Art is not a luxury product like Hermes bags: Larry Gagosian (Video)

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Gagosian Gallery owner Larry Gagosian on Friday explained why he doesn’t consider art to be a “luxury good” and how the art world has benefited from globalization.

“It’s not a luxury good. It’s not a luxury product. I mean it may appear to people who buy Hermes bags, but it’s not a Hermes bag. Sometimes people try to categorize it as a luxury. It’s a disservice to art in my opinion. And it really distorts the nature of the market,” he told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on “Wall Street Week.”

Gagosian discussed how globalization has helped fuel the art market and help promote art pieces from around the world.

“So what’s different now is that you can transmit information very quickly. We have sixteen galleries literally all over the world and for instance somebody who works in our gallery in Hong Kong, they have access to a particular painting and they liaison with our gallery in Geneva,” he said. “It’s also allowed collectors to have more communication and to have access to more transparency about prices, which gives the market more confidence.”

Watch the Video

Year in Review: Here Are the Most Talked About Artists of 2017

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Year 2017 saw its fair share of controversies, culture wars, and political upheavals, and in some ways, it seems like the art world has run parallel to mainstream culture more than ever in recent decades. Artists have not only responded to the difficult issues that have come to light this year; some have raised controversy themselves. Some new, some old (and some really, really old); some groundbreaking, some irksome—here are, for better or for worse, some of the most talked about artists of 2017.

Peter Doig review – sun, sea and savagery in a troubled paradise

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In these grave and noble paintings of our catastrophic age, the Scottish artist uses lurid colours to create bold beach scenes haunted by murders and mangy lions.

The art of Peter Doig takes place in a troubled Arcadia, a place of sunshine, sea and deadly snakes. In his new painting Red Man (Sings Calypso) (2017) a colossal figure stands on a golden beach, his bare – reddish – torso framed by the black iron structure of a coastguard’s platform. The sea is a green band flecked with daubs of white. The pale blue sky is hollowed out by puffy cloud shapes. On the ground, a man lounges in shades with a boa constrictor wrapped around him. Is it a pet or is it strangling him? 

Two Trees is not about trees. It is about violence, and the ease with which it can become normal. He says he got the image of the hockey player from a hockey team he saw in New York who were all wearing desert camouflage. Meanwhile at the centre of the scene, a young man’s downward gaze refers to a killing that took place in his own neighbourhood. A third character, toting a video camera, alludes to the chilling phenomenon of people filming death and disaster instead of trying to help.

So Doig explains, but even without knowing any of that you feel the bejewelled tragic irony of this modern masterpiece. In its majestic, spooky gorgeousness this is a noble and grave picture of our catastrophic age. How magical, to see art that is so obviously destined to endure, when the paint is still practically wet. Peter Doigis a great artist and getting better.

The Weight of History: Richard Serra’s Sculpture and Drawings

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Richard Serra told us that he came to a place in his work where he didn’t want people to be simply looking at a single object; he wanted them to experience the work by going through it. “Yes, the walk into, through and around,” he said, so on November 5, 2017, on the morning after the opening of his exhibition “Richard Serra Sculpture and Drawings” at David Zwirner in New York, we sat in the centre space created by Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, 2017, forged steel, each weighing 82 tons, the tallest measuring 120.5 inches, the least tall measuring 45.75 inches. Ten feet, to less than four.

 

Homage to Mexico: Josef Albers and His Reality-Based Abstraction

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A radiant Guggenheim exhibition grounds the proto-Minimalist abstract paintings of Josef Albers in the geometric grandeur of Mesoamerican monuments.

Art rarely thrives in a vacuum. It is by definition polyglot and in flux, buffeted by the movement of art objects, goods and people across borders and among cultures, and also by individual passion. This much, especially the passion part, is demonstrated by “Josef Albers in Mexico,” a quietly stunning exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum that contrasts Albers’s little-known photographs of the great Mesoamerican monuments of Mexico with his glowing abstract paintings.

The show grounds this German-born artist’s paintings in his Mexican travels between 1935 and 1967, clarifying his creative debt to the pre-Hispanic world. It reveals an artist from one culture being blown away by the achievements of another culture, and making work that might otherwise not have been possible without a change of scene.

These paintings are among the pinnacles of pure abstraction — if you believe in pure abstraction. But this beautiful exhibition may destabilize that faith. All art is reality-based, derived in part from looking long and hard at whatever chooses you. In Albers case, “Homage to Mexico” might have been a more accurate title.

