CHRISTIE’S ‘ARTIST MUSE’ SALE NETS $491.4 M., LED BY A $170.4 M. MODIGLIANI, THE SECOND-HIGHEST PRICE EVER REALIZED AT AUCTION

Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu Couché (1917–18) soared past its already astronomical $100 million on-request estimate en route to a record-smashing price of $170.4 million at Christie’s Monday night, making the magnificent nude portrait the second-most-expensive painting ever sold at auction—and, in a twist, a high point in an otherwise surprisingly tepid evening. The Artist’s Muse, the auction house’s […]

What 5 of the World’s Riskiest Art Buys Tell Us About Collecting Art Today

As the art world braces for an estimated $2 billion fall auction season in the next few weeks, it’s no secret that the global art market is moving ahead at a rapid-fire pace. The stakes appear higher than ever with an unprecedented number of seven-, eight-, even nine-figure works on the auction block. While headlines […]

The new reserve currency for the world’s rich is not actually currency

Here’s an interesting question: If the world’s economy is filling markets with a pervasive sense of uncertainty, why is the art market picking up steam for yet another season of what would appear to be massive sales?  For the very rich, art is a store of value—which is not a very new idea and one […]

VIDEO: 60 Works in 60 Seconds from TEFAF Maastricht 2014

MAASTRICHT — Vincent van Gogh’s “Moulin de la Galette” from 1887 is one of four of the Dutch painter’s works — and one of many stunning discoveries — on view at TEFAF, The European Fine Art Fair, which opened Thursday in Maastricht, The Netherlands. “Moulin de la Galette,” which was last exhibited in public in 1965, is […]

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, review: ‘a terrific treat on a winter’s morning’

Like seeing double: the Amsterdam and the National Gallery Sunflowers hang side by side for the first time in 65 years at London’s National Gallery. What would be the ultimate blockbuster exhibition? High up anyone’s list would surely be a show of the still lifes of sunflowers that Vincent Van Gogh painted in Provence between 1888 […]