Press Releases

Federal judge finds California Resale Royalty Act unconstitutional

 http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-california-art-resale-royalty-act-unconstitutional-20120521,0,705518.story

Los Angeles Times By Jori Finkel
May 21, 2012, 

You can almost hear the sighs of relief coming from art galleries and auction houses up and down California: Federal Judge Jacqueline Nguyen has declared the California Resale Royalty Act unconstitutional.

The highly controversial, widely misunderstood and little enforced state law that took effect in 1977 was designed to provide artists with 5% of their resale prices under certain conditions. As written, the law would apply to a resale of an original work of art provided this sale takes place in California or the seller resides in California.

Nguyen of Central District Court in California found this last provision, which would allow for royalties to be collected on sales that take place in other states, overreaching in a way that invalidates the entire law. In granting a motion by Christie's and Sotheby's to dismiss a class-action suit brought against them by artists Chuck Close and Laddie John Dill and the estates of artists Robert Graham and Sam Francis, Nguyen wrote that the law “explicitly regulates applicable sales of fine art occurring wholly outside California” and thus violates the U.S. Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause.

Artists have very rarely gone to court over this law before, but Nguyen had some experience with it. She was the judge who sent artist Mark Grotjahn's resale royalty suit against collector Dean Valentine back to state court in 2011, after Valentine had removed it to federal court arguing that the law interferes with the Copyright Act of 1976. (At the time she found that the Royalty Act “does not infringe on the exclusive rights delineated in the Copyright Act,” providing a “qualitatively different” right than copyright holders receive.)

Sotheby’s lawyers at Weil, Gotshal & Manges called this month's decision “a major victory.”

L.A. attorney Eric George of Browne George Ross, who represents the plaintiffs in the class-action suit against the auction houses and has also led suits against nine California art galleries, said the matter isn’t over: “For a single federal judge to invalidate the law, more than 35 years later and without allowing any evidence to be taken, marks a departure from established constitutional law. We are confident, as both sides have always believed, this case will ultimately be resolved by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which already upheld this very statute in 1981.”

Federal Judge Strikes Down California’s Art Royalties Law

 http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/judge-strikes-down-californias-artists-royalties-law/?partner=rss&emc=rss

The New York Times
May 21, 2012, 3:23 PM

By PATRICIA COHEN
A federal district judge has struck down as unconstitutional a California law that gave artists a part of the profits when their work is resold.
The artists Chuck Close and Laddie John Dill and the estate of the artist Robert Graham brought a class-action suit in November against the auction giants Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and against eBay, arguing they had failed to pay them money owed under the California Resale Royalties Act. That act, which took effect in 1977, was the first of its kind passed in the United States. It required state residents who resold a work of art, even out of state, to pay the creating artist 5 percent of the price over $1,000; anyone selling art in California was also subject to the law.
Artists in most of the United States have long complained that unlike composers, filmmakers or writers, they do not receive a share of any future sales — known by the French expression droit de suite — under copyright law.
In her ruling on Thursday, Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen did more than simply find against Mr. Close and his colleagues: Because the law has the effect of controlling sales “wholly outside the boundaries” of California, she ruled that it violates the commerce clause of the Constitution and that therefore “the entire statute must fall.”
Eric George, the lawyer who brought the suit, said he would appeal. “The artist protection law was properly enacted by California’s legislative and executive processes, pursuant to powers the U.S. Constitution reserves to the states,” he said. “We are confident, as both sides have always believed, this case will ultimately be resolved by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which already upheld this very statute in 1981.” As it turns out, Judge Nguyen was appointed two weeks ago to that court.
Spokespeople for Christie’s and Sotheby’s said they were very pleased with the decision.
A bill to institute a national resale royalty law has been introduced in Congress. “A federal law is ultimately the solution,” said Robert Panzer, executive director of VAGA, a company that represents the copyright interests of artists.

What Chinese collectors are really buying

 http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/What-Chinese-collectors-are-really-buying/26476

Buyers are still overwhelmingly focused on domestic art, ranging from archaic bronzes to "wet paint" works by contemporary Chinese artists

The Art Newspaper  By Georgina Adam. Market, Issue 235, May 2012
Published online: 17 May 2012

Interest is growing in jadeite carvings. This pendant sold for $1.9m at Sotheby’s Hong Kong last month
China is the world’s largest art market—even if the figures are disputed (see above). The numbers vary according to whose research you read, but the French site Artprice claims that in 2011, China represented 41.4% of the fine art auction market. The art economist Clare McAndrew, in her latest report (“The International Art Market in 2011”), puts China’s share, taking both auction and dealer sales into account, at 30%, and both sets of figures put China ahead of the US and Europe.
Even if Chinese figures are subject to caution, there is no denying the importance of China in the market today. But it is still predominantly domestic, with the Chinese mainly buying in segments of the market ranging from archaic bronzes to “wet paint” works by the brand names of Chinese contemporary art, such as Yue Minjun and Zeng Fanzhi, jade, ceramics, furniture and traditional brush painting as well as modern painting in the Western style by Chinese artists.

Chinese buyers are not just based in the mainland and Hong Kong. “There are quite significant differences between what people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, the mainland, Indonesia or Singapore will buy,” says Kate Bryan of London’s Fine Art Society, who previously worked at the Cat Street Gallery in Hong Kong. “Because Taiwan did not have a cultural revolution as in the mainland, and because its industrialists travel more widely, buyers are more informed about Western art, and more adventurous,” she says, pointing to the £1.75m sale, to a Taiwanese collector, of Damien Hirst’s The Inescapable Truth, 2005, showing a pickled dove. It was the first Hirst formaldehyde piece to be shown in China and was sold at Art HK in 2010 by White Cube. But these sales are the exception. “There is no tradition of conceptual art in China,” says the art dealer Pearl Lam, who is opening a new space in the Pedder Building in her native Hong Kong on 15 May. “Basically, the Chinese like painting,” she says.

Chinese collectors also love traditional art, both in the fine and applied fields. “Ceramics and other decorative arts made up a substantial 24% of the market by value [of the Chinese art and antiques auction market] in 2011,” reports McAndrew. As newly wealthy Chinese entered the market over the past decade, their focus was mainly on the Qing period (1644-1911), with an emphasis on the reign of the great Qianlong emperor (1735–96). This is where some of the most stunning prices have been made, such as the famille-rose double-gourd vase that sold to the Hong Kong-based collector Alice Cheng in 2010 at Sotheby’s, for $32.4m.

“For Chinese looking for investment potential, this market [the Qing] offers volume, and the fact that these pieces have age, and were difficult to make adds to their appeal,” says Patti Wong, the chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. “Until recently Chinese investors felt that contemporary Chinese painting was too ‘new’ to have as much value.”

The word “investment” is crucial among mainlanders. “With people from Hong Kong, you can talk about the art, but with mainlanders the conversation is all about the investment potential,” Kate Bryan says.

Chinese buyers also tend to shun earlier works and particularly grave goods, but this, according to many in the trade, is changing. “Buyers in the region are taking a great deal of interest in Ming and Song works, and in the past 18 months we have seen a growing interest in archaic bronzes, jadeite carvings and both huanghuali and zitan [a very dark wood like ebony] furniture, as well as textiles and Buddhist sculpture,” says Pola Antebi, the head of Chinese ceramics and works of art at Christie’s Hong Kong.

Last month, Sotheby’s celebrated a new record for a Song ceramic with $26.6m paid for a Ruyao brushwasher from the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) at its Hong Kong sale. It went to Wong on the telephone, who was bidding on behalf of an unidentified buyer thought to be a Hong Kong or mainland Chinese. “Pieces from the Ru Kiln are so rare that there couldn’t be a market for them,” Wong says. “The last one we sold was 20 years ago.”

“To an extent Chinese buying in the earlier periods has also been caused by the rise in prices elsewhere; when a Qianlong vase goes from $10,000 to $1m, buyers start looking at other sectors,” says the foremost Asian art dealer, James Lally of New York. “But what is interesting about China is that people collect in absolutely every field, so the market is very deep.”

20th and 21st century

As for modern and contemporary Chinese art, this splits into a number of sectors. Chinese buyers are prepared to pay huge prices for brush works on paper by artists such as Zhang Daqian, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, or Fu Baoshi— names Westerners do not necessarily recognise. Last year in Beijing, China Guardian sold Qi Baishi’s Eagle Standing on Pine Tree, Four-Character Couplet in Seal Script, 1964, for $57.2m, which stands as the record for a modern Chinese painting. With a prolific supply, the sale of works by Qi and Zhang were each worth well over $500m in 2011, according to Artprice. Enthusiasm also falls on 20th-century Chinese artists working in oil on canvas: Zao Wou-ki, Chu Teh-Chun or Lin Fengmian. Zao stood in the 14th place of highest-grossing artists in 2011 according to Artprice, and in Sotheby’s 2 April sale in Hong Kong, six of the top ten lots were by him. Also in this segment are hyperrealist artists such as Ai Xuan, Chen Danqing or Liu Xiaodong, popular in mainland China and again, not well known in the West.

According to the New York and Beijing collector Richard Chang, until five years ago mainland Chinese collectors were less interested in artists such as Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi or Wang Guangyi, who are better known in the West. Pioneers in this field included the curator and dealer Johnson Chang of Hong Kong’s Hanart gallery, who put together Hong Kong grandee David Tang’s collection. Western collectors such as the Swiss diplomat Uli Sigg and the Belgian food baron Guy Ullens were also significant early buyers in this field.

Now, Chang says, “Chinese collectors are replacing Western collectors in the contemporary Chinese sector.” The Hong Kong-based dealer Jean-Marc Decrop says that the percentage of mainland buyers of contemporary Chinese art in Hong Kong has gone from 15% three years ago to around 85% today. “Chinese buyers are very keen on the investment aspect, and also they saw other people interested in these Chinese artists, this gave them pride and the desire to buy these works as well,” he says.

Western art

Sotheby’s and Christie’s say that the percentage of sales of non-Asian art to Chinese buyers is growing, although the actual figure is quite difficult to define—and, anecdotally, low.

Wong says that “travel plays a big part” in interest in Western art among collectors in Taiwan. “They see the landscapes that inspired the impressionists, and they have been slowly moving to these artists over the past ten years, and good works by Monet, Cézanne, Sisley and Pissarro have gone into Taiwanese collections,” she says. As for Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia, she says there is interest in Western contemporary art, but “Picasso is inevitably the most favoured artist”. His Femme Lisant (Deux Personnages), 1934, went for $21.3m (est $25m-$35m) to an Asian bidder in the room at Sotheby’s New York last May.

In Taiwan and Indonesia, Wong says, Chinese buyers of Western contemporary art initially looked to the US, but now are taking more interest in British artists such as Hirst, Gormley and Kapoor. “But this is not the situation in the mainland where the buying of contemporary Western art, at least at auction, is still in its infancy,” she says.

Last year’s autumn sales in Hong Kong saw a weakening after years of uninterrupted, rapid growth, leading to fears that the Chinese boom was ending.

Last year Sotheby’s spring series, held in Hong Kong in early April, clocked up $447m for almost 3,400 lots sold, whereas this year it only made $244m for 2,780 lots (Christie’s sales are 25-30 May). Asked whether the smaller volume and value was down to a lack of supply, Wong says: “Sourcing was definitely more difficult this year. There was less ‘hot money’ coming from the mainland. But when an exceptional piece came up, there was a great result, as with the Ruyao piece. Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline-Big Family: Family No. 2, 1993, went for twice its estimate at $6.7m to a private museum in Shanghai. But prices have softened for the more average material.” The private museum was reported as being built by the Indonesian-Chinese collector Budi Tek. Wong adds: “People are anxious about the end of this year, because of the poor economic news.”

Confidence

Christie’s Asia president François Curiel says he sees “no sign of slowing down, and no less enthusiasm” in the Chinese market, pointing to the number of foreign dealers setting up in Hong Kong and the bumper number of applications (630) to Art HK as evidence of the continuing confidence in the market there.

Nevertheless, the consensus is that Chinese buyers are still overwhelmingly focused on their own art. An attempt to interest them at Tefaf Maastricht in March did not lead to many sales, even if one Asian buyer bought a 19th-century Anglo-Indian armchair from Mallett (asking price €95,000). The Hong Kong-based art dealer Anna Ning says she sees some wealthy Chinese interested in “European aristocratic taste”, and the buyer of Lord Raby’s 18th-century wine cooler, which sold at Sotheby’s in July 2010 for £2.5m, was Hong Kong-based. (The cooler was finally export stopped.) But, Curiel says: “I don’t see Chinese buyers moving much into Western art.”

“Western art galleries are deluded in thinking how much they can persuade Chinese buyers to take an interest in Western art right now,” Bryan says. “On the other hand, because of the sheer numbers and money in China, the percentage going into Western art will grow over time as knowledge and information develops.”

Tax-relief cap will curtail major gifts British government’s proposal to close tax loopholes upsets museums and their biggest donors

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Taxrelief-cap-will-curtail-major-gifts/26361

By Martin Bailey. Museums, Issue 235, May 2012
Published online: 26 April 2012

The artist Kaya Mar shows what he thinks of Osborne’s budget
Major projects planned by the UK’s leading arts organisations and museums are threatened by tax changes that the British government is proposing in an attempt to close loopholes enjoyed by the super-rich. In his March budget, the chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne announced a tax-relief cap on annual donations to charity above £50,000 or a quarter of an individual’s income, whichever is greater. Critics argue that this will discourage very large charitable gifts, and pressure to force a U-turn was mounting as we went to press.
The cap could have a particularly serious impact on large museum building projects, which are highly reliant on £1m-plus donations from private individuals and trusts. These include the extension to Tate Modern (a £215m project, which still needs £54m), the British Museum extension (£135m, needing £15m), the development of the Design Museum in Kensington (£80m, needing £18m), upgrading Tate Britain (£45m, needing £10m), the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) project in Dundee (£45m, needing £30m) and the V&A extension in Exhibition Road (£40m, needing £25m).

Donations at risk

Growing pressure from the charities, including those raising money for health, education and the elderly, may force the British government to rethink the proposals. In the cultural sector, Arts Council England warns that donors are already considering pulling out of important projects. A council spokeswoman says that major donors have contacted some of the arts organisations it helps fund to say that if this cap is introduced, “they will not be able to support them at previous levels”. As a result, “at least £80m of regular donations to several of our largest organisations could be at risk”.

The chancellor announced a limit on all uncapped tax reliefs to ensure that the very wealthy pay a higher proportion of tax. This affects several forms of relief, including donations to charities. A Treasury spokesman suggested that a few people are abusing the system by using foreign charities set up by themselves to reduce their tax liabilities.

Critics of the cap say that it will be a major disincentive to philanthropy at a time of government cuts. They say there is little evidence of abuse, and, where it exists, it should be tackled directly. The new system is likely to be devastating for charities because it will hit the big donors. A survey by the Charities Aid Foundation estimates that of the £11bn donated in the UK in 2009/10, 45% came from 7% of donors.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations gives an example of the impact that the new system could have on a very wealthy arts patron who earns £800,000 a year and responds to an appeal by donating £1m.

Under the current Gift Aid concession, this would result in £1,250,000 for the recipient. The individual also gets personal tax relief of £312,500. It effectively costs the donor £687,500 to give £1,250,000 to charity. Under the new proposals, the donor would only be able to claim tax relief on 25% of their income, or £200,000. This means the same gift will effectively cost them £950,000. Most donors would therefore respond to an appeal with a considerably lower contribution (or possibly decide against giving at all).

Stephen Deuchar, the director of the Art Fund, says the new cap could have a “devastating impact”. A fund spokeswoman adds that it will have “a disproportionate impact on the arts, museums and cultural charities, which are often dependent on a small pool of larger-value donors”.

Mark Getty, the chairman of London’s National Gallery, says there is “no question the gallery and many other organisations will suffer”. Martin Roth, the director of the V&A, says the change will “adversely impact” potential donors.

Michael Dixon, the chairman of the National Museums Directors’ Conference, is “deeply concerned” about the tax-relief cap. A spokeswoman for the organisation points out that the proposal comes at a time when the government wants museums to get “a greater contribution from philanthropy in running the nation’s great cultural institutions”. The conference is preparing a detailed submission to the government on the possible effects of the proposed tax change.

The Museums Association is equally worried. Mark Taylor, its director, says: “It seems bizarre that the government is restricting tax relief on large donations at precisely the time they want to increase philanthropy.”

The government has stressed the importance of private support for the arts. The March budget introduced the Cultural Gifts Scheme, which offers tax benefits to those who donate pre-eminent objects to museums and galleries (it is a parallel system to Acceptance in Lieu, which covers inheritance tax).

The new £100m Catalyst scheme matches private donations to cultural organisations with Lottery and government money, with the first awards due to be made later this month. The budget also included a concession allowing those who leave more than 10% of their bequests to charity to have their estates subjected to a lower rate of inheritance tax.

Second thoughts?

Critics of the proposed cap say the government has often drawn parallels with the situation in the US, where, partly because of greater tax incentives, wealthy donors give a much higher proportion of their income to charity. In America those earning more than £150,000 a year give eight times more to charity than those in Britain.

The tax-relief cap is due to come into effect in April 2013. But after the storm of protest from charities and donors, the Treasury was having second thoughts. A spokesman says it will “explore with philanthropists ways to ensure that this measure will not impact significantly on charities that depend on large donations”. The Treasury minister David Gauke says: “There will be a proper consultation over the summer and then draft legislation produced in the autumn.”

Schiele case could damage NY business, say dealers

Ruling in long-standing restitution battle may threaten defence that a purchase was made in good faith

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Schiele+case+could+damage+NY+business%2c+say+dealers/26405

By Gareth Harris. Market, Issue 235, May 2012
Published online: 10 May 2012

Dealer Richard Nagy has filed court papers in the case around Egon Schiele’s "Seated Woman with a Bent Left Leg (Torso)", 1917, above
International dealers have joined forces to lobby against potential US legislation that could have a “significant and negative impact on the art market in New York”. The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA), the Society of London Art Dealers (Slad) and the UK dealer Richard Nagy are unhappy about moves in a US court that could “dramatically limit the application of the laches doctrine”, which is a defence procedure commonly used in disputes over titles to works of art.
The trio has filed an amici curiae statement (a “friends of the court” supporting brief) relating to the long-standing legal row over ownership of an Egon Schiele drawing, Seated Woman With a Bent Left Leg (Torso), 1917, which once belonged to the Austrian art collector Franz Friedrich “Fritz” Grünbaum. Two New York collectors, Charles Katzenstein and Nelson Blitz, have also contributed to the brief, according to the court documents; Katzenstein declined to comment.

The legal battle dates back to 2005, when the case was first heard in the US district court. It involves various parties including the US collector David Bakalar and Grünbaum’s heirs, the Czech citizen Milos Vavra, and the New York resident Leon Fischer.

Vavra and Fischer claim that the Nazis stole the drawing from their family (Grünbaum fled Vienna in 1938 and died at the Dachau concentration camp in 1941). Bakalar disputes this, claiming instead that Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, sold the drawing to the Swiss dealer Eberhard Kornfeld of the Galerie Gutekunst in 1956. Later that year, Kornfeld sold the piece to the Galerie St Etienne in New York. In 1963, Bakalar bought the work from the Manhattan dealer in “good faith”, he says.

The case was first heard in the US district court in New York in 2005. Three years later, the court applied Swiss law and ruled in Bakalar’s favour. But, in 2010, the US court of appeals reversed this decision, saying that New York law should apply. A district court ruled again in Bakalar’s favour in 2011. The case is now going through a second hearing in the appeals court.

The laches doctrine, which forms a major part of Bakalar’s defence, is now in jeopardy, according to the group. “For the past 25 years, good-faith purchasers of art have relied on the laches doctrine to protect themselves from stale or frivolous claims to ownership,” state the court papers, that were filed at the end of March by the lawyers Jon Dean and Julian André of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, which represents Nagy, the ADAA and Slad.

The trio is particularly alarmed over two specific changes that Vavra and Fischer are seeking. Firstly, that the “duties of diligence relevant to a laches defence inquiry trigger only after the true owner learns of the location of the stolen chattel”. Secondly, that the “knowledge or actions of a claimant’s ancestors cannot be imputed to the claimants when determining if laches should apply”. The group argues that Vavra and Fischer are seeking “to eliminate the laches doctrine’s protections and make the time for claimants or their heirs to file a [recovery] action virtually limitless”—which means that each new generation of alleged heirs could potentially challenge title to works of art.

Without such protection, buyers would “have to think twice about doing business in New York”. The group argues that collectors may even avoid lending works to New York-based museums, and might take their business to other US states where “the laws are more favourable to good-faith purchasers”.

“The laches doctrine is really the only defence a good-faith purchaser has against a claim,” says Gilbert Edelson, of law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, representing the ADAA. “A good faith purchase must establish that a claimant delayed unreasonably in pursuing a claim.” Edelson gives a theoretical example of a claimant who does not sue immediately because he or she is aware of witnesses who might hurt his or her case. If those witnesses die, the claimant could choose to file a suit within the 20-year statute. Although the buyer could not assert a defence under the statute of limitations, they could seek protection under the laches defence “because the claimant did not assert the claim promptly, and the death of witnesses prejudiced the defendant”.

But Raymond Dowd of Dunnington, Bartholow and Miller LLP, representing Vavra and Fischer, dismisses these arguments, calling the laches doctrine a “classic ‘sit on your hands’ defence [which] has traditionally been a very heavy burden [for claimants]”. He says that his clients do not want to eliminate the procedure, and are not arguing to “re-set” the clock for successive claims, but emphasises that the onus should be on “purchasers to show that they have exercised due diligence. Bakalar has not demonstrated this.” Dowd adds: “Bakalar argues on this appeal that the whereabouts of Grünbaum’s art collection… remains a mystery. The reason why any ‘mystery’ remains is because Bakalar and certain art dealers have succeeded in blocking discovery in this proceeding.” Meanwhile, “Nagy has a direct financial interest in, and probable possession of [Schiele’s] Woman in Black Pinafore, 1911, which was stolen from Fritz Grünbaum,” states the declaration filed by Dowd in opposition to the amici curiae.

But a later opposing motion disputes that the piece was stolen, saying that “while Nagy previously purchased an ownership interest in Woman in Black Pinafore, Nagy voided the purchase in October 2011 and no longer possesses [the work]”. The documents add that the London dealer has never handled any Schiele works with provenance relating to Mathilde Lukacs. Bakalar’s lawyer, William Charron of Pryor Cashman, says: “Dowd’s perspective is not rooted in the evidence or in reality."

