Monkdogz Artblog

Yet more art world records were broken yesterday, when Modigliani’s “Tête”; a limestone sculpture of a head was sold for just under $52.5million at the Christie’s Impressionist and Modern art auction in Paris.  The price was the highest ever for the artist worldwide and the highest ever for a work of art sold in France at auction.  

The piece was originally estimated to bring $5.4 – $8 million according to the catalogue.  However the heated bidding for the work continued for 10 minutes, starting with 20 bidders; 15 of whom were bidding via telephone.   By the time 24million Euros ($32.4million) was reached only four bidders remained.  The post auction press release said “The successful buyer – who wishes to remain anonymous – defeated a European and an American bidder on the phone to claim the prized work.”  Does that mean the winner was an Asian, Russian or perhaps a Middle-Eastern collector?

There are 27 known sculptures in existence in the world of which 17 are in significant museums around the world.  10 are in private collections as this one was; owned by Gaston Levy, the businessman who co-founded Monoprix, supermarket chain, artist and collector.  The work has been in the Levy family since Gaston purchased it in 1927.  The work is unusual in that I has a impeccable provenance in terms of exhibitions, catalogues, photographs, illustrations, critiques, anecdotes, memoires and quotes. 

This is part of the reason that even during these uncertain economic times, Masters, Impressionist and Modern art prices continue to rise and break records.  So many of these works are picked up by museums and foundations, or donated to them by collectors, from where they are unlikely to be released for sale or to auction.  Thus the number of pieces coming onto the market are becoming scarcer and scarcer.  Serious collectors are starting to panic with each piece that becomes available that this may be the last opportunity to own one of these significant works of arts.  When the piece also has an impeccable lineage and provenance plus is considered a masterpiece, the stakes are even higher. 

This means that this record breaking trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.  Are the prices crazy or are they really worth this money?  The collectors obviously think so and that’s what the art market is based on.  The next batch of sales in the fall should provide some exciting moments.

There’s a commercial gallery in Chelsea that shows good work. The artists that they represent show innovative work of good quality. Some of them are cutting edge are potentially worthy of significant collections and museums.

However the gallery personnel are arrogant, dismissive and often obnoxious in dealing with visitors to their gallery that they deem not to be worthy.

The gallery business is a symbiotic relationship between the gallery and the artists. The art that a gallery displays determines the character, quality and audience of that gallery. Similarly, the gallery that an artist associates with affects their own reputation, potential future and value.

We also work in an industry that suffers a difficult reputation of elitism, self-aggrandizement and at its worst fraud; where perception is often the only basis for the valuation of quality and price. In this environment a good reputation for quality, integrity and value is hard earned.

My moral dilemma is do I help promote a gallery that adds fuel to the fire of the poor reputation of the industry because they show innovative work or do I not promote the gallery but at the expense of the artists.

Does the artist have a responsibility to work with galleries who have a reputation of honesty and integrity or do they have to be grateful when a well known gallery asks to represent them. And let’s be open here, this is not the only bad boy gallery in town; there are plenty of others.

On the other hand there are plenty of galleries which are reputable and work hard for their artists and clients. Do I assume that there are enough of those galleries to write about and forget the ones that disturb my values?

What do you think?

The Impressionist and Modern Art Sale at Sotheby’s was hailed a huge success and a return to pre-bust days.  The highest price at auction was exceeded with the sale of Giacometti’s L’Homme Qui Marche1 (The walking man1) which sold to an annonymous telephone bidder followed by a chorus of “oohs” and “aaahs” for £65 million ($92.5 million, or $104.3 million with fees). 

The work was estimated at $19.2million – $28.8million but eventually brought in nearly 3 times the previous record for a Giacometti which was set by Chrisite’s in New York  in 2008 at 27.4million for Standing Woman II.  

The previous overall record of artwork sold at auction was held by Pablo Picasso’s Garçon à la pipe (Boy with a pipe) which was also sold at Sotheby’s in 2004.   There have been several other pieces of work which have been purported to have sold for more in private sales.

Gustav Klimt’s Church in Cassones that I wrote about last month which was tangled in a ownership web sold well above it’s estimate of $19.6 –$27.7million at $43.2million which would be split nicely between the current owners and the pre-war owners.  

The sale brought in £146,828,350, a record for a sale in London.  Of 39 lots only 8 were unsold. 

