Christie and Sotheby’s achieved a billion dollars in sales this week in two New York record sales of contemporary art.  This area of the art market suffered badly in the early days of the recession but appears to have made a stellar recovery.  However, many dealers are nervous about these astonishing prices being paid whilst
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Dasha Zhukova, the glamorous girlfriend of Roman Abramovich and leading Contemporary Art Collector and Curator is moving her Garage Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow from the converted bus terminal designed by constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov to a former restaurant in Gorky Park.  The transformation of the restaurant into an art gallery has been entrusted
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A Renoir sells at Christie’s. Orlando Rock, deputy chairman of Christie’s, offered up a detailed guide on how to buy art at auction published in an interview with John O’Ceallaigh in this week’s Telegraph newspaper.  Although doubling as a piece of PR for Christie’s, Rock has done his time at Christie’s, was for many years
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SIMON STUDER started his career in a basement vault in a warehouse complex near the heart of this city, known for international banks and outrageous prices. It was a strange job. Every day, someone would open the vault and lock him inside until it was time for lunch. Then he’d be let out of the
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Over 5,175 UK and international collectors, many of who had flown in especially to attend the third fair has confirmed Masterpiece in a unique position as a central force to the international art market. ‘This year has seen Masterpiece London settle in and cement its position at the centre of London’s vibrant art market…’ said
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Painting By The Numbers, We shouldn’t judge quality of fine art by the dollar amount being paid by a collector” but we can’t help but be interested after The Scream went for $120 million. In early May, Munch’s The Scream was sold by Sotheby’s for $119.9 million, making it the highest price achieved for a painting to
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Why Picasso is Attractive for First-Time Art Buyers…And Auctioneers Blue-Chip Period What a performer! Ivan Lindsay on the reasons why that randy old goat Pablo Picasso remains so irresistibly attractive to neophyte art collectors (not to mention auctioneers) A RECENT BLOOMBERG article led with the line: ‘Pablo Picasso has been dethroned.’ The article was referring
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Collecting art dates back to classical antiquity. The Romans collected Greek sculpture and, when no original was available, commissioned copies of famous works. Paintings, too, were collected but none have survived except for Egyptian Mummy portraits and Roman wall decoration. In the Dark Ages the concept of the individual artist was lost, but not the
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