Sotheby’s has been accused of colluding with a 10th-century Cambodian statue’s current owner to hide information about provenance. Papers were filed in United States District Court in Manhattan by Federal prosecutors alleging that the work was stolen in 1972 and that Sotheby’s had knowledge of this prior to consigning it. Sotheby’s stated that The United States attorney’s office is trying “to tar Sotheby’s with a hodgepodge of other allegations designed to create the misimpression that Sotheby’s acted deceptively in selling the statue. That is simply not true.” (more…)

Bejing’s 798 Arts district, currently composed of warehouse spaces that have been repurposed into galleries and artist studios, will be developed into a high end arts and culture center, replete with skyscrapers. Designed by I.M. Pei’s son Li Chung Pei, the project is slated for 2013, and will include a “laser stage”, a “primitive art community”, luxury hotel and apartments, and facilities to “examine and trade art” as well as an aquatic theater. The project’s manager, Wang Jianjun, said that it “will be the biggest art center in China with the best service.” (more…)

Sotheby’s saleroom with Rothko, No 1 (Royal Red and Blue) photo by ArtObserved

Last night Sotheby’s held its highest grossing auction ever. The Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled over $375 million, just over the projected high estimate of $374 million. Auctioneer Tobias Meyer rejoiced stating “I can hardly express how thrilled we are.” According to Sotheby’s, it has experienced a record-breaking year in 2012, with Contemporary Art sales totaling over $1 billion.

Rothko, No 1 (Royal Red and Blue) Courtesy Sotheby’s
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Richard Prince, Installation View, 2012 courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Richard Prince’s Four Saturdays offers blackened, collaged six pack rings and text paintings that recall movie openings. The solid black of the text paintings on the simplistic white backdrop echoes the more simplistic atmosphere, contradicting his earlier, more colorful works that paradoxically seem to emphasize the glamour and allure of Hollywood.

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Eric Shiner, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, has been appointed curator of Armory Focus: USA. In Celebration of the Centennial of the 1913 Armory Show, The Fourth Edition of Armory Focus will exhibit the achievements of contemporary art in America.  Several museum cultural partners will host exhibitions relating to the 1913 Armory and the development of modernism. During the fair, the Museum of Modern Art will present Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925; The Metropolitan Museum of Art will exhibit African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde; The New-York Historical Society will host The Armory Show at 100, featuring such canonical works as Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, first viewed on American soil at The Armory Show of 1913. (more…)

Alex Israel, Thirty exhibition at Almine Rech (announcement)

Work by Los Angeles-based American artist Alex Israel is being showcased in the Almine Rech Gallery Paris this month in an exhibition entitled Thirty, harking back to his Berlin exhibition which occurred exactly one year ago at Peres Projects in Kreuzberg, Berlin, and also to his installation at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City this summer.

Alex Israel, Thirty & Property, courtesy Almine Rech
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Parsons School of Design will reestablish its Paris presence, opening on November 29th with a reception at the Palais de Tokyo. Frank Alvah Parsons initiated a Paris program in 1921 for the school (which was then New York School of Fine and Applied Art). The French program closed during World War II but reopened upon merging with The New School for Social Research in 1970 but has since become less connected. “We see this less as a satellite campus and more of a node and network system,” said Joel Towers, the school’s executive dean. (more…)

Christie’s sale today to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation achieved $17,017,050 for the Foundation’s endowment, with 91% of lots sold. Leading the sale of 354 works by Andy Warhol were Endangered Species: San Francisco Silverspot, which had an estimate of $1,000,000 – $1,500,000 and sold for $1,258,500; followed by Endangered Species: Bighorn Ram, estimated at $700,000 – $1,000,000 and achieving $842,500; and Jackie, which more than doubled its high estimate of $300,000, realizing $626,500. (more…)

Richard Armstrong announced that six of approximately 100 acquisitions that have been made for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi so far have come from the art fair, which opened last week. They include work by Jacques Villeglé, Rachid Koraïchi (Algeria), Monir Farmanfarmaian (Iran), Ai Weiwei; El Anatsui and Subodh Gupta. He stated that the acquisition’s general ratio of European to artists from other countries will be indicative of the museum’s overall focus. (more…)

Derek Eller, Printed Matter, Wallspace and Bortolami Gallery have received grants from the ADAA’s hurricane relief fund, which will help them recover economically from damage sustained during Hurricane Sandy. The fund began with $250,000 and continues to increase. Factors include catastrophic damage that prohibits gallery business, drastically impaired cash flow, and risk of permanent closure. (more…)

Five paintings worth a total of $2 million were stolen at gunpoint from the Pretoria Art Museum yesterday in what could be the biggest art theft in South African history. Over the past 5-10 years, work by South African artists has increased tenfold, experts say. The thieves are not believed to be professionals, as they left work by some of South Africa’s best-known artists, including work by William Kentridge, behind. The museum’s security cameras were not working at the time; Interpol is investigating. (more…)

