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The Contemporary Art Market is Killing It Right Now With $2B in sales worldwide, it's a good time to be a world-renowned contemporary artist -- especially if you're Jeff Koons

 

<img class="wp-image-411344" src="http://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/lot-12-koons-balloon-dog-orange.jpg?w=283&h=283" alt="Sold: $58.4 million | Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Orange), 1994–2000" width="283" height="283" title="The Contemporary Art Market is Killing It Right Now" />

Jeff Koons’ stainless-steel “Balloon Dog (Orange)” was just one of the pricey auction items that broke records at auction last year. It sold for a whopping $58.4 million.

 

Sales of contemporary art at public auctions surpassed $2 billion for the first time last year, the Paris-based arts-data organization Artprice said.

The report tallied auction sales between July 2013 and July 2014, and it found that contemporary art sales grew 40 percent from the previous year. The number of big-ticket items that sold for over 10 million euros ($12.8 million) more than doubled in the period.

Those who follow the art market will remember the record-breaking Christie’s auction in November that saw buyers walk away with the most expensive publicly auctioned piece of art ever, Francis Bacon’s $142.4 million Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969). That auction also minted Jeff Koons’ $58.4 million Balloon Dog (Orange) (1994-2000) as the most expensive piece by a living artist ever sold at auction.

The Artprice report comes with a nice helping of patriotism. The three artists who have sold for the most at auction, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool, are all American. The rest of the top ten earners are Zeng Fanzhi of China; Peter Doig of Britain; Richard Prince of the U.S.; Martin Kippenberger of Germany; and Luo Zhongli, Chen Yifei and Zhang Xiaogang, all from China. In fact, Chinese artists have now eclipsed the U.S. in overall contemporary art sales, with 40 percent of the market.

Read more at http://observer.com/2014/09/the-contemporary-art-market-is-killing-it-right-now/#ixzz3F0ddmswO Follow us: @newyorkobserver on Twitter | newyorkobserver on Facebook

Anish Kapoor Adds New “Super Black” to His Palette

 

Sculptor Anish Kapoor is embracing Vantablack, the newly invented blackest black ever, and plans to incorporate the substance into his artistic practice, reports the BBC.

Vantablack was invented by London-based Surrey NanoSystems and announced in July, dubbing it a kind of “super black.”

“It’s blacker than anything you can imagine. It’s so black you almost can’t see it,” Kapoor told the BBC. “It has a kind of unreal quality.”

The artist has always been drawn to exotic materials, and Vantablack seems especially well-suited for creating the types of disorienting and unsettling sculptures for which Kapoor is known. Although the company that created it had entirely different uses in mind when it developed the product, expecting it could help camouflage stealth aircraft, or black out light inside telescopes, improving space photography, Surrey NanoSystems isn’t about to turn up its nose at the arts.

“We are delighted that an artist of Anish Kapoor’s stature and reputation is interested in exploring its possibilities in the creative sphere,” the company’s chief technology officer, Ben Jensen, told Dazed Digital.

http://news.artnet.com/in-brief/anish-kapoor-adds-new-super-black-to-his-palette-111382

MANILA - The Sandiganbayan has ordered the seizure of valuable old master paintings owned by the family of the late dictator, former President Ferdinand Marcos.

In a three-page order issued by the court at noon today, the court sheriff was directed to search the artworks, ranging from a Picasso classic to a de Goya masterpiece, in all known Marcos residences.

"…You are hereby ordered to seize, secure and attach the paintings described…and such other paintings listed in (the) judicial affidavit of dated 18 August 2014 of Comm. Ma. Ngina Teresa Chan-Gonzaga," the court said in a writ of attachment.

