I really enjoyed getting this candid look inside Sotheby's contemporary art department, now a month after the November sales. I absolutely agree with what Tobias Meyer said -- that if the right piece comes up, something that is rare, from a pivotal point in the artist's oeuvre, and with the right provenance and condition -- then the market will respond. And I love that my pick of favorites last night included the Currin, which is shown here.
We'll see how these post-war and contemporary NY auctions fare over the next several weeks; in the meantime everyone is on pins & needles waiting to see if the art market can stand on its own, or if it will succumb to the same fate as the rest of the world markets. According to Marc Porter of Christie's, “Prices of all assets have fallen — stocks, gold, oil, real estate — and it would be unrealistic to expect works of art to be immune to the market’s pressures.” For more of Carol Vogel's article recently published in the NY Times about the sales, read here.
Last night I heard Joseph Kosuth speak at the Hirshhorn Museum and what an experience -- I've been attending artist lectures for over a decade and nothing compared to this one. Where to begin? This is an artist who pioneered conceptual art, most notably in the 1960s when he undertook his series of "investigations" into ways in which art could exceed the limitations of institutional and structural hierarchies of art and art history. Kosuth is known for his brilliant and ironic appropriation of words -- in which the reading of the words and the subsequent understanding of its meaning (by the viewer) is the ultimate goal of the artwork and aesthetics. Whether or not the viewer deems it ugly or beautiful is besides the point -- the process is what matters. Which again goes to the heart of my own perspective about "where" art resides -- it's in the interaction between artwork and viewer, when the viewer is moved/disturbed/inspired/puzzled/etc.
Could there be a more inviting way to look at (and converse about) art?
Update 10/25: Sold for $9,400,000
I just returned from a lecture by Christo and Jeanne-Claude at the Phillips, where their current exhibition, Over the River: A Work in Progress, is currently being exhibited. And what an amazing experience -- it reminded me of why I love (and miss) working in the art world -- the enormous personalities and ability by artists to see life in ways that escape most of us. And within this world, Christo and Jeanne-Claude are singularly remarkable; I can't think of anyone else who compares to them in terms of the parameters given to their projects and the devotion they outwardly show each other and their work. They spend upwards of tens of millions of dollars (all earned through the sale of drawings and collages of Christo's preliminary plans), hundreds of skilled laborers and engineers, and decades of planning, acquiring permits, and educating people along the way about their work and vision.
As reported by Katya Kazakina for Bloomberg today, as the Dow Jones fell 777 points, the single largest point drop ever: ``The response has been slow,'' says Natalia Sacasa, the gallery's senior director. Six out of 13 works have sold since the show opened on Sept. 6. ``There isn't the frenzy we all have become accustomed to.''
In Chelsea, sales are more sluggish and art buyers increasingly cautious as the financial sector reels from losses. While dealers say it's too early to tell whether the art bubble has burst, there are signs that the market is becoming more attractive for buyers and less favorable to sellers.
``My clients are sitting tight and they want to see what happens in the next six to eight months,'' says Cristina Delgado, a New York-based art adviser. ``The prices for young and emerging artists have to come down to adjust to a new economic reality.''
Joel Sternfeld, East Meadows, Northampton, Massachussetts, 2006
Everyone has been talking about the Jenny Holzer site-specific light projection commissioned for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which was unveiled this past Monday evening at the completion of a 3-year museum renovation. I have always admired her work, which is known for its witty and provocative manipulation and compilation of the written word. This particular piece will include her own writing as well as excerpts from other texts, including “Tortures,” from the View with a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska. It will be projected every Friday evening through the rest of the calendar year.
Continuing to look at pictures of people looking at art....this photograph was taken by my fellow blogger Ashleigh (thank you again!!), who liked it because of how the woman is standing; you can almost feel how perplexed she is about the work in front of her.
This is fun - diary entry from ArtForum's "Scene and Herd" about Jeff Koons' current exhibition at Versailles (comprised of 17 works, none of them new, Split Rocker belonging to French billionaire Francois Pinault, one of the show's patrons), which has caused quite the uproar and buzz of excitement around town - Hoover vacuum cleaners in the chateau?! Inflatable plastic beach rings along the fence?? 40-foot tall flowering head of a rocking horse plopped in the flowerbed of the Orangerie gardens?? I think the entire affair is just delightful. And I can't help but giggle at the sight of one of my favorite Koons pieces, Balloon Dog, standing so proudly in the baroque space surrounding it.
