Art Collecting & Investment News, 18th - 24th August

Sunday, 24^th August 2008

200 unsold Damien Hirst works go under hammer at Sotheby's
UK - London: Hirst hopes to tap into the international market and most buyers are expected to be from newer markets such as India, Russia and the Gulf. So many works have come off Damien Hirst's production line that more than 200 remain unsold by the artist's main gallery in London.
                                                                                                                     Times Online - UK

Saturday, 23^rd August 2008

Media & Marketing Edition
GLOBAL - Increasingly lost amid the noise is this question: What does it mean for the art market that a living artist bypasses dealers altogether and sells his wares directly at auction?                  
                                                                                                        Wall Street Journal - USA

Turning Black To Cash
INDONESIA - The pace of Masriadi's rise has been unusual but not unique in the region. The Indonesians Rudi Mantofani, Agus Suwage and Handiwirman Saputra have also done very well at recent auctions.
                                                                                                                     Newsweek - USA

Lee Miller's work on both sides of the camera
US - "The Art of Lee Miller" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has the clean, spacious staging and authoritative catalog we expect of a retrospective. Yet it provokes an almost forbidden question.
                                                                                        San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA

Friday, 22^nd August 2008

A Portrait by Leonardo? Scholars and Skeptics Differ
ITALY - Vinci: A 19th-century German School portrait that sold for $21,850 at a Christie's auction in 1998 has now been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by some art and scientific experts.
                                                                                             New York Times - United States

In New Delhi, 'Art, Money and Desire'
INDIA - In response to a global buzz around Indian art, the three-day India Art Summit is promoting New Delhi as an international art hub, bringing together contemporary Indian artists, gallery owners, auction house representatives, critics, collectors and curators.
                                                                                             Washington Post - United States

Indian Contemporary Art Award Winners Announced
INDIA - The New Delhi-based Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), has awarded its 2008 emerging artist award to Sandip Pisalkar, a sculptor from Baroda, and Shumona Goel, a Bombay-based artist who works in film, video, and photography.
                                                                                                    ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA


Sotheby's Hong Kong Autumn Sales 2008 to be Held in October
CHINA - Sotheby's Hong Kong Autumn Sales to be Held in October to Realise US$256 Million. I Nyoman Masriadi's The Man From Bantul (The Final Round). Est. HK$1-1.5 million.
                                                                                                                       Art Daily - USA

From the Art World to the Underworld
US - The U.S. is the biggest buyer within the $6 billion black market for art, the FBI says. Last year alone, 16,117 artworks in the U.S. were listed by the London-based Art Loss Register as missing or stolen, up from 14,981 the year before.
                                                                                                  Wall Street Journal - USA

Stripping the Walls to Cover the Bills
US - Any museum would be happy to own a painting by Pollock, but this one is a particularly rich prize. It's a pivotal work in the artist's career, prefiguring in its size and imagery his signature "drip" paintings of a few years later. Selling it would deprive the museum of its crown jewel.
                                                                                                           Wall Street Journal - USA

Hirshhorn Museum Presents Recent Acquisitions From the Collection ...
US - Acquisition Highlights - The 16 artists represented in "The Panza Collection" are Robert Barry, Larry Bell, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Hamish Fulton, Douglas Huebler, Robert Irwin, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Richard Nonas, Roman Opalka, Lawrence Weiner and Doug Wheeler.
                                                                                                                            Art Daily - USA

The Nazis, the Jewish banker, and the battle for two priceless ...
US- New York: The paintings are not only priceless, but they have been among the star attractions at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the city's equally renowned Guggenheim Museum for more than four decades.
                                                                                              Independent - London,England,UK

The 8th ARTSingapore is the Largest Contemporary Asian Art Fair
SINGAPORE.- The most anticipated Asian contemporary art fair will be here once again to set the visual arts scene ablaze over five days from 10 - 13 October at Suntec Singapore, International Convention and Exhibition Centre. There will be about 110 art galleries from 16 countries showcasing US$30 million worth of artworks.
                                                                                                                       Art Daily - USA

Thursday, 21^st August 2008

Iranian Art Auction Records Spark Frenzy for Tanavoli, Moshiri
IRAN - For 30 years, Parviz Tanavoli led a quiet life teaching sculpture and holding shows in his native Iran and abroad. That changed in April when a work sold for a record $2.84 million at an auction in Dubai.
                                                                                                                    Bloomberg - USA

Indonesia Artist Masriadi Slays Ogres, Cuts Batman Down to Size
CHINA - In the past two years, Masriadi, 35, has become a poster boy for Indonesian contemporary art. Christie's International sold his painting ``Used to Being Stripped,'' which depicts one of his trademark stocky black figures, for HK$4.2 million ($538,000) at their May auction in Hong Kong, a record for Southeast Asian art.
                                                                                                                     Bloomberg - USA

Hirst in Hamptons; Captain Cook's Boomerang for Sale: Art Buzz
UK/INDIA - Sotheby's is to hold invitation-only previews of Damien Hirst's 65 million pound ($120.8 million) sale of new artworks in the Hamptons -- and New Delhi.
                                                                                                                      Bloomberg - USA

Artist's Pointed Critique Is Barred From Beijing
Zhang Hongtu's 'Bird's Nest, in the Style of Cubism' is rife with volatile political references to 'human right,' Tibet, the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 and the French president's support for the Dalai Lama.
                                                                                                            Wall Street Journal - USA