The Gunter Sachs appeal – life and legacy of the playboy art collector

 Sotheby's to auction off trove of art treasures and memorabilia owned by the renowned playboy. Mark Brown, meets his son Rolf

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/may/07/gunter-sachs-appeal-playboy-art-collector

• Mark Brown, arts correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 May 2012 


Gunter Sachs married Brigitte Bardot in Las Vegas in 1966, and divorced as friends in 1969; just one part of Sachs' eclectic life. Photograph: Sipahioglu/Rex Features
Picture the scene. A ruggedly handsome, impeccably dressed man is enjoying a snack with his superstar wife, Brigitte Bardot, in St Tropez's Gorilla bar in the late spring of 1967. A pale, odd-looking white-haired man with a large entourage notices him and marches straight over, complaining that the Cannes film festival, of all places, has refused to screen his film because of its nudity. The man agrees to see the film,Chelsea Girls, and everyone bundles into speedboats and heads for the Carlton Hotel on La Croisette.
That chance meeting between the millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs and artist Andy Warhol had a profound effect on both men. For Sachs, a serious collector, it led to a sea change in his art buying; for Warhol it marked a vital first foothold in Europe.
Sachs became an assiduous collector of pop art and in 1972 opened a gallery in Hamburg. The Warhol exhibition he staged there was one of the first in Europe, although as Sachs's son Rolf recalls: "Nothing sold. My father was highly embarrassed, and he bought most of the exhibition himself – which was of course the best investment he ever made."
Rolf Sachs spoke to the Guardian ahead of a dazzling auction of artworks and objects that belonged to his late father. The Sachs family is selling following Gunter's death last year when, at 78, he turned a shotgun on himself.
Over two days, Sotheby's will sell a collection estimated to be worth more than £20m that includes art spanning surrealism, new realism and pop art, as well as furniture and personal objects. They shine an often fascinating light on a man who liked, perhaps more than anything, to enjoy himself.
"He had a great creativity for life, combined with a joie de vivre and an ability to live it," says Rolf. "He was interested in the zeitgeist."
Categorising Gunter Sachs is tricky. Sotheby's describes him in the catalogue as a "playboy, businessman, gallerist, museum director, art collector, film-maker, celebrity, photographer, astrologer, director and sportsman".
Certainly he was the man of a thousand stories. He created the Dracula Club, an exclusive private members' club in St Moritz; he was vice-president of the Cresta Run, an epic skeleton bob run also in St Moritz; he encouraged Salvador Dalí to shoot a gun in his penthouse and, of course, he married one of the most famous women in the world. He proposed to Bardot by dropping hundreds of roses on her villa from a helicopter before diving into the Mediterranean and emerging from the sea.
Something beautiful
Was it really like that? "I wasn't there," says Rolf, smiling. "It gets embellished every time, but so what? It has something beautiful about it. Stories should have a poetic, dreaming effect." The couple married in Vegas, honeymooned in Tahiti and divorced as friends in 1969, both of them having had affairs.
Born in Germany in 1932, Gunter Sachs inherited fortunes from his mother's side of the family – she was daughter of Wilhelm von Opel of the car-making dynasty – and his father, who owned Fichtel Sachs, one of Germany's largest automobile suppliers.
He located to France in 1958 which in itself was a brave move, says Rolf. "It took a special character to go and live in Paris in 1958 – which was 13 years after the war – as a German. It probably was quite difficult."
At the time, Sachs did not have huge amounts of disposable cash so he would spend his afternoons playing cards – at which he was extremely good. "He wasn't that wealthy then. Father would play ecarté with friends in the afternoon and he would invest his profits in art. At the time nobody was really buying art, people were building up their businesses, everything had been shattered."
Sachs began buying works by the likes of Yves Klein, Jean Fautrier, César and Arman, who are far better known today than they were at the time. "He bought it for the love of the art."
Sachs collected with passion and skill; he was an aesthete, says Rolf, who is a professional artist and designer himself partly as a result of his upbringing. "I was very much aware of the art in the house and as an eight-year-old I knew every painter, I knew every painting. I had a very strong relationship with all the art we had."
Sachs is mentioned in Warhol's memoirs as one of the young Europeans who went to New York and had the whole Studio 54 experience. "At the time you didn't think much of it, but it was fun. You don't appreciate those moments enough because you don't realise."
Surrealist work
Sotheby's has described the sale as "among the most desirable single-owner collections ever to come to market", but it is only part of what was an extraordinary collection. Sachs collected surrealist work by the likes of Dalí, Yves Tanguy, René Magritte and Max Ernst. He owned important pieces from the new realism school including Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman and Martial Raysse. And there were works that could be described as art informel, including pieces by his friend Fautrier whose studio in the early years of the war was a refuge for intellectuals and artists associated with the Resistance.
Sachs decorated his homes and hotel penthouse suites with the most fabulous art and furniture. He had Lichtensteins in his bathroom, a Warhol Campbell's Soup in his kitchen, a Mel Ramos Banana Split in the guest bedroom. He commissioned a table direct from the sculptor and designer Diego Giacometti and was a big fan of Allen Jones, a star of 1960s British pop art, and had a set of his furniture that used fetishistic female mannequins.
Jones once recalled staying in Sachs' St Moritz Palace Hotel penthouse. "It was the most ritzy place I had ever been in. One wall of the apartment seemed to be entirely glass, with a breathtaking view of the Alps. There were Lichtenstein panels around the bathroom, a flock of Lalanne sheep on the carpet and the set of my sculptures."
If he had stayed at another time he would have seen Warhol's 1974 portrait of Bardot taking pride of place in a kind of pop art concept apartment. One of the last Warhol's Sachs bought was in 1998 – Self-Portrait (Fright Wig) which Warhol produced in 1986, a year before his death – and it is being sold for between £2m-£3m.
Another talking point in his penthouse suite was a bulletproof glass panel which Sachs would cheerfully stand behind and ask guests – Dalí was one – to shoot.
Works in the sale include Les Feux de L'Enfer, a piece Klein made using an industrial blowtorch at a state-owned gas research facility near Paris; pieces by Max Ernst, Magritte and Dalí; and a thickly painted gold canvas by Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale (1961), estimated up to £900,000.
"There was never a thought of it being an investment," says Rolf. "In fact, he stopped collecting in the 1970s because he was disillusioned with the art market – it became so aggressive. It had a strong business component."
Not that he entirely lost his love for it. "He always wanted to find the new, and even at 72, he started collecting graffiti art. We have tons of it," says Rolf. "It shows a curious mind, a young mind, looking for what is the next thing and what is the next trend."
Speaking of his father's death, Rolf says: "It came as a big shock to us all, but as a family we are not bitter towards him … I admire the courage."
It has been suggested that he feared the onset of Alzheimer's: "Perhaps in his mind it was speculation. Whenever something like this happens, obviously, there is chemistry involved. Chemical imbalances, which do things to your mind."
The decision to sell the works was taken as a family, and Rolf stresses they are keeping the items that hold the most importance for them. "People have said, 'Oh my god, you're selling the collection,' but the real core of his collection is staying in the family." He adds that they want to do a museum exhibition at the Villa Stuck in Munich in October.
Fond memories
Rolf Sachs has many fond memories of growing up. He remembers Bardot as his step-mum – "she was very kind to me, very sweet. I have only the fondest memories of her." He remembers one of Sachs' girlfriends, the Swiss biscuit heiress and champion water-skier Marina Doria going back and forward, back and forward in front of the house, pulled by Riva, a speedboat that is also in the sale.
He remembers the parties his dad would organise. "He made some of the most spectacular parties. Everyone would dress up, there was always wonderful music. Once he did a party where he played as if there was a hold up and everyone was surrounded [laughing] and people were getting frightened.
"A lot of fun people surrounded him, people who were spirited, who were good laughs."
Rolf Sachs has taken on some of the responsibilities his father had such as being vice-president of the Cresta Run and on the day the Guardian talked to Rolf he was beaming with pride at a purchase he had made at auction that day: a vampire killing set from around 1900 which he can't wait to show fellow members of the the Dracula Club. It is meant to be the most select club in St Moritz but Rolf says it is full of fun-loving. "Father created it and it is a very nice group of friends. Every member loves being part of bloodlessness."
Gunter Sachs was also interested in astrology, publishing a bestselling book on the subject and creating the grandly titled Institute for the Empirical and Mathematical Examination of the Possible Truth of Astrology in Relation to Human Behaviour.
Two months ago Rolf floated 3,500 candles on the lake in St Moritz in the shape of Scorpio in memory of his father.
There are clearly things going into the sale tinged with regret but Rolf says the family tried to create a rounded sale that was also fun, so there are pieces of art estimated in the hundreds of pounds up to one of Warhol's Brigitte Bardot canvases, estimated at £3m to £4m.
The auction will be held at Sotheby's on 22 and 23 May. Highlights go on show in London from 18-22 May and in New York from 5-9 May.

Mere Society Paintings? Look Again Vuillard Works at Jewish Museum and Jill Newhouse Gallery

 New York Times - ART REVIEW - (Jill Newhouse is a CINOA affiliated dealers)

By KEN JOHNSON
Published: May 3, 2012
If, by some fluke of metaphysics, the last four decades of Édouard Vuillard’s long, prolific and rewarding career were erased from collective memory, he still would not be forgotten. Before the age of 30 he made some of the most beguiling paintings of fin de siècle Paris: intimate, compact, brushy pictures of his mother and sister in the apartment he shared with them and the dressmaking shop they worked in. Painting with special attention to wallpaper and fabric patterns, he made people almost dissolve into atomized, flattened surfaces, anticipating a century that would pulverize into air everything once taken for solid.
After 1900 Vuillard (1868-1940) turned back his own clock. Reverting to a more conventionally naturalistic style and often using his own photographs as references, he painted portraits of well-to-do people and decorative murals for their homes. In the eyes of many critics he became a mere society painter. But Vuillard’s later work has its supporters too, and they are having their say, convincingly, in a pair of exhibitions: “Édouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940” at the Jewish Museum and, at Jill Newhouse gallery, a complementary show featuring major late works as well as some small early paintings and a selection of drawings.
Organized by the museum’s assistant curator, Stephen Brown, the Jewish Museum show includes more than 40 paintings, and 15 from the 1890s convey the hothouse interiority at which Vuillard excelled early. “Woman in a Striped Dress” (1895) is a dreamily blurry picture compressed into an approximately two-foot square. A young woman engulfed in billowing red-and-white fabric tends to flowers on a table in the foreground as an older woman looks on over her shoulder. Domestic routine becomes mystic ritual.
A late painting from the opposite end of the psychic spectrum is the portrait of David David-Weill (1925), which pictures a past chairman of the bank Lazard Frères wearing a business suit and tie and standing in a palatial chamber filled with antique furniture, gleaming decorative objects and a dozen gold-framed paintings on the background wall. As is typical of his late work, Vuillard here decompresses interior space, giving its rich and powerful subject a distinctive, commanding presence and making room for his expensive and well-pedigreed possessions, which Vuillard describes in sensuous detail.
In “Madame Louis Kapferer” (1918), a large portrait of an elderly woman in a black dress sitting in a dark armchair and gazing into space, with a sparkling clutter of decorative glassware on a mantel behind her, Vuillard combines sharp-eyed realism and a subtly comical sympathy. But, as in the portrait of David-Weill, you sense a willingness to flatter and a desire to please.
Part of the exhibition’s mission is to shed light on Vuillard’s social circles, which, as it happened, included numerous assimilated, cosmopolitan Jews throughout his lifetime. With some of these he was quite intimate. He had a romance with Misia Natanson, wife of his friend and first dealer, Thadée Natanson; and a 40-year affair with Lucy Hessel, the wife of one of his later dealers, Jos Hessel.
But it remains hard to say in what way the Jewishness of his relations influenced Vuillard as an artist. What seems more obviously consequential was his move from the avant-gardist circles of his youth, when he belonged to an upstart group of painters who called themselves the Nabis, to a more conservative milieu governed more by money and haut-bourgeois taste.
But Vuillard was not just another John Singer Sargent knocking out suave portraits of the rich and indolent for lunch money. The exhibition at Jill Newhouse reveals how intensely and eccentrically Vuillard labored over his most ambitious late works. Using glue-based distemper paint that he built up into crusty, granular surfaces, he devoted years to some. “Misia Sert and Her Niece Mimi Godebska” (1925), an eerily dark and gloomy, mostly gray canvas measuring more than 4 ½ by 5 ½ feet, took two years. It depicts two women — the elder one the remarried Misia — in a cavernous room, one standing and one sitting at a dinner table whose glassy surface reflects white-striped black teacups sitting on it. A shadowy haze fills the space, rendering the women indistinct and giving the scene a spectral feeling.
An even larger portrait at about six feet square, “Madame Jean Bloch and Her Children” (1927-9), took so long that Madame Bloch had had a fourth child by the time he finished it. So he made another one, reproducing the original image but adding a toddler into the lower left corner at her mother’s elbow. (The second version is in the Jewish Museum show.) As a composition it has the stiffness of an official family portrait. But it compels close scrutiny because of the excruciatingly slow and self-aware technique that he brought to it.
The most surprising as well as the biggest piece in either show is “Garden in Winter With Peacock” at the museum, a wintry picture, 6 foot 9 ½ inches by 4 foot 9 ½ inches, of a fenced-in garden with leafless trees and the bird in question in the foreground. Painted in broad strokes and drawn into with brusquely gestural lines, it is more suggestive of a prison’s exercise yard than of a fancy aviary. Completed in 1940, the year he died, it seems a landscape of despair, which, oddly, calls to mind the allegorical landscapes of postwar grief that Anselm Kiefer would create 40 years later.
These shows are unlikely to change minds about which Vuillard was better — the pre- or the post-1900 model — but they make a convincing case for looking more thoughtfully at what the late one did.
“Édouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940” runs through Sept. 23 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street; (212) 423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org. The Vuillard exhibition “Paintings and Works on Paper” runs through May 25 at Jill Newhouse, 4 East 81st Street, Manhattan; (212) 249-9216, jillnewhouse.com.

A clean-up but no shave as Mould outs first cross-dresser

Antique Trade Gazette

http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/8216.aspx

The rediscovered portrait of the Chevalier D’Eon which Philip Mould spotted at auction in New York. Its whereabouts had been unknown since 1926 and the Dover Street dealer is said to be in serious negotiations with the National Portrait Gallery.

23 April 2012
IT was the five o’clock shadow that gave it away. When London dealer Philip Mould spotted this 18th century portrait in a general paintings sale at the New York auctioneers Thomas Cornell Galleries in November last year, he thought it to be of a rather masculine middle-aged lady.

So did the auctioneers, who catalogued the oil on canvas, which was part of the collection of Ruth Stone, daughter of Samuel Klein of Klein's Department Stores, as 'Portrait of a Woman with a Feather in her hat' and attributed it to Gilbert Stuart.

Having done some research before the sale, which suggested all was not as it seemed, Mr Mould bought the painting and, upon cleaning it, found definite hints of stubble around the face.

"This fuelled further investigation that resulted in the astonishing discovery that the portrait is of the legendary spy, diplomat and transvestite Chevalier D'Eon that has been lost since 1926," he explained.

The French-born D'Eon (1728-1810) is known as the "Patron Saint of Transvestites" and the term "eonism", meaning cross-dressing and cross-sexuality, derives from him.

This is thought to be the earliest surviving formal portrait of a male transvestite, and research undertaken since by the gallery has attributed the work to the theatrical artist Thomas Stewart (b.1766), who specialised in painting actors and theatrical scenes in London in the 1790s – the same time as D'Eon was performing on stage as a fencer in drag.

The painting was almost certainly commissioned by the Earl of Moira, an 18th century Irish soldier, playwright and patron of the arts, and passed through his family till the 1850s when it was given to George III's ex-doctor – possibly as a mark of its medical curiosity. Descendants of the doctor sold it to an American collector at the beginning of last century, after which it apparently vanished.

According to Mr Mould, it is now "under serious consideration" by the National Portrait Gallery in London for an undisclosed price. Should they decide to purchase the work, it will represent the gallery's first oil painting of a cross-dresser in guise.

By Anna Brady

Christie’s and Sotheby’s galleries raise the stakes in Hong Kong

The Antique Trade Gazette

 http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/8199.aspx

10 April 2012

LARGE new gallery spaces in Hong Kong look set to provide the battleground in the competition for private treaty sales between Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

Christie's opened a 15,000 sq ft gallery and saleroom space in the heart of Hong Kong early in 2010. Now Sotheby's are to launch a similar venture, which is virtually the same size.

The new facilities will allow the two auction houses to showcase major artworks to wealthy Asian buyers on their doorstep all year round. They will also free them from the limitations of their time slots at the main convention centre where they continue to hold their major sales.

Christie's are already using their space for wine sales and previews, and both houses have mentioned future sales on their premises, but neither will yet give details of what these will entail.

However, the facilities will certainly give them a more visible presence in an increasingly important market beyond the biannual auction series they currently hold.

Christie's Asia president François Curiel told ATG: "It can be used for any kind of auction, and if we find we need to have additional auctions in addition to the big two auctions at the convention centre every year then yes, why not, but at the moment there is nothing on the calendar."

Meanwhile, Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby's Asia, said: "It has been very clear for the last couple of years that our clients want to transact with us outside of our current twice-yearly schedule, and that there is eager anticipation for the launch next month of our Hong Kong gallery space where we will mount auctions and selling exhibitions, show upcoming sale highlights from our other international centres and hold other events."

The Sotheby's HK gallery includes a permanent salon for Sotheby's Diamonds, "a unique partnership" with Steinmetz Diamond Group, "allowing clients to purchase from the collection throughout the year".

On top of previews in May for June sales in London, Sotheby's have announced two selling exhibitions for their new gallery space, from May 19-31.

One covers 30 'important works' by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and the other is Modern Masters: Corot to Monet – French Landscape Painting in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

The latter appears to be, at least in part, an exercise in taste-making, the key to broadening demand for Western art and antiques among Asian buyers.

Sotheby's president and CEO Bill Ruprecht added: "This transformative space will increase the level of activity and the range of objects we will offer to clients in Asia on a regular basis."

The results of Sotheby's five-day Hong Kong spring series of sales, which ended on April 4, illustrated why competition is becoming ever more heated in this market. Sotheby's Asia chief executive Kevin Ching announced "more than 2780 lots sourced from nearly 30 countries around the world were sold to buyers primarily from across Asia, but with substantial worldwide competition", and achieved over US$316m, "solidly over" pre-sale estimates of over US$244m.

By Tom Derbyshire

Hidden from the Revolution: Russian treasure unearthed

 Antique Trade Gazette
http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/8213.aspx

April 16

WORKERS restoring an 18th century house in St Petersburg have unearthed an extraordinary cache of Tsarist-era artefacts once owned by one of Russia’s most prominent noble families.
The opening of a walled-up niche between the second and the third floor of the Trubetskoi-Naryshkin mansion on Ulitsa Chaikovskogo in the city centre revealed more than 40 sacks of predominately late 19th century and early 20th century silver, jewellery, orders, coinage and stacks of documents. The value of the find, announced on March 28, is likely to run into millions of dollars.
To this day, Russia's former imperial capital St Petersburg is alive with rumours of untold treasures hidden by Russian aristocrats and business tycoons as Russia careered towards Bolshevism – and discoveries are not unheard of.
But this cache, found in a previously undetected storage space between two floors, ranks as spectacular. It includes three silver dinner sets of over 1000 pieces each from 1872, 1914 and 1915, most carrying the crest of the Naryshkins, descendents of Nataliya Naryshkina, the second wife of Tsar Alexis and the mother of Peter the Great.
The family lived in the house from 1875, when Duke Vasily Naryshkin acquired the two connected 18th century properties, but fled Russia on the eve of the October Revolution. Many of the objects were wrapped carefully in newspapers dated from March, June and September of 1917. Some of the larger items, including a group of silver and gilt samovars, were wrapped in cloth soaked in vinegar to prevent oxidisation.
Members of the city's Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments are currently taking an inventory of the hoard while local police, who were informed of the discovery more than 24 hours after it was made, may also seek to prosecute workers who had attempted to hide some of the treasure from the authorities.
Three parcel-gilt trays and flatware engraved with Naryshkin crest were reportedly found hidden in sacks of construction rubble outside the building.
Documents accompanying the find may shed light on who might have secreted the treasure at the time of the Revolution. A 1908 student card from the Imperial College and a certificate of the White Eagle Order from 1915 carry the name of family member First Lieutenant Sergey Somov who fled to Paris in 1917.
After the Bolsheviks nationalised private property, the Naryshkin home was turned into a stolovaya, a canteen serving simple meals to city workers. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the building became private apartments but was recently purchased for conversion into a conference and cultural centre. The new facility has been suggested as a fitting place for the hoard to be displayed but the issue of proper title is yet to be resolved.
According to Russian law, that operates something equivalent to the Treasure Trove law, the find should be divided into equal parts between the owner of the property on which it was found and the person or people who found it.
However, if the objects discovered are identified as having cultural or historical value, they will be given to the state and the owner and those who found them will receive a monetary value of the treasure.
It has been reported that the last members of the Naryshkin dynasty died in France in the mid 20th century.
By Roland Arkell

Collecting for Love or Money? That is the question

The TEFAF closed its doors and a successful jubilee it was. With 72,000 visitors crossing the threshold - of which 238 museum curators, 360 private jets flying in and an encouraging number of buyers from Russia, China and Hong Kong, the hope is that it was also a commercial success for exhibiting dealers.

To celebrate the 25 TEFAF Jubilee the fair organiser had organised an number of activities of which one was the TEFAF Art Symposium, titled “Collecting for Love or Money?“, held on the day the fair opened for the general public.

The opening talk was by Dr. Clare McAndrew, art economist who for the last three years compiled the renowned TEFAF art market report and the proprietor of ArtsEconomics. She presented a compilation of her report, covered market trends over the last 25 years and gave an outlook of what the art and antique trade may expect and the impact this could have. In 2011, 80% of gallery sales were € 50,000 and less and only 3% of art sales exceeding € 500,000, the USA is no longer the major stakeholder in the art market and has been surpassed by China that now has a 30% share. An impressive accomplishment because in 2006 China only had a share of 5%. The Chinese market is predominantly a domestic market of which a staggering 70% of the total sales are generated by the auction houses.

The last 25 years have shown an immense increase in size and sales volume, this is due to the globalisation of supply and demand and, of course, the development of internet. The market has furthermore developed into an event-driven market were art fairs are growing in numbers and thus playing a more important role as a point of sales for art and antiques, substituting more and more the physical shop front, which is now in decline.
Other changes are that auction houses have adopted new business models and besides auctioning also function as retailers. Parallel to these developments are art consultants acting as up and rising sales mediators.

As will be confirmed further on during the symposium, Dr. McAndrew states that there is an increasing demand for art as it is considered a valid investment alternative.

The report ‘Observations on the art trade over 25 years’ is basically an essential read for the serious collector and aficionado with an above average interest in the arts. The report can be ordered through the webshop of www.tefaf.com.

Prof. Rachel Pownall, Associate Professor of Finance at Tilburg University, gave us insight in the emotional values. An example, which caused a grin amongst the public, was the positive effects the weather had on stock prices. Through academic research, the effects of weather conditions were proven to effect people in their decision making. Gloomy weather in a negative sense and sun flooded days positively. In a nutshell, the message of the lecture was that positive emotions affect our optimistic judgement.

Fabien Bocart, Quantitative Research Director at Tutela Capital, a company specialised in producing analytical tools and investment strategies in the art market, presented some interesting observations. Based on the historical volatility of the market they can predict to a certain extent the possible gains and losses a collector is subject to. Two examples are the analysis of Canaletto and Andy Warhol.
Example: Canaletto (Yearly volatility of returns of an investment in Canaletto: ~21% )

Sources: Tutela Capital SA

Example: Andy Warhol (Yearly volatility of returns of an investment in Warhol: ~34% )

Sources: Tutela Capital SA

For collectors and investors the question is how to minimize risks and maximize returns. The road to follow is compare and analyse relevant data, be it on a professional level through quantitative tools or good old fashioned pen and paper. The second step, a great difficulty for passionate collectors, is to diversify, as diversification leads to fewer risks. The pie charts here below are illustrative.

