"In fact, tracking auction records and auction house stock is one of the best ways to smell out a simmering economic crisis. "As one of the world's leading art auction houses, Sotheby's has been a beneficiary of booms in the art market," he writes in ... [Read Full Article]
Published By: The Atlantic
On: 04/05/11
Website: http://www.theatlantic.com/
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Showing posts with label Sotheby's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sotheby's. Show all posts
Long-Missing Degas Painting Will Return to France
Stolen Degas painting to be sent home to France: US
NEW YORK (AFP) – An Edgar Degas painting stolen nearly 30 years ago from a museum in France will be returned by the US government, which recovered the rare artwork shortly before it was to be sold at auction, officials said Thursday.
The painting, "Blanchisseuses souffrant des dents," was stolen from a French museum in 1973 and resurfaced recently when investigators discovered that it was set for auction at Sothesby's in New York.
Degas' Impressionist portrait of a laundrywoman holding her face in pain from an aching tooth was stolen in December 1973 from the Malraux Museum in Le Havre, Normandy.
The artwork, painted by Degas between 1870-72, had been on loan from the Paris government to the museum, which was destroyed in World War II, in honor of its reconstruction.
The Sothesby catalogue for the November 3, 2010 auction had estimated the painting's sale price to be between 350,000 dollars and 450,000 dollars.
"The return of this masterpiece to the French government reflects our commitment to ensure the return of stolen artwork and cultural patrimony," said Loretta Lynch, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement.
Lynch said Sothesby's promptly cooperated with law enforcement and pulled the piece from the auction block once it learned that it had a purloined artwork in its possession.
US customs officials and authorities from INTERPOL were also involved in the recovery of the painting, officials said.
This article is from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101202/ennew_afp/entertainmentusfranceartcrime_20101202171620
Chinese Art Prices Soar, Signalling A Shift In Taste
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"]
[/caption]Art sales: the great haul of China
China's young millionaires have driven this new trend in Asian porcelain sales, says Colin Gleadell.
The phenomenal prices being paid for Chinese works of art provides a fascinating insight into the tastes of China’s new rich who are driving the market. Traditional western preferences were for older and more subtle workmanship, a fusion of aesthetic and academic values. Now, Chinese buyers are investing most in later works, particularly in 18th century porcelain made for the Emperor Qianlong, such as the record £53 million vase sold at Bainbridge auctions in Ruislip this month, which has been described as ‘gaudy’ and ‘flamboyant’ by critics. Chinese collector and TV personality, Ma Weidu said: “Really it is pretty, but that’s all.” The Emperor Qianlong, who reigned from 1736 to 1795, is seen as the last great Emperor of China, and his style is back in fashion with a vengeance.
The previous record for a Chinese work of art was set last month by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong when a Qianlong double gourd shaped vase with an imperial seal under its base, denoting its use in the emperor’s palace, sold for $32.4 million. It had been bought in 1971 for £1,680 ($4,200) by a New York based Chinese dealer who could never sell it. The buyer, Shanghai born Hong Kong collector, Alice Cheng, said: “As long as you like something, even if it’s expensive it’s worth it.” According to the Hurun Report, a rich list compiled by Shanghai based accountant, Rupert Hoogewerf, there are an estimated 875,000 millionaires and 110 billionaires in China, the majority of whom are aged in their 30’s and 40’s. Typically, says the report, they will own three houses, and spend their money on cars, watches and art.
Before last month, the record for a Chinese work of art was the £15.7 million ($28 million dollars) paid at Christie’s in London in 2005 for a beautiful but less ornate 14th century blue and white porcelain jar. The jar was bought by London dealer, Giuseppe Eskenazi for Bruno Eberli, a Swiss-born financier based in New York. Eskenazi says that the traditional, scholarly taste for earlier Song dynasty (11-13th century AD) ceramics and Ming (14th — 17th century AD) porcelain, on which so many western collections were founded, has been pushed aside over the last 2 or 3 years.