How One Obscure David Hockney Painting Encapsulates the Greatness of His Work

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s big, popular David Hockney retrospective is more than worth your time. As far as I can tell, however, what it reveals is that the conventional opinion of the beloved British painter is basically the right one. His most famous works are also his best works, specifically the late-1960s, early-‘70s cycle making of Los Angeles’s artificial oasis an achieved, if slightly remote, paradise of gay desire.

Since that’s not, maybe, the biggest reveal, I will focus on a single work from Hockney’s golden period to try and explain why: Rubber Ring in a Swimming Pool, from 1971.

Passion, Not Profit, Is the Biggest Motivator for Collectors, a New Study Says

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The surprising results from a new study by Swiss bank UBS suggest that profit is rarely a driving factor.

With the 2017 edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach—also known as the art world’s Black Friday—in full swing, Swiss bank UBS has released an extensive survey of art collectors that explores what motivates them, how they decide what to buy, and how they manage their collections.

UBS will release the findings of the survey, titled the “UBS Investor Watch Pulse Report,” on Thursday at its VIP lounge inside Art Basel in the Miami Beach Convention Center. The study consists of findings of interviews with 2,475 high-net-worth US-based individuals with at least $1 million in investable assets during September 2017, including 608 respondents with at least $5 million. Of the total survey respondents, 1,017 are collectors and 363 say they collect fine art.

Perhaps most surprising—and almost unbelievable—in a cash-obsessed art world: the notion that passion, rather than profit, drives most collectors.

The False Narrative of Damien Hirst’s Rise and Fall

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The rise and fall of Damien Hirst is an oft-told tale of hubris and nemesis. An art-world superstar in the nineteen-nineties and early two-thousands, Hirst made white-hot works—the most infamous of which involved animals immersed in formaldehyde—whose prices only ever went up. He got rich, his galleries got rich, his collectors got rich, everybody was happy. But, then, in 2008, he got a bit too cocky when he auctioned off two hundred million dollars’ worth of art, fresh from his studio, at Sotheby’s, bypassing dealers entirely. That auction marked the end of Hirst as an art-market darling: his auction volumes and prices dropped, and bitter collectors who had spent millions on his art were left with work worth much less than what they had paid for it.

These days, though, those collectors don’t seem to be so bitter after all. Hirst says that sales from his latest show, in Venice, reached a jaw-dropping three hundred and thirty million dollars as of early November. Even accounting for inflation, that’s substantially more than the two hundred million dollars he racked up at the Sotheby’s auction in 2008. Maybe that day didn’t mark the top of the Hirst market after all.

The Hirshhorn and Beyeler Join Forces to Stage a Georg Baselitz Survey—Naked Man and All

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The Swiss-US retrospective will include early painting that shocked 1960s Germany, plus “exuberant and explosive” late works.

Georg Baselitz will get a US-Swiss retrospective next year co-organized by the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC, and Fondation Beyeler, near Basel. The show is set to kick off at the private museum in Switzerland on January 21—two days before the German artist turns 80.

His survey will feature more than 100 works from every period in his six-decade-long career, including paintings, such as his upside down German eagle, Fingermalerei – Adler (1972), sculptures, and works on paper, as well as new works. “He is a great painter who has been consistently good over the years,” Stéphane Aquin, the chief curator of the Hirshhorn, who is co-curator of the show, tells artnet News. He adds that the artist is enjoying an “exuberant and explosive” late period of creativity.

The State of Cool Britannia: Art Market in Review

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When in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Young British Artists announced themselves in an alcohol-fueled cacophony of controversy it looked as though the British art scene would never be the same again.

Here was a media-savvy group untrammeled by artistic or behavioral politeness. Shock and outrage were a key part of their modus operandi, from Tracey Emin’s drunken cavorting on television after the 1997 Turner Prize and Marcus Harvey’s portrait of the Moors Murderer Myra Hindley composed of children’s handprints to Jake and Dinos Chapman’s phallus-faced sculptures and Damien Hirst’s pickled animals.

While the group had no shared aesthetic or intention other than to grab attention, they managed to put art on the front page of newspapers and take their place alongside musicians and designers as an integral part of the cultural renaissance tagged Cool Britannia. In the process, many of the group finessed their devil-may-care attitude into enormous wealth.

Why Would Anyone Pay $450 Million for the ‘Salvator Mundi’? Because They’re Not Buying the Painting

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An attempt to psychoanalyze the buyer of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi.’

