Flash news: Richard Serra in Qatar – Tintin on top form – $200 for a Dali

Every fortnight, Artprice provides a short round up of art market news: Richard Serra in Qatar – Tintin on top form – $200 for a Dali

Richard Serra in Qatar

Considered the world’s most powerful buyer of modern and contemporary art for its museums, Qatar pushes the boat out when it comes to both one-off exhibitions and large-scale commissions from key artists of the moment. Louise Bourgeois, Takashi Murakami, Adel Abdessemed, Francesco Vezzoli, Shirin Neshat and Damien Hirst are some of the recently-invited artists whose exhibitions have been a huge success. Adel Abdessemed’s Coup de Tête, a five-metre-high sculpture showing Zinedine Zidane’s famous head-butt to Marco Materazzi in 2006, was recently withdrawn from the Doha corniche because it was considered to promote violence: a polemic that has only boosted the maverick image of the Qatar Museum Authority. Today, controversy is focused on Richard Serra, who has a solo exhibition in the Al Riwaq exhibition space in Doha (10 April to 6 July 2014). Here, the great American sculptor, whose price index is rocketing (and rose 338% during 2013 alone), has installed two giant oxidised steel curves designed to disorientate the viewer. In addition, the Qatar Museum Authority (QMA) has commissioned a permanent monumental installation from him, entitled East-West/West-East, now set up in the Qatari desert. Although this is one of the most important works ever produced by the artist, reactions have been mixed, and criticism abounds in the Middle East. Unlike the polemic fuelled by Adel Abdessemed’s head-butt, it is not the waves created in the media by this commission that will spread the influence of Qatari culture, but the sheer ambition of the installation. It is helping turn Qatar into an open-air museum.

Tintin on top form

Entirely devoted to the Belgian draughtsman Hergé, the Artcurial Paris sale on 25 May 2014 has set a new world record for comic strips. €2.65 million including the buyer’s premium is the new top price: double the previous one (Les aventures de Tintin et Milou. Tintin en Amérique, pour la couverture Les aventures de Tintin reporter du Petit Vingtième en Amérique (1932), which fetched €1.33 million including the buyer’s premium at Artcurial on 2 June 2012). Such a dramatic rise – nearly €2 million above the low estimate – after only 15 minutes’ bidding proves how far Tintin fans are driven by passion rather than speculation.

The record-breaking plate now enters the collection of “a private, extremely unobtrusive American collector”, according to Artcurial. It consists of a double page in Indian ink produced for the flyleaves of Tintin albums published from 1937 to 1958, and shows Tintin and his dog Snowy (“Milou” in the original) in 34 different situations. Artcurial has now further consolidated its lead in this specific area of strip cartoons (a department created in 2005), and the Parisian marketplace should stay in pole position despite Belgian sales, especially as Christie’s Paris also jumped on the bandwagon this year, staging a sale devoted to comic strips on 5 April 2014.

$200 for a Dali

Patience can certainly pay off sometimes. It took 25 years of dedicated research for art historian Tomeu L’Amo to authenticate his painting, bought for 25,000 pesetas (around $200) in 1988, as an early original work by Salvador Dalí. “Early” because it is the work of the 17-year old Dalí, produced three years before the official birth of Surrealism. Before he joined the movement, Dali was feeling his way and trying to find himself, witness two works from 1920 and 1922 that have already gone under the hammer. Youthful works like these are of course extremely rare; none has appeared at auction for 17 years. At the time, they fetched between $220,000 and $330,000. It is hard to guess what the final price will be for The Intrauterine Birth of Salvador Dalí (as it is called) discovered by Tomeu L’Amo, who has already sold it through a private sale. Its rarity, the story of its rediscovery and the opinion of expert Nicolas Descharnes, who has confirmed that the painting can be considered the first Surrealist work by Dalí, are all unique assets for collectors. The artist’s current record is $19,292,400 for a 1929 Portrait of Paul Eluard, sold at Sotheby’s London in 2011.