Sources: Tutela Capital SA

Sources: Tutela Capital SA

Wrapping up his lecture, Fabien Bocart concluded financial risks and rewards are to a certain extent manageable. One of the very few certainties, as he announced in his opening is the ‘discovery’ that price in the art market goes up and down! More controllable are operational hazards which can be covered by, for example, insurance policies. Financial risks can be managed by a market analysis, diversifying and selling at the right moment in order to manage any liquidity risks. Finally, he stated that the art market is the only market that is immune against bankruptcy!

Panel Discussion
After a short coffee break there was a panel discussion on the subject of the symposium’s title, moderated by Annabelle Birnie, participating attendees were J. Patrice Marandel (Curator at the LACMA), George Kremer (private collector), Phillip Hoffman (Chief Executive of The Fine Art Fund Group), Fabien Bocart and Xavier Auerbach (tax partner PwC).

Phillip Hoffman had an interesting statement in which he claimed that the arts is the only commodity which actually does not devaluate, which is confirmed to a certain extent through Fabien Bocart’s previous presentation. To be noted is that a clear distinction was made between investing and speculating. Speculating being the financial gamble commonly seen when art bubbles are created, especially with contemporary art. To top it off, George Kremer was more than convinced that a great number of contemporary artists will be completely forgotten in the 50 years to come. In 2009, Ben Lewis, art critic and filmmaker, made an interesting documentary title ‘The Great Contemporary Art Bubble’, which gives an excellent insight how art bubbles are created.

One should not buy art when one wants to establish a collection, according to J. Patrice Marandel and George Kremer. J. Patrice Marandel strongly advises to start off with collecting books about the art one has a soft spot for before purchasing the first work of art. George Kremer stresses that educating once self is the all essential start of every collection. Books, lectures, museums, collectors and of course the trade, are the sources to consult before compiling a serious collection.

The overall conclusion to the question whether to collect for love or money can be none other than that it depends on personal motivations. Phillip Hoffman, the only non-collector amongst the panel members, states he is in it for the money in order to give his clients the best return on their investment and that the emotional value is nonexistent. J. Patrice Marandel and George Kremer obviously have different motivations and value the art they acquire on a more emotional level.

Conclusion
The symposium presented some very interesting insights, was more than worthwhile attending and will hopefully be a reoccurring event. Establishing a collection should require a bit more than just financial funds, whether ascertained for emotional reasons or from an investment perspective. Prior to developing a collection, one should be informed of market trends, price developments and obtain knowhow of the discipline(s) one wants to focus on. From a pure rational point of view, if collecting is ever a rational occupation, diversifying is financially the safest way to go, according to Fabien Bocart.

Boudewijn Meyer
Kunstpedia Foundation
 

China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest market for art and antiques

 TEFAF 16 March 2012

China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest market for art and antiques ending decades of American domination. This historic turning point, which is also an important indicator of seismic shifts in the wider global economy, is revealed in a new report published on Friday 16 March 2012. The International Art Market in 2011: Observations on the Art Trade over 25 Years has been commissioned by TEFAF Maastricht, the world’s best art and antiques fair.

China’s share of the global art market rose from 23% in 2010 to 30% last year, pushing the United States, with 29%, into second place. The report, compiled by Dr Clare McAndrew, a cultural economist specialising in the fine and decorative art market and founder of Arts Economics, called the development “perhaps one of the most fundamental and important changes in the last 50 years”. The United Kingdom, which was overtaken by China in 2010, remained third with a 22% market share while France was a distant fourth with 6%.

The powerful surge by China combined with a rise in fine art sales, particularly in the Modern and Contemporary sectors, led to a continuing strengthening in the art and antiques market worldwide. Sales in 2011 rose by 7% to €46.1 billion, an increase of 63% from the market crisis of 2009. Although not quite back to its 2007 pre-recession high of €48.1 billion, the market has staged a significant recovery over the past two years.

The principal findings of the report, the first TEFAF study of the market to be translated into Chinese, are:

∎ China overtook the US for the first time in 2011 to become the largest art and antiques market worldwide with a share of 30% based on both auction and dealer sales.

∎ The US share dropped by 5 percentage points to 29% while the combined total for the 27 European Union countries was also down by 3 percentage points to 34%. Among the EU nations, the largest markets were the UK with 22% of the global total and France with 6%, both unchanged.

∎ The Chinese art and antiques auction sector was the strongest growing market worldwide with a dramatic rise of 177% in 2010 and a further 64% in 2011.

∎ The global art market continued to recover in 2011, increasing by 7% to €46.1 billion, an increase of 63% since the market crisis of 2009. The volume of transactions also increased by 5% to 36.8 million.

∎ The driving forces behind the recovery were strong sales in the Chinese auction market and the rise of fine art sales (over decorative art).

∎ The Modern and Contemporary sectors combined to account for nearly 70% of the fine art market. Both continued a strong recovery in 2011, leading them to levels in excess of the boom of 2007-2008.

∎ The art market took nearly a decade to recover from the recession of the 1990s whereas the contraction in 2009 has been relatively short-lived. This is due, in part, to its increasingly global nature.

∎ The art market has more than doubled in size in the 25 years since TEFAF Maastricht was founded and grew over 575% from its lowest point in 1991 (just under US$10 billion) to its highest in 2007 (US$66 billion/€48.1 billion).

“Apart from its rapid increase in size, the last decade has witnessed significant changes in the art market’s geographical distribution of sales,” writes Dr McAndrew in the report. “The next decade will be the first period when emerging market countries contribute more to global economic growth than developed ones.”

“The dominance of the Chinese market has been driven by expanding wealth, strong domestic supply and the investive drive of Chinese art buyers. Although recent economic turmoil has created a more cautious buying climate in the rest of the world, growing domestic difficulties in Chinese property and stock markets and the lack of other alternatives appear to have led to a significant amount of substitution into art as an investment by Chinese consumers.”

“However all regions will be facing challenges in 2012 and beyond: the Chinese art market in how to cope with an overheated market and promote more stable, long-term growth; Europe, with how to maintain its competitiveness in the face of continued regulatory and cost burdens: and the US, with the challenge of losing its supremacy during the recent past as the centre for demand and supply in the market.”

Antique Ivory Sales Banned in California, Consignments Seized

Maine Antique Digest April 2012 Issue 
by David Hewett
http://www.maineantiquedigest.com/stories/index.html?id=3069

California recently began to strictly enforce a much-amended state law, and it has already caused dealers and auctioneers much grief.
On Sunday, February 5, a dealer couple in their 60's set up at an outdoor flea market. A visitor to their booth picked up an item and asked, "What's this made of?" "It's ivory," the man answered.
Wrong answer. The customer flashed his badge and identified himself as an agent with the California Department of Fish and Game. He then proceeded to seize all eight of the pieces in the booth that contained ivory. He cited the couple for committing a misdemeanor and gave them a court appearance date of April 12. The man estimated his loss at between $1500 and $2000. He told M.A.D. that another dealer had lost upward of $10,000 worth of material.
That dealer, like others who spoke with us, was afraid of publicity. He said he'd heard we were working on a report about the seizures, and that's why he'd made the cold call to us. He refused to give his name or even the location of the seizure. The reason? "People are saying if you make a stink about it or get your name in the papers, they could sic the IRS on you or make it a federal case," he said. "My wife is a schoolteacher. They could change the misdemeanor charge to a felony, and then she'd be out of a job."
That couple's loss is but a fraction compared to what the owners of Slawinski Auction Company suffered. The Scotts Valley, California, firm was raided on February 18 by agents enforcing the new law. When the agents left, they took all the ivory lots with them—ivory worth approximately $150,000.
Some in the auction trade learned about that event through a February 20 e-mail warning sent out by Rosie DeStories, co-owner of Fairfield Auction in Monroe, Connecticut.
DeStories wrote: "The State of California Department of Fish and Game is ACTIVELY raiding auction houses and antique shows, confiscating ivory. It is now illegal to sell or have the intent to sell ANY IVORY within the State of California or to sell it to any bidders within the State of California REGARDLESS OF THE AGE of the ivory. The fine is a minimum of $1000 per violation and a maximum up to $5000 per violation."
DeStories's message continued: "Two days ago during an auction preview approximately 25 uniformed and armed State of California Department of Fish and Game officers stormed into my brother's auction preview. They confiscated approximately 40 lots of antique ivory that was scheduled to be auctioned yesterday on February 19."
DeStories's brother is Robert "Rob" Slawinski. He and their father, Robert "Bob" Slawinski, run the Slawinski Auction Company. We spoke with the elder Slawinski on March 6.
"This was a screw-up that didn't have to happen," he said. "We checked with Fish and Wildlife well before the auction. We have always worked with the idea that ivory has to be genuinely antique in order to sell it; I mean older than one hundred years. I've been very careful about that. We even refused a couple of pieces for that sale because we couldn't prove they were that old."
Slawinski went on to say that he had called the Department of Fish and Game and spoken to a woman there. "I explained I had an auction coming up in a few days and needed to know if there was something going on. We had heard there might be changes relating to ivory. I said I was selling antique ivory and needed to know if I was doing everything I needed to, legally, and was told they'd get back to me. She called me back a couple of hours later and said she wasn't able to talk to anybody.
"The night they showed up, they covered the parking lot. We had probably twenty armed agents here. There was no reason for that level of intimidation. They were uniformed and armed to the teeth. I have some young girls working here, and those kids were just shaking.
"I tried to work with them. About midway through the evening I told the chief, 'Look, this whole thing could have been resolved if you'd just had somebody in the office to give me the information I needed.'
"I pulled out my iPhone and showed him and said, 'What's your number?' Then I scrolled down and went to Friday and 10:41, and said, 'Here's when I called you.' He took the phone out of my hand and said, 'That's my number, and you were on the phone for five minutes.'
"I said, 'Somebody in your office answered the phone and told me no one was available,' and he said, 'No, that's not true. I was in the office all day.' He said he knew some calls came in, but 'she didn't say anything to me, and her desk is twenty feet from my desk.'
"They gave me a receipt [for what they took], but what they didn't give me was any kind of a summons. I think at that time they realized I'd done everything humanly possible. But apparently that's not enough."
Slawinski said his record was spotless, he'd been involved with the local community for 40 years, had run numerous charity auctions, and had actually received an award for saving the life of the local sheriff.
"This is impacting far more than my business," Bob Slawinski said. "One of my consignors brought me a collection that had been in the family for years and years with things going back to 1800. They needed to raise money for medical bills.
"I've called most of my consignors, and they'll be taken care of," Slawinski said. "They'll be paid whether we get the ivory back or not. My reputation is important to me. Integrity is everything in the auction business."
Slawinski said he'd learned from those conducting the raid that they had sent in two undercover agents that afternoon.
When California Department of Fish and Game law enforcement spokesman Patrick Foy heard about the raid, he laughed. "I doubt we're able to get twenty-five 'uniformed and armed' officers together in this state at any one time," he said. "That's a little over the top."
"It is illegal to sell any ivory or other material from any animal on the endangered species list in California," he pointed out. "It's legal to possess it, but you cannot sell it. Possession with intent to sell is illegal. It's a misdemeanor level crime."
We asked where they got their leads. Foy said, "If I'm at a trade show or something like that kind of event, and I find someone with elephant ivory, that's illegal. It is not legal to sell elephant ivory in California. It doesn't matter if it's antique. There is no provision in the law for how long it has been possessed or when it was made. It's still illegal to possess ivory with intent to sell in California," Foy said. "It's important to know that we are not in the business to put antique dealers out of business; that's not what we're after. Our intent is to prohibit the business of selling wildlife parts."
The portion of the law identifying the species covered lists more than just elephants, though. Whales, dolphins, porpoises, and polar bears are also included. Here's the first full paragraph of the relevant criminal code:
California Penal Code Section 653o:
(a) It is unlawful to import into this state for commercial purposes, to possess with intent to sell, or to sell within the state, the dead body, or any part or product thereof, of any polar bear, leopard, ocelot, tiger, cheetah, jaguar, sable antelope, wolf (Canis lupus), zebra, whale, cobra, python, sea turtle, colobus monkey, kangaroo, vicuna, sea otter, free-roaming feral horse, dolphin or porpoise (Delphinidae), Spanish lynx, or elephant.
Crocodiles, alligators, and seals are covered in subsequent paragraphs.
The next section, Penal Code Section 653p, repeats some of 653o, makes possession illegal, and identifies the root source of the law:
It is unlawful to possess with the intent to sell, or to sell, within the state, the dead body, or any part or product thereof, of any species or subspecies of any fish, bird, mammal, amphibian, reptile, mollusk, invertebrate, or plant, the importation of which is illegal under the Federal Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Title 16, United States Code Sec. 1531 et seq.) and subsequent amendments, or under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (Title 16, United States Code Sec. 1361 et seq.), or which is listed in the Federal Register by the Secretary of the Interior pursuant to the above acts. The violation of any federal regulations adopted pursuant to the above acts shall also be deemed a violation of this section.
There are thousands of objects that may contain ivory from the teeth of endangered species. All whales, including beluga, blue, bowhead, finback, humpback, killer, North Atlantic right, sei, and sperm, are listed as endangered in the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Similarly, all elephants are listed on the endangered species list. Since almost all ivory found on antique objects comes from elephants and/or whales, anything containing ivory is illegal to offer to sell in California.
Antique pianos often have ivory key veneers. Some antique silver or plated tableware may have an ivory ring between the handle and knife blade. Federal and country-made furniture sometimes has bone or ivory key escutcheons, and then there is the vast amount of carved ivory Orientalia that makes up whole subsections of auction offerings and is found in countless gift and curio shops throughout California.
Bonhams' March 13 Asian decorative arts sale in San Francisco included well over 125 lots that contained ivory. On March 9 and 10, all of those lots were abruptly withdrawn. Many of those lots contained multiple objects (some with as many as eight pieces), and most were described as 20th century in origin.
The law's strict enforcement is going to have an impact on those who make a number of objects, such as knives and pool cues, and repairers of antique musical instruments. Custom knife maker Al Warren of Roseville, California (who uses several types of ivory on his knives), thought he was operating legally when he wrote on his Web site: "In 1987 I secured a good supply of elephant tusk and have the 1975 bill of lading for its entry into the USA. Copies are available upon request with purchase of a knife with elephant ivory."
Warren is well aware of the pitfalls involving selling objects containing whale products. "I have a very limited number of registered teeth that belong to me that I can use for knife handles, but due to a stipulation in the law, I cannot ship them to any address outside the state of California [his emphasis]."
Warren said, when told about the California law being strictly enforced, "I guess I better get to my Web site and change some things."
The penal code banning the sale of ivory isn't the only law affecting the sale of animal parts. "If an animal exists in the wild in California," Patrick Foy said, "it's illegal to sell parts from that animal. As an example, if you hold a valid hunting license and shoot a nice big buck and have the head mounted, it's illegal to sell that head to another person. You can give it to your buddy, you can transport it somewhere, but you can't sell it."
eBay, based in California, already has made its decision about how to handle ivory. It placed a global ban on the sale of all types of ivory, stating: "This global ban will be effective January 1, 2009."
California's law will have no effect on the root cause. The demand for ivory from Asia is driving the mass murder of elephants in Africa. Poachers in Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park, using modern automatic weapons, slaughtered up to 450 elephants for their tusks in just one bloody raid in mid-February.
According to TRAFFIC, a conservation group that tracks trends in wildlife trading, a record number of large-scale ivory seizures happened around the globe in 2011. TRAFFIC estimated that over 23 tons of ivory was seized in raids by authorities last year.
"I'll get beyond this," auctioneer Bob Slawinski said. "This will not affect my reputation because everybody knows me, but some homeowner who sells a used piano with ivory keys who gets busted will be liable for six months of jail time and a fine.
"They are not interested in sending people to jail; California wants the money, one to five thousand dollars fine per item."
Agents Charge the Real Traffickers in Endangered Species Parts
On January 6, 2011, a California task force working under the name Operation Cyberwild announced it had brought charges against 12 people who allegedly sold clothing, footwear, and rugs made from parts of endangered species, plus live birds and fish that appear on the endangered species list.
The arrests were announced in Los Angeles by several Assistant U.S. Attorneys, by Scott Flaherty of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and by Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Game (see his comments in the main story).
The accused allegedly offered the prohibited material on two Internet services, Craigslist and eBay. Those who face federal charges were said to have sold a pair of boots made from loggerhead sea turtle leather, a leopard skin coat, a pair of sea turtle leather shoes, a tiger skin rug, and a hawksbill sea turtle shell.
The two defendants facing California charges were said to have sold an elephant foot, a bearskin rug, and mounted hawks and birds.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announcement of the arrests reported that they were aided by "[f]ive volunteers from the Humane Society of the United States who searched the Internet for suspicious items and referred the listings to investigators."
________________________________________
Originally published in the April 2012 issue of Maine Antique Digest. © 2012 Maine Antique Digest

Gerhard Richter, Henry Moore and Rubens at Maastricht Fair

You Need a Rubens? Sorry, Sold

The New York Times
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: March 18, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/arts/design/gerhard-richter-henry-moore-and-rubens-at-maastricht-fair.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — There’s nothing unusual about hearing French, Italian, German or even Russian spoken at the European Fine Art Fair. But this year, as the doors to the cavernous convention center here opened for the invitation-only preview on Thursday, Chinese was also a noticeable part of the mix.
Keenly aware that Asia is the fastest-growing segment of the art market right now, a group of the fair’s dealers and organizers made a visit to Beijing and Shanghai in September to meet with collectors’ clubs and private museums and to talk up the fair. As a result of that trip alone, officials here said, about 100 visas were issued to Chinese collectors for visits to the Netherlands. And by the time the 10-day fair ends, on Sunday, they expect that 250 to 500 collectors, dealers and other art world figures will have made a trip here from China.
For first-time visitors the variety of things to see is dizzying: “This is the only place you can buy something that is 1,000 years old and something that is still wet,” said Matt Carey-Williams, international director of the London gallery Haunch of Venison.
Some $1.3 billion worth of art and objects from many categories are on view. Among this year’s highlights: a monumental black marble sculpture by Henry Moore from 1977, priced at $35 million; an early Rubens oil painting on a panel that was sold, for perhaps as much as $3.9 million; a ruby and pearl brooch by Salvador Dalí in the form of Marilyn Monroe’s lips, for $45,000; and an ancient Chinese caldron for $3 million.
The influx of Chinese collectors is a boon for dealers in Asian art. Gisele Croes, a Brussels dealer, said she had had a blockbuster fair so far, selling many works of Chinese art on the opening day, including a scholar’s rock priced at $180,000. Three Asian collectors, she added, are all seriously considering buying a bronze caldron from the Eastern Zhou period (770-221 B.C.), apparently undaunted by the $3 million price. “I’ve met a lot of new Chinese collectors this year,” Ms. Croes said.
Over all about 70,000 visitors are expected to flock to this small Dutch city, about an hour and a half east of Brussels, over the course of the fair. During the opening weekend many recognizable faces could be spotted perusing booths here, including Calvin Klein; Sheik Saud al-Thani of Qatar; and American collectors like J. Tomilson Hill, and his wife, Janine, and Donald L. Bryant Jr. and his wife, Bettina. Timothy Potts, the new director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, is also here, as is Adam D. Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, who is making his first visit to Maastricht, with a group of museum trustees and supporters. “It’s really refreshing to see the way people here are really looking at the art,” Mr. Weinberg said.
Before the fair opened there was a good deal of anxiety among the dealers about how much business they would do given the financial turmoil in Europe. And though a true measure of business at any fair is difficult to gauge, as of Sunday business was slow for some, while others had made impressive sales. “It seems more active than last year,” said Richard L. Feigen, the New York dealer, whose booth was filled with an impressive array of old master paintings. “People are frightened of various currencies, and art is a good repository for their money.”
Among the star attractions this year is that early Rubens painting, a particularly dramatic Crucifixion scene dating from around 1618-20. Konrad O. Bernheimer, the Munich dealer who was selling it, said the painting came from a Spanish family that had owned it since the 1970s. It sold within the first hour of the fair to Eijk van Otterloo, a financier and collector, and his wife, Rose-Marie, who live in Boston.
Old master paintings, often by artists who are far from household names, have long been the heart and soul of this fair. Some are discoveries that dealers wait to show off here for the first time. Richard Green gallery in London has an immaculately detailed still life of exotic plants by the 17th- and 18th-century Dutch flower painter Rachel Ruysch, who — as both one of the most skilled painters of her time and a woman in a male-dominated profession — was something of a star in her day.
This canvas, from 1700, was discovered by Jonathan Green, the gallery’s deputy executive chairman, in a small auction in upstate New York. “It hadn’t been seen for 100 years,” Mr. Green said. He paid about $2 million for the painting, which has now been cleaned and researched and has an asking price of $4.3 million. As of Sunday morning it was still unsold.
A few years ago several major American modern and contemporary dealers began exhibiting here, making for some competition with fairs that specialize in newer art like Art Basel, in Switzerland. But many left and still haven’t been replaced. Still, those who have stayed — Sperone Westwater, Anthony Meier and Christophe Van der Weghe to name a few — value the fair for the mix of serious collectors it draws. “I see people here that I don’t see at any other fairs,” Mr. Van der Weghe said.
Their booths feature good examples of exactly what collectors want right now. Both Mr. Meier, of San Francisco, and Mr. Van der Weghe, of New York, have been showing paintings by Gerhard Richter for years, but a retrospective that was at the Tate Modern in London and has now traveled to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is contributing to a new level of interest in Mr. Richter. Mr. Meyer’s stand has 28 works by Mr. Richter from every style and period of his career, including “Kleine Strasse,” a 1987 landscape Mr. Meyer bought at a Christie’s auction in London in 2008 for $4.5 million. It was for sale here for $5.6 million and sold on Thursday.
Mr. Van der Weghe has a 1984 abstract canvas by Mr. Richter that he is hoping to sell for $5.5 million. “This is an artist who appeals to new collectors and hardcore ones who want a piece of art history,” he said.
It wouldn’t be a 21st-century art fair without at least one video installation. And this being old master country, the Fine Art Society, the London gallery, is offering a work by the British artists Rob and Nick Carter titled “Transforming Still Life Painting: After Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, ‘Vase With Flowers in a Window’ ” (2009-12). They have created a computer-generated exact copy of this celebrated 1618 painting in the collection of the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague; over the course of their looped, three-hour film, the image of a bouquet of flowers changes almost imperceptibly to reflect the passage of time. Every few minutes there’s a tiny moment of drama — when a caterpillar snacks on a leaf, for instance, or a snail crawls out of its shell. The work was produced in an edition of 12 (8 had sold by Sunday), and the gallery was asking about $105,000 for it.
“Mauritshuis has No. 1 of the edition,” said Patrick Bourne, managing director of the Fine Art Society gallery. One excited buyer is the Paris dealer old master dealer Bob Haboldt who fell in love with the video. “In a way it’s better than the real thing,” he said. “It’s just not 400 years old.”