Every May and November, many around the art world wonder aloud—with varying degrees of frustration—why so much of the media fixates its auction coverage on star lots and gaudy prices. The 36-hour frenzy following Christie’s sale of Salvator Mundi (circa 1500), the so-called “Last da Vinci,” answered those questions with the blunt force of a bowling ball dropped onto a parked car from a penthouse window.

By now, everyone reading this piece knows that the painting sold for a hallucinatory amount of money: $450.3 million with the auction house premium, crushing the painting’s guarantee of nearly $100 million by a 4.5X multiple. And ever since, nearly everyone with even a tangential interest in art has felt compelled to grapple with the unexpected result in some way, even if only by vocalizing how much more attention or money we as a species could be dedicating to other, more important issues.

I’m sympathetic to that viewpoint. However, regardless of whether you’d committed yourself to avoiding the art market entirely or felt you’d made complete peace with big money’s impact on culture, seeing Salvator Mundi’s price tag is still like taking your dog out for its regular morning walk only for it to be snatched off the street by a pterodactyl. The outcome is so far out of bounds that it bends our understanding of reality’s basic parameters.

The Art Market Moves East: How Gagosian, David Zwirner, and 14 Other Western Art Businesses Are Trying to Expand to Asia

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China has been described as “the largest growth market for the art business, anywhere.” See how auctioneers and dealers are tapping into it.

In the past year alone, no fewer than six galleries have opened or announced plans to open an outpost or office somewhere in Asia.

Amid announcement after announcement, it may feel like Western art businesses have been working forever to tap into the Asian art market. But in fact, the push to set up outposts in China—as well as South Korea and Japan—began less than a decade ago. And much of the momentum has picked up only in the last several years. In a recent interview, the CEO of Phillips, Edward Dolman, called China “potentially the largest growth market for the art business, anywhere.”

Now, galleries are looking not only to import their own artists to cities like Shanghai and Beijing, but also to scout major local talent. And some have begun to look beyond financial hubs like Hong Kong to expand into less saturated markets like Seoul.

Having trouble keeping up with all the action? We have compiled a handy list of major galleries and auction houses’ initiatives in Asia to get you up to speed—fast.

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

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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 becomes the machine that makes the art.” In a few short paragraphs, LeWitt cast aside concerns about aesthetics and visual expression in favor of a new way of art making, one that takes place primarily in the mind of an artist such that the making of the physical object becomes “a perfunctory affair.” Unbound from traditional art mediums, conceptual artists quickly moved into idea-privileging formats such as found objects, archival documentation, text, and video.

Conceptual art was very much in vogue from the late 1960s through the ‘70s, alongside related movements like Minimalism, but strictly speaking it precedes LeWitt’s famous definition. Today, we might see it as existing on a continuum from the early-20th-century works of Duchamp and Magritte to the very 21st-century art of Thomas Demand. The ten works below, each excerpted from the new edition of Phaidon’s The Art Book, offer just a slice of the depth and variety of conceptual artworks from the past 100 years.

What Is Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ Really Selling? Cracking the $100 Million da Vinci Code

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Jesus saves, but the buyer of da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ will spend—a lot.

The signs all point one way: Christie’s upcoming sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s spooky Salvator Mundi is the latest and perhaps most convincing portent that we are living in the End Times.

In the Bible, Christ and his apostles held their property in common. Now, this image of Christ as “Savior of the World” will be the ultimate piece of private property, sold in a spectacle of unhinged wealth (the pre-sale estimate is $100 million). As a symbol of society out of balance, the golden calf’s got nothing on the Salvator Mundi.

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Maybe so—but the rich man can buy a form of earthly immortality through association with “the last Leonardo in private hands.”

Lord knows in whose hands, public or private, the Salvator Mundi will end up. I hope it goes somewhere people can see it, because it’s a cool painting, full of oddities and mysteries.

WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE PEOPLE WATCHING “SALVATOR MUNDI”.

The Evolution of Art, Part II: From Minimalism Until Now

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How did we get to where we are today in the realm of fine art? Who were the artists that changed the course of art history and what were the artworks that broke the mold? In Part I of this two-part series we described the advances in Modern art starting with the advent of abstraction and ending with Donald Judd and the Minimalists, showing the progression of art from 1915 to 1969. But what happened next? Here we introduce some of the more recent developments leading up to art today, starting with feminist art in the ‘70s and ending with new media art.