Does this mean that the art market has recovered?  What does this mean for the Contemporary art market?  With financial markets down all around the world today and the DOW falling below the 10000 mark, it really is hard to determine.  

I have a suspicion that in the rare and quality works category which the Giacometti falls very nicely into, there will always be a market regardless of the financial situation.  The fact that few exceptional pieces of work have been placed on the market will also have had an impact.  Whether this all translates into a general recovery for the art market is impossible to gauge at this point.

Do you have any further insight?

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At Christie’s International in London tonight a Rembrandt was sold for $33million, a record at auction for this artist and a Raphael study sold for $48million, the most at a public sale for any work on paper according to Bloomberg.

Compare this to the Warhol print of ‘200 One Dollar Bills’ which sold for $43.7 a month ago that I wrote about.

And to top this off, secondary market price fluctuations suggest that old master prices are holding or even doing well, while contemporary art has overall dropped in price by about 50% since the height of the boom in 2007.

Supply and demand is what usually drives prices and you assume that spending this sum of money usually requires some due deligence of the item.  How can a print be worth more than an old master painting?  What is the value of money? What is the value of art?

The latest and most interesting shows in Chelsea are not so easy to see. They are not in the best known galleries in Chelsea or Soho, they’re not in private galleries or collections, you don’t have to know the right people and move in the right circles. They’re not in the museums or schools or in the homes of people you don’t know.

You just have to look extra hard and they’re everywhere. Street art in Chelsea is proliferating. Paintings and drawings, sculptures and collage, photographs and mixed media. It’s amazing what’s out there.

Perhaps the closing of numerous galleries in New York and the reduction in funding for non-profits is driving emerging artists into the streets. I would obviously prefer the economy to be in a better state, but having said that if this is the result with artists being creative in how and where they show their work as well as being creative in their creations, it has to be the silver lining on the heavy grey financial clouds that we’re wading through right now.

Talk around town continues to be in the vein of “things are starting to move” or “we’re seeing some movement” whatever that means. However Bob and I were invited to a round table breakfast discussion today in mid-town and the prognosis from the commercial realty and recruitment industries was that things are likely to continue to go downhill for much of 2010 and any “movement” not going downwards would likely to stagnate for a while into 2011.

The silver lining on those grim statements were that there appear to be a significant numbers of clients with deep pockets around and very cheap realty and really talented recruits were being snapped up by these people. I think we’ve also seen this in the recent contemporary art auctions in New York where collectors have been aggressively bidding and spending in the millions for well priced works. It has become a buyer’s market

Being creative in how artists, dealers and galleries catch the eyes of savvy buyers and collectors is going to be key over the next few months. Ingenuity added to integrity, hard work and creativity hopefully will be what drives the market now.

You’ve all probably heard the story that’s been flying for the last month or so about the incestuous exhibition being planned by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan of collector Dakis Joannou’s (who also happens to be one of the museum’s trustees) private art collection to be curated by his good friend Jeff Koons, who’s work is also collected by the said collector. There’s a lot more to this incestuous inner circle which if you’re interested in you can read in the various links I’ve attached to the bottom of this post.

I wasn’t particularly interested in this turn of events as it was just more of the same usual “stuff” that goes on in the art world. What surprised me was the degree of moral outrage that it’s spawned.

The art world is probably one of the last unregulated industries left. Consequently, although there are many good individuals and businesses within the industry operate with integrity there is also a fair share of those who don’t. In truth, does regulation help that much anyway? Just look at the worlds of finance and pharmaceuticals; although proponents of regulation I am sure would point out how much worse it would be without any regulations.

Having said all that the art world has it’s share of forgers, chandelier bidding, insider trading, cronyism, nepotism, price fixing, cartels, money laundering. You name a nefarious activity and the art world probably has it and maybe more than in other industries. If you hark back to the early days of this blog, Bob wrote about the Intelligence Squared US debate on the proposition “The art market is less ethical than the stock market” which was held in February of this year in the very midst of the financial crash. Those for the motion won the day with 55% of the votes.

So everyone knows that it happens. So why suddenly is the New Museum being singled out for public outcry? Is someone harboring a grudge against Lisa Phillips the Director, Jeff Koons or Dakis Joannou?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a very healthy thing to air and discuss working practices in our industry and a little bit of self regulations is “a very good thing” as our once incarcerated Martha Stewart likes to say.  However I am much more interested in the motivation forthis sudden soul searching and self-scrutiny in the mirror.

