethe-Sulamit ($80-120k) $230,500
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal’s SceneAsia blog interviews Anselm Kiefer about his Mao paintings and gets off on a tangent about the artist’s new life in Paris and his gigantic studio there.
You moved to Paris in 2010. How are you adjusting to life there?
I’ve worked all my life in the desert, in isolated places. I was isolated in Germany, and I was isolated in the south France.
It’s good to be in the city. For once in my life, I want to be in the center, surrounded by colleagues, intellectuals, poets.
You have an unusually large studio. How do you work there?
It’s an old department store warehouse. I have 36,000 square meters. There I can see all that I’ve done all my life. My paintings never finish. I have paintings there from the 1970s. If I have an idea, I can take it out and finish it. The whole space is like my brain. It’s like I’m walking through my brain.
Gallerist Admits He’s in Hong Kong to Sell Art
Speaking to IB Times, White Cube Asia’s director, Graham Steele, tied to make a distinction between attending the ArtHK12 art fair and opening a gallery in Hong Kong.
“There’s always this question about Hong Kong because of the rising market here. The auction houses in some ways have made that very public. I think it would be disingenuous to say we’re not here with any interest in the market. But I think art fairs are a good way of tapping into a market, chasing a market to a certain extent. I think that if you build a gallery in a place to chase the market you’re fundamentally flawed. We’re artist led. In other words, we want to provide the spaces, the galleries, places, it may be temporary, it may be a gallery like this, where are artists want to show,” said Steele.
Final Art HK Show Launches in Hong Kong ft. Warhol, Picasso, Ai Wei Wei (IBTimes)
