Henry Moore, Warrior with Shield (1953—1954), all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Taking a historically nuanced approach towards the vastly influential career of British sculptor Henry Moore, Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting an exhibition of early works on paper by the artist.  Exploring the artist’s graphic practice in the years directly following the end of WWII, the exhibition traces Moore’s ongoing engagement with the world of literature, and his engagement with the broader artistic spheres as he continued to hone and develop his practice.  Organized by the Henry Moore Foundation and curated by the artist’s daughter, Mary, the exhibition traces Moore’s impressive creative spirit, and the ever-shifting craft of an artist continuing to work through wartime. (more…)

René Magritte’s Miroir Universel sells over estimate for$6,661,000, via Rae Wang for Art Observed

The November auctions are over, as Christie’s capped its final major evening sale of the year to strong results, with 13 lots going unsold out of the 62 offered, tallying a final of $145,545,000. (more…)

An independent art dealer in Victoria, British Colombia, thinks he has purchased an unsigned Henry Moore original for $20,000, and is pushing for authentication that could value the work at up to $150,000.  “It was a first casting. Moore wanted to change something to it. He wasn’t happy with the feet,” says Alison Ross, the owner of Kilshaw’s, where the work sold. “That’s why it was not signed. It was never for sale.”  (more…)

Henry Moore, Wunderkammer – Origin of Forms installation view, Photo: Mike Bruce, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

Gagosian London presents a new look at Henry Moore’s body of work in its current exhibition, a cunningly arranged series of small-scale sculptures.  Though best-known for his large abstractions of the human form, Moore’s inspiration often came from small objects he found in nature—pebbles, shells, animal bones—which have been preserved in his Hertfordshire studio in Perry Green, his former home and now a museum and headquarters of the Henry Moore Foundation.  These pieces are currently on display in this unique show demonstrating Moore’s artistic process. (more…)

In a bid to become a global destination for art lovers, the British city of Yorkshire has created the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, a coalition of galleries and institutes dedicated primarily to the art of sculpture.  The Triangle includes the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and The Hepworth Wakefield, and showcases a variety of both classic works and new pieces from around the world.   “I’m delighted that we can support a project that will attract further investment and visitors to Yorkshire. It is a great example of how partnership-working can help more people to become more familiar with Yorkshire’s pre-eminence in modern sculpture.”  Says Cluny Macpherson, director of the Yorkshire Region of the Arts Council. (more…)

A London borough in financial straits decided on Wednesday to sell a Henry Moore sculpture valued at up to £20 million despite opposition from the art community. Mayor Lutfur Rahman called it a “tough decision” to sell the 1957 sculpture, Draped Seated Woman, which is affectionately known by locals as “Old Flo”.
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The New York Times reports on the rising wealth in Singapore and its interest in arts and culture; a particular example at the Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore. Over 4,200 paintings and sculptures are on view to the public in the hotel. “Moby Dick,” a fiberglass sculpture the hotel commissioned by Frank Stella, hangs in the lobby. The corporate collection includes work by Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Henry Moore. The four Kwee brothers, whose company owns the hotel, are known to be one of Singapore’s wealthiest families. They started by displaying their private collection in the hotel and then went on to commission 350 artworks for the site. (more…)

A sculpture by the British artist Henry Moore has been stolen from the grounds of his former home, now the Henry Moore Foundation, in Much Hadham, England. Valued at £500,000, Sundial was stolen in between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Investigators are leading a search for the bronze work, fearing that it may be melted down as scrap metal, a fate that awaited Moore’s Reclining Figure, which was stolen and melted down in 2005.

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Marc Chagall, Noce et Musique (1939) which sold for £2.5 million

Last night at Sotheby’s marked the opening night of three straight weeks of art auctions in London. The evening achieved a few exceptional and even record breaking sales, yet it did not compare with the astonishing May auctions held previously this year in New York. Out of the 48 lots offered only 33 of them sold – a sell through rate of 69%. Still, Sotheby’s total sales for the night reached £75 million – above their low estimate of £73 million.