A huge success for Hirst and Sotheby's - on the same two days in which we witnessed the horrifying plummet of the US financial markets and collapse of some of our largest investment institutions, the world's highest paid living artist broke auction records for the sale of his work, as reported in Artinfo.com, a net of $200 million dollars. Unbelievable!! And what a precedent he has set, for himself, his gallery, and other single-artist auction sales to follow, as well as a reassurance to all that the art market is still strong and standing.
Philippe Vergne started work today as the new director of the Dia Art Foundation. His first order of business, according to an interview he gave ARTnews this month, will be to find a permanent exhibition site within Manhattan, after its Chelsea galleries shut down in 2004. Vergne is the successor to Michael Govan, who left Dia in 2006 in order to head up LACMA and revitalize their contemporary collection. All eyes will be on him to see if he can fulfill the foundation's longstanding wish to have a permanent presence in NYC in addition to its world-renowned contemporary art space in Beacon. His biggest challenge may be funding, as Dia's largest benefactor and board chairman (who donated the $30 million necessary to purchase the Nabisco warehouse in Beacon) has also recently departed. Hopefully other patrons will rally around this remarkable foundation to assist in its reestablishment in NYC, after the gift of Beacon to those of us in the art world who have never seen contemporary art installed so perfectly - in the context of immense space, tranquility, and minimalism - the way it should be viewed. Best wishes and good luck!!
The sale is expected to net $120 million, but will anything short of that amount signal a larger decline in the art market? And what does it mean that Hirst is auctioning off new works, made within the last 2 years, as opposed to selling them through a gallery? I wonder how White Cube feels about it.
I've been thinking about the Rothko room at the Phillips Collection since I first saw the space about six months ago. I can't seem to get it off my mind....which means it's time for a second visit. It's rare that an artist commands the installation of his or her work in a museum, especially within a permanent collection which normally is the pride and joy of a senior curator, and so this room is quite extraordinary. The floorplan was organized by Mark Rothko in 1960 for his benefactor and museum founder, Duncan Phillips, with the intention of providing visitors with the best possible environment to view his paintings. He wanted the large canvases to be installed in a "small, intimate space - in a scale of normal living - so that they would overwhelm the walls, saturating the room with color and sensation." The gallery would have one door, a simple bench in the center, and the paintings to be hung low to the floor.
WHEN the 9/11 attacks took place, I thought of this photograph. I’d taken it many years before — on my first visit to New York, in 1961, in fact — but I looked for it anyway. It reminded me of Lower Manhattan, the twin towers, and then, of course, of their absence.
The view is from the back of the Staten Island Ferry. I remember it as the first all-American moment of my life, looking at the Statue of Liberty while eating a hot dog. I also remember the Financial District skyline, which appeared to me to be forlorn and empty, as if you could feel the buildings that were supposed to be there but weren’t.
I’d come to the city from Oklahoma and I was on my way to Europe. Then, as now, New York seemed a delicious place to visit, but not somewhere I could live. It was too big, too expensive, too accelerated. There was no way I could carry a two-by-four across town.
But it was an inspiration. I walked around with my Yashica camera, filled with black and white film, shooting whatever interested me: bricks, the street in front of my hotel on 34th Street, the old-fashioned scissor fence in this picture.
For me, it’s that scissor-gate on the back of the ferry that dates the image. It comes from another time. A slice of history that goes way back.
But everything else seems modern, up-to-date. When I look at the picture, which is over my desk in Los Angeles, I look for the towers, even though I know it’s impossible for them to be there. It’s hard to look at a photograph of that part of the city, no matter when it was taken, and not want to see them.
Love him or hate him (I'm still not sure) the work of Damien Hirst is first up for auction this month. Titled "Beautiful Inside my Head Forever", the sale will be held at Sotheby's in London, with evening sale scheduled for September 15. A recent article by Time Magazine art blogger Richard Lacayo includes an interview with Hirst where the artist talks about his infamous and terrifying glass tank works and influence of Francis Bacon.
Posts
All Comments
