I am willing to admit I read celebrity gossip and I was stunned when, trying to see Nicole Ritchie’s “baby bump”, I found this!
for some reason I was more offended than usual seeing the names of artists on that pink page…
Archive for July, 2007
Stay on your own turf Perez Hilton!
July 29, 2007Chinese Contemporary’s Achilles Heel
July 28, 2007After disappointing sales for Bonham’s in Hong Kong, the auctions held by Poly International Auction Company in Beijing has impressed even the duopoly of Sotheby’s and Christies. The FT article Into the Void by Natasha Degen reported that Poly’s last auction was a success with the 80% Chinese and 10% Western patrons bidding on the highest quality works seen together in the auction market.
The art market has curiously become important in China which experts argue is due to the absence of an established museum infrastructure. Chinese museums do not have high curatorial standards and rarely exhibit contemporary art. “Right now there’s a void, so the galleries and the auction companies have naturally filled that void,” said Beijing dealer Meg Maggio. “It’s like we’re missing the third point on the triangle.”
American collector of Chinese Contemporary and owner of 210 works said the shortage of important exhibitions in China, and in the West, was Chinese contemporary art’s “Achilles heel.” “There’s not a good conceptual understanding of what the art’s all about,” says Logan. “Everybody can quote the prices but there’s not a real thorough understanding of why this art is important and where it fits into the total scheme of things.”
Beijing has been developing to correct this void of knowledge which is affecting new collectors, wanting to own Chinese Contemporary. The Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art is opening this fall, the Central Academy of Art’s Museum of Contemporary Art is under construction, there is also the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and The Poly Group is restructuring their art museum of antiquities to include Contemporary Art.
Predictions are that the new museums and serious contemporary art spaces will divert attention away from the auctions, or private/commercial sector, to curators and critics for validation.
Wu Guanzhong, Ancient City of Jiaohe (1981)
Sold to a Singaporean Chinese for a record ¥37 million or $4.9 million at Poly
Because the art market is so slow…
July 26, 2007As many of you know, the art market really slows down in the summer – especially August, but picks up again in September with important auction sales usually in October then Basel/Miami in December, etc. I have really been struggling to find interesting material.
So thank you New York Times “Arts, Briefly” for this (please beware – it’s very upsetting):
Tough Guy Faces Stern Reality
After revelations that Bear Grylls the star of its survival show “Man vs. Wild,” was staying in comfortable resorts and dining on prepared cuisine when the camera was turned off, the Discovery Channel says it will re-edit previous episodes and in the future inform viewers about any off-camera help. “We have learned that isolated elements of the show in some episodes were not natural to the environment and that the crew and host received some assistance while in the field mainly for health and safety concerns,” said a statement from David C. Leavy, executive vice president of Discovery Communications. “Moving forward, the program will be completely transparent in its promotion and all elements of the filming will be explained to our viewers.”
The show follows Mr. Grylls as he is deposited in wilderness areas without much more than a flint, water bottle and knife; he must find his way out, sometimes eating the heads of live frogs or sleeping in freezing temperatures. But The Sunday Times of London reported this week that a consultant on the show, Mark Weinert, said that Mr. Grylls spent nights in a motel in Hawaii instead of on a deserted island, as depicted on the series, and that for an episode filmed in the Sierra Nevada, Mr. Grylls stayed at a resort. When interviewed in June by The New York Times, Mr. Grylls said the conditions did not change regardless of whether the cameras were on or off. Mr. Leavy said Mr. Grylls, who did not respond to e-mail requests for an interview, was on vacation. (by Patricia Cohen)
One More Reason to go to The Corcoran
July 25, 2007The Jeremy Blake show will go on (info via Tyler Green in Modern Art Notes). And if you haven’t visited the Modernism exhibition yet – you have until July 29th!
Washingtonians are very lucky to have hometown access to these exhibitions
Authenticating Andy
July 23, 2007Another great article relating to Warhol Estate Rigging the Market?
Jeremy Blake
July 21, 2007The Jeremy Blake show is the last exhibiton Jonathan Binstock curated for the Corcoran, Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits (October 27, 2007 thru March 2, 2008) and it seems to be heading toward a tragic outcome.
LAObserved reported that Jeremy Blake is missing off New York‘s Rockaway Beach. This morning NYPD confirmed to Tyler Green that they consider Blake to be missing. This all comes a week after Theresa Duncan, Blake’s longtime girlfriend, committed suicide. Blake is said to have found her in their East Village apartment. An individual reported seeing someone swimming out to sea and Blake’s clothes and wallet were found nearby on the beach.
Blake, who grew up in Washington, DC, is international renowned, with work in MoMA, SF Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. He is known for his digital videos which feature representational and abstract imagery.
Jeremy Blake
Update on feelings toward the Smithsonian Institute
July 20, 2007A while back I wrote a snarky post about the Young Benefactor’s Society of the Smithsonian asking me for a donation.
Well, I was once a young intern looking for a break and a sweet girl (who was a helluva of a follow-upper) got me to donate a framed Dalek (James Marshall) print.
Please go bid! for the good of the Smithsonian!
Warhol Estate Rigging the Market?
July 17, 2007This has been going on for a while, but unless you live in the UK you may not have known…
So basically, the estate of Andy Warhol has been accused of manipulating the market for decades. Joe Simon-Whelan, owner of a 24 x 20 in. silk-screen Self-portrait, has filed a $20 million lawsuit the Foundation and the Authentication board which partnered up in 1995.
His work was authenticated several times by the Warhol estate before the partnership began and now that he has an opportunity to sell the work (for $2 million) they have twice rejected the work in 2001 and 2003. Perhaps, and according to Simon-Whelan, their dismissals are helping to create scarcity in the market?
