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Sotheby’s last big sale before the summer [22 Jun 2021]
The final stretch of Sotheby’s major Contemporary art sales in Hong Kong, with 22 June as the last day of no less than 12 days of bidding. The particularity of this voluminous Contemporary art session is not only related to its duration and its online action, but also to its choice of curator: a certain […]
Fred Forest vs Beeple – Major success at Phillips [18 Jun 2021]
Fred Forest more expensive than Beeple… On 15 June, Fred FOREST – a French artist familiar with initiatives highlighting the speculative mechanisms within the art market – sent ripples through the art world by offering an NFT (on the specialized NFT platform, Opensea) purposefully priced above the result fetched by Beeple’s now famous digital collage […]
France’s place on the global art market six months after Brexit [15 Jun 2021]
In March earlier this year, Vincent Van Gogh’s Scène de rue Montmartre (Street scene in Montmartre) (1887) allowed France to reconnect with the very high-end of market. It generated the best French fine art auction result since the sale in October 2019 of Cimabue’s Christ Mocked. Sotheby’s and Mirabaud-Mercier chose Paris to sell this very […]
Focus on Jordan Casteel [11 Jun 2021]
That ‘new’ artists attract a lot of attention is nothing new in itself. However, the auction prices reached by recent ‘new’ artists is definitely a new phenomenon with some finding themselves propelled to levels way beyond those of very established Contemporary artists. It may seem surprising during a period as difficult as that of the […]
The most sought-after abstract works in Paris [08 Jun 2021]
On 3 June Christie’s Paris hosted a sale Post-War & Contemporary art sale with 120 lots, including works by César, Kosuth, Dubuffet and Richter. The sale was diverse in terms of style and with a large number of artists represented, but the clear winner was abstract art. Paris has a long history with abstraction. In […]
César in 2021 [04 Jun 2021]
César would have been 100 this year. This symbolic anniversary is an opportunity to refocus on his work and that is exactly what the César Foundation and the Almine Rech gallery are doing. Classified as a New Realist, César (born César Baldaccini) was a major figure of post-war artistic creation. Born in Marseille on […]
Flash news about NFT [28 May 2021]
Results of the first NFT sale in Europe It was a first for the “old continent’: on 20 May, the European auction house Millon offered 13 NFTs for prices ranging between 400 and 20,000 euros in Brussels. The sale’s final tally was consistent with the overall estimate of 70,000 euros (approximately $85,000), without any of […]
Eli Broad: the unreasonable collector [25 May 2021]
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man” George Bernard Shaw. Eli Broad made this maxim his own; he even alluded to it in the title of his autobiography / success manual published in 2012, […]
Women abstract artists [21 May 2021]
They were daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, muses… but above all, artists A special focus The Pompidou Center in Paris has just reopened (19 May) with a major exhibition that highlights the contributions of a hundred female artists to the field of Abstract Art up until the 1980s (with a couple of unprecedented forays into […]
Afro-American Artist : focus on Noah Davis (1983-2015) [18 May 2021]
Noah Davis Is Gone, His Paintings Continue to Hypnotize declared Roberta Smith in the New York Times in February 2020, her article enthusiastically celebrating David Zwirner’s New York exhibition of Davis’s work five years after the artist’s untimely death from a rare form of cancer at the age of 32 . If Davis’s works had […]
Over a billion dollars worth of art sold in New York this week [14 May 2021]
The high-end art market appears to have regained its full strength with sales totalling $691 million at Christie’s and $677 million at Sotheby’s. This week’s activity clearly signals a return to pre-pandemic dynamism. The two auction majors have just dispersed nearly $1.4 billion worth of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary works (11 – 13 May). We […]
Monet and Basquiat tomorrow at Sotheby’s… Over $40 million each? [11 May 2021]
On 12 May in New York, Sotheby’s will be hosting two evening sales: one dedicated to Impressionist & Modern art, the other to Contemporary art. The two most expensive works – a Monet and a Basquiat respectively – could each exceed $40 million. An important painting from Claude MONET’s Water Lilies series and one of […]
Hermann Nitsch : Paris/New-York [07 May 2021]
With the creation and ‘actions’ of the Orgies & Mysteries Theatre in 1957, Hermann Nitsch caused a sensation in the Post-War art world (and beyond). The group put on powerful performances bringing together painting, architecture, opera, music and ‘actions’ for a ‘total art’ with a cathartic objective… a “celebration of purification and abreaction”. Although symbolic […]
What Christie’s has in store for us in May… [04 May 2021]
A clear sign the art market is returning to its pre-pandemic condition, the catalogues for Christie’s mid-May sales see the return of major masterpieces… in number, in diversity and in price… Whereas all the indicators were in the red last year with a constrained and impoverished market, the selection of Modern and Contemporary works due […]
Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch [30 Apr 2021]
“The Loneliness of the Soul”, a joint exhibition of work by Tracey Emin and Edvard Munch at London’s Royal Academy is scheduled to reopen on 18 May (until 1 August). We visited the show on the RA’s website. The Royal Academy didn’t choose Tracey Emin by chance. The venerable British institution has greatly contributed to […]
1958… when Sotheby’s took a decisive leap into the future [27 Apr 2021]