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Pablo Picasso, La Lecture, 1932 (est. £12–18 million), via Sothebys.com

February’s round of major art auctions begins in London next week with Impressionist & Modern sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.  On Tuesday evening Sotheby’s will offer forty-two lots estimated to bring between £55-79 million. Sotheby’s will also hold a 60-lot sale of Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary works titled “Looking Closely: A Private Collection” on Thursday, February 10th that is expected to fetch up to £54 million.  All the works in that sale are from the collection of George Kostalitz, a Geneva-based collector who died last year. Christie’s forty-six lot evening sale on Wednesday is estimated to bring £54-80 million and, as was the case last year, will be immediately followed by a thirty-one lot auction of Surrealist works estimated to fetch an additional £19-28 million. While it is uncertain whether these auctions will produce a buzz-worthy sale on par with last year’s £65 million paid for Giacometti’s L’Homme Qui Marche I, both houses are offering a number of strong works led by canvases by Picasso and Gauguin.

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Alberto Giacometti, Diego, 1958 (est. £3–5 million), via Sothebys.com

more images and story after the jump…

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Alfred Gilbert, Jubilee Memorial to Queen Victoria (1887). Via The Guardian

It is understandable that critics are particularly divided in their reviews of Modern British Sculpture, at the Royal Academy of Arts through April 7. It attempts to question “What is British, what is modern and what is sculpture” ranging as far and wide as the African and Asian colonial influences of 20th century British sculptors, to the transitions between figurative and abstraction, to the work of Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. The show runs the gamut of well-known names but has fun throwing in the odd obscurity, like Alfred Gilbert’s Jubilee Memorial to Queen Victoria, a baroque piece by a classic British artist that is decidedly out of context in this exhibition. More familiar are Anthony Caro, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, who are newly contextualized in this first exhibition in 30 years to focus on 20th century British sculpture—its origins, evolution, and impact.

Damien Hirst, Let’s Eat Outdoors Today (1990). Via The Guardian

More text and images after the jump…

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Reclining Figure (1951), by Henry Moore, via The Guardian

Currently on view at Tate Britain is an exhibition celebrating the work of renowned sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986).  With a display of over 150 stone sculptures, wood carvings, sculptures, bronzes, and drawings, the show revisits the legendary works of one of the masters of twentieth century art.  The show attempts to emphasize the revolutionary in Moore. It highlights his fight to preserve the figurative tradition for three decades by challenging and yet incorporating  elements of abstraction.

Seated Nude with Mirror (1924) by Henry Moore, via Tate Britain

More images, text and related links after the jump…

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Frieze Art Fair entrance in Regent’s Park, London

Art Observed is currently on site at the seventh edition of Europe’s largest contemporary art fair: Frieze which is on show in London’s Regent’s Park through October 18th.  The 164 exhibiting galleries represent the most exciting contemporary artists working today and for the past two years Frieze Art Fair has attracted over 60,000 visitors over the three day period for which it is active.  In addition to this, the fair not only attracts curators and collectors but encourages participation by all: over the three days the fair presents a curated program of talks, artists’ commissions and film projects, many of which are interactive or performative and encourage visitors to engage with art and artists directly.

A view of the booth of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin with work from Xavier Veilhan in the foreground and Duane Hanson in the background at Frieze Art Fair via abcnews.go.com

Related Links:
Art out of the ordinary [TimesOnline]
Frieze gets off to fizz-popping start [The Guardian]
A chair you can actually sit on [WSJ]
Autumn Fairs Are a Barometer of the Art Market [NYTimes]
Abramovic, Paltrow browse at Freize as buyers haggle [Bloomberg]
Chill of recession hits London Frieze art bonanza [Reuters.com]
Introducing the Frieze Art Fair [Telegraph.co.uk]
Party of the Weel: No sign of the Crunch at Frieze Art Fair [The Independent]
Recession chill hits Frieze Art Fair [Channel4.com]
Roll up for moody modern masterpieces:it’s the Frieze art fair [The Guardian]
Frieze Art Fair Opens to Steady Sales, Gray Art [WSJ]
Frieze Art fair: test your knowledge. A quiz to find out if you’re an art aficionado or Frieze faker [The Guardian]
London Calling a Spate of Artists to their Openings [NYTimes]
More text and images after the jump….. (more…)