Fall Asian Art Sales At Sotheby's New York
NEW YORK - Sotheby's is pleased to announce its Fall series of Asian Art sales in New York from September 16-19, 2008. The exhibitions will be open to the public on September 12th.
                                                                                                                             Art Daily - USA

China bans loans to show on Cultural Revolution
NEW YORK - The Chinese government has attempted to censor an exhibition about the Cultural Revolution opening next month at New York's Asia Society, The Art Newspaper has learned.
                                                                                                                     Art Newspaper - UK

Museum21 Symposium at Irish Museum of Modern Art
IRELAND - Dublin: A major international symposium which investigates new perspectives on the role and function of public galleries and museums in the 21st-century will be held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art , Dublin , from 12 - 13 November 2008.
                                                                                                                      Art Daily - USA

Wednesday, 20^th August 2008

Alternative Investments That Deliver Fun And Profits
GLOBAL - The most recent five- and ten-year compound annual returns for the art index, 16.3 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively, also exceeded the return of the benchmark stock index, 12.7 percent and 5.9 percent during those periods.
                                                                                   CNBC - Englewood Cliffs,USA

Superb Japanese and Korean Art to be Offered at Christie's New ...
US - New York: The last auction of Christie's Asian Art Week, Japanese and Korean Art takes place on September 18. The sale is expected to realize in excess of $7 million.

Artnet News
US - Does art have a role to play in the upcoming Democratic and Republican political conventions? The high-profile art activities attached to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Aug. 25-28, 2008, and the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Sept. 1-4, 2008, are what an International Herald-Tribune headline writer has referred to as "gentle."
                                                                                                        Artnet - New York,NY,USA

Indian Summer
US - Santa Fe: While collecting American Indian art has traditionally been a strictly American pastime, dealers report rising interest among Europeans, many of whom have started to come to Santa Fe for the shows
                                                                                                    ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Art Review Indian Modernism via an Eclectic and Elusive Artist
US - Philadelphia: Word is that contemporary Indian art is the next sensation on the international market. So now's the time to understand something about where it came from, which the nuanced, storytelling show called "Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882-1966)" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art helps us to do.
                                                                                                 New York Times - United States

A Bear Market for Art Giving?
GLOBAL - UBS is currently the main sponsor for Art Basel, but for how long? Richard Fitzburgh, a senior vice president at UBS whose specialty is wealth management, put together the UBS art forum with Wolfsberg and outside parties such as Sotheby's. "Our wealthy clients demand it. And it's important that we deliver it to them. It's not going to go away."

Taxing Matters
US - When collectors are audited, their fates may rest in the hands of a cadre of art world mandarins who help the IRS scrutinize the values of artworks listed on tax returns. We talk to the powers behind the panel.
                                                                                                    ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Tuesday, 19^th 2008 2008

US lawyer guilty over stolen art
US - A retired US lawyer faces up to 10 years in jail after being found guilty of possessing six stolen French expressionist paintings. Robert Mardirosian, 74, was found guilty of the charges by a federal jury in Boston, Massachusetts.
                                                                                                                           BBC News - UK

Billionaire Chandler Invests $4 Million for Mom's NY Gallery
US - Billionaire investor Richard Chandler is helping his mother break into Manhattan's clubby art scene by spending up to $4 million on a 14,000-square-foot gallery that sells her paintings. Chandler, 49, considers the two-story gallery, set to open this fall, an investment, not a gift.
                                                                                                                       Bloomberg - USA

Monday, 18^th August 2008

Artist David Ireland's House Goes to Collector
US - San Francisco: Artist David Ireland's house in San Francisco will not hit the real estate block; Carlie Wilmans, an art collector and philanthropist, has bought the 500 Capp St. residence with plans to preserve and restore it, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
                                                                                                    ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Art classes improve diagnostic skills of medical students
US- It seems that seeing is a skill that the world of art can lend to the world of medicine. Doctors-in-training who took art classes while in medical school appear to have better skills of observation than their colleagues who have never studied art, according to a research from Harvard Medical School.
                                                                                             CBC.ca - Toronto,Ontario,Canada

Sotheby's to Sell Important Russell Drysdale Painting in ...
AUSTRALIA - Melbourne: Russell Drysdale (Australian 1912-1981), Rocky McCormack, 1962-63. Oil on canvas. 111 by 86 cm. Estimate: 1,800,000--2,200,000 AUD. Sotheby's will hold its Important Australian Art sale on August 25 and inscluded is an important lot made by Russell Drysdale.
                                                                Recent News on Artdaily.org - http://www.artdaily.org/

Hirst Announces the End of an Era
A lot depends, of course, on what Hirst does in 2009 and onwards. Will he keep his large staff and simply set them to work on brand-new series? Or will he scale down? Given that the most successful artists from Warhol onwards have tended to be the ones with lots of assistants and massive output.
                                                                                   Conde Nast Portfolio - New York,NY,USA

Germany Thanks Russia for Returned Art, Asks for the Rest Back
``Fifty Years of Loss and Return'' is at Sanssouci, Potsdam, through Oct. 31. Similar events are taking place in Aachen, Berlin, Bremen, Dessau, Dresden, Gotha and Schwerin.
                                                                                                                       Bloomberg - USA