Qatar Purchases Cézanne’s The Card Players for More Than $250 Million, Highest Price Ever for a Work of Art

 http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/02/qatar-buys-cezanne-card-players-201202

By Alexandra Peers

With this landmark score, the tiny, oil-rich nation joins a massively exclusive club: only five Card Players exist, and the other four are in world-class collections such as the Musée d’Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The purchase is just the latest bid in Qatar’s effort to become an international intellectual hub.

The tiny, oil-rich nation of Qatar has purchased a Paul Cézanne painting, The Card Players, for more than $250 million. The deal, in a single stroke, sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art and upends the modern art market.

If the price seems insane, it may well be, since it more than doubles the current auction record for a work of art. And this is no epic van Gogh landscape or Vermeer portrait, but an angular, moody representation of two Aix-en-Provence peasants in a card game. But, for its $250 million, Qatar gets more than a post-Impressionist masterpiece; it wins entry into an exclusive club. There are four other Cézanne Card Players in the series; and they are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d’Orsay, the Courtauld, and the Barnes Foundation. For a nation in the midst of building a museum empire, it’s instant cred.

Is the painting, created at the cusp of the 20th century, worth it? Well, Cézanne inspired Cubism and presaged abstract art, and Picasso called him “the father of us all.” That said, “$250 million is a fortune,” notes Victor Wiener, the fine-art appraiser called in by Lloyd’s of London when Steve Wynn put his elbow through a Picasso, in 2006. “But you take any art-history course, and a Card Players is likely in it. It’s a major, major image.” For months, he said, “its sale has been rumored. Now, everyone will use this price as a point of departure: it changes the whole art-market structure.”

The Cézanne sale actually took place in 2011, and details of the secret deal are now coming out as a slew of V.I.P. collectors, curators, and dealers head to Qatar for the opening next week of a Takashi Murakami blockbuster that was recently on view in the Palace of Versailles. The nation, located on its own small jetty off the Arabian Peninsula, is a new destination on the art-world grand tour: current exhibitions include an 80-foot-high Richard Serra and a Louise Bourgeois retrospective (her bronze spider is crawling across the Doha Convention Center), and in March it hosts a Global Art Forum that attracts artists, curators, and patrons from museum groups worldwide.

Land of the 1 Percent
Qatar (and its capital city, Doha) isn’t just a destination for those with private jets. It’s also a burgeoning intellectual and media hub. It hosts the headquarters of Al Jazeera, the Mideast campuses of Georgetown, Texas A&M, and Northwestern Universities—and of one the most ambitious sets of cultural goals since the robber barons and empire builders of America founded so many grand institutions a century ago.

Qatar does big things in a spectacular way. In 2008 when it opened the Museum of Islamic Art, a grand limestone behemoth by I. M. Pei, a flotilla of vintage ships sailed in V.I.P. guests representing the world’s great museums. Later, Robert De Niro floated up from the sea in a revolving open-air elevator to announce the Tribeca Film Festival was starting a Doha outpost.

In 2010, Qatar opened its Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Qatar National Museum, currently closed for renovation by superstar architect Jean Nouvel, will reopen in 2014. That’s where the Cézanne could end up, flanked by some famous Rothkos, Warhols, and Hirsts that the Qataris have been snapping up in a buying spree.

The royal family of Qatar, does not comment on its purchases, however. And the tight circle of auction, houses, officials and dealers it is involved with, by and large, sign confidentiality agreements. But multiple sources confirm the record purchase of The Card Players.

The Deal
How did Qatar get the Cézanne? For years, Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos had owned and treasured the painting, rarely lending it. He was “entertained” but unmoved, according to one art dealer, by occasional offers for it that climbed ever higher alongside the art market in past decades. A few years ago, the painting was listed by artnews magazine as one of the world’s top artworks still in private hands.

Shortly before his death in the winter of 2011, Embiricos began discussions about its sale, which was handled by his estate. Two art dealers—William Acquavella and another, rumored to be Larry Gagosian—offered upward of $220 million for the painting, people close to the matter said. But the royal family of Qatar, without quibbling on price, outbid them, at $250 million. (Disputes about the exact price turn on currency exchange rates, exactly when the painting changed hands—and whether the person talking has a pricey Cézanne in inventory. Estimates of what Qatar paid range as high as $300 million.)

Qatar’s appetite was all the stronger because, as the sale was going on, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was opening an entire exhibition devoted to the Card Players series—noticeably absent the elusive Embiricos one. Believed to be the final one the artist painted, circa 1895, it’s “the darkest, the most stripped down and essential,” said Gary Tinterow, curator of that Met show and, as of this week, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Members of the royal family of Qatar work through G.P.S., a New York-and-Paris-based triumvirate of dealers known for its discretion. Its principals include Lionel Pissarro, grandson of the painter Camille Pissarro, and dealer Philippe Segalot, who had handled many private transactions for luxury-goods billionaire François Pinault. Guy Bennett, former head of worldwide Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s, also played a hand in the record-setting deal, people close to the matter said. (Christie’s goes way back with the Embiricos family, who are a horsey set, as it hosts the annual Foxhunter Chase in Cheltenham, England.)

The most paid for a painting at auction is the $106 million, paid last year at Christie’s for a lush portrait of Picasso’s curvy mistress Marie-Thérèse. Privately, works by Picasso, Pollock, Klimt, and de Kooning have changed hands in the $125 million-to-$150 million range, traded to and from by Ronald Lauder, Wynn, David Geffen, and the like. But no price has come close to this one. And Qatar is also buying 20th-century art: The Art Newspaper, with has chronicled Qatar’s buying sprees with care and ferocity, earlier this year crowned the nation the biggest single contemporary-art buyer in the world.

The money is there: the United Arab Emirates region (which, loosely defined, includes Dubai, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi) is home to nearly 10 percent of all the world’s oil reserve, nearly four million people, and, until recently, the planet’s largest-ever construction boom. Qatar’s neighbor (and rival) Abu Dhabi started, stopped, and now has started again ambitious plans to build outposts of the Louvre and the Guggenheim museums on its Saadiyat Island.

The region’s glamorous arts expansion takes place in the shadow of the Arab Spring, of course, but that hasn’t stopped the showmanship game. This is a play for fame, tourism, and immortality—and the buyers are well versed in Hollywood-style hype. The daughter of Qatar’s emir, 28-year-old Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, now heads the Qatar Museums Authority. But her first job was working as an intern in New York for the Tribeca Film Festival. (She once bragged, laughing, that her job was picking up breakfast pastries for Jane Rosenthal.) Next week, she’s hosting the opening of the Murakami exhibition.

Qatar became an art-world force roughly a decade ago, when Sheikh Saud Al-Thani, cultural minister and second cousin of the emir of Qatar, began an unprecedented global spending spree. That ended ignobly, with the sheikh’s arrest in 2005 for misuse of public funds (he has since been released). Now his cousin the emir Saud al Saud continues to buy.

Is the buying spree over? Not a chance. Qatar made another major acquisition last year, hiring Christie’s chairman Edward J. Dolman as executive director of the Museums Authority.

A market divided

The Art Newspaper

Top quality works are keeping the numbers up, but there are uncertain times ahead

By Georgina Adam. News, Issue 231, January 2012

The crisis in the eurozone, the threat of reces­sion, rising unemployment and widespread political uncertainty painted a grim picture of the global economy at the end of 2011—and yet one sector was apparently defiant: the art market. As the economic gloom deepened through the autumn, there was widespread speculation that it, too, would inevitably follow other sectors downwards, and the autumn season’s fairs and auctions were watched carefully, and with more anxiety, than usual.
But as the results came in, it was clear that some sectors of the art market were almost miraculously walking on water. Sotheby’s 8 November sale in New York fetched extraordinary prices for a group of Clyfford Stills and for works by Gerhard Richter, and its total of $315.8m was its third highest for such a sale, with just $100,000 separating it from its second (the record is still held by Christie’s $384.6m sale in May 2007). The autumn fairs and many other auctions also turned in more than respectable results. Based on almost complete data for 2011, the French site Artprice reported that the year was the best ever for sales of art at auction: $10.7bn, compared with $9.5bn in 2010. This extraordinary result shows that the market was still growing last year, boosted by Chinese buyers.

Art has certainly benefited from being considered by some as a “tangible asset”. “Investors were disappointed in financial assets following the economic crisis and there is growing demand for ‘real assets’ that offer a long-term store of value,” says Randall Willette of Fine Art Wealth Management.

An illustration was the extraordinary results of the New York sales of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels and memorabilia (total $156.7m) last month, which showed that there is still a massive amount of money available to be splurged on luxury goods—an area into which art is, rightly or wrongly, assimilated by many financial analysts.

The major questions, as we go into this year, are how resilient is the market, and can it continue to operate in an apparently parallel dimension?

First, and this cannot be repeated enough: the art market is not a single entity, but a succession of smaller markets. The chart (see p8) looks at impressionist, modern and contemporary art sold at auction since 2004, and shows the first slipping slightly while the other two are still rising. In other fields, however, the picture is not so rosy—recent sales of Old Masters, Russian art, Middle Eastern art, 19th-century painting and European sculpture have all seen high buy-in rates, while antiques, furniture in particular, are in the doldrums.

“Dealers in smaller markets are very panicky,” says art economist Clare McAndrew. She has been conducting wide-ranging interviews for her annual report on the market, published during the Maastricht fair (The European Fine Art Fair) every March. “But the high end is getting further away from the rest,” she says.

“The increase in the sheer amount of wealth is leading to a bifurcation towards ‘masterpieces’,” says Michael Plummer of Artvest. This leads to big prices being paid for top pieces even in otherwise weak sectors, one example being the $6.9m given for a Louis XVI lacquer commode in the Safra sale at Sotheby’s, New York in October.

The difference between today and the 2008-09 crisis is that the very rich have, overall, regained their fortunes and are spending again. “From 2009 to 2010, it was seen as unfashionable to flash your cash,” says McAndrew. “And at that time, UHNWIs [ultra-high-net-worth individuals, defined by Merrill Lynch-Capgemini as those with more than $30m in investable assets], were worried about banks going under, so they held off spending; today’s concerns about unemployment, say, are not their problem.”

And if they buy mainly in the contemporary art segment, it is because the art market is supply-driven: this is the only part that can continue to furnish stock, particularly as the very rich increasingly parade their wealth with private art spaces showing contemporary art.

It is also fashion-driven: today’s buyers, those with new wealth in particular, like the “branded” nature of contemporary art. Contemporary also has global reach, says Jeff Rabin of Artvest, but he cautions: “The greatest demand will be for fresh and correctly estimated property.”

The market is also highly dependent on confidence, something that was bolstered by the good results of the autumn sales. “There were surprisingly few guarantees in the November sales,” says Nick Maclean of the dealership Eykyn Maclean. “This shows that vendors were confident they would sell.” He says that in the impressionist and modern art field the auction results do not reveal the enormous amount of business transacted out of the public eye, through private dealers or through the auction houses’ private treaty departments. He is confident that there is enough supply in this field as well.

Nevertheless, there were signs of weakening as last year ended. The Russians have been slowing their buying, and while market leader Sotheby’s announced an increase of 16.6% on its sales (in New York and London) for 2011 over 2010, its strongest sales were at the beginning of last year.

Much was also made of a weakening of the Chinese market after Christie’s November sales in Hong Kong finally hit a snag. The firm sold $385m-worth of mainly Asian works of art, down 8% on its 2010 results. But, says Plummer: “The Chinese market is still strong, but has gone from overheated and reckless to more discerning, overall a good thing.” Meanwhile, the mainland auction houses continue to report blisteringly good results ($1.8bn for 2011, says Poly, a Chinese auction house).

“The art market is saved by two things: Europe, with its economic woes, is becoming less important; and the high end is so strong,” says McAndrew. And the market is also supported by countries such as Qatar (The Art Newspaper, July-August 2011, p1). Rabin sounds a warning: “We are in uncertain financial times and a scare in the financial markets and the continued fragility of the euro could change the landscape overnight,” he says.

Are furniture prices levelling out after years of decline?

 
Antique Trade Gazette

23 January 2012
After massive falls in the previous two years, the Antique Collectors’ Club’s Annual Furniture Index (AFI) dropped by a modest two per cent in 2011.

While, for reasons of fashion and function, the English antique furniture market remains in a parlous state, the decline was no more severe than those seen on the stock exchange or the housing market.

Established in 1968, the AFI is based on a blend of retail and auction prices for 1400 typical (rather than exceptional) pieces of furniture from seven different periods or categories pictured in John Andrews' book British Antique Furniture. It does not reflect the volume of items traded, nor does it include spectacular sales at the top end of the market where prices largely held up well.

The index stood at 100 when Mr Andrews began the project and it reached an historic high of 3575 points in 2002. But the past decade has seen a steady decline, including record falls of seven per cent in 2009 and eight per cent in 2010. Last year, the index moved downwards again from 2505 to 2463. It was last at this level in 1995.

Five of the seven constituent indices of the AFI registered falls in 2011. The categories most associated with the decline in formal dining, Late Mahogany (-3%) and Regency (-3%), show few signs of returning to form, while falling demand for dressers and a lack of good examples meant Oak (-2%) and Country (-4%) again showed the new-found vulnerability that marked them among the biggest losers in 2010.

Across 43 years, oak and country have been the strongest of all categories, but post-1770 mahogany furniture now carries the lowest of all index figures at 1803.

The Early Mahogany category saw a small gain (+1%) and Walnut, which fell 7% in 2010, was up by 5% in 2011, something Mr Andrews attributed to a very limited supply.
"There was a shortage of quality in the auction rooms, where routine antique furniture continued to be in poor demand," he said.

Early Victorian pieces were again the biggest loser at -8%.

Only items that were well above average in terms of design and quality, or those with an attractive provenance, maintained their values.

The separate Victorian & Edwardian Index, started in 1973 and once the recipient of spectacular gains, continues to nosedive, dropping a further 11%, mirroring double-digit falls in recent years. While some forms remain strong, such as the upholstered tub chairs popular with interior decorators, other standard late 19th and early 20th century pieces, such as the davenport, the work table and the credenza still languish among the unfashionable.

The Victorian & Edwardian Index, which stood at 2031 in 2003, has lost more than half of its value during the tailspin of the past decade. It now stands at 871, below the index figure it held in 1988.

Nevertheless, given the modest fall in the overall index, Mr Andrews finds some cause for optimism, particularly when measuring the AFI against comparable indices for the FT250 Share Index or the average house price in the south east of England.

"In today's economic circumstances it could have been much worse," he concluded.

Reports from the 'factory floor' during the final quarter of 2011 were also cause for some encouragement. Paul Viney, chairman of the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers, commented in January: "An aspect I have noticed in the last few months is that English furniture has become more sought after, though whether this is merely a blip or represents an encouraging emergence from the doldrums of the last few years, it's difficult to say."

A fuller analysis of the AFI numbers is published in the February edition of Antique Collectors' Club magazine Antique Collecting.

By Roland Arkell

Subtle changes to summer fairs calendar

Antique Trade Gazette 

16 January 2012
The dates for the trio of major London summer fairs have now been released.

The sequence of the three events sees the Olympia International Fine Art & Antiques Fair (June 7-17) overlapped by Art Antiques London (June 13-20) followed just over a week later by Masterpiece (June 28 to July 4).

The calendar is subtly different from last year when Olympia and Art Antiques London (incorporating The International Ceramics Fair and Seminar) both opened on June 9. This year they will overlap rather than clash. The new dates also mean there will be less clear air between the first two fairs and Masterpiece at the end of the month.

Talk of the disjointed London summer season abounded at last year's fairs. Two events opening on the same day proved unpopular, while overseas visitors in particular were asked to make a choice between an early or a late June trip.

Haughton Fairs, organisers of Art Antiques London, held since 2010 in a purpose-built pavilion in Kensington Gardens next to the Albert Memorial, were the last of the three organisers to declare their hand for 2012. They say the new dates have been well received by exhibitors.

After celebrating its tenth anniversary last year, Master Drawings London is returning once again to Mayfair, St James's and Bloomsbury from June 27 to July 5.

State of the Art-Unique exposition by the Association of Fine Art Dealers in The Netherlands- Nov 12, 2011- Jan 8, 2012

 “State of the Art” -
Unique exposition by the Association of Fine Art Dealers
in The Netherlands- Nov 12, 2011- Jan 8, 2012

Brings together the most beautiful pieces from the Dutch art trade in an extraordinary exhibition at Paleis Het Loo Nationaal Museum, starting from the 12th of November 2011.

Amsterdam, November 2011

The Dutch Antiques Dealers Association (VHOK) was founded 100 years ago. To celebrate its centenary, the Association is presenting a broad selection of the masterpieces its members have had the pleasure of dealing with throughout the years in this jubilee exhibition.

Historical Event
At this exhibition, the public will be able to view State of the Art-pieces that are owned, or were traded by the members of the VHOK. The variety of works on display - from museums, private collections and the art trade - is dazzling.

Robert Aronson, Chairman of the VHOK: “We can really speak of a historical event. In fact, this is only the third time that this kind of event will take place. The first time was in 1929, and the second in 1936, that’s 75 years ago! And with this, we also hope to clarify to the Dutch art-loving audience that as an interest group the Association continues to endorse the superior quality of the art and antiques offered for sale by its members. In so doing, it aims to gain the trust of and afford certainty to future buyers.”

Prof. dr. Johan R. ter Molen, Director of Paleis Het Loo: “It’s delightful that the VHOK is also organizing an exhibition for the occasion of this centennial celebration – just like for the 25 anniversary with a presentation in the Rijksmuseum – where such a wide selection of masterpieces, which belong to the select collection of these prominent Dutch art dealers, is gathered.

Exhibition Opening
“State of the Art!” opens on the 12th of November 2011 at Paleis Het Loo, and will run through the 8th of January 2012. Admittance is free for visitors of Paleis Het Loo with a valid admission ticket.

Works of Art
What is so special about “State of the Art!” is that there is no main theme, except that these State of the Art-pieces passed through their members hands. Among the many works of art of this exhibition, the following masterpieces can be found: (download pdf for images)

1 Isaac Israels Oil on canvas 'Danshal, Zeedijk'. ca. 1892-1893.
2 Vincent van Gogh Oil paint on panel 'Gezicht op de Singel Amsterdam’.
3 René Lalique Pendant gold, enamel ‘plique à jour’ with pearls, 1901.
4 Gilded mummy mask, late 1st century B.C. – late 1st century A.D.
5 Sepik chair, New Guinea, Province East Sepik, late 19th – early 20th century.
6 Niki de Saint Phalle sculpture 'Mother and child', 1999.
7 ‘Pineapple’ goblet, Haarlem silver, early 17th century.
8 Matthijs Horrix Secrétaire en pente, 1765-1770.

VHOK 1911-2011
The Dutch Antiques Dealers Association (VHOK) was founded in Amsterdam on 13 November 1911. This national organisation aimed to promote the interests of its members and of buyers, as well as to guarantee quality. The leading and most influential art and antique dealers joined ranks in this Association from the very beginning. The driving forces behind it were the formidable experts Staal, Houthakker, Goudstikker, Duits and Keezer. The VHOK organised a national exhibition in the Rijksmuseum in 1929. Together with international colleagues, it mounted another exhibition in the Rijksmuseum in 1936. These two events can be considered the forerunners of the present-day national and international art fairs.
By now, the Association has 94 most renowned Dutch art and antique dealers as its members. VHOK is a member of CINOA.

Palace Het Loo Nationaal Museum
Address: Koninklijk Park 1, 7315 JA Apeldoorn.
Entrance: through the parking lot at the Amersfoortseweg, Apeldoorn.

Legal costs kill off Andy Warhol Foundation's vetting board

http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/8054.aspx

25 October 2011 - Antiques Trade Gazette

THE Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts have decided to dissolve the controversial Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board in early 2012.

The board, established 16 years ago to review and authenticate artworks by the Pop artist, has been subject to criticism and numerous lawsuits for its authentication practices. It will honour all requests for review received before October 19, but will not accept new submissions after that time.

Given the sheer volume of Warhol's output and his methods, authentication issues have become part of his legacy. At an annual cost of around $500,000, five Warhol scholars and curators have met three times a year to consider around 1200 submissions since 1995.

But it was the legal fees that followed lawsuits over rejected works that have made the not-for-profit Authentication Board untenable. The process of authenticating Warhols will now fall to the wider art market.

Recent litigants who believed their 'Warhols' were unfairly rejected included three owners of the so-called Red Series of self-portrait paintings: the London-based American Joe Simon-Whelan (see separate report here), the US collector Susan Shaer and the London dealer Anthony d'Offay.

D'Offay had hoped to include a Red Series portrait (that had been included with the artist's knowledge in a 1970 catalogue raisonné) in the 2008 Artist Rooms gift, but it was pulled after it was downgraded by the Authentication Board.

At worst, the foundation and the board were accused of conducting a conspiracy to inflate Warhol prices to benefit their own significant holdings by denying the authenticity of other works as a way to limit supply. The foundation remain in litigation with their liability insurer from whom they are seeking coverage of their legal fees which in 2010 alone were $7m.

A statement from the foundation said the move – a definite step back from the market that has used the authentication service for profit – reflected the need to focus on their primary charitable mission as a grant-giver to the visual arts. "Our money should be going to artists, not lawyers," said Warhol Foundation president Joel Wachs.

The foundation will continue their work in establishing the complete Warhol catalogue raisonné, but will now only accept requests to review works in their own time and when relevant to studies. Wachs is keen to stress that this serves a different function from a dedicated authentication board. "The catalogue raisonné serves a non-market purpose: Andy's legacy and Warhol scholarship. The market seems to want to use the authentication board, but that can't be our concern," he added.

Andy Warhol works (the foundation estimate there are more than 100,000 of them) accounted for an estimated 17 per cent of the Contemporary auction market in 2010.

