“Art prices swelled last year, lifting sales at Christie’s International PLC to $5.7 billion last year, up 14% from the year before. Christie’s auction sales matched those of its chief rival, Sotheby’s, which said it auctioned off $4.9 billion of art last year, up 14.5% from the year before.”
Category: visual
Leonardo Replica Of Mona Lisa Discovered In The Prado
“What is most exciting about the Prado replica is what it reveals about Leonardo’s original. In the Madrid copy there are areas that are better preserved than in the Louvre painting.” Compare the two in an interactive screen here.
India Art Fair Struggles To Join World Circuit
“Nothing is simple in India. Although the government had agreed to waive a customs levy on imports, there was still duty and 12.5% sales tax to be paid on anything bought at the fair, with the result that dealers were reserving rather than selling and concluding transactions out of the country. The organisers also had to contend with India’s notoriously obstructive and lackadaisical bureaucracy–for example, the road to the fair was only paved the day before it opened.”
Frank Gehry Designing, For Free, New L.A. Jazz Venue
“Having designed L.A.’s signature space for classical music, Frank Gehry is on board to do the same for jazz – although his pro bono work on a new Culver City home for the Jazz Bakery would be on a much smaller scale than his downtown Walt Disney Concert Hall.”
Renaissance Bankers Of Florence, Hanging On Walls
“The recent ‘Money and Beauty’ exhibit, held in the majestic 15th-century Palazzo Strozzi, illustrated how Florentine merchants got around the Catholic Church’s ban on money-lending and bankrolled the Renaissance.”
The Banksy Of Moscow
“A Russian street artist who created a giant pair of spectacles from a streetlamp has been dubbed ‘the Russian Banksy’. The mysterious figure, known only as P183, … reveals little about himself except that his name is Pavel, he is 28 and that he studied ‘communicative design’.”
Painting By Young Hitler Sold At Auction
A painting created by the 24-year-old Hitler has recently sold at an online auction, according to reports. The painting, titled “Maritime Nocturno,” sold for approximately $12,000 in a closed sale by the Darte auction house in Slovakia.
Unseen Portraits By Lucian Freud To Be Shown For First Time
“[A] major new exhibition of his drawings and watercolours [in London] will feature rare, previously unseen works, including intimate portraits of his parents, children, self-portraits and childhood etchings.”
Sydney’s Top Museum Takes Its Time Finding New Director
“Six months after Edmund Capon announced his retirement as director, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is no closer to naming a successor.”
Animal Rights Group To Indian Artist: Let The Pigeons Fly Free
“Live and ‘hand-raised’ pigeons are confined in a room filled with copper wires and transistor radios emitting white noise from unused frequencies.” It’s all part of an exhibition – and animal rights activists are not amused.