“Western and Japanese collectors liked imperial porcelain,” he says” but not the later more showy examples, which didn’t excite them.” Celebrating his 50th year in business, he has just sold an 18th century Qing dynasty vase for which he was asking $25 million to a Chinese buyer. “It would have been much less three or four years ago,” he says. “The interest I had was all Chinese, and I priced it accordingly.” For auctions outside China, repatriation is an important motive, as it was during the early surges of the Russian and Middle Eastern art markets. The Bainbridge vase is believed to have come from Old Summer Palace that was looted by French and British troops during second Opium War in 1860, providing added incentive to return it to China. Some important works are being donated by wealthy collectors, such as Alice Cheng, to Chinese museums. In addition, John Axford of Woolley & Wallis, which last week sold an 18th century white jade carving of a deer for £3.8 million to a collector in Hangzhou, believes the Chinese are comparing the price of their antiques with Western modern art in the belief that it should be worth as much or more.
The rate of price increases is leaving even Andy Warhol in the shade. At Sotheby’s in Hong Kong last month a Qianlong jade imperial seal which had been bought in London in 1997 for £25,300 ($42,600) sold for $16 million. At Sotheby’s in London this month, a yellow jade censer from the Qianlong dynasty, estimated at £3,000 to £5,000, sold for £313,250, or 45 times the higher estimate.
Western collectors are getting priced out of the top of the market, but are still active elsewhere, says Eskenazi. From his current exhibition, he has sold a 6th century limestone carving of an asparas, or heavenly being, for $2 million to a UK based collector.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong sales in October of everything from wine and watches to contemporary Asian art, doubled estimates to make almost $400 million - a record for such a series in Hong Kong. Next week, Christie’s will be attempting to emulate that figure with a similar series that is estimated to fetch $220 million. In the current climate, that must be just an educated guess.
This article is from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artsales/8152180/Art-sales-the-great-haul-of-China.html
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Stolen Paintings Returned After 32 Years
Stolen art’s return ends long drama
Paintings were taken from Stockbridge home
Michael Bakwin (left), and Assistant US Attorney Jack Pirozzolo, at a news conference in Boston yesterday, unpacked one of the Jean Jansem works that was stolen from Bakwin’s home in 1978. (Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe)
Michael Bakwin and his wife left their Stockbridge house on Memorial Day weekend in 1978 for a short trip. Soon after they returned, they discovered that someone had broken in and stolen seven paintings together worth millions, including a major still life by Cezanne. It was the costliest burglary from a private residence in Massachusetts history.
Yesterday, after a saga that spanned two continents, featured characters ranging from a Pittsfield thief to a British sleuth of stolen art, and culminated in the 2008 conviction of a Watertown lawyer-turned-artist, the last two of the missing paintings were returned to Bakwin.
Federal prosecutors turned over two small works by the French artist Jean Jansem to Bakwin at the US attorney’s office in Boston. Bakwin, who bought the two paintings in Paris in the late 1950s, said he had not seen them since they disappeared 32 years ago and was grateful to get them back, even though they were the least valuable of the lot. Together, the two are worth no more than $10,000.
“My hobby was collecting art,’’ the 76-year-old man said with a catch in his voice. “When they’re taken away from you, you feel like something has left your life. It’s a big hole.’’
The two Jansems, titled “Woman Seated’’ and “Boy,’’ have been in the custody of the FBI since Robert M. Mardirosian, a retired criminal defense lawyer, was convicted in federal court in Boston in August 2008 of possessing six of the stolen paintings. Mardirosian, who is also 76 and had stopped practicing law to become a painter and sculptor, is serving a seven-year prison term.
After a federal appeals court upheld his conviction this year and the US Supreme Court declined to consider further appeals, prosecutors were able to return the two Jansems.
Bakwin got the other five paintings back earlier and sold the Cezanne titled “Bouilloire et Fruits’’ in December 1999 for $29.3 million at Sotheby’s.
“Often, we’re here to deliver bad news,’’ Jack W. Pirozzolo, the first assistant US attorney, told reporters and photographers gathered in front of the paintings. “Today, we’re here delivering very good news.’’
All seven paintings, most of them post-Impressionist, had adorned a room in the house of Michael Bakwin and his wife, Doris, who died six years ago.
The highly publicized theft was so devastating to the family, Michael Bakwin said, that he, his wife, and their children moved to Ossining, N.Y., within a year.