By Roland Arkell

Artists File Lawsuits, Seeking Royalties

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/arts/design/artists-file-suit-against-sothebys-christies-and-ebay.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: November 1, 2011 New York Times

When the taxi baron Robert Scull sold part of his art collection in a 1973 auction that helped inaugurate today’s money-soused contemporary-art market, several artists watched the proceedings from a standing-room-only section in the back. There, Robert Rauschenberg saw his 1958 painting “Thaw,” originally sold to Scull for $900, bring down the gavel at $85,000. At the end of the Sotheby Parke Bernet sale in New York, Rauschenberg shoved Scull and yelled that he didn’t work so hard “just for you to make that profit.”
The uproar that followed in part inspired the California Resale Royalties Act, requiring anyone reselling a piece of fine art who lives in the state, or who sells the art there for $1,000 or more, to pay the artist 5 percent of the resale price.
That law is now at the center of three class-action suits brought this month by artists who include Chuck Close and Laddie John Dill and the estate of the sculptor Robert Graham. They have filed suit against the auction powerhouses Sotheby’s and Christie’s and the online auction site eBay for failure to pay royalties.
“It’s a question of basic fairness,” Mr. Close said recently in an interview. When purchasers are getting extraordinary returns on their investment, he said, a royalty resale law allows the artist to share, at least in a small way, in the increase in value. (Under the California law, no payment is due if the price drops.)
The suits do not specify damages, nor do they list particular sales of art by California residents. Rather, as Eric George, the lawyer who filed them, explained, the complaints seek to force the auction houses to reveal the identities or locations of sellers, information that is often kept secret.
“What’s so perverse,” Mr. George said, is that the houses conceal “the very information necessary to know whether a royalty is due.”
The California law, which applies to living artists and those who have died in the past 20 years, states that if the seller is not able to locate the artist within 90 days, he or she is required to send the payment to the California Arts Council, a state agency charged with locating the creators.
Sotheby’s responded to the suit with a terse statement: “We believe the claim is meritless, and it will be vigorously defended.” Christie’s said that it “views the California Resale Royalties Act as subject to serious legal challenges” and that it “looks forward to addressing these issues in court.” The law has so far survived two legal challenges, and experts in art law are divided about whether it might be vulnerable on constitutional grounds.
The larger issue of whether visual artists should receive a cut of future sales remains a subject of vigorous debate. Dozens of countries already have a version of a resale royalties law, generally referred to by the French phrase droit de suite. Starting in 2012, Britain and other members of the European Union will adhere to a uniform standard that applies to both living artists and those who have died within the past 70 years. Indeed, Christie’s, on its Web site, informs prospective clients that it collects the royalty mandated in Europe at the time of the sale.
For many visual artists, the issue is clear. “We need legislation to enact the right to royalties,” said Frank Stella, the president of the International Council of Creators of Graphic, Plastic and Photographic Arts, “and we need to align it with what goes on in Britain and the E.U.” Literature, music, film, computer programming and patents all have better intellectual-property protection than American visual art, Mr. Stella added. The Visual Artists and Galleries Association, a nonprofit group that seeks to protect the intellectual-property rights of artists, also supports a national law.
The idea has never really caught on in the United States, though, and California remains the only state that requires royalties when a painting is resold. In 1986 Senator Edward M. Kennedy was unsuccessful in efforts to include a similar provision in the national Visual Artists Rights Act. A study by the Copyright Office in 1992 concluded that it was “not persuaded that sufficient economic and copyright policy justification exists to establish droit de suite in the United States.”
In the 34 years that the California law has been in effect, about 400 artists have received a total of $328,000, said Patty Milich, the resale royalty act coordinator at the California Arts Council. That list includes the estates of the Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia (who made drawings), Jean-Michel Basquiat, Albert Hirschfeld and Larry Rivers.
Most artists and galleries either don’t know about the law or ignore it, several art lawyers in California said. People often don’t realize, for example, that if a California hotel with paintings on the walls changes ownership, or if a donated sculpture sells for more than its original price at a fundraising auction, a royalty may be due.
Sellers, museums and galleries generally dislike the idea, which they view as an added tax that raises the cost of doing business and cuts into profits. They contend that the law’s main beneficiaries are artists who need it the least: those, like Mr. Close or Mr. Stella, whose work is famous enough to sell again and again.
Opponents add that resale royalties can hurt new artists selling their work for the first time — on what is known as the primary market — by reducing future resale value.
Some artists agree. In 2006, when Britain agreed to adhere to the European Union’s policy on resale royalties, David Hockney argued: “The arrival of this levy will do little or nothing for the vast majority of British artists. It will undoubtedly envelop the market, on which we as artists depend, in red tape, and it will discourage art dealers from buying particularly the work of emerging artists.”
According to one study of the droit de suite in France, approximately 70 percent of the royalty payments went to the estates of a handful of famous 20th-century artists, like Picasso. Still, in California, Ms. Milich said that while it was easier for well-known artists to track resales, “I have contacted artists with a $2,000 royalty, and they were really happy to get it; one was living on Social Security.”
John Henry Merryman, a law professor at Stanford University and an expert on art and cultural-property law, said that advocates of the droit de suite ignore how the art market operates. The increased price for Rauschenberg’s “Thaw” at the Scull auction was due not only to the artist’s continuing creative efforts, he said, but also to the dealers, collectors, auction houses and critics who took a risk in supporting and buying Rauschenberg’s work before he was famous. He noted that the increased price for a single painting simultaneously raises the value of all the artist’s work.
Mr. Merryman dismissed the argument that the droit de suite was analogous to music or literary royalties. “The idea that somehow artists are hurt because they don’t have copyright is nonsense,” he said. Artists retain copyright and must be compensated if their work is reproduced. The difference, he explained, is that “the realization of a work of art is in exhibition, not in duplication.”
The Whitney Museum of American Art at one time compensated artists for exhibiting their work. Mr. Merryman said the idea never caught on, but that it made more sense.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 2, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Artists File Lawsuits, Seeking Royalties.

Fairs see fewer early headline sales

http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/8038.aspx

Fairs see fewer early headline sales
17 October 2011

SLIGHTLY nervy might best describe mood in the opening days of the two big fairs in town last week.
Although the hip Contemporary feast Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park (October 13-16) once again drew in the crowds – around 60,000 visitors is the norm – early sales reports suggested a fall in confidence. The same was true of the smaller, soothingly chicPavilion of Art & Design London (October 12-16) in Berkeley Square.
At Frieze, confirmed big-ticket sales were sparse among the 173 exhibitors, although New York dealer David Zwirner sold Haus des Lehrers, a 2003 painting by German artist Neo Rauch to a US collector for $1.35m, and a Marlene Dumas triptych for $550,000.
Meanwhile London gallery White Cube sold a Gursky for €600,000 and an Antony Gormley for £300,000.
While Frieze sits proudly at the frontline of contemporary art, PAD positions itself a little further back from the edge with modern art and design from 1860 to the present.
But, although there were new clients around, major sales also appeared slower for the 58 dealers across the numerous glamorous VIP preview evenings at PAD.
Van de Weghe Fine Art from New York, sold a 1947 Alexander Calder mobile for $1.5m, while London's Sladmore Gallery soldJean d'Aire (1887), a lifetime cast bronze by Auguste Rodin, for £500,000 to a new client, but on the whole sales were in four or five figures.
PAD and Frieze have, since 2007, existed alongside each other in happy symbiosis, but things might not be so amicable next year when Frieze organisers Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp launch Frieze Masters to coincide with the existing fair.
They are hoping to attract 70 galleries dealing in art from antiquity to 2000 for this new fair and, with this brief, they are treading on the toes of PAD organisers Patrick Perrin and Stéphane Custot.
With the organisers of Frieze Masters apparently approaching somePAD exhibitors during the fair last week, it will be interesting to see how 2012 pans out for both fairs.
On the competition from Frieze Masters, Mr Perrin commented: "For us it is all about location and having the right combination of artworks and collectors which keep the dealers coming back. Why would you leave a fair that is unanimously appreciated by both collectors and the public?".
At PAD in 2010, all exhibitors had requested to sign up for this year's fair by the last day, and contracts were distributed last Friday for PAD 2012.
By Anna Brady

In Galleria mattoni e web sono le strategie vincenti

 See download

Will Art Fairs Replace The Traditional Art Gallery

 http://www.artlyst.com/articles/will-art-fairs-replace-the-traditional-art-gallery

Date: 28 Aug 2011

A new report from CINOA reveals startling new facts
High profile auction sales of Warhol, Picasso and the Impressionists reported via news headlines doesn't accurately reflect that art and antique dealers account for fifty percent of the global art market's sales. A new report sponsored by the leading non-profit dealer association CINOA finds that fairs and online business are poised to become the main source of revenue for dealers in the art and antiques trade. E-retail is expected to surpass traditional offline sales by 2020. Collectively dealers consist largely of discreet, low profile individuals and small businesses, preferring to focus on finding great art to match with the right client, rather than publishing high flying sales prices as the leading auction houses customarily do. Clare McAndrew’s new study, the first of its kind, explores the essential role of art and antiques dealers within the art market and as a consequence society as a whole. It offers insight into how and why the art dealing profession is changing, and what this means for the trade as well as collectors. It has also been noted in the report that gallery visits are declining as the art market expands to new international centres served better by art fairs or electronic media. The growth of fairs brings with it huge pressures for dealers to fund travel, staff fairs and find enough stock. Whether the traditional gallery model can sustain all this pressure remains to be seen, so says The Art Newspaper.

The Facts

The market divide between dealers and auction houses has wavered at around 50:50 globally for the past decade. There are about 400,000 listed dealers of fine and decorative art and antiques in the major global art markets, however, the top 2% to 5% of dealers account for well over half the value of sales.

- Aggregate art sales worldwide in 2010 were approx. 43 billion euros (split roughly in half between auction houses at 21.1 billion euros in sales and dealers with 21.9 billion in sales).

- There are about 25,000 auction houses worldwide, with Christie's and Sotheby's dominating many sales categories.

- About 375,000 dealers are listed worldwide, with 5,000 or 2-5% of dealers accounting for half of sales by value. The average dealer does about 60,000 euros in sales, including those working part-time.

- The dealer sector is more male dominated with 56% male and 44% female while the top-tier auction houses are about 56% female, and second-tier auction houses are roughly split evenly.

- Collectors and dealers fall in an older demographic: 80% of buyers are aged over 45, 60% were over 55 years old. Dealers are primarily over 50 years old.
- The rise of the event-driven marketplace has seen a proliferation of dealer fairs. The one-room excitement of fairs competes with auction houses and their competitive energy.

- Nearly every dealer has a website, but online sales are low at 3-8% of dealers' sales totals. Web use is primarily for communication with clients, or to expose some inventory in a low-risk way to a broad audience. The internet has provided more transparency to the market, including auction prices, but sometimes this information is incomplete (for
example, some art price databases show hammer prices and not the price with commission, or they do not show the best woks by an artist on the market).

- E-retail is expected to grow at five-times the rate of traditional offline sales and its year-over-year dollar intake is expected to overtake offline sales by 2020.

- A competitive challenge for dealers is the auction houses with their powerful marketing arms, and their increase in private sales.

- Competition for a dwindling supply of quality non-contemporary artworks and antiques is another hurdle.

The competitive landscape of the art market has seen many changes in the past 50 years as power has been redistributed geographically and between market players. One of the most recurrent themes that dealers cited in the research is the challenge they have faced in recent years of dealing with the increasing power of the auction houses, which over the past two decades have transformed from being wholesalers to effective retailers. Many dealers now compete with them for clients and stock. While the auction houses have gained relative market power over the past 20 years, the survey highlighted key areas where dealers still maintain a competitive edge. Dealers often offer better protection and fuller and more legally binding guarantees with less caveats. They can also be better value than auction houses as they often take smaller commissions.

For more information: Download the full CINOA report for free.

Fiere e Web, un veleno per le gallerie tradizionali?

 da Glob*ArtMag: Fiere e Web, un veleno per le gallerie tradizionali?
Creato il 29 agosto 2011 da Roberto Milani

Leggo su Glob*ArtMag ( http://www.globartmag.com ), un articolo molto interessante a firma di Micol Di Veroli... l'argomento è rapporto Gallerie tradizionali, fiere e web...
Merita la lettura!
 

Il mercato dell’arte contemporanea, formato dalla tradizionale rete di gallerie private più o meno grandi, è attualmente subordinato dei meccanismi operativi che ai nostri giorni appaiono un tantino superati se non in netto declino. Ovviamente non si tratta di giudizi personali ma di considerazioni nate alla luce di quanto pubblicato dalla Cinoa (Confédération Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d’Art) nel volume The Role of Art and Antique Dealers – An Added Value, pubblicato a giugno 2011.Lo studio del Cinoa parla chiaro, il grosso delle vendite di mercato è attualmente appannaggio delle grandi manifestazioni fieristiche internazionali e delle varie realtà online che in questi ultimi tempi sono spuntate come funghi, creando non poco interesse fra collezionisti e semplici appassionati. Sempre più gallerie lamentano una crescente diminuzione di pubblico e vendite durante le inaugurazioni stagionali, ma quando si parla di fiere gli affari cambiano rotta in maniera repentina. Insomma la cara vecchia abitudine di creare una propria scuderia di artisti e programmare la consueta serie di mostre per la stagione espositiva non basta più. Nel corso di un’intervista rilasciata recentemente a The Art Newspaper, Dominique Lévy, (co-direttore della prestigiosa L&M gallery) ha affermato quanto segue: “Facciamo più vendite alle fiere che nella nostra sede stabile”, questa dichiarazione potrebbe funzionare come cartina al tornasole dell’intera situazione. Il problema della maggior parte delle gallerie private (soprattutto quelle più piccole) è il loro legame con il territorio, una situazione prettamente locale che non permette di raggiungere un collezionismo globale. Le fiere e le piattaforme web invece permettono di abbracciare un bacino di pubblico potenzialmente infinito.Detto ciò andrebbero però valutati i costi di tali manifestazioni, solitamente irraggiungibili per le piccole realtà. Ed allora che fare? È chiaro che il sistema-mercato locale dovrebbe rigenerarsi per accostarsi ai nuovi trend, se non vuole scomparire del tutto. All’amante dell’arte contemporanea piace la situazione fiera, la galleria dovrebbe allora orientarsi su un exhibition commerciale in grado di offrire qualcosa di diverso. Impresa ardua ma le inversioni di tendenza obbligano a nuove sperimentazioni.Micol Di Veroli

per vedere l'articolo originale:http://www.globartmag.com/2011/08/29/gallerie-arte-contemporanea-fiere-web-internet-mercato/

Century Art

http://art.zjol.com.cn/05art/system/2011/08/25/017796389.shtml

艺博会抢风头 画廊系统渐衰弱

　　“CINOA”(国际非营利艺术交易商组织)近来发布一篇文章，说明艺术产业链中的画廊系统因为全球艺博会数量的增加而力量遭到抵触。文章中还提到，“网上艺博会”(例如年初的VIP)这一交易新趋势也影响了画廊内部交易量。数据显示，拜访画廊从而购买作品的客人数字呈现下降，他们转而去参观国际城市所举办的大型艺博会。美国纽约L&M画廊Dominique Levy便说，“当今在艺博会里达成的交易显然比在画廊里还要多，这是毫无置疑的”。

　　艺博会能够将画廊本身的经营弱点补足，画廊一开张本来就是立足于满足本地的市场;当金融风暴来临时，本地市场萎缩，就会发现还能买艺术品的客人都集中到国际艺博会去。也有研究数据显示出，私人买卖商在这一两年涌入亚洲艺术市场，探查亚洲藏家们的新口味。而现在艺术世界结构的变化就像20世纪初那时的一般剧烈，大量拍卖公司及艺博会的崛起，网上艺术品交易的出现也引起人们对艺术作品交易走向改变的关注。不过目前藏家对艺术品网上交易的信心只维持在单件作品十万美金以下，藏家很难接受在网上进行百万千万以上的交易就只为了一张没见过实品的艺术品。Gagosian及David Zwirner此类画廊已经将画廊做的类似企业经营，全球各大都市皆建立了人脉及关系，成功突破本地市场的局限性。但是对于其他规模较小的画廊来说呢?

　　全球艺术圈之艺博会突然崛起并有了巨大的影响力，但是对那些尚未找到其定位的新兴艺博会或是未紧跟上潮流转变方向的老艺博，目前的状况只是让艺博会们互相厮杀，直到找到新秩序。

来源： HI艺术 　作者： 吴亚男 　编辑： 童丽莉

Искусство продается в обход арт-галерей

 http://www.firstnews.ru/news/culture/50955/

03.08.2011

Многочисленные галереи больше не являются приоритетной формой распространения искусства, сообщают международные арт-дилеры. По мнению экспертов, отечественные арт-проекты эта тенденция пока не затронет.
Традиционная галерейная модель арт-выставок во многом исчерпала себя. К такому выводу пришла в своем отчете Международная конфедерации ассоциаций арт-дилеров (Confédération Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d'Art, CINOA).
По данным CINOA, в настоящий момент галереи стали меньше посещать, чем специальные арт-ярмарки и электронные медиа-ресурсы.
"Продажное" искусство
Общий объем продаж искусства и антиквариата в мире в 2010 году составил €43 млрд. (€21,1 млрд. на аукционах и €21,9 млрд. через арт-дилеров).
Иностранные эксперты склонны соглашаться с выводами исследования арт-продавцов.
"Мы заключаем гораздо больше сделок на ярмарках, чем в галереях — вне всяких сомнений", — подтверждает тезисы конфедерации Доминик Леви, директор галереи L&M Arts, сообщает The Art Newspaper.
Иностранные арт-дилеры также отмечают, что такая ситуация будет сохраняться, поскольку "на данном этапе большая часть рынка ориентирована на клиентов, которые не живут там, где вы работаете, и поэтому их гораздо удобнее обслуживать через арт-ярмарки".
Впрочем, российские эксперты, оценивая результаты исследования, подчеркнули, что международная конфедерация арт-дилеров рассматривает вопрос со своей точки зрения, то есть продавцов.
"Традиционные галереи не пришли в упадок, они существуют, пока их никто не отменял. Другой вопрос, что все институты, в том числе коммерческие, имеют свойство возникать, трансформироваться, иногда отмирать, а иногда – появляться в новых формах", - полагает директор Мультимедийного комплекса актуальных искусств Ольга Свиблова.
Вместе с тем Ольга Свиблова считает, что не стоит забывать об еще одном "игроке" – арт-аукционах, "перед натиском которых галереям иногда приходиться отступать".
"При этом остаются галереи, которые создают бренды в искусстве. Более того, они начинают использовать и электронную площадку", - отметила Ольга Свиблова.
Арт-деятель добавила, что между тем не стоит переоценивать роль интернет-платформ.
"Отношение между виртуальным и реальным в сегменте художественного рынка ровно такое же, как в реальной жизни", - полагает Ольга Свиблова.
Галерист, член Общественной палаты РФ Марат Гельман считает, что на России эта тенденция пока не должна отразиться.
"В России проще, так как галереи не успели стать фундаментальным основанием. У нас гораздо более значительную роль играют фонды и музеи", - отметил Марат Гельман.
Что касается ярмарок, искусствовед подчеркнул, что они также собираются галереями. Марат Гельман полагает, что просто изменился тип бизнеса.
"Если раньше главное – это было пространство, выставочная программа, то сейчас важнее иногда продюсерская активность галериста", - считает Марат Гельман.
Искусствовед добавил, что "галерист должен участвовать в различных ярмарках, бывать на форумах, то есть получается, что сейчас многие агенты успешнее, чем галереи, просто потому, что у них нет серьезных расходов".
 

www.napi.hu

 http://www.napi.hu/nincs_rovat/ertekesitesi_csatornak_harca_a_mutargypiacon.493197.html
2011. augusztus 22
Az utóbbi évtizedben a műkereskedelmi forgalom nagyjából fele-fele arányban oszlott meg az aukciós házak és a műkereskedők között − állapította meg a műkereskedők nemzetközi szövetségének megbízásából (CINOA), az Art Economics műtárgypiaci kutatócsoport által készített legutóbbi felmérés − és nagyjából ez volt jellemző a 2010-es évre is. Tavaly összesen mintegy 43 milliárd euró értékű műtárgy és régiség cserélt gazdát a világon, ebből 21 milliárd eurónyi jutott az árverésekre, a többit műkereskedők bonyolították le. A világ műtárgypiaci szempontból fontos térségeiben összesen mintegy 400 ezer regisztrált kereskedő tevékenykedik − beleértve a 25 ezer árverési házat −, ám ezek 2−5 százalékára jut a globális összforgalomnak több mint a fele.
Aukciósházak kontra galériások
Az utóbbi húsz év egyik fő trendje az aukciósházak hatalomátvétele volt: némi leegyszerűsítéssel nagykereskedőkből kiskereskedők lettek, velük is versenyezni kell a vevőkért, illetve az árukészletért. A galériás vagy más formában működő műkereskedőknek annyi előnyük van velük szemben, hogy ők általában csak néhány területtel foglalkoznak, azokkal viszont nagyon magas szinten. Ennek egyszerre vannak előnyei és hátrányai − figyelmeztet az Art Economics. Az eredményük nagyban függ attól, hogy mekkora sikerrel adnak el viszonylag kevés számú munkát, ugyanakkor specialistaként könnyebben is szerzik be az értékes darabokat.
A galériák legfőbb erénye a diszkréció
A műkereskedők állítják, hogy ők jobban tudják garantálni a műtárgy eredetiségét és kisebb jutalékot kérnek, mint az aukciósházak − a legfőbb előnyük azonban a diszkréció. Nem csak azt tudják megoldani, hogy a vevő és az eladó névtelen maradjon − ez többnyire az árverések szervezőinek is sikerül −, hanem azt is, hogy mennyiért cserélt gazdát egy-egy alkotás. Azt is a műkereskedők mellett szóló érvek között említik, hogy a vevők kevésbé stresszes körülmények között dönthetnek, mint a nyilvános licitálásokon − több idő van az ügylet átgondolására, sőt alkudni is lehet.
Bolt nélkül is megy az üzlet
Az élesedő versenyhez a műkereskedők úgy is alkalmazkodnak, hogy egyre többféle értékesítési csatornát, illetve módszert vesznek igénybe. A legfontosabb továbbra is a klasszikus galéria vagy régiségkereskedés, de egyre fontosabbak a művészeti vásárok, és az internetes kereskedés is kezd teret hódítani. A globális műtárgyeladásoknak mintegy 45 százaléka jut galériákra a CINOA adatai szerint, a művészeti vásárok pedig már 30 százalékot visznek el. A nagy műtárgypiacokon terjedőben van az a gyakorlat is, hogy a műkereskedő bezárja a hagyományos boltot és irodáján keresztül vagy éppen lakáson értékesít abszolút privát körülmények között. Ezt a megfelelő helyiségek magas költségei mellett néhol az is indokolja, hogy a belvárosokban egyre kisebb a gyalogosforgalom, így a beeső "impulzusvevők", érdeklődők száma is megcsappant. A galériák fenntartásának árát sokszor nem is lehet behozni az ottani eladásokból, ráadásul a kereskedőknek egyre többet kell költeniük utazásra, vásári részvételre, már csak azért is, mert a művészeti piac is mindinkább "eseményorientált" lesz. Alapvetően a vásárok teszik lehetővé, hogy a kereskedők ne csak a helyi, hanem a nemzetközi vásárlóközönségre is számíthassanak, illetve hogy együttműködve vehessék fel a versenyt az aukciósházakkal.
Ez még nem az online terepe
Az online értékesítés jó pár éve téma a műtárgypiacon is, voltak próbálkozások még internetes vásárra is, de az áttörés még várat magára. Kommunikációs és marketingeszközként persze használják a netet a műkereskedők, weboldala szinte mindenkinek van, de az e-kereskedelem nem igazán jellemző. A személyes kapcsolatok, a szakmai háttér fontossága felülírja az online módszer előnyeit, legalábbis ami az új ügyfelek megszerzését illeti − ismeretleneknek nehéz műtárgyat eladni a neten, a törzsvevőknek már inkább lehet. A diszkréció, a magánszféra megőrzése azonban mindennél fontosabb − különösen a piac felső kategóriáiban −, egy-egy kivételes és drága tárgy adásvételekor nem szívesen teszi ki magát se az eladó, se a vevő a netes adatkezelés veszélyeinek. Ezzel együtt a felmérés készítői összességében azt várják, hogy 2020-ra az e-kereskedelem összértéke meghaladja majd a hagyományos formákban elértet, ám a legtöbb piaci szereplő kombinálja majd az offline és az online módszereket.

Survey: To Fair or Not to Fair?