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Angel of the North (Life-Size Maquette), Antony Gormley 1997. Via Chatsworth

Currently on display in the grounds of Chatsworth House, home to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, is Sotheby’s ‘Beyond Limits‘; a selling exhibition of modern and contemporary sculpture which the auction house claims is their “largest and most diverse to date.” The exhibition will continue through November 1.  It will be the fourth year of the installation, which has become known as one of the most prestigious platforms for displaying monumental works in an outdoor setting.  On display are bronze sculptures by Henry Moore and Aristade Millol, as well as contemporary pieces by Antony Gormley, Marc Quinn, Subodh Gupta and Fernando Botero.  All works on display are available for private sale.

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Three Piece Reclining Figure: Draped, Henry Moore (1975). Via Sotheby’s

Related Links:
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Chatsworth House Homepage [Chatsworth House]
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‘Beyond Limits’ Event Page [Chatsworth House]
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‘Beyond Limits’ Catalogue [Sotheby’s]
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‘Beyond Limits’ Press Release [Sotheby’s]
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VIDEO TOUR Beyond Limits: A Selling Exhibition of Monumental Sculpturewith Simon Stock, Deputy Director, Impressionist & Modern Art [Sotheby’s]
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In Pictures: Giant Sculputres at Chatsworth House [BBC NEWS]
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Big-money sales behind closed doors [Telegraph.co.uk]

More pictures and text after the jump…

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A glimpse of the Sol LeWitt mural, ‘Swirls and Whirls,’ being constructed in the Columbus Circle subway station, via NY Times

A mural designed for the Columbus Circle subway station in New York by Sol LeWitt in 2007, just before his death, is nearly complete [NY Times]

In related, Turner Prize winner Richard Long designs the cover for the London Tube Map [FAD]
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid has seen visitor numbers quadruple since the opening of its Henri Matisse exhibit [Art Daily]
Following the success of earlier Beyond Limits exhibitions, Sotheby’s announces its fourth contemporary sculpture exhibit at Chatsworth including works by Henry Moore, Marc Quinn, Zhan Wang, among others [Auction Publicity]

Jeff Koons via the Telegraph UK

Jeff Koons sits for lunch with the Financial Times and discusses his love of inflatables and how the custody battle for his son has affected his work [Financial Times]
MoMA’s PS1 in Queens will soon reprise its Greater New York exhibit, which will be its 3rd [LindsayPollack]
On Miuccia Prada and her still to be built €25 million, 20,500 square meter Prada Foundation in a south Milan industrial complex [ArtNewspaper]
Sotheby’s CEO William Ruprecht sells 5% of his equity holdings; he retains a 1% stake in the company [Barron’s via Art Market Monitor]

The Starns Brothers’ cover for the fifth anniversary of T Magazine, via NY Times

T Magazine celebrates its fifth anniversary with specially designed covers by Mike and Doug Starns, Jeff Koons, Francesco Vezzoli, Jenny Holzer, and Frank Gehry [NYTimes T Magazine]
Christie’s abandons its plan to establish an art-investment fund and a lending division [Bloomberg]
In related, Leibovitz creditor Goldman Sachs has stepped in to help negotiate the photographer’s financial troubles with Art Capital Group [Artforum]
The recession in the art world has not stopped bartering of valuable works between contemporaries [TimesUK]

Creative Time’s short shorts for sale at Creative Time

Creative Time is selling limited edition short shorts, and the campy video is here [CreativeTime via Artnet on Twitter]
On collecting phenomenon Herb and Dorthy Vogel’s gift of 50 works to 50 US States [Wall Street Journal]
Interpol allows online access to its 34,000 work database of stolen art [ArtDaily]
In related, roughly 1,000 Alberto Giacometti counterfeit sculptures seized in Germany [GlobeandMail]