According to evidence presented at Mardirosian’s trial, a client of his, David Colvin of Pittsfield, stole the artwork and then left them in the lawyer’s Watertown office.
Mardirosian had the paintings when Colvin was shot to death in February 1979 by two Boston men who had come to his home to collect on a debt.
Mardirosian kept the artwork in Massachusetts until 1988, when he moved it out of the country and eventually to a Swiss bank, prosecutors said. He was able to keep his possession secret through a variety of means, including creating a Panamanian shell company called Erie International Trading Co.
Mardirosian tried to move the paintings to London for sale, prosecutors said. But an investigation by the Art Loss Register, a London-based company that maintains a database of stolen artwork, determined that the artwork was stolen.
The company, which is headed by a hunter of missing art named Julian Radcliffe, contacted Bakwin and brokered an agreement in October 1999 with Erie for return of the Cezanne in exchange for relinquishing claims on the remaining six paintings, prosecutors said. The six were valued together at about $1 million.
Two months later, after getting the Cezanne back, Bakwin auctioned it through Sotheby’s in London.
In April 2005, Mardirosian had four of the remaining six paintings transferred from Geneva to Sotheby’s London auction house in preparation for a sale.
But Bakwin, with the help of the register, filed a suit to void the 1999 agreement and halt the sale. The lawsuit and public disclosure of Mardirosian’s name in connection with the paintings prompted the federal investigation that led to his surrender to federal authorities in 2007.
It took the jury about three hours to convict Mardirosian of possessing six stolen paintings.
Radcliffe, who stood next to Bakwin at the US attorney’s office yesterday, said the saga shows that “art crime doesn’t pay’’ and that hunters of stolen artwork “should never give up.’’
Bakwin has drawn his own conclusions. He now believes that individuals should not own extraordinarily valuable masterworks such as the Cezanne. It is too easy for such artwork to be stolen or destroyed by fire.
“It’s too much responsibility to have something like that,’’ he said.
The Jansems are another matter, he said. Asked whether he intends to hang them in his house in Ossining, he replied, “Yes, probably.’’
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
A Billion Dollars Of Art
Gold Rush for Art of the Recent Past
By SOUREN MELIKIAN
NEW YORK — Auction house executives can celebrate now that this week’s contemporary art sales are over. And buyers? That’s a trickier question.
Together, Phillips, de Pury & Company, Sotheby’s and Christie’s took in almost $750 million. World records were set everywhere. Nine for lesser known artists at Phillips, de Pury, where the $137 million it posted on Monday was the highest in its history in any field. Five at Sotheby’s on Tuesday, also for lesser known painters. Among these, Julie Mehretu, born in 1970, led with “The Seven Acts of Mercy,” which went for $2.32 million, twice her previous record.
And on Wednesday, Christie’s achieved the most significant record when Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 “Ohhh... Alright...” soared to $42.64 million. It was followed by Alexander Calder’s $6.35 million “Red Curlicue,” a monumental stabile made in 1973 from sheet metal painted bright red.
But records fail to convey the unwavering interest in contemporary art displayed throughout the week by larger numbers of bidders than ever before.
Several prices defied imagination. Who could have predicted the $63.36 million realized on Monday at Phillips, de Pury by Andy Warhol’s “Men in Her Life?” Done in silk-screen technique, in pencil and ink, the dark black and white picture endlessly repeats a photographic image published in Life magazine in 1963. Color used to be essential for Pop Art to go through the roof; no longer.
The prices paid for prankish works by a more recent generation were no less remarkable.
The Monday sale was only in its fourth lot when a heap of candies credited to Felix Gonzalez-Torres fetched $4.56 million. True, the title of the work was not “A Heap of Candies.” It read more imaginatively “Untitled (Portrait of Marcel Brient).” The small print specified the “Ideal weight: 198 lbs (90 kg)” and recorded the date, 1992, when this work of art was executed. Most importantly, the experts noted that the candies selected by Gonzales-Torres are accompanied by a “Certificate of Authenticity.” It would thus be pointless for forgers to nip around to their local confectionery. Without the certificate, they would just have candies for sale, not art.
Issues of conservation and durability did not seem to be a consideration.