Madonna and Child by Michelangelo Bounarroti

Femme Couchee VI (Reclining Woman VI) by Pablo Picasso

Portrait of the Marqueza de Sta. Cruz by Francisco de Goya

Still Life with Idol by Paul Gaugin

LaBaignade Au Grand Temps by Pierre Bonnard

Vase of Chrysanthemums by Bernard Buffet

Jardin de Kew pres de la Serre 1892 by Camille Pisarro

L'Aube by Joan Miro

The court ordered the sheriff to search in all known addresses and offices of former First Lady Imelda Marcos, including her office at Room NB-218 of the House of Representatives; her condominium suites at the Penthouse of One McKinley Place in Bonifacio Global City and 34-B Pacific Plaza Condominium in Ayala Avenue, Makati City; the family's ancestral house in Batac, Ilocos Norte; and the family's old house on Don Mariano Marcos Street corner P. Guevarra Street, San Juan City.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/09/29/14/picasso-michelangelo-paintings-ordered-seized-marcoses

 

. Review                     

Alas, mere 'Shadows' in MOCA's Andy Warhol exhibit

 

 

In January 1979, when Andy Warhol first showed "Shadows," a room-size installation made up of scores of silkscreen paintings, one critical observer of the exhibition was concise:

"The show only looks good because it's so big," he wrote.

The shadow paintings feature enigmatic blurs of dark and light in various colors. They filled the long center room of a large gallery in New York City's Soho neighborhood, on West Broadway just off Spring Street, where the dealer acquired them for a private foundation with which he was involved. The foundation, later known as Dia, still owns the paintings.

Vapid and pretentious, the overblown installation ranks among the worst works Warhol made. There are 102 canvases, each one just over 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide.

                    'Andy Warhol: Shadows'  Brian Forrest/The Museum of Cont Installation view of "Andy Warhol: Shadows." The exhibition is at MOCA until Feb. 2, 2015. Installation view of "Andy Warhol: Shadows." The exhibition is at MOCA until Feb. 2, 2015. (Brian Forrest/The Museum of Cont)    

Even the big Soho room wasn't quite large enough to accommodate them all. (The full installation requires at least 442 linear feet.) Not until 2012, for a show at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., were all the paintings installed together for the first time.

Now, they've all been installed again — this time at the Museum of Contemporary Art. MOCA director Philippe Vergne, former Dia director, arranged the loan. The canvases are hung edge-to-edge and low to the floor, so that they ring several MOCA rooms. Not quite half the museum's exhibition space is filled, but they look as lame as ever.

No one knows for sure what the sources of the shadows are. Of seven or eight compositions, two dominate: a tall, narrow form called "the peak," and a shorter, stubbier one known as "the cap."

The monochrome colors include eggplant, chartreuse, Carmine red, yellow, midnight blue, silver and 11 more, plus lots of black. The 1979 observer who thought the "Shadows" only looked good because the show was so large also described it as "disco décor," not art.

   

Ironic or not, he was right on both counts. Of course, that astute critic was Warhol himself, writing in his diary and speaking to an interviewer.

The installation's vast size lends passing interest, if only because the claim that "bigger is better" is so American. But despite 102 paintings, there's next to nothing to look at. The jagged color and fuzzy sweeps of ebony are lifeless.

Disco is also dead, but "Shadows" forms an irresistible backdrop for MOCA visitors to take selfies and cellphone snapshots. It's like being at the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard with Warhol paintings filling in for famous cartoon characters like Spider-Man and the Hulk.

Conventional wisdom used to be that, with a few exceptions, the quality of Warhol's work took a steep dive after about 1968. "Shadows" came a decade later, when he was 50.

 

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-knight-warhol-review-20141002-column.html#page=1

 

A Miniature MoMA Design Store in Her Tote

The Brains Behind the Museum of Modern Art Shop Displays Her Bagful of Curios

Considering         Chay Costello's       many aesthetic interests, there may be no better job for her than overseeing the buying teams at the Museum of Modern Art's Design Store.

As assistant director of merchandising, the 39-year-old Ms. Costello gets to collaborate with MoMA's curators to select products made by international artists, designers and architects. She tracks trends, like the current infusion of technology into fashion, then brings those pieces to market in her shop.

She attends all the major design fairs in Paris, London and Tokyo, but says she unearths her most treasured discoveries by riding a bicycle through places like Copenhagen and Kyoto.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-miniature-moma-design-store-in-her-tote-1412116000