In the era of NFTs and the crypto-monetization of the art market, Artprice looks back to the 1950s when the first wave of auction modernization was largely initiated by Sotheby’s bold and dynamic chairman, Peter Wilson. It has often been said that the modern art market was born at 9:30 pm on 15 October 1958, […]
New records in Hong Kong [23 Apr 2021]
Hong Kong plays a key role in Sotheby’s global fine art auction activity, generating almost a quarter of its global annual turnover. In 2020, the American company was the best performing fine art auctioneer in Asia as a whole, taking $563 million in the region. This week, Sotheby’s Hong Kong closed eight “Spring sales”. We […]
Historic volume of transactions in the first quarter [20 Apr 2021]
Despite all the restrictions art market professionals have faced, Q1 2021 ended with a historic record in terms of the number of lots sold on the auction market. During the first quarter of 2021, more than 112,000 artworks changed hands in auction sales around the world. This remarkable figure illustrates the strong growth dynamic of […]
Michael Armitage, a brief history of dazzling success [16 Apr 2021]
The Contemporary art market is currently showing a clear preference for figurative painting, especially if it addresses the themes of racial and sexual identities. The most popular artists on the other side of the Atlantic are often those who create work is related to the major social-cultural upheavals of our times. The works of Michael […]
Beeple, from crypto-success to mega-stardom [13 Apr 2021]
To see Mike Winkelmann – shirt & sweater, small glasses and greying temples – you would have no idea that this ‘normal family man’ appearance hides the imagination of Beeple, a hallucinated world, populated by Hillary Clinton cyborgs, Mark Zuckerberg zombies and futuristic starships in vertical robotic cities. So… apart from being the most bankable […]
A stimulating end of quarter at Sotheby’s [06 Apr 2021]
Having hosted Paris-London cross-geography and cross-category sales with a catalogue combining Giulio Romano and Gilbert & George, as well as Impressionist and Contemporary Art online sessions that elicited strong demand, Sotheby’s ended its first quarter on a high note with a total turnover of $208 million for 25 and 26 March alone. Van Gogh’s “Street […]
Flash News: MENART FAIR, a new fair in Paris – Françoise Pétrovitch, winner of the Guerlain Prize [02 Apr 2021]
The Florence and Daniel Guerlain Foundation drawing prize is awarded to Françoise Pétrovitch Three artists were shortlisted for this important prize reserved for contemporary drawing: German artist, Martin Dammann, Dutch artist, Erik van Lieshout and French artist Françoise Pétrovitch. The Guerlain Foundation asked everyone to make a video showing their works and commenting on their […]
Claire Tabouret enters France’s TOP 10 [30 Mar 2021]
Approaching her 40th birthday, Claire Tabouret is already the most popular living French artist on the art market. A phenomenal success that extends far beyond her native country. Claire Tabouret’s work has been described as expressing “sensitive power” and her paintings are said to convey memory, sensation and vulnerability. Her recent paintings have strong colours […]
The tranquil power of Morandi’s œuvre is still convincing… [23 Mar 2021]
Classical but modern, calm but intense, figurative but minimalist … beyond the paradoxes, Morandi’s paintings evoke a simplicity and immobility that seem at odds with our image-consuming lifestyles and customs. Everything is a mystery said Morandi, ourselves and all things both humble and simple. With rigor, perseverance and modesty, the artist got as close as […]
Phillips hammers record after record in Ultra-Contemporary art [17 Mar 2021]
In the U-C market – that Philips has made a strategic priority – the thirst for novelty seems unquenchable. The success of its New Now sales, mixing established signatures with young artists on auction debuts, just keeps unfolding… Hosted on 3 March last, Phillips’ latest New Now session elicited enthusiasm from all over the globe […]
The Art Market report 2020 [16 Mar 2021]
“The Art Market has now constructed the framework for a new economic model and reached a new equilibrium that the most optimistic projections weren’t expecting before 2025. It is now much better equipped for this ‘other way’ of living and collecting… that of the digital 21st century.” thierry Ehrmann, President and Founder of Artmarket.com […]
Buyer’s premium: is art becoming increasingly expensive? [09 Mar 2021]
2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019 … more or less substantial increases in buyer’s fees are regularly imposed on bidders. The price reached when an auctioneer’s gavel drops – the hammer price – is not the price actually paid for the artwork. Auction houses take commissions, some of which are paid by the buyer who placed […]
News in brief: from Van Gogh… to Beeple [05 Mar 2021]
Beeple drives interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) market Will it end up being the most expensive digital artwork of all time? The First 5000 Days (2021) by Mike Winkelmann, aka ‘BEEPLE’, is currently skyrocketing in a Christie’s online auction. On Monday 1 March, four days after the start of the sale, this unique digital collage […]
Picasso… hot ceramics? [02 Mar 2021]
Picasso remains the most sought-after and valued artist in the world. His 2020 auction performance once again elevated him to the global number 1 position, both in terms of auction turnover ($245.4 million) and in terms of lots sold (nearly 3,400). Despite all the upheaval and disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Picasso’s market status […]
Joan Mitchell, the art market’s leading female artist… [26 Feb 2021]
The 17th most successful artist in the world (by 2020 annual auction turnover), Joan MITCHELL is above all the highest ranked female artist (after 16 men). Her annual total for last year exceeded that of hot signatures like Yoshitomo NARA (id: 171599), Yayoi KUSAMA and BANKSY. In the current health crisis, Joan Mitchell has […]
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