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-chafin/short-takes-art-fair-surv_b_922204.html

Posted: 8/9/11 06:45 PM ET

As the director of a commercial art gallery, I was slightly disturbed by this article on The Art Newspaper'swebsite last week: "Gallery System is Structurally Weak." According to the article: "a new report by the non-profit dealers' federation Cinoa finds that fair-led and online business is taking over as the main source of revenue. . . . Gallery visits are declining as the art market expands to new international centres served better by art fairs or electronic media."
And that's where my ideals come crashing headlong into economic reality. If there's one thing I've learned in the three years since I opened Offramp Gallery, it's that selling art is not easy. The idea of taking our show on the road to a larger audience by participating in art fairs is very tempting, even though I find attending the fairs a sterile and depressing experience. (One artist told me that the only time she ever stopped off at a bar by herself on the way home from anything was after visiting an art fair at the LA Convention Center.)
Using the same branding/marketing models for art that we use for cars, appliances and pharmaceuticals really bothers me. Isn't art supposed to operate on a higher plane and be the antithesis of, say, a gun show? Commodification of art is certainly not a new topic for debate, but I think it's as relevant now as it has ever been.
Participation in the fairs is also very expensive. I looked at the costs of booths at three of the upcoming fairs in LA. The least expensive was a 144 sq. ft. booth for $5,500, the most expensive, a 940 sq. ft. booth for $37,600. If you need more space, you are encouraged to inquire.
That's a lot of money for a small gallery like Offramp to risk in these volatile economic times. So -- I'd like to know how you feel about art fairs. Love them? Hate them? If you're a dealer or a gallerist, I'd love to hear your experiences and welcome your advice -- is it worth the risk? Should I dive in or stay away?
I've put together a short survey to get your feedback. Thank you in advance for participating. I will share the results with you soon.
Click here to take survey.

www.news.cn

 http://news.xinhuanet.com/shuhua/2011-08/03/c_121763093.htm

　　全球藝術市場仍然處于不斷發展的狀態中，然而據法國國際藝術品商人聯合會(Cinoa)最新發布的一項調查來看，藝術的全球化正為這個產業的運轉帶來了一定損失。這項調查由藝術市場研究公司Arts Economics頂級的文化研究員Clare McAndrews引導，最終得出了這樣一個結論：收藏家們在去年購買了大量的藝術品，但相應的藝術經銷商也在經歷著一些改變。這表明了藝術界正在發展快速地變化，以下是幾個非常有趣的發現。

　　1、藝博會是新常態

在初級市場上，傳統畫廊經營模式的力量被藝博會的繁榮興盛削弱了。藏家們越來越喜歡聚集在國際性的藝博會上，並且在某種程度上充分利用了網絡的便捷。整個世界的財富也正在全球化。畫廊開始迎合高度多變且在地理上分布廣泛的客戶的需要。藝術經銷商為了適應新的市場環境也開始參加更多的藝博會。但是這種新的生活方式也嚴重削減了利潤，因為帶著昂貴而又精細的藝術品旅行的花費是巨大的。

　　2、建立藝術網站是趨勢

　　許多新的合資企業不斷出現在網絡上，以便抓住極其不穩定的觀眾。例如由達莎‧朱可娃(Dasha Zhukova)和鄧文迪支持的Art.sy，這個網站採用了“基因組”技術，在已知用戶喜歡的藝術品類型的基礎上向他們介紹新的藝術家和畫廊。雖然這個網站目前還處于測試階段，不過它已經深受藝術界某些大牌的喜愛了。

　　不過，在涉及到藝術品的出售時，網絡就局限于那些相對較便宜的作品了。在購買高價的藝術品時，人們還是更傾向于與經銷商或是拍賣行進行直接交易。

　　3、這不是一個公平競爭的環境

　　雖然老式的、實實在在的藝術經銷商仍然在藝術市場中扮演著重要的角色，但這並不表示名氣較小的畫廊不會受市場逐漸國際化的影響。據調查報告顯示，2010年只有一半的藝術品交易是通過藝術經銷商實現的(也就是說另一半是通過拍賣行實現的。這一群體大概包含了37.5萬名經銷商，但McAndrews的研究“肯定只有2%到5%的經銷商能夠代表畫廊產業一半的營業額。”只有7500至2萬名經銷商每年能夠共同帶來100億美元的產值平均到每人也就100萬美元左右。

　　4、高價藝術品意義重大

　　這些數據都是McAndrews之前為Cinoa所做的調查結果。在這方面的調查中，她發現2010年藝術市場的恢復很大程度上是依靠高價藝術品的售出而實現的。2009年與2010年之間的市場年增長率達到了52%，然而，“2010年度交易數量的增加是很溫和的(只有13%)，而市場銷售額方面的增長大部分是因為售出的高價藝術品的數量在增長。”

　　5、全球化在逐漸改變力量的平衡

　　2010年，美國以34%的銷售份額在整個藝術及古董市場上佔據了控制地位；中國佔據了第二名的位置，以1%的份額險勝英國(分別佔23%與22%)；而法國則以6%的份額居第四位。

　　對高價作品重要性的強調也許對未來藝術市場的發展走勢有著極其重要的指示意義。例如，追續權法規將于明年在英國及歐洲其它尚未執行該條款的國家生效。McAndrews的研究估計由此而新增的稅收會使許多高價藝術品離開英國的拍賣行市場。研究稱：“賣主更值得將4萬或高于4萬歐元的作品運到紐約去賣。”

To adapt to an increasingly competitive market, dealers have expanded the channels through which they sell works

The Art Newspaper

By Clare McAndrew | From issue 226, July-August 2011
Published online 28 Jul 11 (Opinion)

Changing landscape: dealer Matthias Arndt will now combine holding occasional shows at his Berlin gallery with being an art adviser; January’s inaugural VIP Art Fair took place entirely online, while big international brands such as Hauser & Wirth are sticking with the traditional retail model

Art and antique dealers make their living by co-ordinating supply and demand in the art market, an opaque trading ground where the value placed on information is at a premium. Knowledge and expertise are key for competitive advantage and successful art dealers require both specialist knowledge combined with business acumen. A recent study commissioned by the Confédération Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d’Art (Cinoa) and carried out by my organisation, Arts Economics, looked into how dealers are surviving in an increasingly competitive art market, and the key trends affecting their future.

The market divide between dealers and auction houses has wavered at around 50:50 globally for the past decade. Aggregate sales of art and antiques around the world in 2010 amounted to approximately €43bn, €21bn at auction and €22bn through dealers. There are about 400,000 listed dealers of fine and decorative art and antiques in the major global art markets, however, the top 2% to 5% of dealers account for well over half the value of sales.

The competitive landscape of the art market has seen many changes in the past 50 years as power has been redistributed geographically and between market players. One of the most recurrent themes that dealers cited in the research is the challenge they have faced in recent years of dealing with the increasing power of the auction houses, which over the past two decades have transformed from being wholesalers to effective retailers. Many dealers now compete with them for clients and stock.

While the auction houses have gained relative market power over the past 20 years, the survey highlighted key areas where dealers still maintain a competitive edge.

Unlike the more diversified auction houses, dealers often specialise in a few tightly defined fields where they have a high level of expertise. Due to this specialisation, their business models are highly dependent on the successful sale of a small number of works and hence are subject to considerable risk. However, specialisation also brings a number of competitive advantages: dealers often have access to works from more sources and can therefore offer better quality stock and more choice than the auction houses. Many dealers also claim to offer better protection and fuller and more legally binding guarantees. They can also be better value than auction houses as they often take smaller commissions.
The discretion of dealers was also singled out as a key advantage: buyers can avoid revealing how much they spent, which is sometimes unavoidable at auction. For sellers at auction, although the reserve price can protect their bottom line, if a painting is “burned” the negative effect on its future value can be long-lasting. Dealers, on the other hand, can protect buyers from unwanted publicity and only show works privately.
Expensive, infrequent purchases such as art can be stressful for buyers, and dealers can offer a much less pressured environment compared with an auction room where emotional and competitive tensions are high. With a dealer, collectors have more time to consider a purchase and make thoughtful decisions. Many dealers also offer the possibility of trialling, returning items or reselling them in future. Finally, dealers are generally more concerned with building long-term relationships with their clients.

The research found that the main complaints when buying or selling via a dealer were about pricing and perceived value; pushiness, and a lack of transparency.

Shutting up shop
To adapt to an increasingly competitive market, dealers have expanded the channels through which they sell works. Although the traditional gallery remains the most common sales outlet, there is evidence that the traditional retail shopfront is in decline. Global polling of Cinoa dealers showed that 45% of dealer sales are still made through galleries, but some 30% are via art fairs, either local or international.
The research showed that, particularly in larger art markets, a growing number of dealers have closed their shops and now deal privately from offices or homes. The reasons for this shift are varied but include the high cost of maintaining a retail presence in the high street and the low or variable volume of sales. Foot traffic has become too low to justify a gallery in some areas as fewer people visit them than in the past.
Another key factor driving dealers away from traditional retail premises is the increasingly “event-driven” nature of the art market. Fairs have become a vital part of many dealers’ livelihoods, giving them access to international buyers. They are seen as a crucial way for dealers to collaborate in the face of increasing competition from auction houses, creating some of the same “one-room” excitement and competitive energy as an auction.

Many dealers felt that the cost of running a gallery (in addition to frequent travelling and attending fairs) was not justified by sales made through this channel, with some reporting revenue from this source as low as 5% of total sales. Some also felt that buyers’ loyalties were shifting from dealers to fairs, and that these events have become the focus for sales.

The drawbacks of online selling
The growth in online sales has been another important driver in making galleries less important for some dealers. However, it is worth noting that while the internet has become an integral communication and marketing device, e-commerce for dealers remains relatively patchy. The subjective nature of the market and the need for advice and personal contact works against more anonymous, less personal online sales. Dealers’ businesses depend on developing trust and credibility, and personal contact is vital and highly valued when arranging large, infrequent purchases such as art and antiques. Because of this nearly all dealers found it difficult to “sell cold” on the internet, but with established clients repeat business using the online channel was common.

High-value, low-inventory businesses are generally less suited to mass marketing through the internet, and the need for discretion and privacy, especially at the high end of the market, also mitigates against using it to attract buyers and sellers. Some dealers pointed out that the more exceptional the work being sold, the more exclusively they worked with a small number of clients and the less they wanted to reveal what they were doing to an online audience.

Finally, many dealers are technological laggards compared with people in similar industries. Although there are a few dealers with exceptionally advanced web platforms, in general auction houses are way ahead in terms of online marketing, sales and the use of technology. With e-retail expected to grow at five times the rate of traditional retail and to overtake its value by 2020, online sales are bound to become important for all dealers, but it still seems likely that most dealers will continue to pursue a model that combines an offline and online presence.

By appointment only
Some dealers felt that the move towards focusing on dealing services was encouraging the decline of their retail presence. Increasingly for many dealers, discretion, expertise, and intellectual “added value” were their key selling points, and therefore “a brightly lit frock shop” added little to their offering.

Dealers also reported that increasing their freedom to work by appointment rather than being tied to a shop was becoming more important as they devoted more time to travelling to fairs, visiting clients in different locations and in particular searching for new works. Most concurred that there is now more competition in sourcing works than there is in finding buyers.

There are a number of important retail galleries that are bucking this trend. Large international “brand” galleries, often with premises in a few major cities around the world, are still operating successfully via the retail model in many cases.

Other successes included multi-service general shops in smaller markets (with services such as valuation, restoration and auctions in-house); smaller, specialised one-man shops, either where rates are feasible or in major, visible thoroughfares such as key cities or destination towns; and some one-stop, convenient and cost-effective shops or multi-shop premises (for example a group of dealers in a rural area with ample facilities and adjacent amenities).

The writer is a cultural economist and founder of Arts Economics

Fairs, online sales boost art dealers' outlook

29 July 2011 - by ArtfixDaily Staff

A new report sponsored by the non-profit dealer association CINOA finds that fairs and online business are poised to become the main source of revenue for dealers in the art and antiques trade. E-retail is expected to surpass traditional offline sales by 2020.
Dr. Clare McAndrew's CINOA study reports:
- Aggregate art sales worldwide in 2010 were approx. 43 billion euros (split roughly in half between auction houses at 21.1 billion euros in sales and dealers with 21.9 billion in sales).
- There are about 25,000 auction houses worldwide, with Christie's and Sotheby's dominating many sales categories.
- About 375,000 dealers are listed worldwide, with 5,000 or 2-5% of dealers accounting for half of sales by value. The average dealer does about 60,000 euros in sales, including those working part-time.
- The dealer sector is more male dominated with 56% male and 44% female while the top-tier auction houses are about 56% female, and second-tier auction houses are roughly split evenly.
- Collectors and dealers fall in an older demographic: 80% of buyers are aged over 45, 60% were over 55 years old. Dealers are primarily over 50 years old.
- The rise of the event-driven marketplace has seen a proliferation of dealer fairs. The one-room excitement of fairs competes with auction houses and their competitive energy.
- Nearly every dealer has a website, but online sales are low at 3-8% of dealers' sales totals. Web use is primarily for communication with clients, or to expose some inventory in a low-risk way to a broad audience. The internet has provided more transparency to the market, including auction prices, but sometimes this information is incomplete (for example, some art price databases show hammer prices and not the price with commission, or they do not show the best woks by an artist on the market).
- E-retail is expected to grow at five-times the rate of traditional offline sales and its year-over-year dollar intake is expected to overtake offline sales by 2020.
- A competitive challenge for dealers is the auction houses with their powerful marketing arms, and their increase in private sales.
- Competition for a dwindling supply of quality non-contemporary artworks and antiques is another hurdle.
For more information, readers can download the full CINOA report for free.

http://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2011/08/01/3477-fairs-online-sales-boost-art-dealers-outlook

World art market: 2010 turnover

Published on 28 July 2011.
Brussels, 28 July 2011, Art Media Agency (AMA).

Cinoa (Confédération internationale des négociants en Œuvres d’Art) has published its latest report on the art market. It states that the total global turnover of art dealers and auction houses amounts to €43 billion. €21,100 million was made by auction houses and €21,900 million by art dealers. The art market has almost regained its 2007 level, when the total turnover was €48 billion.

Cinoa listed 375,000 art dealers, but affirms that 2 to 5% of them represent half the turnover of the gallery sector.

The number of auction houses in the world is estimated at 25,000 but two actors are monopolising the market in several sectors: Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

Increasing activity of galleries at fairs and online

Published on 29 July 2011.

Brussels, 29 July 2011, Art Media Agency (AMA).

Cinoa’s latest report illustrates that the activity of galleries is increasingly taking place online and at major fairs.

Like with any other profession or trade, gallery owners and art dealers have to evolve and the report shows that the physical location of galleries are less important and that a growing number of sales take place on the internet and at fairs. Dominique Lévy of L&M gallery declared in the Art Newspaper: “We do much more business at the fairs than at the gallery.”

However, the report minimises this phenomenon, concluding that contact, expertise, advice from art dealers and the relationships between professionals and clients are still highly-regarded qualities. Moreover, recent projects launched online are often linked to a physical location. The report and the professionals agree that expensive major pieces are not sold online.

In addition, galleries and art dealers still build their reputations based on the exhibitions they organise and the artists they represent. Internet and fairs are only tools and professionals still have to undertake research and promotions and forge relationships – characteristics that fairs and internet can not replace.

http://www.artmediaagency.com/en/25474/increasing-activity-of-galleries-at-fairs-and-online/

Art Dealer: Fairs ‘Will Strangle Each Other in the End’

 The New York Observer July 28, 2011

Art Dealer: Fairs ‘Will Strangle Each Other in the End’
By Andrew Russeth 8:54am

Lounging at Art HK 2011. The blue-chip Art Basel fair recently bought a 60-percent stake in the Hong Kong venture.
“The proliferation of fairs is ridiculous,” New York dealer Dominique Lévy, of L&M Arts, says in the latest edition ofThe Art Newspaper. “They will strangle each other in the end.” Ms. Lévy goes on to argue that the comprehensive services that galleries provide—shipping, framing, insurance, and so forth—will guarantee that they will outlive the current vogue for fairs.
Ms. Lévy’s come in a recap of a recent study of the art market by the nonprofit dealers’ association Cinoa (Con¬féd¬ération Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d’Art) that suggests galleries are losing some of their power to online ventures and art fairs. The complete, fascinating study is available here. Here are some of the highlights:
• The top two to five percent of art dealers account for more than half of the sales in the market.
• In 2010, aggregate sales in the art and antique markets amounted to approximately €43 billion, split roughly equally between auction houses and dealers.
• The “average” dealer sells only about €60,000 worth of art each year, a remarkably low number that was determined based on the fact that a full 375,000 people identify as dealers worldwide.
• In the dealer market, men outnumber women 56 percent to 44 percent.
• At “top-tier auction” houses, women outnumber men by the exact same margin.
• There are now more people in the Asia-Pacific region than the West with $1 million or more of investable assets.
Given that last statistic, it is going to be interesting to see how many new galleries sign up for the 2012 edition of the Art HK fair, which is increasingly considered to be the most prestigious fair in Asia, especially following the news that Art Basel had purchased a 60-percent stake in it.
http://www.observer.com/2011/07/art-dealer-fairs-will-strangle-each-other-in-the-end/

Gallery system is structurally weak - A new report by the non-profit dealers’ federation Cinoa finds that fair-led and online business is taking over as the main source of revenue

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Gallery-system-is-structurally-weak/24188
By Charlotte Burns | From issue 226, July-August 2011
Published online 28 Jul 11 (News)

Gallery visits are declining with the rise of art fairs, according to Cinoa's report

BRUSSELS. The traditional gallery model is in decline, according to a new report by the non-profit dealers’ federation Cinoa (Con¬féd¬ération Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d’Art), which found that fair-led and online business is taking over as the main source of revenue.
Gallery visits are declining as the art market expands to new international centres served better by art fairs or electronic media.
“We do much more business at the fairs than at the gallery—no question,” said Dominique Lévy, the co-director of L&M gallery.
András Szántó, consultant and contributing editor to The Art Newspaper, said: “The fairs have done very well in exploiting a structural weakness of the gallery system—it is inchoate and based on local markets.” With the withdrawal of those markets during the downturn “the overall weight has shifted to clients who don’t live where you work—so you service them through art fairs,” said dealer David Zwirner.
According to a recent report from Capgemini, the Asia-Pacific region has overtaken the west in terms of the number of individuals with investable assets worth $1m or more. It is no coincidence that the Hong Kong art fair, Art HK, in which Art Basel bought a 60% stake in May, attracted such a stellar line-up of western dealers this year.
The growth of fairs brings with it huge pressures for dealers to fund travel, staff fairs and find enough material. Whether the traditional gallery model can sustain all this outreach remains to be seen. Some think not. “It is more convenient and inspiring to work in a more unconventional format, having an office and platform, and doing temporary projects and pop-up shows,” said Berlin dealer Matthias Arndt, when he announced earlier this year that his gallery would now open only sporadically for shows.
“We are in a major systemic shift,” said Szántó. “The expansion of the auction business and art fairs is adding a whole layer above the gallery system as it evolved in the 20th century.” A handful of galleries, including Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner “have pulled away from the pack, but the question is, where does that leave the regular rank and file gallery?” he added.
Dominique Lévy is sanguine. “The proliferation of fairs is ridiculous. They will strangle each other in the end,” she said. She suggested that the old-fashioned benefits of a gallery may, in fact, be key to their survival. “The secret is to inform new buyers of all the options—and galleries offer a special service, whether it’s taking care of shipping, hanging works, advis¬ing on exhibition loans, refram¬ing or insurance. Collectors will realise [this],” she said, but added that it “may be later [rather] than sooner”.
Several web-based ventures, including the VIP art fair, Art.sy and Paddle8, have recently emerged. However, dealers remain to be convinced that online business will work for expensive art. “There’s a lot of potential for cheaper works…but nobody is going to spend a huge amount on a work without seeing it,” said the New York-based, secondary market specialist Christophe Van de Weghe. “The comfy price limit is $100,000,” confirmed Alexander Gilkes, the co-founder of Paddle8.

Legal Ruling: The Spanish State is the sole holder of the resale right on the works of Salvador Dalí

http://www.salvador-dali.org/en_noticies.html?ID=147

 
Figueres, 12 July 2011
Legal victory for the Fundació Dalí
The High Court of Paris has upheld the claims of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí and acknowledges that the Spanish State is the sole holder of the resale right on the works of Salvador Dalí and the Fundació Dalí as its beneficiary.

The Fundació Dalí is very glad to announce this legal victory because it does not only represent a step forward in the defence and protection of Salvador Dalí rights, but it also establishes jurisprudence.

In a ruling passed on Friday 8 July, the High Court of Paris, upholding in its entirety the claim submitted by the Fundació Dalí and VEGAP against the ADAGP (the French collective management agency of visual artists’ royalties, which corresponds to the Spanish VEGAP), declared that Spanish law is the applicable law for determining which party is the holder of the resale right on the artworks of Salvador Dalí, and consequently acknowledged that the Fundació Dalí, as the manager and administrator of the royalties on Salvador Dalí’s works by delegation of the Spanish State (the artist’s testamentary heir), is the beneficiary of the resale right accruing from resales of Salvador Dalí’s works.

In 2006, the Fundació Dalí initiated legal proceedings in Paris against the ADAGP claiming the resale right obtained in public auctions of works by Salvador Dalí. The resale right is the right of authors and their heirs to receive from the seller a part of the price of any resale of the authors’ works in public auction, in a mercantile establishment, or with the intervention of a dealer or mercantile agent.

Until the filing of this claim, the ADAGP, in spite of managing the artist’s royalties to the benefit of the Fundació Dalí, had unilaterally paid the resale right accrued in France to the artist’s relatives, basing itself to that purpose on the argument that the French legislation on intellectual property only recognises as beneficiaries of that right the legal heirs who are natural persons, that is, those called to succession in the absence of a will.

In its claim, the Fundació Dalí argued that the resale right forms part of the assets comprising Salvador Dalí’s estate, and that the determination of the beneficiary of that right is a question of inheritance law, the applicable legislation being that governing the artist’s estate, that is to say, Spanish law, which admits the transfer mortis causa of the resale right to any natural or legal person; consequently, his heir, the Spanish State, is the sole holder of this right and the sole party entitled to receive it, through the Fundació Dalí as the party exclusively responsible for its management and administration.

The artist’s relatives were called to the proceedings by the ADAGP but decided not to appear. However, they must observe the ruling now passed.

Before passing judgment, the High Court of Paris addressed the Court of Justice of the European Communities to raise two prejudicial questions, the more important of the two concerning the possibility that, following Directive 2001/84/EC, France could maintain a resale right reserved solely to the legal heirs with exclusion of the testamentary heirs.

On 15 April 2010 the Court of Justice of the European Communities replied to this question in the affirmative, stating that the Directive did not oppose a provision of internal French law reserving the benefit of the resale right to the legal heirs, excluding the testamentary legatees. However, the CJEC made an implicit acknowledgement that the internal French regulations on beneficiaries of the resale right was not applicable to the inheritances of foreign artists, which were regulated by the inheritance law of their own country, as recognised in the applicable international rule regulating the matter, Article 14.ter of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

The ruling of the High Court of Paris adopts precisely this argument and declares that the resale right already exists at the moment of opening of the succession, and consequently it is the national law applicable to succession which must determine the holders of that right.

