Category: visual

As art prices soar, buying art might look like a great investment. But Merrill Lynch reports oterwise. “While stocks or bonds are almost certain to make investors a profit over five years, art has a high chance of declining in value, the world’s biggest brokerage company said. The probability of losses on small-cap stocks, corporate bonds and long-term treasury bonds is 3 percent or less if they’re held for five years. Art investors have a 17 percent chance of losing money over five years, Merrill said.”

New York’s Neue Galerie has scrapped plans to charge $50 to view its newly purchased Klimt portrait on a day its doors are normally shut. The Gallerie says the offer was “misread by the public.”

Britain’s Charity Commission has ruled that the Tate Museum broke the law when it cought a £600,000 work by Chris Ofili. “Most major art institutions are set up as charities. By law, trustees cannot receive monetary benefit from their charity without express permission, usually from the commission. The Tate failed to seek permission, not only in the case of the Ofili work, The Upper Room, but in 17 previous purchases of work by artist-trustees going back 50 years.”

“Sotheby’s first-half art sales totaled $1.96 billion, according to the company’s Web site. They were helped by Pablo Picasso’s ‘Dora Maar au Chat,’ which took $95.2 million at a New York auction in May. Christie’s estimated total was ‘in excess of’ $2.09 billion.”

“Adele Bloch-Bauer I” (1907), by Gustav Klimt, sold last month for a record $135 million. “Is she worth the money? Not yet. Paintings this special may not come along for sale often, and the hundred and four million dollars spent for a so-so Picasso, “Boy with a Pipe,” two years ago indicated that irrational exuberance could be the booming art market’s new motto. But Lauder’s outlay predicts a level of cost that must either soon become common or be relegated in history as a bid too far. And the identity of the artist gives pause.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s decision to raise its admission price from $15 to $20 has Christopher Knight thinking: Why such a puny increase when the Met could really stick it to its customers? “It’s 2006! America has been through Reagan, Bush, Clinton and another Bush. Whether it’s health insurance, schools, campaign funding or any of the arts, liberal concepts of public responsibility have been out of fashion for a quarter-century. Didn’t the Met get the memo? Americans want things fully privatized.”

Five Americans who won judgments against Iran in an American court have adopted an unusual tactic to collect on their claims. They are “laying claim to some 2,500-year-old cuneiform tablets that are on loan from Iran to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. The survivors are demanding that the university sell the tablets, unearthed by American archaeologists at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in the 1930’s, and compensate them with the proceeds.”

“If left unmanaged, the sea of tourists may be a lot more threatening than the Adriatic Sea. Currently, around 15m people visit Venice each year, while the city has a resident population of about 60,000. Around the world literacy and cultural awareness are increasing. Incomes in India, China and Eastern Europe are now increasing very rapidly; there are 2.5 billion people in India and China alone who within 50 years might have incomes comparable to ours. That means that the number of people who want to see Venice and will be able to afford to see Venice might very plausibly expand by a factor of three or more over the next few decades.”

“Chinese investors are beginning to collect contemporary Chinese art as they accumulate wealth. Oil paintings, statues and other works created by artists since the 1980s used to sell for no more than $1,000 a piece a decade ago. Today, they can go for $600,000 or more. Sales at the latest autumn and spring contemporary art auctions in Hong Kong more than doubled to HK$276 million ($35.5 million) from a year earlier.”

“The organisers of Frieze have sent a letter to print publishers such as Alan Cristea, Paragon Press and Two Palms saying that “a certain category” of exhibitor will not be admitted this year. The reasons given are that “prints don’t look good in a fair”, and that the dealers do not have “primacy of representation” of the artists they show.”