Category: visual

So one in six Warhols is said to be fake. Now “New York is bracing itself for a Warhol washout at next week’s sales after a two-year price boom that has seen as much as £4 million change hands for a wallsized Warhol canvas.”

Steve Wynn put down some serious cash for for a Modigliani image of a nude. “It brought $26.8 million, above Christie’s $25 million high estimate. After the sale, art experts were quick to point out that Mr. Wynn had paid nearly $10 million more for the painting when he bought it privately in the mid-1990’s.”

London’s Paternoster Square, in the shadow of St. Paul’s, has opened after decades-long battles as to what whould be built there. “To those sickened by the damage inflicted on Britain’s cities and towns by modernist planners and architects, Paternoster Square was a battle cry. If the setting of St Paul’s was not sacred, then where in Britain was? To modernist architects and their supporters, it was no less emotive. If the classicists could capture such a major site in the heart of the City of London, who knew where the counter-revolution might end? It was, of course around the figure of the Prince of Wales, then at the height of his campaign to roll back the boundaries of modernism, that the battle raged and swirled. Like Verdun, the end result was stalemate.”

“Thirteen exceptional 18th-century watercolours including views of Montreal and Quebec City as they looked in the 1780s are among a collection of rare paintings that have been bought in Britain by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Quebec City and Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa… Bonhams, the auction house that negotiated the private sale, says the collection is worth at least $194,000. There is speculation, however, the Canadian officials might have paid a bit more to have them withdrawn from public auction.”

The estate of Quebec artist Jean-Paul Riopelle has announced plans to sell 43 of the abstractionist’s works at auction this month, sparking controversy over the issue of who is calling the shots in the preservation of Riopelle’s legacy. At the center of the debate are Riopelle’s daughters, who are not executors of his estate; Riopelle’s longtime companion, who is an executor; and the director of the Musee de Quebec, who is also an executor, and therefore in a potential conflict of interest regarding the sale. The announcement of the auction, which came only ten days before the auction itself, has many observers questioning whether the market value of Riopelle’s work could be lowered by such a hasty selloff.

London’s art world is changing, writes Jerry Saltz. “The best way to understand the change taking place in London is to think about what’s not going on: scandal. Although Jake and Dinos Chapman’s realistic sculpture of two bronze blow-up dolls engaged in mutual oral sex, unveiled last week in the Turner Prize exhibition, is sure to raise a ruckus, a new generation of British artists appears to be turning away from the shock tactics of yesteryear.”

“More than 250 stolen paintings have been recovered from a parked van in Paris, French police have said. The haul includes one Picasso, two works by French painter Raoul Dufy and one by Dutch artist Kees van Dongen.”

On a list of the world’s most influential art people, Gil Peretz ranks No. 50, according to Art Review Magazine. And who is Gil Peretz? “He’s a 52-year-old Puerto Rican who lives in Queens with his wife, his 22-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son. And what does he do? Are we soon to be favoured with one of his installations in Tate Modern’s turbine hall? Not even close. Has he got an unexpectedly large collection of hitherto unseen Breughels in his house in the Hamptons? Hardly. No, Perez is arguably the world’s most important doorman. He stands at the door of the Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters in New York greeting clients and helping to organise auctions.”

Important archaeological finds were made all along the route of the high speed trains for the Chunnel between England and France. “Hundreds of archaeologists, working over a period of 15 years, have salvaged vast stores of finds from the path of the 185mph trains, as well as recording scores of sites which will remain safe but buried beneath the tracks. One long string of pearls seems to be everyone’s favourite description.”