(To see movements one through five, read The Evolution of Art: Artworks That Advanced Our Understanding of the Medium, Part I.)Je

The Evolution of Art: Artworks That Advanced Our Understanding of the Medium, Part I

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Today, art can be almost anything. But there was a time in the not-so-distant past when abstraction was inconceivable, and it was believed that art could only represent something that already existed in the real world. There was a time when an object couldn’t be considered art unless it showed evidence of the artist’s touch. And until relatively recently, processes like silkscreen printmaking or the use of industrial materials like steel were considered off-limits in the realm of fine art.

So, how did we get to where we are today? Who were the artists that changed the course of art history? And what were the artworks that broke the mold? Though you’ve probably heard of most of the artists in the list we present to you below, we’re here to explain what discovery each artist made, and how they effectively changed the definition of art. In this two-part series, we’ll first describe the advances in Modern art beginning with Duchamp’s urinal and ending with Donald Judd and the Minimalists in 1969. In Part II, we’ll introduce some of the more recent developments leading up to art today. 

Yayoi Kusama and the Amazing Polka-Dotted, Selfie-Made Journey to Greatness

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The artist of “Infinity” rooms has become an Instagram darling.  But two new gallery exhibitions in New York show that she’s much more than that — an almost frighteningly fertile talent.

Sometimes I think Yayoi Kusama might be the greatest artist to come out of the 1960s and one of the few, thanks in part to her long life, still making work that feels of the moment. Other times I think she’s a bit of a charlatan who produces more Kusama paintings than the world needs and stoops to conquer with mirrored “Infinity” rooms that attract hordes of selfie-seekers oblivious to her efforts on canvas.

Ms. Kusama’s current three-ring circus of exhibitions at David Zwirner’s uptown and downtown spaces — which include 76 works on canvas — argue in favor of greatness.  On all fronts, Ms. Kusama has a formidable urge toward art and fame fueled by what seems to be a steely will and also a great mental focus — partly a function of psychological imbalances that have led to periods of hospitalization. (She began to experience visual and auditory hallucinations as a child and they continue.) She has characterized art as her chance for salvation both here and in the afterlife.

The Four-Hour Art Week? Read Carol Bove’s Self-Help Guide for Artists

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The sculptor Carol Bove likes to play with associations and forms as she builds her assemblages of constructed and readymade objects. Time and space to experiment are crucial elements of her process, as is a certain psychological sovereignty—Bove writes that “creating a nonpurposive, free space in which to play and have fun is essential.” Here, the Brooklyn-based artist gives her best advice for finding happiness (rather than “succeeding”) as an artist, excerpted in its entirety from the new book. 

For example:

MONEY   Becoming an artist is not a good business plan.

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (Linda Nochlin, From 1971)

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Implications of the Women’s Lib movement for art history and for the contemporary art scene—or, silly questions deserve long answers.

A version of this story originally appeared in the January 1971 issue of ARTnews.

While the recent upsurge of feminist activity in this country has indeed been a liberating one, its force has been chiefly emotional—personal, psychological and subjective—centered, like the other radical movements to which it is related, on the present and its immediate needs, rather than on historical analysis of the basic intellectual issues which the feminist attack on the status quo automatically raises.1 Like any revolution, however, the feminist one ultimately must come to grips with the intellectual and ideological basis of the various intellectual or scholarly disciplines—history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, etc.—in the same way that it questions the ideologies of present social institutions. If, as John Stuart Mill suggested, we tend to accept whatever is as natural, this is just as true in the realm of academic investigation as it is in our social arrangements. In the former, too, “natural” assumptions must be questioned and the mythic basis of much so-called “fact” brought to light. And it is here that the very position of woman as an acknowledged outsider, the maverick “she” instead of the presumably neutral “one”—in reality the white-male-position-accepted-as-natural, or the hidden “he” as the subject of all scholarly predicates—is a decided advantage, rather than merely a hindrance of a subjective distortion.

What is important is that women face up to the reality of their history and of their present situation, without making excuses or puffing mediocrity. Disadvantage may indeed be an excuse; it is not, however, an intellectual position. Rather, using as a vantage point their situation as underdogs in the realm of grandeur, and outsiders in that of ideology, women can reveal institutional and intellectual weaknesses in general, and, at the same time that they destroy false consciousness, take part in the creation of institutions in which clear thought—and true greatness—are challenges open to anyone, man or woman, courageous enough to take the necessary risk, the leap into the unknown.