Thus, the High Court has declared that, on the basis of the provisions of Article 14.ter of the Berne Convention, the sole holder of the resale right on Salvador Dalí’s works is the Spanish State, and orders the ADAGP to pay the said right to the FUNDACIÓ DALÍ as the assignee thereof.

The ruling specifically orders the ADAGP to (1) communicate to the Fundació Dalí and VEGAP the entirety of the information and supporting documents on the amounts received and, as the case may be, paid under the heading of resale right since 17 October 1997 (the date on which the Fundació Dalí joined VEGAP and the ADAGP); (2) to pay to VEGAP, on account of the Fundació Dalí, any amounts it may have received under the heading of resale right since 17 October 1997, plus the corresponding interest since the filing of the claim; (3) to pay the fees of the lawyers of the Fundació Dalí and VEGAP; and (4) to compensate the Fundació Dalí and VEGAP with the joint amount of 10,000.-euros.

Without prejudice to any appeal which may be lodged, the Court has ordered the provisional enforcement of the ruling.

The importance of this decision is twofold: on one hand, it acknowledges in favour of the Spanish State the holdership of the resale right on the works of Salvador Dalí, which right generates revenues which the ADAGP has been paying to relatives of Salvador Dalí who were not mentioned in his will, in which he instituted as his universal heir the Spanish State; and on the other hand, it acknowledges the application in France of Spanish law to the succession of a Spanish artist. This aspect goes beyond the specific case posed by the Fundació Dalí, since a contrary declaration by the High Court of Paris would have signified acknowledging that a country’s internal legislation may modify not only the inheritance law of another country but also the testamentary will of any person.

Newly published CINOA Study: 'The Role of Art and Antique Dealers - An Added Value

 The recently published CINOA study ‘The Role of Art and Antique Dealers – An Added Value Historical and Future Perspectives’. This study was commissioned to help member associations and affiliated dealers manage their businesses.

Clare McAndrew’s study, the first of its kind, explores the essential role of art and antiques dealers within the art market and as a consequence society as a whole. It offers insight into how and why the art dealing profession is changing, and what this means for the trade as well as collectors, as for the culture as a whole.

This economic study offers a brief historical review of the art dealing profession, and then continues with an emphasis on the current art market and proposes what might be in store for the future. It examines how dealers’ businesses have been affected and changed due to the current economic condition and the rise of new technologies. The study highlights the challenges dealers face from competitors and a range of key competitive advantages such as expertise, services and recourse. In order to conduct her analysis, Dr. McAndrew’s research included examining spending trends, motivations, and the interaction with dealers from the perspective of both sellers and buyers.

An electronic version of the study can be accessed from CINOA.org

For more specific information regarding the research, please contact
Dr. Clare McAndrew
Arts Economics
clare@artseconomics.com

CIS & Russian International Confederation of Art & Antique Dealers (ICAAD) defends Natalia Goncharova’s heritage

In this special document the CIS & Russian International Confederation of Art & Antique Dealers
(ICAAD) wishes to come out in support of the heritage of the Russian avant-garde artist Natalia
Goncharova after the recent publication of questionable research in the West. In the opinion of
ICAAD the publication of monographs by Anthony Parton and Denise Bazetoux damage this artist’s
reputation and can cause a misinterpretation of her role in the History of Art. (to read more download document below)

First impressions of “Illuminazioni” exhibition at Venice Biennale- Elegant, intelligent and well paced, but its curator Bice Curiger takes few risks

By Georgina Adam and Jane Morris | Web only
Published online 3 Jun 11 (News) The Art Newspaper
For the original article, click here

Visitors take in Tintoretto's "Last Supper" as part of Bice Curiger's Illuminazioni
VENICE. Organising the Venice Biennale’s headline exhibitions in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and the Arsenale is the high point of most curators’ careers—and also one of the most exposing. Swiss art historian Bice Curiger, the curator of the Zurich Kunsthaus and co-founder of the art magazine Parkett, is only the third woman to be entrusted with this task and the sixth non-Italian. She has called her show “Illuminazioni”, and has invited 83 artists to take part.

In stark contrast to several of the national pavilions, as well as Robert Storr’s exhibition for the 2007 biennale, she has chosen to steer clear of political statements. Instead, Curiger has organised a show that despite its conceptual underpinnings also focuses on the classic themes of form, composition and materials. The selection shows a clear bias towards Western European artists with a lesser one towards those from the US. There is also a notable contribution from names who became famous in the 1960s and 1970s and towards later artists whose work references that period.

“The relationship between art and current affairs as we know them through the media can be problematic: what seems so clear and important today may be old hat by tomorrow,” Curiger said, explaining her aversion to the overtly political. In her official curatorial statement she said she wanted to focus on the idea of light and enlightenment, mutual interaction between artists, the relationship between art and popular culture and on issues of identity.
Perhaps her biggest break

with tradition is the inclusion in the central hall of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni (formerly the Italia Pavilion) of three major works by Tintoretto, two from the Gallerie dell’Accademia and one, The Last Supper, 1594, from San Giorgio Maggiore. The rest of the exhibition is a sober, intelligent survey of works by the likes of Gianni Colombo, Jack Goldstein, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price and Gabriel Kuri. There are some deliberate relationships between individual works, for example Philippe Parreno’s light installation at the entrance with Jack Goldstein’s video, The Jump, 1976, while in other sections artists’ rooms flow satisfactorily from one to another. The German-born philosopher Boris Groys, who is also curator of the Russian pavilion, said that he thought the exhibition was particularly successful because “every work of art has been chosen to reflect the individual position of the artist but also to place it in a national context or within a particular tradition.” He cited Fischli and Weiss’s simple clay sculptures, which are abstract but also look a lot like pipes and builders’ blocks. “They clearly relate to minimalism but also to manual work, while the quality of the production and the attention to detail speaks of a certain Swiss tradition of craftsmanship,” he said.

The works in the Arsenale section of “Illuminazioni”, as befits the cavernous space, are of a larger and more dramatic scale. However, a number of rooms revealed the same strict curatorial approach. The third major space in the sequence displays works by Mai-Thu Perret, Rashid Johnson, Andro Wekua, Annette Kelm and Ida Ekblad, all of which have a strong thread of architecture and construction. Interspersed with them are some real showstoppers, such as Nicholas Hlobo’s dragon made of tyre inner tubes, Iimpundulu Zonke Ziyandilandela, 2011 (see related article), Urs Fischer’s sculpture, a huge wax “candle” interpretation of Bologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women, and Christian Marclay’s The Clock, 2010.

“Illuminazioni is, if anything, rather traditional,” said Jens Hoffmann, the director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, in San Francisco. “I mean that in the best possible way: gone are the endless rows of black boxes with hundreds of videos, no more overly political work that is formally underwhelming and no more pseudo intellectual curatorial concepts. I think 'Illuminations' is as good as the international group exhibition in Venice can be in terms of its selection of works, the use of the spaces and overall display. It is very understated, subtle and elegant.” Hoffmann added that the title is probably the worst part of the show, “and I guess we can live with that.”

The critical reaction generally favoured Curiger’s other innovation: the creation of four “para-pavilions”, in which Franz West, Song Dong, Monika Sosnowska and Oscar Tuazon were invited to create individual spaces that could also house works by other artists. West is showing a “reproduction” of his kitchen in Vienna with works that usually hang there by his artist friends. The works are displayed on the outside of the structure. Inside is projected Dream Villa, a work by Dayanita Singh.

“There is a intelligent and subtle rhythm between the monumental pieces and the smaller works,” in the Arsenale, said the French curator Catherine David. “The exhibition has a Swiss, central European flavour with great consideration for the history of form and formalism. It does not pander in any way to fashions, which I liked a lot,” she added.

Others agreed with the assessment, with a caveat. “[The exhibition] does not take too many chances,” said Joseph Backstein, the director of the Moscow Biennale. Ossian Ward, the art critic and art editor of London’s Time Out magazine, said: “The Arsenale is the stronger of the two venues, but overall 'Illuminazioni' fails to take any real risks. Besides, that is, the parachuting of three Tintorettos into its midst, which neither steal nor cement the show.” Ward added: “Unfortunately we are now so accustomed to this current language of contemporary art and of many of these artists, precisely because of the biennial circuit that Venice helped create. By rights it should still figure as the original and the best, but the breadth of the art world has now made the pre-eminence of the Venice Biennale more contested than ever before.”

***

The Venice Effect -Curators of the Biennale have always played down its impact on the art market, but the two go hand-in-hand

By Olav Velthuis | Web only
Published online 3 Jun 11 (Features) The Art Newspaper
For the original article, click here

When the Venice Biennale was founded in 1895, one of its main goals was to establish a new market for contemporary art. A sales office assisted artists in finding clients and selling their work, a service for which it charged 10% commission. The office was successful: by the end of the first edition, more than half of the works exhibited had been sold. The organisers earned so much in commissions that they were able to donate a handsome amount of cash to charity.
Sales remained an intrinsic part of the biennale until 1968, when leftist students and intellectuals sought to occupy the Giardini’s exhibition grounds as part of their widespread revolt against bourgeois culture. They vilified the biennale as a playground of the rich that promoted the commodification of culture. During their occasionally violent clashes with the police, students carried posters with slogans like “Biennale of capitalists, we’ll burn your pavilions!” and “No to the biennale of the bosses.” Their protests did not go unnoticed, for the biennale’s board decided to dismantle the sales office. Commerce was now taboo in the Giardini. While many of the achievements of 1968 have since been discarded, the biennale’s ban on sales remained. Its commissioners and curators have time and again framed the exhibition as a locus for experiment rather than commerce, elaborating on the fundamental differences between the institution and the art fair, and downplaying its impact on the market. For instance, when Daniel Birnbaum, director of the 2009 edition, revealed the list of artists he had invited to the Arsenale, the president of the biennale, Paolo Baratta, emphasised that the director’s job is “not to give the latest quotation on the market for contemp-orary art”.
But if past attempts to ban commerce from the biennale have been serious, they have also been in vain. For instance, in 2007, London’s White Cube gallery had sold the majority of the works by Tracey Emin in the British pavilion (seen on p21) before the biennale had even opened officially. In the same year, the French super-collector François Pinault snapped up a series of paintings by Sigmar Polke in the Padiglione Italia, much to the dismay of some museum directors, who, as Pinault put it mischievously in a recent interview with the Financial Times, arrived “un peu après”.
No matter how hard its curators have tried to deny it, the biennale’s impact on the art market is notable: showing in Venice speeds up sales, gets artistic careers going, cranks up price levels and helps artists land a dealer ranked higher in the market’s hierarchy. While business may be conducted in a more circumspect way than at an art fair or in a commercial gallery, and money may not be changing hands in the Arsenale or the Giardini, the market is never asleep. During the biennale’s opening days, dealers such as Berlin- and London-based Sprüth Magers, with five artists in Venice this year, or Zurich-based Eva Presenhuber (seven artists in this year’s edition), will be gauging how deep the interest is in specific works on display, calculating the best way to “place” pieces in the hands of trusted collectors or schmoozing with museum curators. To exploit the Venice Effect, numerous others exhibiting at the biennale, among them, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla (Lisson Gallery) and Barbara Visser (Annet Gelink Gallery), will have works for sale at Art Basel, the world’s most important modern and contemporary art fair, which opens its doors only a week later (15-19 June, pp15-18). Their dealers’ credo: “See it in Venice, buy it in Basel.”
So what causes the Venice Effect? The easy answer is that showing in Venice is widely perceived as a signal of artistic quality, lending legitimacy to an artist’s oeuvre and therefore contributing to shaping collectors’ tastes (read: their willingness to pay for art). In this respect, Venice is, of course, far from unique. Dozens of other biennials around the world, such as Documenta in Kassel, but also museums and art critics, as well as influential market players such as Pinault or Charles Saatchi and dealers such as Larry Gagosian or Hauser & Wirth, send out signals of their own. It would therefore be easy to overstate the biennale’s power to make or break artistic careers. The days of 1964, when Venice awarded the top prize to Robert Rauschenberg, and by doing so imported Pop Art into the canon of art history, are long gone. Leafing through past catalogues, the dominant impression is not of the scores of artists whose careers, like that of Pierre Huyghe in 2001, were launched at the biennale, but of all the artists who have been almost forgotten since.
Nevertheless, compared with those of other institutions, the signals sent out by the biennale have a relatively strong effect on the market because of their pure, fresh, independent and highly visible character.
Paradox 1: Purity produces market power
In the contemporary art market, economic value can only be established if it is backed up by artistic value: a growing body of research shows that the reputation of an artist (the sum of all the solo and group shows in museums, monographs published, acquisitions of works by institutional collections, etc.) is one of the best predictors of price levels. The late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu accounted for this correlation: the type of capital around which the art world revolves is not economic or financial, but symbolic. Possessing symbolic capital means having the power to “consecrate” works of art. It is accumulated by curators, critics and all the other brokers of taste who populate the art world. They do so by demonstrating their independence from the market, by ignoring commerce, by showing an autonomous interest in art, in experimentation rather than mundane monetary matters. But once such symbolic capital has been accumulated, it can be converted into economic capital: the stronger the artistic reputation, the stronger the sales and the higher the prices. Thus the paradox is that the curator’s resistance to commerce and Venice’s official status as a non-selling event, is exactly what makes its quality signals influential in the art market.
The importance of purity is illustrated by Ireland’s contribution to this year’s edition. When the country announced the name of the commissioner for its pavilion, Emily-Jane Kirwan, and the artist exhibiting there, Corban Walker, it stirred up controversy. Kirwan is a director at New York’s Pace gallery, one of the world’s most established art dealers, which represents Walker. In The Art Newspaper, a veteran biennale curator who wished to remain anonymous called it “a terrible decision” to put an entire pavilion in the hands of an art dealer and her protégé, arguing that “certain lines must not be crossed, certain categories must not be confused or conflated, and ethical standards must be strictly applied”.
Paradox 2: The fresher the signal, the stronger its impact
While in the past, inclusion in the Venice Biennale would crown the end of an artist’s career, now it often marks its beginning. To show their independence from the market and their ability to spot new talent, the biennale’s directors and curators have increasingly focused on young artists who are not yet household names. In this competition to send out fresh quality signals, which has hotted up due to the worldwide proliferation of biennials, curators are now engaging in a reverse generational race. The press release of the list of artists invited by Bice Curiger emphasised that 32 were born after 1975.
The paradox is that the more virginal these young artists’ curricula are, the stronger the Venice Effect will be for them. Referred to by the late American sociologist Robert Merton as the Matthew Effect (“the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” according to the gospel of St Matthew), their participation prompts many more curators and collectors to pay attention to their work. For the few older artists in Curiger’s “Illuminations” exhibition, such as James Turrell or Elaine Sturtevant, Venice will be just one more line on their CVs. Likewise, the market for Christopher Wool is unlikely to change much due to Curiger’s invitation: his 1990 canvas Blue Fool was sold at Christie’s New York last year for $5m (with buyer’s premium), making him the most expensive artist included this year. But they are the exceptions to the rule. The market for most of the artists selected by Curiger are nowhere close to established. And while the commissioners of the national pavilions tend to invite artists who are better known, of all the participants this year, only one out of five has ever achieved an auction price of more than $25,000. Half of them have never been sold at auction. Anya Titova, the second youngest artist to participate in the biennale, does not even have a dealer representing her.
Paradox 3: Independence financed by the dealers’ money
Curators have another instrument to demonstrate their independence vis-à-vis the market: focusing on artists who make work that is hard to sell, such as installations or videos. In the past couple of decades, these non-commodities have slowly crowded out the commodities at the biennale. But paradoxically this has done little to decouple Venice from the market. One reason is that powerful dealers are interested in representing artists who create non-commodifiable art for similar reasons to curators: it allows them to prove that they not only want to make a quick buck from selling smart paintings and photographs or from trading on the secondary market. In other words, representing these artists produces symbolic capital for these dealers.
An important practical reason why the focus on non-commodities has failed to decouple Venice from the market is that the biennale itself lacks the funds to produce, ship and install these large-scale works. Therefore the financial involvement of dealers is indispensable. Here the decision to stop selling in 1968 has taken its revenge, because it resulted in a steep drop in revenue for the biennale. The same hand that pushed the sales commissioner out pulled the art dealers in.
Paradox 4: Visibility because of proximity to the biennale
The Venice Effect not only depends on the purity, freshness and independence of its signals, but also on their high visibility. The 2009 edition attracted more than 375,000 visitors. In itself, this number is hardly staggering if one takes into account that the biennale lasts for almost six months. In the same year, solo shows of Pipilotti Rist at the Museum of Modern Art or Cai Guo-Qiang at the New York Guggenheim museum attracted more visitors. But in terms of the audience’s composition, the biennale is hard to beat: functioning as the art world’s equivalent of Cannes, which on the side of its film festival hosts the main international platform for the movie business, the entire industry convenes in Venice.
Obviously Venice’s importance to the art industry is related to its attractive location and to its status as the oldest biennale which has served as a (counter) model for the dozens of other biennials established in the last couple of decades. But another reason is its proximity – both in time and place – to the centre of the international contemporary art market: Art Basel, which opens only a week after Venice (the two usually follow each other) and attracts a largely similar crowd of art professionals.
The structural position of Venice and Basel in the global art world overlaps in several respects. First of all, presenting an instant overview of today’s worldwide art production, they provide a means for both curators and collectors to economise on search time. This is particularly important for the art market’s clientele whose scarcest resource is not money but time: travelling regularly to individual museum or gallery shows out of town has become a luxury that the richest can no longer afford, unlike the leisure class of yesteryear who used to be the main customers. Visiting fairs and biennials in order to save time and travel costs is all the more important in an art world where “local” has become a pejorative term. As The Economist put it: “‘local artist’ has become a synonym for insignificant artist … ‘International’ is now a selling point in itself.” In other words, a global habitus is expected from all members of the art industry. Both Venice and Basel enable this habitus by temporarily bringing the globally consecrated supply of art under one roof.
Second, the continuing success of both Basel and Venice in attracting art crowds should be seen in the light of a wider culture of events. Within this culture, the consumption (but not necessarily acquisition) of contemporary art is packaged as a social and cultural experience, livened up by the artistic performances, seminars and round table discussions of experts that have now become standard elements of both the fair and the biennale.
Third, Basel and Venice derive their central role in the art industry from the latter’s status-driven nature: both the biennale and the fair are finely tuned tools that reflect and reproduce status hierarchies. They distinguish visitors by providing selected groups with VIP treatment, access to pre-(and pre-pre-) openings, after parties on expensive billionaire’s yachts, or visits to the villas of collectors living close by. Those types of access are broadly recognised as signs of status among the cultural elite: the more exclusive the venue, the more status access to that venue produces.
In short, asking what the impact of Venice on the art market is poses the wrong question: without institutions such as the biennale, it is impossible to conceive of a contemporary art market to begin with. And vice versa: without the art market, the biennale would no longer flourish. To annul the Venice Effect seems impossible, but if the curators and commissioners want to try, here is the recipe: follow Ireland’s example of appointing art dealers as the commissioners and curators; invite artists with a chock-full rather than a virginal curriculum; postpone the opening a couple of weeks so that it can no longer be attended as part of a 21st-century Grand Tour that also includes Art Basel.
It is unlikely that any of these measures will be adopted soon by the biennale’s organisers. And why would they? It may go a long way towards decoupling Venice from the market, but at the cost of turning the institution into an irrelevancy. In the end, the problem may not be the Venice Effect itself, but the art world’s anti-commercial ideology, which makes curators uncomfortable about this effect. As Curiger argued recently in an interview: “What happens to an artist once you’ve approached him or her is beyond your control. Artists are not throwaway objects – if they sell well, does that mean that their work doesn’t mean anything any more?”

***

Argentine market proves difficult for ArteBA dealers

The 20th edition sees slower sales but boom for local galleries

By Silas Martí | Web only
Published online 25 May 11 (Market) The Art Newspaper
For the original article, click here

BUENOS AIRES. The 20th edition of the ArteBA fair, held from 18 to 23 May, saw slower sales than the previous edition, but a boom in the local market for photography and paintings at the lower price points.
Dealers were quick to admit the Argentinian market is difficult, although the fair maintained its massive public following, with huge lines forming at the door every day.
Though figures are unofficial, it is estimated this year had a similar number of visitors as last year, nearly 120,000. Sales had not been tallied up by the time we went to press, but dealers said they had sold about a third less than in 2010 when revenue hovered around $6m.
The fair has become more international, with 30% of the 73 participating galleries from abroad. New wings of the fair, the Barrio Joven, with emerging Latin American galleries, and U Turn, with six galleries from Berlin, gave the event a more cosmopolitan feel.
But while more foreigners browsed ArteBA, most dealers from abroad lamented their poor performance. “This is simply awful, I haven’t sold a thing and no one comes by the stand”, complained Spanish dealer Ángeles Baños. “It is definitely difficult to sell things here, but it’s good to meet people,” said Peruvian gallerist Renzo Gianella, of Revolver.
By contrast, Alberto Sendrós, one of the leading galleries in Buenos Aires, was bustling with visitors. Every paintings in Matías Duville’s series Una Larga Noche was sold, seven of them for $24,000 and three with a $32,000 price tag, totalling $264,000—one of the largest results at the fair. Baró, the São Paulo gallery with a stand nearby, sold Roberto Jacoby’s 1968, El Culo Te Abrochó” series for $110,000 to a local private collector.
Another highlight was the sale of Marta Minujin’s 2011 Freaking on Fluor installation, which sold at RO gallery for $85,000 to celebrity collector Eduardo Costantini, founder of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba). Argentinian modernist Antonio Berni's El Sueño de los Injustos, 1961, sold for $200,000 at Montevideo’s Sur gallery, although other more expensive Berni pieces did not find buyers.
Other modern pieces by Berni and painters like Roberto Aizenberg were on show at several stands, but went unsold. Ruth Benzacar, a leading local dealer, did not manage to sell Aizenberg’s Homenaje a Matisse, for its $80,000 asking price, but sold all three photographs in Flavia Da Rin’s Carnival series for $5,500 each and Miguel Rotschild’s Los Angeles photograph for $3,000. Both artists are young photographers from Argentina.
“Photography here is really growing, but art as a whole remains very cheap”, said ArteBA director Facundo Gómez Minujin. “We are a not-for-profit foundation, so we’re not trying to make money with the fair. All the revenue we take in is used for production of the next fair”, added Minujin.
 

At a Hard-Charging Art HK, Blue-Chip Western Dealers Finally Sense Asia's Market Winds Blowing Their Way

By Judd Tully
Published: May 25, 2011 ARTINFO
For the original article, click here

HONG KONG— Boasting 260 galleries from 38 countries, the fourth edition of the much-expanded Hong Kong International Art Fair — aka Art HK 11 — held its sparsely attended VIP preview this afternoon at the city's waterfront convention center. Though the names may not sound familiar to the local population, top-drawer galleries ranging from New York's Gagosian and Marian Goodman to Paris's Thaddaeus Ropac and London's White Cube signed on this year in hopes of catching some of the newly minted Asian wealth.

There has also been a nonstop buzz about the growing status of the fair since the announcement just weeks ago that the big daddy of art-fair organizers, Basel's MCH Group, organizers of the Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach fairs, purchased for an undisclosed sum a sixty percent controlling stake in Asian Art Fairs Ltd., the owners of Art HK. Next year's ART HK will reposition itself with an early February schedule, midway between Art Basel Miami Beach in December and Art Basel in June.