These issues are acute for the two 40-watt light bulbs also sold as a work of art by Gonzalez-Torres. Cryptically titled “Untitled (March 5th) #2,” the bulbs were assembled in 1991 as part of an edition of 20, plus two artist’s proofs. A certificate of authenticity accompanied the two bulbs. What happens when they burn out is uncertain. Current European Union regulations ban the use of tungsten bulbs. That troubling thought did not weigh heavily on the minds of bidders who pushed the work of art with a limited life span to $506,500.
The question of just how you define an original was not raised either. Works manufactured on artists’ specifications in editions of several specimens did brilliantly, even though they are repeatable.
Takashi Murakami’s “Miss ko2” was one of them. The Disney-movie-style synthetic resin fiberglass figure of a blonde waitress was “executed in 1997” in an edition of three plus one artist’s proof. But how long can the fragile materials painted in acrylic on an iron armature withstand the passage of time?
If bidders felt qualms about the soundness of such an investment, the appearances of other figures from the same edition in leading museums — the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and currently the Château de Versailles — must have reassured them. “Miss ko2” charmed her way up to $6.8 million, a world record for Murakami.
With its tongue-in-cheek humor recent contemporary art earned millions. But the bigger winners this week were New York school artists, represented by works from the early 1960s. Prolonged acclaim in the media and the museums is perceived as an insurance policy by buyers. Warhol had an encore Tuesday at Sotheby’s with “Coca Cola.” Bought at Christie’s in 1983 for a miserly $143,000, this time it went for $35.36 million.
The stars of Pop Art were greeted with an admiration reserved in earlier days for major Old Masters or Impressionists. Comic-strip style paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and his ilk had their ups and downs even in the heady months preceding the 2008 autumn financial crisis. But on Tuesday, Lichtenstein’s 1962 “Ice Cream Soda” sold for a mind-boggling $14 million. Rauschenberg’s “Exile” brought $8.03 million. Both vastly exceeded expectations.
Experts had not worked into their calculations this new interest in a period of art history, irrespective of the art itself. It has changed the game.
Even small works on a flimsy support are now eagerly sought when graced with the aura of the early 1960s. A study by John Chamberlain in painted tin, paper and fabric pasted on board brought $722,500, triple the high estimate. Warhol had acquired it from Chamberlain around 1962, further enhancing its value as an icon of art history.
Just how high contemporary art blessed with the seal of cultural history has risen may be measured by Arshile Gorky’s “Housatonic,” sold in Sotheby’s Tuesday session for $3.66 million. The drawing in ink and crayon dated 1943 was not seen as a particularly important work when it sold in 1974 for $55,000 at Sotheby Parke Bernet as part of Norton Simon’s collection of Impressionist and Modern art.
Christie’s Wednesday auction hugely amplified the trends that had emerged at Phillips, de Pury and were confirmed on a larger scale at Sotheby’s.
The works produced in the 1960s by the Fun Art movement, as it should be called, led the band. Historic Pop Art was lionized. Even more tellingly than the record-breaking Lichtenstein, the irrepressible wave of enthusiasm that drove most of the Warhols well past the high estimate was unprecedented.
Large size, a prerequisite for huge success in previous years, was no longer required. “Brillo Box (3 cents off),” a three-dimensional piece only 40 centimeters, or 16 inches, high, tripled the high estimate as it ended up at $3.05 million. At a Christie’s New York sale in November 1995 it had been bought for $43,500 by the late Robert Shapazian, whose collection was being dispersed this week by Christie’s.
Warhol’s picture “Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato),” 40 by 50 centimeters, matched its low estimate at $9.04 million. The price of the 1962 picture will be deemed moderate only by those too young to remember the $16,500 that it went for at Christie’s in November 1981.
Hopes of such long-term profits played a part in the steep prices that were achieved on Wednesday by the more recent generation of Fun School artists.
“Balloon Flower (Blue),” a monumental imitation of a bunch of inflatable balloons was made in stainless-steel with transparent color coating between 1995 and 2000 according to the instructions of Jeff Koons. So were four others in different colors. A bidder who may have a special fondness for fun in a blue guise footed the $16.88 million bill.
The French say that the best jokes are those that are the shortest. Auctioneers must be secretly praying that there are exceptions.
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