Category: visual

An important Francis Bacon painting sold at auction in London this week for £26.34 million, “breaking the record for any postwar and contemporary work of art sold in Europe… Almost 1,000 collectors, dealers and hangers-on descended on Christie’s in London to witness the sale as a barometer of the art market. “

Architect Norman Foster’s latest challenge was to revitalize the courtyard of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, and “the result is quite a departure in a city as architecturally conservative as Washington DC… Foster was eager to rekindle the history of the Smithsonian as a social-events building providing a large public living room.”

“The auction signalled another step towards the mainstream for the genre, with 75 pieces of ‘urban art’ in the catalogue. Spray-paint and stencils featured largely in the works on sale, and many began life as street graffiti before being transferred to canvas.”

A trio of artistic pranksters has been tweaking the Seattle Art Museum with unauthorized audio tours and sculptures mocking the museum’s “don’t touch” signs. Their activities have met with mixed reactions from SAM officials.

“An Andy Warhol painting stolen from a Manhattan art gallery a decade ago has resurfaced at Christie’s auction house, and on Tuesday the gallery sued to have it returned. The painting, one of Warhol’s Dollar Sign portraits that was created in 1981, is worth at least $100,000.”

It looked like the Smithsonian’s budget would be trimmed, as politicians warned the institution that it needed to shape up. But despite the turmoil, the Smithsonian received $682.6 million for fiscal 2008, which ends in October. That was a $47 million increase from the previous year.

As reported on Modern Art Notes last week, an iconic artwork is in danger. Artist Nancy Holt, the widow of artist Robert Smithson, is encouraging the arts world to protest plans for exploratory oil drilling in Utah’s Great Salt Lake that may have an effect on her late husband’s 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide environmental artwork “Spiral Jetty.”

The total includes record estimates for Impressionist art this week: 89 million pounds for Christie’s today, 82 million pounds for Sotheby’s tomorrow and 72 million pounds for Christie’s contemporary art on Wednesday.

“A Picasso painting of his mistress Dora Maar fetched 5.7 million pounds ($11.3 million) at a Christie’s International auction last night in London as dealers said demand held up in the year’s first test of the impressionist and modern art market.”

Why three federal agencies devoted four years to investigating what seems to be low-level smuggling and penny-ante tax fraud? “Scams involving art valuations have been common over the years, experts say. ‘You bought a painting at an auction or a yard sale for $100, had it appraised for $5,000 and donated it to the local Humane Society’.”