Over Facebook, I asked an informal question about who pays artists. I wasn’t surprised by the results. Many artists, including those still in school, tend to pay other artists, actors, and writers who’ve assisted with the production of a work. Even those with limited means tend to exchange work, materials, or other barterable goods. Contrast […]
If you bring up the name Stefan Simchowitz in the company of art dealers, collectors, advisors, or other professionals, you are bound to get a vigorous reaction. A producer of Hollywood movies like “Requiem for a Dream” and a co-founder of MediaVast, the photo-licensing site that was sold to Getty Images in 2007 for $200 million, Simchowitz is one of […]
Money continues to pour into art, and with it, stories multiply about art’s manipulation by callow titans of finance. Speaking of the recent decade, one pundit said not so long ago: “The conversation has turned from ‘Is art an asset class?’ to ‘Art is an asset class,’ and then to ‘How do we take advantage […]
LONDON — Works by contemporary artists born after 1945 generated $17.2 billion in worldwide auction sales last year, a 39 percent increase from 2012, according to figures just released by the French database Artprice. Last November, a triptych by Francis Bacon sold for $142.4 million, a record for any work of art at a public […]
The season of art market performance reports is upon us, and keeping up with them all can be an all-consuming—and sometimes baffling—affair. In the last month various entities have declared 2013 to have been both the best year ever and the second best year ever for art sales, while also (erroneously) declaring art to be […]
The global art market outlook for 2014 is extremely bullish, according to the latest TEFAF Art Market Report published today by the European Fine Art Foundation. Prepared by Dr. Clare McAndrew, the much anticipated annual report tracking global art market movements says 2013 was the best year on record, other than 2007, and only just shy of […]
The truth of the art market is that art sells better at auction than it does in the galleries. This is primarily due to the “new buyer” phenomenon, which for the time being is what rules the day. All hail the rule of the auction season! Here’s my take on the recent sales in London. […]
When a local artist intentionally shattered a vase, last week, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami’s ongoing Ai Weiwei retrospective, most journalists predictably focussed on the price of the destroyed work, which was said to be a million dollars. CNN’sheadline was typical of the coverage: “MIAMI ARTIST DESTROYS $1 MILLION AI WEIWEI VASE IN PROTEST.” Variations […]
David Roberts is an art-world oxymoron: a property developer who collects art and almost never sells, a businessman worth more than £80m who doesn’t see art as an asset class. As one of Britain’s most significant contemporary art collectors and founder of the charitable David Roberts Arts Foundation (DRAF), Roberts is a major presence on the international art […]
Browsing the International Art Market. From Tutankhamun to the ancient Greeks, the church to the Medicis, there’s a long history of shopping for art. Comedian Sally Phillips explains the bulk-buys and the beheadings – then explores the international art fair circuit to find out what’s worth its weight in gold … and why Tate bought […]
MEXICO CITY — Few devotees, domestic or foreign, seem to find their way to Mexico City’s museums of contemporary art, of which there are several. Nor are any of those museums firmly fixed on the route followed by the packs of art professionals — curators, collectors, dealers — who ritually travel the planet from one art […]
I have been an invited interloper in the fiefdoms of the decimal-pointed rich long enough now to know that when rich men want to distinguish themselves from other rich men they buy art. Among practitioners of modern-day social one-upmanship this is hardly new. The nouveaux riches of the Gilded Age were the first Americans to […]
Million dollar Ai Weiwei vase smashed. Mr Ai Weiwei said he did not support artists destroying other artists’ work. An American artist has been arrested after smashing a million dollar vase painte. A vandal was arrested after breaking a million-dollar vase at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). According to the Miami Police report, a […]
A Miami painter who destroyed a priceless Han dynasty vase in a “spontaneous protest” at the city’s new art museum claims he thought he was smashing a cheap garden pot. Maximo Caminero said he picked up the ancient urn from an exhibition curated by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei at the Pérez Art Museum […]
London—The contemporary art market continued its steady climb at Sotheby’s on Wednesday night, with a sale dominated by a strong grouping of paintings by international blue chip artists that brought in £87,915,500 ($144,550,665). Ten of the 57 lots offered went unsold, for a trim buy-in rate by lot of 17.5 percent and seven percent by value. Twenty […]
According to ArtForum there will be nearly sixty international art fairs taking place in 2014. And there must be hundreds of other fairs around the world too. They are everywhere, and whilst not a new phenomenon their numbers have increased inexorably since the end of the 1990s. The art world has become increasingly globalised during […]
A study reveals troubling import/export anomalies between China and the US. Money-laundering, tax evasion and the illicit transfer of cultural heritage objects could be factors explaining large discrepancies that have emerged in an analysis of art shipments between China and the US. Read on …
Tomilson Hill and his wife, Janine, have been outfitting? their Upper East Side home with the best of the best that has come to market for decades. The Wall Street financier has an extensive network of dealers and auction-house specialists on the lookout for pieces that might appeal to the couple. The Hill’s collecting strategy: choreographing works […]
The internet offers the visual art market great potential for growth and change. Currently, online sales make up just 1.6% of total global sales, but this is set to change. In the past couple of years millions of dollars have been invested in online sales platforms. In 2013 Artspace received $8.5m (£5.2m) of investment, Paddle8 received $6m (£3.6m) of investment – backers […]
New Masters of the ART Universe Hedge-fund managers are roiling the clubby art market – seeking “distressed” artists, paying record sums and dumping those who don’t pay off; ‘Going long on Rodin’. Aggressive, efficientand armed with up-to- the-minute intelligence supplied by well-paid art advisers, these collectors are shaking up the way business gets done in […]