Do you have any insider information? Who hates whom?…Who wants to do whom in?…..I’d buy you a cup of coffee and a donut for the down and dirty……meet me behind the dumpster on 27th street……….

Associated articles:

ArtInfo
New York Times
New York Times Art Beats
New York Magazine

My admiration for Holland Cotter seems to grow with every article he writes! He has blown the cover on the emperor’s new clothes in his latest New York Times article:

“Basically, for $43.7 million the new owner of “200 One Dollar Bills” — who was not identified by Sotheby’s — got a funny old print on canvas tarted up with some paint which he (let’s assume the buyer was a he) succeeded in making superfamous and valuable by paying so much for it. Wow. That’s talent.”

Now being a “respected” member of the art establishment (!) I would like to point out that this seminal piece of work was one of Andy Warhol’s earliest prints. It is in excellent condition and has an interesting provenance of having been in Robert C. Scull, the taxi tycoon’s collection for a while.

You will remember that Robert C. Scull was one of the early significant collectors of Pop art. In 1973 he auctioned a part of his collection, some 50 pieces at the very same Sotheby’s in New York, which raised a hitherto unheard of amount of over $2.24 million dollars at the sale. At the time artists and art lovers demonstrated outside of the auction house outraged at Scull’s actions which brought him significant profits. The sale included a painting of flowers by Andy Warhol which Scull initially bought for $2,500 and which ultimately sold at auction for $135,000, a nice 5,400% return on investment. That auction was considered a watershed moment by many art historians as the point in time when the monetary value of art became such a significant measure of the quality of contemporary art. So now we recall when and how things started to go a bit haywire.

So I decided to do some research and wondered what else costs around $42 – $45 million. I came up with:

• The coThe cost of building of the new Cedar Rapids, IA city library after the worst flooding disaster in the city’s history last year.
• Cost of a corporate jet that Citigroup was thinking of buying earlier this year after receiving the $45 billion bail-out but decided not to after a public outcry.
• Manny Ramirez’s new contract with the LA Dodgers in March of this year over two years.
• The amount the IRS spent in 2008 to send a letter to alert US taxpayers to expect rebate checks as part of the economic stimulus plan.
• The amount the inauguration committee budgeted for President Obama’s inauguration parties.
• The amount that Britney Spears claimed she’d lost in earnings while married to Kevin Federline.

So compared to these items, do you think that $43.7 for a silk screen print on a bit of canvas worth it? I still don’t see it myself.

The painting was “too sophisticated, too intellectual,” for most collectors, said Christie’s International Co-Head of Contemporary art, Brett Gorvy, in a press conference as reported by Bloomberg News.

This was in response to Warhol’s 1963 “Tunafish Disaster,” estimated to fetch up to $8 million in the contemporary art auction last night at Christie’s which received no bids. “Tunafish Disaster” was consigned to Christie’s by dealer Robert Mnuchin of L & M Arts, who got the painting from Brant, according to the tycoon. The painting’s subject is lifted from a 1963 article in “Newsweek” about two housewives who contracted a fatal case of botulism from a can of tuna. Personally, who’d want to see a picture of the late Mrs McCarthy and Mrs Brown everyday as you sat down to your own tuna casserole?

When you understand the rationale for why Warhol made his disaster series, it makes a lot of sense.  Christie’s did an excellent job on their catogue entry for this item and which is really worth a read. An excerpt :

“I thought that people ought to think about them: the girl who jumped off the Empire State Building, the women who ate poisoned tuna, the car crash victims. It’s not that I feel sorry for them, it’s just that people go by and it doesn’t really matter to them that someone unknown was killed, so I thought it would be nice for these unknown people to be remembered by those who ordinarily wouldn’t think of them. I still care about people but it would be much easier not to care, it’s too hard to care” (A. Warhol quoted in P. Gidal, Andy Warhol: Films and Paintings, New York, 1971, p. 38).

In this way, Warhol was essentially granting these women their fifteen minutes of fame. Indeed, their own deaths from botulism caused by a product that was bought by many households across the United States had lent them this posthumous veneer of celebrity. As Warhol would later say, “Death can really make you look like a star” (A. Warhol quoted in Andy Warhol’s TV on Saturday Night Live, 1981, Germano Celant, Andy Warhol: A Factory, exh.cat., Bilbao, 2000).

