June 23, 2010
Filed under: Art Sales — Alan @ 4:35 am
This week analysts estimate that anywhere between £300m and £450m will be spent at London Impressionist and Modern Art sales this week making it one of the largest series of auctions to take place in Britain ever.
The current largest sale took place in June of 2008 and achieved £298m when a Monet water lily painting took in £41m. After this record the slump followed, in which paintings were not sold and last June sales reached a low £96m.
However, the money was still there to purchase art if great works had appeared given that last year in Paris at the Yves Saint Laurent sale records were achieved for Brancusi, Matisse, and Mondrian paintings. Also high sales were hundred million dollar sales of Picasso and Giacometti works.
The theory behind this is that the super rich across the globe are choosing to invest their money in art instead of investing it in the unstable stock market or the banking system. This is due to the fact that art is not only a status symbol, but also a way to hedge inflation so long as it is the best art available.
The fair opening in London next week has been titled the Masterpiece fair and will feature works that are said to be the ‘best of the best’ in the categories of art, wine, classic cars, antiques, and jewellery.
The success of the fair however will lie in the interest of the public when it comes down to the top ten paintings up for auction that have been termed the masterpieces which include works by Matisse, Derain, Manet, Picasso, Chaim Soutine, and Monet.
June 18, 2010
Filed under: Exhibitions — Alan @ 6:01 pm
The new exhibition at Tate Britain, Rude Britannia, combines the best of art and comedy in order to create an intellectual, sensory, and instinctually experience.
Co-curator of Martin Myrone, Cedar Lewis, sees the new exhibit as a source of enlightenment that defines the distinction between stand up comedies of fine art and tosses them aside. Lewis stated that Tommy Cooper can be seen as a performance artist or Martin Kippinberger’s paintings seen as the work of a clown.
The curators at Tate Britain worked along with many of the best curators from around the world in order to create an exhibit that is a composite of comedy performers, satirists, and comic publishers creating a large body of comic art from around Britain dated from the 17th century up until the modern day.
The exhibition is split into several thematic sections allowing each feature comic to have a distinct presence in the rooms such as the Scarfe room which shows political disgust down to Martin Rowson’s room which presents the policies of Tony Blair in regards to the Iraq war.
Also notable is Gillray’s room, which shows William Pitt as the top public enemy in the face of his nation and Hill’s room which is best described as a blend of provocations and puzzles.
Paul Sandby also has an image of an exploding bottom in order to present the Georgian obsession with ballooning as well as several objects pulled out of popular culture such as a flask that is made in the form of a potato.
Throughout the Tate Britain exhibit, the viewer is constantly reminded that British comic art is often grotesque but remains highly meaningful.
June 9, 2010
Filed under: Art Sales — Alan @ 9:39 pm
Business tycoons from Ukraine and Russia have been some of the top art bidders around the globe for the last few years, which has helped boost the price of impressionist, contemporary, and Russian art.
With new fine art pieces starting to hit new selling records after a slump caused by the economic crisis, auction houses are once again firm in the belief that Russian arts, manuscripts, and paintings will continue to fetch high bids.
Director of the specialist Russian auction house MacDougall’s, William MacDougall, stated that they are expecting to see even more business now that the market is starting to improve and expects to see over 12m pounds of art sell during the next week.
During this time period, MacDougall’s will also be hosting a side sale of Russian works that were compiled in order to attract middle class bidders that are not able to afford major painting sales.
One of the highlights at the upcoming MacDougall show is “Arsenal Hill at Night” by Niko Pirosami from Georgia, which is valued to fetch between .9m -1.2m pounds. For the past several years the piece of art has been in the Moscow apartment of Lily Brik whom was the muse of Vladmir Mayakovsjy the poet.
This week Sotheby’s will also hold three auctions, out of which it predicts to pull in about 19 million pounds which will be the same amount fetched during the end of 2009.
For Sotheby’s, the top sellers are expected to be “Portrait of Zinovil Grzhebin” by Yuri Annenkov and “The Dark Wood” by Ivan Shishkin. The paintings are expected to fetch 1.2m pounds and 1.5m pounds respectfully.
June 4, 2010
Filed under: Art events — Alan @ 9:28 am
There may still be a few in our modern culture who believe that the camera is a devil’s invention and steals a piece of one’s soul when a picture is taken. OK, this is highly unlikely, but the fact is that hidden cameras are everywhere these days, and personal privacy is on the verge of extinction.
The Tate Modern exhibit that opened May 28th offers a startling and thought-provoking perspective on the subject called ‘Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera’.
In the U.K. alone, there are at least five million closed circuit television cameras (CCTV’s), which is one for every twelve citizens, so no matter who you are, where you are or what you’re doing, there’s a good chance that someone is watching. ‘Exposed’ is geared more towards the concept of camera as voyeur rather than as a security measure, evidenced by such displays as shots taken through bordello windows and pictures of couples in a park in Japan, all taken without the knowledge of the subjects.
Tate’s new curator of photography, Simon Baker, said that the exhibition is meant to raise questions about the role of photographic technology in our lives, just who is looking and for what purpose.
The line between journalism and voyeurism is extremely hazy, especially when it comes to celebrities and ‘public figures’. Witness the shot of Paris Hilton, in a police car and in tears, or for that matter the pictures of Jackie Kennedy during and after JKF’s assassination.
More than 250 photographs are featured in the ‘Exposed’ showing, and they range from the mildly amusing to the horribly graphic. Genocide, suicide and just about every human condition from unposed innocence to vicious cruelty and depravity are included, with the common ingredient being the unwitting exposure provided by the camera. The question might come down to morality: who wants to watch, and why?