Hong Kong’s Peddler building is home to several galleries, effectively having elevated the cities standing as an international arts center. The structure, a historic building in the center of the city was never demolished in order to develop a glass skyscraper, houses Gagosian Gallery, Ben Brown and others, and will soon be the home to Lehmann Maupin as well.  (more…)

Installation view: Bjarne Melgaard “A New Novel” at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. All images by Jennifer Lindblad for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

The door of Luxembourg & Dayan’s historic townhouse on Upper East Side—the second most narrow in New York City— opens to a visual assault: sequined dolls wearing Proenza Schouler-designed evening gowns and Pink Panther figurines perch atop neon-colored piles of books just narrow enough to snake through, violent sexual vignettes are played out by clay figures, and 1970s-style wallpaper and overlapping area rugs serves as a rough-and-tumble backdrop. All comprise Bjarne Melgaard’s twisted vision for “A New Novel.”

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Berenberg Bank has opened a €50 million art fund with a minimum €100,000 investment. The fund plans to offer an alternative investment vehicle in a time of global economic insecurity. The fund, which will rely on museums and collectors to advise on acquisitions, offers a tangible asset. “…Independently of classic investments like shares, bonds or even real estate, an art investment can complete every well-structured portfolio,” said Berenberg Art Advice’s manager. (more…)

Artist and urban planner Theaster Gates has been named as the recipient of its inaugural Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics by The New School. The $15,000 prize will be awarded to an artist every two years. The List Center was named for the philanthropist Vera List, who died in 2002. (more…)

New York banker and oil magnate Chris Keesee has opened a project space called Marfa Contemporary in the Texas town. He lent Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud City to the Met, and eventually wants to take it to Texas, but said: “it can’t be a permanent piece there—the last thing I want to see is it blowing away in a dust storm, tumbling across the desert”. Mr. Keesee is also the president of City Arts Center in Oklahoma City and serves as a trustee of other foundations focused on Arts and Arts Education. (more…)

Rudolf Stingel – Untitled (2012), courtesy The Gagosian Gallery

In 2007, as part of his mid-career retrospective shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Whitney Museum in New York, Italian artist Rudolf Stingel installed several massive sheets of aluminum-faced insulation material, inviting gallery-goers to inscribe their own messages, images and writings into the delicate face of the originally pristine walls.  The result was a long expanse of graffitied surfaces, a testament to the exhibition’s existence as much as it was a record of its visitors.

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Surfboard shaper Tim Bessell has created a series of Warhol-inspired designs for surfboards in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation. The first set were on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Each one retails between $5,600 and $8,000. (more…)

A French man has been arrested on charges of selling fake paintings by “The Picasso of India”, MF Husain. The man, identified as “Sofiane B”, was arrested when a Parisian art dealer said he bought two of the fakes for more than €100,000. Police believe he took advantage of Husain, who was 95 when he died last year, and convinced him to sign paintings done by others. They believe he has flooded the market with fakes since 2004. (more…)

John Cage – Dereau (#11) (1982), courtesy The National Academy Museum

Over the course of his lifetime, composer, writer and theorist John Cage made immense and lasting contributions to modernist and post-modernist avant-garde thought, challenging traditional conceptions of music, sound, noise and arrangement, and blazing a path for young composers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  However, the artist also was a prolific painter, creating a vast body of watercolors, prints and drawings, and ultimately influcing, and collaborating with, many artists in the 50s and 60s.  These works are the focus of a new exhibition at the National Academy Museum in New York City, celebrating what would be Cage’s 100th birthday.

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Artliner has partnered with Haunch of Venison to offer artwork for sale in Farnborough Airport. For £55,000 to £500,000, high net worth clients can purchase a Hirst spin or butterfly painting or work by Tracey Emin or Barber Osgerby (the designers of the Olympic torch). (more…)

Although Sotheby’s revenue increased, it has posted a loss for this quarter. Quarterly revenue rose 18% to $68.5 million. The company typically sees a small profit or loss in first and third quarters, as the largest sales happen during the second and fourth quarters. This year, the third-quarter loss increased by 10%, in an unfavorable comparison with an $11.6 million tax benefit in the third quarter of 2011. (more…)

Someone has stolen Rachel Whiteread’s Untitled (24 Switches) from a central London gallery. The theft of the panel of light switches made by the artist is valued at £24,000. The work would most likely not even be recognizable as art to the garden variety thief, and any reputable dealer could identify it based on the stamp on the back and track provenance, thus confounding the gallery and its insurers as to who might have stolen it. (more…)

Daniel Turner – Installation View (2012) courtesy Journal Gallery West

New York-based artist Daniel Turner creates installations at the nexus of the organic and synthetic, a quirky combination of elements that underlines the environmental interactions of man and nature, and resultant breakdowns in symbol and understanding which results from their increasing distance.  As part of the first show at The Journal Gallery’s new location in Brooklyn, Turner is exhibiting two recent works exploring the complex interactions of objects and environments created by man’s bizarre contemporary relationship to science, chemistry, consumption and natural processes.

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