But beyond that striking development, as well as the multibillion-dollar project underway to build the M+ contemporary art museum and surrounding cultural district in nearby West Kowloon, the overwhelming success of the Hong Kong venue, which has grown into the most important Asian art fair in just four years, compelled Western galleries to take the plunge.

"My expectation is to meet some of the Chinese collectors, but it's not so easy," said London and Munich dealer Monika Sprüth of Sprüth Magers. "We have no Chinese artists so it's complicated. It would take a lot of time to find the right Chinese artists on the same level as our Western artists."

In the first few hours of the preview, the dealer sold Andreas Gursky's large-scale Grand Prix pit-stop photograph "Ferrari II" from 2007, number three from an edition of four, to a European collector for €500,000 ($700,000). "We could have sold this piece anywhere," noted Sprüth, who said she sold it to a collector she already knew. "But we wanted to concentrate on a few artists here."
New York's Sperone Westwater featured Chinese star Liu Ye in its booth, and quickly fielded significant interest in the artist's "Once Upon a Time in Broadway," a 2006 homage to Piet Mondrian's iconic "Broadway Boogie-Woogie." Liu's version was priced at $2 million. So far, the gallery sold the artist's "R," a 2009 print from an edition of 60, for $15,000. The work is part of Liu's battleship series, this one featuring a huge warship seen through red curtains as a small boy in a sailor suit looks on.

"There's a lot of interest percolating," said David Leiber, a gallery partner, "but the big Asian buyers art not from Mainland China. I've been speaking with people from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan."

New York's Lehmann Maupin also traveled far abroad to find success at home, selling two 2010 brushed-stainless-steel-and-stone-base sculptures by Do Ho Suh, titled "Karma," from an edition of three, to an undisclosed United States museum and a New York collector.
Elsewhere, there was early, modestly priced action at New York and Shanghai's James Cohan Gallery, with Guo Hongwei's sweet 2010 watercolor "A Study for Shirley Temple Series" selling to a Chinese collector for $5,000, and Tony Oursler's "De-Doublement," an early piece from 1996 composed of two dolls, a shelf, a projector, and a tripod, going to an Australian collector for $40,000.

The gallery also sold Japanese artist Tabiamo's Chinese-ink-on-Japanese-paper composition of elaborately depicted interlinked hands, "Tawamushi (13)," for in the $7,000 range. Tabiamo will be representing Japan in the upcoming Venice Biennale.

Strolling along the generously proportioned aisles and industrial-strength concrete floors, you could barely tell it was an Asian fair, apart from some booths that went to the trouble of putting up bilingual wall labels.

Familiar fair and art-world faces blurred any sense of geography. In a scene that could have been glimpsed at any of the world's major fairs, for instance, Phillips de Pury chairman Simon de Pury power-walked through the space of New York gallery Gavin Brown's Enterprise, which featured new works by Alex Katz and Rikrit Tiravanija, among others. For his part, Tiravanija contributed a dynamic suite of eight glazed ceramic portrait reprises of Andy Warhol's "Mao" called "Untitled 2011 (Import Export)," priced at $250,000. So far there weren't any takers, but the suite of palladium-luster patinated heads threw plenty of wall-power.

"The fact that Basel has bought into the fair brings a big boost and gives an indication of the strength of the art market here," observed de Pury, sporting his ever-present camera. In fact, de Pury said, he is shopping for a Phillips de Pury venue in Hong Kong for a first-time auction here sometime later this year or early next. He declined to go into further detail.

Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams have already established important beachheads here, turning Hong Kong into the third-largest auction sector, trailing only New York and London. "I'm here to look at everything," said de Pury.

Big-name Japanese art certainly seemed in favor, as evidenced by the work's hearty reception at Paris-based Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery. Perrotin sold Takashi Murakami's "Open Your Hands Wide," a giant two-panel acrylic-on-canvas painting from 2010, mounted on an aluminum frame, for $2.2 million to a European collector. Meanwhile, a small-scale Murakami in acrylic and platinum leaf on canvas, appropriately titled "An Homage to IKB, 1957," sold in the region of the $300,000 asking price.

The gallery also sold two large canvases by Murakami disciple Mr.: "Title to Be Determined" (2011) for $175,000, and the four-panel "Desire" from the same year for $240,000. Both works encapsulated Mr.'s lewdly childish vocabulary of little girls, flowers, and gum drops, set against an exotic background of rich foliage.

Another familiar face circulating the aisles — and making you feel like you were in London, Basel, or Miami — was Brett Gorvy, Christie's newly appointed worldwide head of postwar and contemporary art, flanked by New York Warhol dealer Alberto Mugrabi.
"It's a surprisingly good fair," observed Gorvy, "and they're making a serious effort. Right now, it's more about educating the public here as much as anything else. But it's going to be quick in moving from collecting just Chinese contemporary to Western art." Clearly, auction houses are hoping that the specialist's prediction will come true, opening the floodgates of a market bonanza.
Speaking about top-flight dealers who signed up for this edition, Gorvy expressed what many dealers indicated: "The big names came because they all heard it was the foothold. They're obviously trying to meet new people. You need an art fair to have a public face in order to reach new markets."

Arne Glimcher, the founder and head of Pace Gallery, which established a big branch in Beijing in 2008, was one such big name. "The fair has been very successful for us," he said. "I sold Zhang Xiaogang's 'Slumber No.4' from 2011 to a Korean for $600,000 and a small Zhang Huan ash-on-linen 'Clock' from 2011 for around $100,000 about ten minutes ago." The latter work, featuring a young Asian girl with folded hands, exuded a quiet piety, much like the material of the accumulated ash allegedly gathered from burnt incense from Chinese monasteries.
Glimcher is very bullish on Asia, and China in particular. "They're wide-open and interested to learn, but not so interested as yet in Western Art," said the dealer, who recently celebrated his 50th year of dealing under the Pace moniker. "They own the 21st century and are very optimistic. It reminds me of America in the '60s when that kind of enthusiasm and optimism led to so much buying of American art."
One of the most surprised of the first-time dealers here was David Zwirner, who experienced a near-perfect storm of interest for the art he brought over. That included paintings made specially for the fair, such as Luc Tuyman's large-scale, 87 ½-by-62 ¼-inch oil-on-canvas "Couple," an uncharacteristically sweet 2011 painting depicting two birds on a tree branch that sold for approximately one million dollars.
"We sold a bunch of stuff — what more do you want when you do an art fair?" said Zwirner, who noted that all of the buyers were Chinese collectors. "I would say mission accomplished." He also sold Yan Pei-Ming's powerful "Self-Portrait" from 2011 for $400,000, and Daniel Richter's "Tuwenig," an exotic 2004 composition of a top-hatted circus performer surrounded by a large pack of dogs, for $700,000. On the younger side, the gallery also sold the Algerian-born and red-hot Adel Abdessemed's trio of Murano-glass-fabricated microphones, titled "Fatalité," for $220,000.

New York and Los Angeles galler L&M Arts, another first-time exhibitor here, sold Jeff Koons's large-scale 2007 painting "Monkey Train (Orange)," a Wild West-themed work dominated by a smiling monkey, for a sum in the region of $3.5 million. London's White Cube also sold a major, grimly Nazi-themed Jake and Dinos Chapman vitrine studded with mayhem-making toy soldiers, "Das Kapital Ist Kaput? Ja? Nein! Dummkopf!" from 2008, to an Asian collector for £525,000 ($850,000). Eigen+Art of Berlin and Leipzig, meanwhile, sold Leipzig School guru Neo Rauch's "Fastnacht (Carnival)" from 2010 for $1.2 million to an undisclosed collector.

While a number of dealers grumbled at the absence of action, clearly commerce was making waves.
Two separate sections that are bivouacked on an upper floor here, Art Futures and Asia One, represent a further expansion of Art HK 11 by showcasing more local Asian art, decidedly on the emerging side. The former consists of 45 galleries and the latter 47, adding 92 booths to the 168 mainstream stands on the main floor (The new Asian sections will be covered in another report.)
Finally, one of the best perks found are the stunning views of Hong Kong harbor, literally a stone's throw from what hopes to be more hardcore art commerce.

ART HK 11 runs through the 29th.
***
 

Does Money Grow on Art Market Trees? Not for Everyone

By ROBIN POGREBIN and KEVIN FLYNN
Published: May 30, 2011 in the New York Times
For the original article, click here

As all the talk of record prices demonstrates, contemporary art has soared in value over the last 10 years, outperforming stocks as an investment and drawing attention to possible bonanzas to be found in the market.
But not all boats have lifted with the tide.
Prices for the work of a variety of artists, including some top names like Larry Rivers, Eric Fischl and Francesco Clemente, have declined or stayed flat at auction in recent years, according to data compiled by Artnet, a company that tracks such sales.
For example, a Dutch Masters painted cigar box, created by Rivers and valued as high as $40,000 last year, sold in September for less than $4,000. Last month Mr. Fischl’s untitled painting of robed figures in a church sold for $194,500, $70,000 less than it fetched six years ago.
And Mr. Clemente’s “Parabola,” a painting Sotheby’s had valued as high as $90,000 a year ago, sold for a third of that in March. Often these are temporary descents. Other works by these artists can still command hefty prices. A Clemente painting estimated at $30,000 to $50,000 at auction this spring sold for $76,900.
Nonetheless, at a time when so much attention is paid to skyrocketing values, the dreary performance of some artists’ portfolios is a topic seldom broached.
“We in the auction business want to put our best foot forward, so when we get a good price, we make a big fuss about it,” said Elaine Stainton, the director of the painting department at the auction house Doyle New York. “When we have a disappointing sale, we keep our mouths shut.” Perhaps nothing in the art world is as mystifying to the layman as the often abrupt changes in works’ values. The market’s overall ups and downs make sense. And it seems logical that works by old masters act like stable blue-chip stocks, while contemporary art functions like growth stocks: volatile but with a sudden capacity to crown genius and create fortune.
But how to explain the cruel backslide of artists whose work escalates, then slips in value? Just as it is difficult to pinpoint precisely why work by some artists rises in value, experts say it can be harder still to explain why some artists’ value declines.
“There is a constant ebb and flow in art historical reputations,” said Jeffrey Deitch, a longtime New York gallery owner who now directs the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “The reputation of even the greatest figures like Picasso are in flux.”

Certainly the value of an individual work of art can be affected by its size (bigger is better), condition, provenance and how recognizable it is, something often referred to as wall power.
Andy Warhol, for example, is a premium name brand. This month a silk-screened Warhol self-portrait touched off a bidding war at Christie’s before selling for $38.4 million, well above its high estimate of $30 million. “Some people like that instant recognizability, that someone can walk into the living room and say, ‘That’s a Warhol,’ ” said Mary Hoeveler, an art adviser in New York.
Prices can be hurt by negative reviews or if an artist has gone a long time without a major exhibition. And it helps to have work held by a famous collector: high-profile collectors create high profiles for the art they purchase.
So it was a setback for the Italian artist Sandro Chia in the 1980s when Charles Saatchi, the British advertising magnate and art collector, bought dozens of his works, then turned around and sold them, depressing the market for Mr. Chia’s work and damaging his career.
“It’s an unfortunate truth that some people buy with their ears rather than their eyes — listening to hear who bought what,” said Cristin Tierney, who owns a gallery in Chelsea and has consulted for Christie’s. “They want to get in on the action. They’re not really looking at the work.”
Then there is the simple rule of supply and demand, that — all other things being equal — paintings by Giorgione, which are rare, might command better prices from some collectors than works by Titian, which are more plentiful. But Warhols, among the hottest items on the market, continue to command high prices, though in many instances they were mass-produced.
“People who are buying don’t realize how great the supply is,” Ms. Stainton said. “If they realized how many examples there were, they wouldn’t value them as highly as they do.”
(While important Warhols routinely bring in huge sums, the Artnet tracking does not show a meteoric rise. Amy King, who directs the company’s database, said that was partly because Warhol’s work had done well at auction for years and partly because the data took in the entire gamut of works auctioned, not just the blockbusters, but also many lesser items that may not have escalated wildly in price. The price booms for works by Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon have been more striking. Bacon’s paintings often sell for triple what they did a decade ago.)
Mr. Clemente’s price history at auction is illustrative, but by no means rare. The data indicates that his work peaked in price two decades ago and has trailed off since.
Why?
He was an art darling in the 1980s, part of a group that included Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

His paintings and etchings, which often focus on the body, sexuality and self-portraiture, were once so popular that three New York galleries simultaneously showcased his work.
“Clemente is so in,” observed the London newspaper The Independent in 1989, “that he does not feel it necessary to repeat himself.”
But now his work is at times cast — some say unfairly — as dated, and he is no longer represented by Gagosian, one of the most powerful galleries in the world.
Still, as a matter of history, he has paintings in every major New York City museum, and in 2007 Roberta Smith, a New York Times art critic, described him as “the most resilient of the Italian Neo-Expressionists.”
Representatives for artists who have not done as well at auction say the data does not really measure the true value of their work. More ambitious pieces are often sold privately, by dealers, they said, and those prices are generally not made public. Only about half of all art purchases are made at auction, where prices are announced and can be analyzed.
“It’s a tool that you really need to use with caution,” said Ron Warren, the director of the Mary Boone Gallery, which represents Mr. Fischl.
Some also worry that whatever the accuracy of auction data, using it to track values is a crude exercise that considers aesthetic expressions only as commodities.
“Auctions are a blunt instrument,” said Marc Glimcher, the president of Pace Gallery. Better measures, he argued, would be criteria like: “How many galleries are trying to get a Murakami show from Murakami’s main dealers? How many museum or gallery shows of X artist are there per year? How many different continents do they show on per year?”
Still, more and more people now consult auction data compiled and analyzed by a growing number of companies that seek to provide quantitative measures of value. These consultants acknowledge that auction data is an imperfect tool.
“But there is no other verifiable measure of fluctuation of value — up or down — and the overall health of the market,” said Michael Plummer, co-owner of Artvest, an art investment advisory firm. “Without it, we would all be fumbling around in the dark.”
Ultimately, most agree that artist values are a lot like hemlines. They rise and fall, often fueled by something like a new museum show — for example, the one at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence this fall that will feature Mr. Clemente’s work.
Who knows how that might affect his reception at auction?

“Clemente is still stuck with the label of the 1980s artist, which in five years could be super trendy,” Ms. Tierney said. “So maybe a good thing to do is start buying Clemente now. You’ll be ahead of the pack.”
***
 

Archive of artworks stolen by Nazis goes online

Catalogue launched to help historians and families trace art looted during Hitler era

The Guardian, Friday May 6 201, Sam Jones,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/05/archive-artworks-stolen-nazis-online

Despite a reputation for reaching for their revolvers at the merest mention of
culture, the Nazis were among the most ruthless, avaricious and methodical art collectors ever to cast a
greedy eye and thieving hand over other people's property.

"Use every means of transport to get all works of art out of Florence ... [save] works
of art from English and Americans," ran one of Heinrich Himmler's orders. "In fine
get anything away that you can get hold of. Heil Hitler."

That appetite for the most beautiful and precious works of European art saw
thousands of pieces stolen from their owners between 1933 and 1945 and entire
collections raided, scattered and lost.

The quest to recover them and, where possible, return them to their rightful places
has been under way for almost seven decades.

Now, thanks to a deal between some of the world's leading archives and museums, an
online catalogue of documents has been created to help families, historians and
researchers track down the missing artworks.

Under an agreement signed on Thursday by organisations including Britain's National
Archives , the Commission for Looted Art in Europe , the US National
Archives and Records Administration (Nara) and
Germany's Bundesarchiv , the records will be available through a single web portal
 

The records include files documenting the systematic expropriation of Jewish
property, Adolf Hitler's plans to establish a Fuhrermuseum crammed with looted art
in his Austrian hometown of Linz and the interrogation of art dealers.

The British documents, which cover the years 1939 to 1961, also lay out the efforts
made to identify the stolen works and reunite them with their owners.

Among them is a report from a British art expert and RAF intelligence officer who
was dispatched to Switzerland in 1945. The paper may have faded to yellow, but
Douglas Cooper's exasperation with the Swiss authorities remains fresh to this day.

"Until I arrived here five weeks ago, practically nothing had been done," he writes.
"And still no steps have been taken by the Swiss government to put the looted
pictures in security. This means that it is still possible for any of the present
holders to dispose of them."

Cooper concedes that "a new spirit seems to have made its appearance" since his
arrival, but appeals for Foreign Office support in ensuring that dispossessed owners
do not have to make individual claims through the Swiss courts "because the issue is
a moral one".

The National Archives and the Commission for Looted Art in Europe have worked
together for two years to catalogue and digitise more than 128,000 pages of
information, ranging from seizure orders and inventories to images of looted works
and reports of the transfer of stolen pieces to neutral countries.

All the original British government files have been scanned in colour and are
searchable by name, place, subject and date.

The aim of the enterprise, according to Oliver Morley, chief executive and keeper of
the National Archives, is to provide unprecedented access to the past.

"By digitising and linking archival records online, researchers will be able to
piece together the stories of what became of cultural objects, be they books,
paintings, sculpture, jewellery or any other stolen artefacts from evidence
fragmented across borders and languages," he said.

Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, said that while
records from the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, the US, and Ukraine were now
accessible online, other countries- including Switzerland, Poland and Italy - also
held documents that could help families and historians.

"It's been enormously difficult for families to access these records because before
you had to physically go to them," she said. "But now they're all digitised and you
can search by the name of the victim, the perpetrator, the artist and the artwork.
It will dramatically change the possibilities for people, but there's still more to
come."

Christie's auctioneer posts record sales in 2010

Christie's auctioneer posts record sales in 2010 Thu Jan 27 11:44:07 UTC 2011

By Mike Collett-White LONDON (Reuters) - The world's largest auction house Christie's posted record annual sales of 3.3 billion pounds ($5 billion) in 2010, a jump of 53 percent on 2009, underlining the strength of the recovery in the fine art market. Jussi Pylkkanen, president of Christie's Europe, said the strength was sustainable and that there was room for further growth given the number of new clients bidding with the company. He added that Christie's would focus its efforts over the next five years on expanding its online presence and on developing a new client base in mainland China. The number of new clients who registered for a sale last year rose 23 percent on 2009, and the number of people who went on to buy an item increased 13 percent. "It's that rise of new registrants which really for me signals both sustainability and actually further potential growth," he told Reuters in an interview. "This new influx of buyers ... continues to grow, and that really is the vital piece for me," he added. "I am very comfortable that it is sustainable." Prices in several sectors soared and records tumbled last year, making up for steep losses triggered by the global economic crisis. New collectors and investors from China were one of the main factors behind the rebound. SOTHEBY'S ENJOYS BUMPER SALES Christie's main rival Sotheby's also enjoyed bumper sales, with its auction total, not including private sales, hitting $4.3 billion in 2010 compared with $2.3 billion in 2009. The company, which is listed and has yet to announce its full year figures for 2010, called the performance "outstanding." Last year, Christie's set a new auction record for a single work of art when Pablo Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust" fetched $106.5 million in New York in May. It was just enough to surpass the $104.3 million set by Sotheby's a few months earlier in London for a statue by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Astronomic prices were fetched outside the auctioneering mainstream, most notably when Bainbridge's in England sold a Chinese vase discovered during a routine house clearance for 43 million pounds. The following month, Bonhams, a major auction house, sold a blue-and-white Chinese porcelain dragon jar for $7.7 million, more than 600 times its estimate. Christie's said 28 percent of its clients now bid for items online via its LIVE platform, a five percent increase on 2009. Online bidding would be one of two major areas of expansion over the coming five years, according to Pylkkanen, because it opened up the art world to people other than the super-rich. "It really isn't just about selling a picture by Picasso for $50 million," he said. "It is much more about a broader range of clients, a broader offering. That will provide us with tremendous strength and also great growth opportunity in the next five years. Online is absolutely vital." Another potential area of growth was mainland China. Christie's Asian art sales realized 570 million pounds in 2010, an increase of 115 percent year-on-year. "A lot of our efforts over the next five years will be in ... developing a platform and the relationships that allows buyers in mainland China to buy in all of our auctions globally," said Pylkkanen. (Editing by Paul Casciato)

Sellers and buyers need to know who’s who

THE ART NEWSPAPER

Art world up in arms at “light bulb” law

 THE ART NEWSPAPER

PADA 2010 ANNUAL GRANT ANNOUNCED

Trade fury on delayed report on resale right

Art Newspaper- Sept

Continuous legislation to extend the artist's resale right to include recently-dead artists could be implemented by default in the UK in 2012 because ... download complete article.

 

'The Learned Eye' by Jan De Maere, President of CINOA

The market is fickle and inconsistent. If an auction house does not have an excellent level of expertise, clients are assisted by the best experts available. The best art dealers and antique dealers preserve the monopoly of connoisseurship. For a long time they exchange their views with those of the best specialists in museums and universities. In addition they have time to study a piece and their clients have time to think about the purchase. Ultimately it is only the ... to read more download the full articlein French and English.

James Lally article on CPAC on China

Sept 2010

·        

“ The U.S. embargo is a political gesture that will do no good in China, but the harmful impact in the U.S. will be widespread and long lasting” states James Lally. The Unilateral embargo covers all categories of Chinese art and artifacts from the Paleolithic era through the end of the Tang Dynasty and all ‘monumental sculpture and wall art’ more than 250 years old. For more updated information, download pdf file from Art & Auction Sept. 2010      

CINOA Dealers’ Report: Some Key Findings

Clare McAndrew, Arts Economics                                    September 27, 2010

UN committee on return of cultural property meets in Paris

20 September 2010 – The Parthenon Marbles will be among the cultural treasures under discussion this week as a United Nations committee promoting the return of cultural property to their countries of origin meets for three days in Paris.

Specifically, the Committee will consider the ongoing negotiations between Greece and the United Kingdom concerning the Parthenon Marbles, between Turkey and Germany on the Sphinx of Bogusköy, and the recent return of the Makonde Mask by a private Swiss museum to Tanzania.

The committee will also continue the study it launched last year on alternative means of conflict resolution concerning cultural property, and discuss the creation of a database of successful restitution cases. The future database is intended to demonstrate the diverse types of restitution claims and arrangements possible, as well as the wide range of cultural objects and States involved.

Its members will also work on the elaboration of model rules aimed at helping States define their ownership of cultural property – particularly undiscovered archaeological objects – and will discuss a set of consolidated draft rules of procedure on mediation and conciliation.

The committee is known formally as the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in case of Illicit Appropriation, and it was set up within the context of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

As part of its work during this session, the Committee’s secretariat has invited key representatives of the global art market – Christie’s, Sotheby’s, SNA, CINOA and SYMEV – to present their role in ensuring ethical and legal practices.

In addition, UNESCO’s partner institutions – the International Council of Museums, INTERPOL, World Customs Organization, UNIDROIT, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Carabinieri (Italy) and l'Office Central de lutte contre le trafic des Biens Culturels (France) – will report on their most recent activities in the protection of cultural heritage.

Established in 1978, the Intergovernmental Committee is responsible for facilitating bilateral negotiations for the restitution or return of cultural property to its countries of origin – and promoting such restitution.

Published by UN News Centre on September 20, 2010