Why Bruce Nauman’s Persistent Market Defies Trophy Hunters

Bruce Nauman is considered a towering and influential figure in postwar American art. His reputation as a master of minimalist and conceptual art was cemented more than four decades ago when he was first showing with Leo Castelli in New York and in important European shows like “When Attitudes Become Form,” at the Kunsthalle Bern […]

Art Market Bracing for an Uncertain Sales Season

LONDON — The international art market is gearing up for a hectic autumn of auctions and fairs. Trading conditions could be challenging. Shanghai’s Composite Index of Shares has lost more than 35 percent of its value since June, destabilizing stock markets across the world. Slowing growth in China has depressed oil and commodity prices, tipping […]

2015 Fall Art Preview: The 28 New York Exhibitions Everyone Should See

The fall art season is quickly upon us as galleries in New York return from their August hibernation and bring out key shows to chase away the summer languor.  To help you navigate the mess of fall openings, we offer up a calendar of some of the exhibitions we’re most anticipating at museums and galleries […]

10 Surprising Habits of Millennial Art Collectors

As the largest generation in the U.S labor force, according to the Wall Street Journal, and a generation of consumers that are on track to spend $1.4 trillion annually by 2020 and inherit $30 billion in the coming years, according to the New York Times, it’s no wonder businesses are catering to millennial buyers. Coined by […]

10 Tips For Newly-Minted Tech Millionaire Art Collectors

Are you a newly-minted tech millionaire with cash to burn and an urge to start an art collection?  If so, you’re the unicorn that every art dealer in America is hoping to take for a ride. Why else would mega-galleries like Gagosian, Pace, and David Zwirner be making it out to the Seattle Art Fair this summer? They’re looking to […]

Soaring Art Market Attracts a New Breed of Advisers for Collectors

For decades, art advisers were a small club of professionals who personally helped build collections for clients, using their scholarship and connoisseurship. Their role was to consult and offer expertise, rarely to make deals. But the rapidly changing art market — characterized by soaring prices, high fees and a host of wealthy new buyers from […]

The Broad’s Big Debut

LOS ANGELES – Eli Broad is a man with a reputation for getting things done. After building two Fortune 500 companies from the ground up, he transferred his drive to philanthropy about fifteen years ago; his achievements have since included almost single-handedly creating a cultural centre for downtown Los Angeles, including its monumental anchor – the Frank […]

artnet news’ Top 10 Most Expensive Living Women Artists 2015

Our living ladies span four continents, with work that at times reflects the diversity of their geographical profiles. Using data drawn from the artnet Price Database over the past ten years, there are some shifts from our previous report. Three newcomers join the list, two are no longer on it, and Cady Noland still holds […]

Is Theaster Gates America’s most exciting artist?

Though he has produced pottery and paintings, sculptures, music and video works, Theaster Gates is best known, as we put it in our new monograph, for projects that “bridge the gap between art and life and encourage change by reaching beyond a traditional art audience.” He saved remnants of derelict churches, created black-tar paintings in […]

At White Cube, Sculptor Marc Quinn Turns Over a Thoughtful New Leaf

Marc Quinn’s last London show, five years ago, featured figurative sculptures of defiantly non-Classical subjects including pregnant men, women with penises and a lady called Chelsea Charms who apparently has the dubious honor of possessing the largest breasts on planet earth (although the fickle nature of this kind of fame means she may no longer […]

From Duchamp to Demand: 10 Masterpieces That Show the Evolution of Conceptual Art

In a 1967 Artforum article titled “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” the artist Sol LeWitt gave a simple definition for what would soon become one of the crucial facets of contemporary art in the 20th century and beyond. “In conceptual art,” he writes, “the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work….The idea […]

Marc Quinn: Evolving as an Artist and Social Chronicler

LONDON — Marc Quinn led the way through his East London studio late last month, past a marble sculpture of a fetus, a photorealist painting of raw meat and a bronze statue of Kate Moss in a yoga position. Entering his workroom, he casually walked over distorted three-dimensional canvases of seascapes strewn across the floor. […]

What was good for the Medicis is good for banks

Global companies with an eye on the bigger picture invest in contemporary creations.  Just beyond the turnstiles of Deutsche Bank’s London reception sits a large object resembling several huge dollops of creamy Plasticine. As the viewer comes close, it turns out to be a sculpture made entirely of dice. “Secretions” (1998) by British artist Tony […]

Theaster Gate’s Ambitious New Chicago Arts Centre

In October 2012, Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates bought a 70,000-square-foot building from the City of Chicago. Constructed in 1923, the building was previously Stony Island Trust & Savings Bank, located between Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing and South Shore neighborhoods. The city was ready to demolish it; Gates couldn’t let it go. The cost for this fixer-upper, […]

Instagram Takes on Growing Role in the Art Market

Anyone in the art market who was not already paying attention to the social media platform Instagram had to sit up and take notice in April after the actor Pierce Brosnan visited the showroom of Phillips auction house in London. Mr. Brosnan snapped a selfie in front of a work he admired: the “Lockheed Lounge,” […]

James Lee Byars “The Figure of Death and The Moon Column” at Micheal Werner Gallery, New York and “The Diamond Floor” at Micheal Werner Gallery, London

Throughout his prolific career Byars pursued with tireless curiosity his life-long obsessions with ideal form and a personalized notion of “perfect”. Death and the eternal are related concepts Byars explored in several important performances and sculptures. These recurrent themes are given particularly poignant expression in the works on view at Michael Werner. The Figure of […]

Art, Not Sotheby’s Profit, at Records in Fight for Works

The art market is going from record to record, so why aren’t the auction houses making more money? Sotheby’s reported an unexpected second-quarter decline Friday in part because it lost money on a painting that sold for less than anticipated. The news sent its shares down 7.5 percent to $37.49 in New York on Friday, […]

An Introduction to Process Art (Or, How Minimalism Went From Pretty to Gritty)

The common refrain, “It’s the journey, not the destination,” could make a perfect catchphrase for Process Art. A movement that arose in the 1960s and ’70s and has since expanded in definition to describe a general philosophical approach to making art, Process Art places its emphasis on the process and act of artistic creation rather than the […]

100 Antony Gormley Bodies Take Over Fort in Florence

Brunelleschi’s Dome, the architectural marvel that is in Florence’s Piazza del Duomo, may be one of the most breathtaking sights you’ll ever encounter. Staging an art exhibition that can successfully compete with a view of that iconic building is a tall order, but Antony Gormley‘s current show, “Human” is up to the challenge. Perched on a hill overlooking […]

8 Secrets to Larry Gagosian’s Success Revealed

Larry Gagosian has built a veritable art sales empire. From humble beginnings as a poster salesman in 1970s Los Angeles, Gagosian has climbed his way to the top. He currently operates 15 spaces in New York, London, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, Paris, and Geneva, where he represents some of the biggest names in contemporary […]