He also alleges that the Andy Warhol Foundation has sold $150 million worth of Warhol’s work at artificially inflated prices and that the foundation is trying to dominate the Warhol market with “enforcers”, “secret meetings” and “doctored files”.
FYI – this guy is not the first collector or dealer to allege misconduct by the secretive, four-person board which meets three times a year to authenticate Warhol’s work.
The worst part about this – the “denied” stamp they put on the piece has bled through the back of the canvas and is now visible from the front.
Joe Simon-Whelan bought this Warhol self-portrait for $195,000 in 1989
Bought for $325 – Sold for ₤16.5 million
July 13, 2007Most Raphael’s hang in major museums and rarely come to auction, but NY dealer Ira Spanierman, who bought an “Italian School” painting from a Sotheby Parke Bernet sale in 1968, found himself a miracle. The work, by Raffaello Sanzio – called Raphael was bought for $325 and yesterday evening, resold at Christie’s Old Master sale in London for ₤16.5 million or $33.2 million.
Spanierman said the 1968 sale was low-level and hung salon style (from floor to ceiling), but he noticed the quality of a hand and fur collar in an otherwise filthy painting. Paintings that are restored prior to an auction sale are less attractive to dealers. Dealers are looking to clean, rediscover and exhibit. The success rate of this has decreased dramatically with fewer sleepers on the market.
He then said that his restorer found a label on the back that said it had been exhibited as a Raphael. Most labels verso are very helpful, but those that claim a work was by a known master are often incorrect and misleading.
He then contacted scholars to authenticate the work. These scholars are usually, if living, the author of the artist’s catalogue raisonnne or a kin of the artist. It is very expensive to have a work authenticated – the more valuable the artist, the more costly the inspection.
Unlike David Rockefeller, who was on hand to see the sale of his Rothko, Spainerman decided not to go to the sale. Most sellers like to sit in the back center of the sale gallery so they can have a better look at who is bidding in the seating in front of them.
And why didn’t the dealer he sell privately? “Dealers used to run the art business, and now I have to say, with a few exceptions, the auction houses run the business. They have the widest audience.”
Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael
(Urbino 1483-1520 Rome)
Portrait of Lorenzo de’Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino
oil on canvas
Estimate £10,000,000-15,000,000 (₤16.5 million)
Taub’s Lawyers Leave Him
July 11, 2007After struggling to find anything interesting in ArtNews – for the past 3 years – a little blurb caught my eye. Bruce Taub, former founder of Fernwood Art Investments and purveyor of the most ridiculous art market quote “…Even my secretary could someday own [shares of art] in her 401k…” has had both of the law firms representing him, withdraw.*
On April 5, 2007 it was reported in the Baer Faxt that Bruce Taub was being sued first by Roy Disney’s company Shamrock Estates for $1 million and then again by Whitmore Brey LLc, Hinchliffe Living Trust, Louise + Tom Jones Subscription LLC, Andrea van de Kamp (former chairman of Sotheby’s), William Pearlstein (art lawyer), John Scharffenberger (gourmet food entrepreneur) and Ashton Hawkins (former counsel at the Met) for $1.63 million.
And now, in on a backpage of this month’s ArtNews, Bruce Taub who is being sued for embezzling not $1.63 million but $8 million from his fine art fund “to promote himself and his wife in the art world, and to pay their personal expenses” without launching a single investment fund.
Some background on Fernwood and fine art funds: The opportunity to exploit an inefficient market was the prime factor for developing Fernwood. Fernwood, which began in Boston in 2003 with aspirations to begin purchasing works at the end of 2005, like other fine art funds folded after failing to meet investor expectations, being unable to raise the $100–$150 million suggested capital for its development, and suffering from the effects of conflict of interest among its advisors.
Michael Plummer of Fernwood and formerly of Sotheby’s claimed. “We created an innovative structure that would have worked,” but recalls that “we were concerned whether [founder Bruce] Taub had the financial stability and the wherewithal to manage the funds during their life” (Haden-Guest 2006).
Todd Millay, past executive vice-president of strategy and product development at Fernwood, claimed that he and Taub falsely predicted the ease with which they would create a large-scale fund and find financial support: “Unlike other inefficient, large sectors of the economy, there is no investment boutique focusing on capturing art’s economic opportunities. Even specialty chemicals, medical devices and other kinds of arcane sectors have special private equity firms systematically looking for opportunities. So the first thing that Bruce and I thought was that Fernwood had a much bigger opportunity than just creating an art fund, which would be a fairly mundane and straightforward to do” (Groysberg, Podolny, & Keller 2006, p. 5).
Taub, who had a proven 25-year track record in the financial services and a bevy of seasoned international art advisors, set out to form a fully structured entity. He pointed to fine art’s low correlation to traditional assets and what Fernwood associates argued was “the wealth of comprehensive data never before available.” NB: This statement is disputed by many since art world holdings are estimated at approximately $30 billion and only 30– 50% of the works sold are done so transparently at auction (ABN AMRO 2005, p. 4).
Fernwood was, arguably, using the most favorable business model––the private equity model––and had sound financial thinking at its helm, but was never able to achieve funding. At first I blamed the collapse on the fact that Taub was above all an art collector. He and his wife came up with the vision of Fernwood while on vacation in Canyon Ranch, not the financial milieu that potential investors expect, and at the heart of Taub’s effort to marry art and finance he expanded too quickly and his group lost focus and faith.
But it turns out, I was wrong … you be the judge
* the law firms were Jager Smith and Pachulski Stang Ziehl Young Jones & Weintraub (and all background information on Fernwood was borrowed from my MAAB thesis: The Rationale of Art Funds: Success, Failure and the Future) -LG