Having said all this and appreciating the motive for trying to undo the de-sensitization of the public at large to death, I still have no desire to buy such imagery, much less for the $6-$8million for which it was tagged.

Then to suggest that the standing room only collection of art world players were all too naïve and uneducated to appreciate it is quite unbelievable. It really only confirms to me that despite the severe setback that the industry has experienced which was in part caused by the greed and over-confidence of many in the business, that arrogance still runs strong. However the fact that nobody bid on it seems to suggest that sophistication, intelligence and sanity must be returning!

They say that there is no such thing as coincidence, but it’s intriguing that many of the new shows in Chelsea are much more dynamic, colorful and in some cases whimsical. After the dark somber works in many of the season openers, it’s quite refreshing to see these new exhibitions which match the first glimmers of hope and recovery that I sensed today.

Gallery programs and schedules are determined at least 8 to 12 months ahead and in some cases up to 2 or 3 years ahead. So nobody could have timed these shows to purposefully coincide with the financial recovery, or if they did, I want to know where they bought their crystal ball!

One of the first shows that caught my eye was Andreas Kocks: Current Events at Winston Wächter Fine Art gallery on 25th Street. At first glance, it looks like someone has thrown water balloons filled with grey paint at the walls. The splatters look spontaneous and dramatic; as if you’ve just walked in at the moment the perpetrators have struck. My amazement turned to awe, as I realized that these very fluid and explosive splatters are created by cutting, folding, curling graphite covered watercolor paper resulting in an architectural structure of a splatter in an instant of time. It seems to allow the viewer luxury to examine movement frozen in time, at the leisure.

The work is very meticulously designed and constructed, yet it has a wonderful feel of frivolity and excitement. It helps to underline a concept in fine art that is often neglected or dismissed; it’s ok to have fun with art!

The show continues until November 28th, 2009.  Andrea Kocks also is featured at the Museum of Art and Design New York in a group show entitled Slash: Paper Under the Knife which continues until April 4, 2010.

For most of us who’re not financially wealthy or commercially famous, we think that those who are rich and famous have it easy. Even if they were to lose a lot, go out of fashion or go bankrupt, we think that they are unlikely to end up on the streets; in fact they’d probably end up better off than we ourselves are now!

I’ve always accepted though that the wealthier you are or the more famous you are, your responsibilities tend to grow as well. You have a lot more people relying on you, working for you and with you and whose salaries you are responsible for. Your other expenses tend to be a lot larger as well including those fixed costs which can’t be reduced so easily.

So it was interesting to read the very frank (sic) interview of Frank Stella by Katya Kazakina for Bloomberg News. Frank Stella is 73 and still working. His current show at Paul Kasmin Gallery “Polychrome Relief” is reviewed in a previous post of mine titled “Rare Gems”. Despite his fame and critical recognition which includes a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2007, he explains that he is not currently in fashion and explains “there’s just not enough capital to keep going at the rate that I make work”.

Asked by Kazakina if Stella wakes up and goes to the studio every morning he replied “No, I wake up every morning thinking about servicing my debt. I have to pay for what I do. And in the last 20 years, I’ve done it all by myself.” Stella estimates that he has to raise $5million annually to create his work. He explains that “Exhibiting is how you make a living. You can sell everything, but you still have to go to work the next day. I have to earn money to make the work. So I work for the work. It rules me completely financially, psychically, physically.” However when Kazakina suggests that it sounds tough he replies. “It’s not any harder than digging ditches. It’s the poverty of imagination that defines us.”

He then goes on to give us the scoop on Larry Gagosian “I’ve been with Larry. It’s hard to get money out of him. He’s responsible to, essentially, the stockholders who are putting up the money. Those guys want 17-18 percent return on their money. I am not that successful.”

Asked how the art world factors into his life he concludes “There is the art world in which I live and have to function in. And there’s the art world which has been given to me, which is the past. And it’s the most sustaining thing.
You don’t get carried away because you see how you fit into it, if you fit at all. It’s pretty infinitesimal, the space that you occupy. What matters is that you are part of the organism and that you feel alive that way.”

It’s worth reading the full interview…. You know that question that they ask?.….If you could sit down to dinner with anybody, who would it be? It looks like Frank Stella’s just jumped to the top of my list!