Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

The Art Market: Munch and more

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • The Art Market: Munch and more

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/386d44d6-8eb9-11e1-aa12-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1tQWUCVD1

    Last updated: April 28, 2012 1:05 am
    The Art Market: Munch and more

    By Georgina Adam
    New York is centre-stage with `The Scream' sale, Frieze and a rich crop
    of contemporary art auctions
    [image: Edvard Munch's 'The Scream']

    Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'

    New York is centre-stage for the market over the next two weeks, with a
    glut of art on offer, starting on Wednesday with Edvard Munch's
    tipped-to-beat-the-world-record `The
    Scream',
    continuing with Frieze's inaugural US fair and ending after the weekend
    with a rich crop of contemporary art auctions.

    Huge headlines have already been made by `The Scream' (1895), which is
    being offered by Sotheby's on May 2 with an estimate of about $80m. Can
    Munch's work shatter the world record, currently standing at $106.5m for
    a
    Picasso?

    Qatar, currently the world's biggest buyer of art, with its apparently
    bottomless pockets and a massive appetite for top artworks, is tipped to be
    interested. Certainly, the $250m that Qatar is believed to have paid for
    Cézanne's `The Card Players' (1892-93) has upped the ante: the art
    price
    sky is a lot higher than it was before. Curiously, the thought of Qatar
    could discourage other bidders, who may think it is hopeless to even try to
    go for it.

    If `The Scream' does break the record, it will be the first time a pastel
    on board has achieved this feat - all the top art prices so far have been
    made by oils on canvas.

    *. . . *

    Then, two days later, Frieze launches its first New York fair on Randall's
    Island. There is an immense buzz around the event, with everyone agog to
    see how the successful London formula will translate to the US.

    `The location is the big unknown,' says Darren Flook of London's Hotel, who
    knows New York well, as he organises the Independent fair in New York.
    Frieze is counting on curiosity and novelty to overcome the transport
    issue. Flook, who will be exhibiting there, says: `You listen to Amanda
    [Sharp] and Matthew [Slotover, the organisers] when they call, they have
    been right before'.

    *. . . *
    [image: 'View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus' (1856) by Aivazovsky]

    'View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus' (1856) by Aivazovsky

    A painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, a 19th-century Russian painter of Armenian
    descent, hit the jackpot at Sotheby's Orientalist sale this week. The
    artist is a favourite with Russians, and the work depicted Constantinople,
    thus also making it a magnet for Turkish collectors, who are an increasing
    force in the market. `View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus' (1856)
    sold
    for £3.2m, well over its top estimate of £1.8m (estimates don't include
    commissions; final prices do). The result must have delighted the
    `gentleman' who had bought it in 1995 for the then-record £326,000, because
    he had tried and failed to sell it in November 2008 - during the depth of
    the financial crisis - with an estimate of £2m-£3m.

    Overall, however, the sale was weak. The cover lot, a portrait of a scholar
    by the Turkish Osman Hamdy Bey, who was roughly a contemporary of
    Aivazovsky, was bought in under its punchy estimate of £3m-£5m. In all
    10
    of the 33 lots failed to find buyers and the Aivazovsky accounted for over
    half of the total haul of £5.6m.

    *. . . *

    This will hardly come as a surprise: Art-Athina, the Athens-based
    contemporary art fair, has been cancelled. Generally held in May, the event
    was founded in 1993 by the Greek Art Galleries Association, making it one
    of the longest-running in Europe. Last year's fair attracted 58 galleries,
    but, according to its director, Alexandros Stanas, `Art-Athina is
    reassessing its strategy, taking into consideration the latest facts in
    [the] economy and the country in general.'

    *. . . *

    The Biennale des Antiquaires has decided to expand from its Paris home and
    go global. It intends to hold scaled-down versions of the grand Paris event
    in between its regular slot: this year, from 14-23 September. So far Hong
    Kong, Istanbul, Moscow and New York are mooted as destinations for the
    fair, with Hong Kong the first, slated for October 2013.

    *. . . *

    Thanks to its tragic tale and the movie industry, items from the `Titanic'
    regularly appear at auction. But it is now illegal to sell items from
    inside the ship, explains Brian Badge of the specialist auctioneer Henry
    Aldridge in Wiltshire. `The wreck is a grave and so nothing can be sold,'
    he says. `But an enormous amount of material, souvenirs, trinkets were
    taken by visitors from the liner when it docked in Southampton, Cork and
    Cherbourg, before it even set sail on its fatal journey.'

    There are also items from survivors: the firm recently got £76,000 for a
    first-class menu that had been kept in a passenger's handbag.
    [image: A tea cup from the
    'Titanic']©AP

    A tea cup from the 'Titanic'

    Meanwhile in New York, 5,500 objects from the Titanic, collected from the
    debris field around it, have been put up for bids as a single lot through
    US auctioneer Guernsey's, with an estimate of around $189m. They include
    a
    hair pin, gold-and-navy-blue china cups, a bronze cherub from the ship's
    grand staircase - and a massive, 17-ton chunk of the ship's hull.

    These have been exhibited around the US by Atlanta-based Premier
    Exhibitions, but it has been involved with legal tussles with its own
    subsidiary RMS Titanic Inc, which has exclusivity on exploring around the
    wreck. The sale was ring-fenced with conditions: the collection had to be
    kept intact and made available to the public; the buyer had to be
    `acceptable' to a Virginia judge. Bids were due in by April 2: so far,
    no
    sale has been revealed. Guernsey's says: `it's a complicated situation: an
    announcement will be made'.

    *Georgina Adam is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper*

Working...
X