Dasha Zhukova via Style.com

Dasha Zhukova, rumored pregnant with 2008 top collector Roman Abramovich’s child, as new editor of Pop magazine has a Damien Hirst work on the cover [NYMag]
Russian oligarchs invest enough money in the Constructivist and Suprematist art of the beginning of 20th century to provoke forgeries, more than half of items bought of these movements are reported to be inauthentic [The Independent]
In related, as Princeton Architectural Press claims to have discovered Frida Kahlo’s lost archive, scholars involved with the artist’s work refute the possibility of it being authentic [GuardianUK]
A new high intensity x-ray developed by Cornell University has already revealed a lost NC Wyeth illustration [ArtInfo]

Stephen Power’s Hold My Own Iverson’s Arm

2007 Fulbright Scholar Stephen Powers, known as ESPO, is completing his Love Letter project, comprised of murals by multiple artists stretching across his home town of Philadelphia that can be seen from one train [A Love Letter For You]
Shepard Fairey calls his decision to graffiti-proof the brick walls of his studio personal preference and rebutts claims of hypocrisy [Street Level] and separately he is to unveil a large scale mural produced by the gallery Country Club at Art Basel Miami Beach [ArtDaily]
Are Museums crossing the line by granting curatorship to corporations? [The New York Times]

Terence Koh’s window display at Opening Ceremony which reads “The Whole Family” via this hearts on fire

Terence Koh sends a very Terence Koh letter regarding his latest project with Opening Ceremony, a window installation [Hint]
On the relatively accessible yet potentially financially rewarding decision to invest in the works of MA students [The Guardian]
The Bortolami Gallery building is up for sale at $6.1 million by collector Adam Lindemann as Stefania Bortolami prepares to move to another location in Chelsea [Lindsay Pollack]
Matthew Barney and Bjork buy a four bedroom townhouse in Brooklyn Heights listed for $4.2 million [NYMag]

Dans la prairie (1876) by Claude Monet; Sold for  £11,241,250 ($16,104,942), against estimates of around  £15 million. Image via Artnet.

“It was a great sale and brought back a lot of confidence to the market.” Leon Benrimon, in remarks to ArtInfo.

Christie’s evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art, held February 4th, has been hailed by some as a confidence-building event which demonstrated that there is some vitality left in the art market, while others give credit for the auctions ostensible success to high quality pieces (often being auctioned for the first time in decades), along with low estimates and low expectations. The auction realized a total of £63.4 million or $91.2 million, well within its range of £58.8 million to £86 million. In the course of the evening, 39 of 47 lots were sold, with 4 lots sold for over £5 million, 16 for over £1 million, and 25 for over $1 million.  According to Christie’s, 54% of the works were bought by European bidders, 26%  from the U.S., 18% from the U.K. and 2 percent from Asia.

Dans la prairie, by Claude Monet, was the highest priced lot of the night despite falling below its expected range.  The painting, which was exhibited for the first time at 1877’s seminal Impressionist Exhibition, sold for £11.2 million, or $16.1 million–while the range for the painting was unpublished, it is thought to be somewhere in the £15 million range. Dans la prairie‘s subject is Monet’s wife, Camille, reading in a meadow in Argenteuil, a few kilometers north of Paris. It was bought in a single telephone bid made by Anika Guntrum, a Paris-based Christie’s specialist, on behalf of an anonymous buyer.

Monet oil tests art market [GuardianUK]
Monet Painting of Wife Sells for 11.2 Million Pounds [Bloomberg]
Monet painting sells for £11.2 million, £4 million below estimate [Telegraph UK]
Monet, Modigliani, Low Estimates Boost Christie’s London Sale [Bloomberg]
Impressionist and Modern sale nets £63.42 million at Christie’s [IHT]
Christie’s “Brings Back Confidence” [ArtInfo]
Claude Monet’s Dans la Prairie Sells for $16,164,918 at Christie’s Auction of Impressionist and Modern Art [ArtDaily]

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