AO Art Observed™

John Currin's Nice 'n easy, 1999, an Oil On Canvas, Sold for $5,458,500, (Estimate:$3,500,000-$4,500,000)

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale, New York, Tuesday, November 11th
Total Lots Offered: 63
Total Lots Sold: 43 (68.2%)
Total Sales Value: $125.1 million
Total Sales Pre-Auction Estimate: $202.4 million

On the heels of its Impressionist and Modern Art sale that brought in $223 million, well below its low estimate of $339 million, with only 45 of 70 lots sold as previously covered by Art Observed here, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York, held on Tuesday, November 11th, brought in $125 million against a $202 million estimate. The sale was 68.2% sold by lot, with 43 of 63 works finding buyers, marking the lowest selling rate for a multiple-owner evening sale of contemporary art held at Sotheby’s since November 1994. A third of the lots failed to sell, and most of the works that did sell went for less than their presale low estimate. The top lot of the sale was Yves Klein’s Archisponge (RE 11), seen below, which brought $21,362,500. Artist records were set tonight for Philip Guston Beggar’s Joys, which achieved $10,162,500; John Currin, Nice ‘N Easy (see above), which realized $5,458,500 (see above) and Richard Serra, 12-4-8, which fetched $1,650,000.

A Dreary Night for Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s [NYTimes]
Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Sale defies worst fears [Reuters]
Sotheby’s New York Evening Sale of Contemporary Art Brings $125,131,500 [ArtDaily]
$125 million at Sotheby’s Contemporary [ArtNet]
The art market: Contemporary art gets hammered [FinancialTimes]
Bare Market [ArtForum]
Eli Broad Goes Shopping as Sotheby’s Art Auction Falls Short [Bloomberg]
Currin Nudes Set $5.46 Million Record at Spotty Sotheby’s Sale [Bloomberg]

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Richard Serra via Time

The Economist is long on Richard Serra: “slow-burning Mr Serra will be one of the artists whose work will continue to shine long after he is gone” [TheEconomist]
The defensive financial strategies art auction houses take during a market downturn [The Art Newspaper] and in related, financing for fine art is correspondingly receding [Portfolio]
A look inside the highly specialized art storage business [Financial Times]
The Tate Modern may have accidentally hung 2 Rothko’s sideways [TimesUK]

The Pollock in question via terisfind.com

Highly controversial supposed Jackson Pollock drip painting is for sale for $50 million in Toronto [CBC]
London’s Colony Room, favored bar of Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst, may close [TimesUK]
50 to 75 Modern and Contemporary German works of art including some by Rosemarie Trockel, Georg Baselitz and Candida Höfer donated to the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard [Artdaily]
Yvonne Force Villareal, sets up an APFlab (”Art Production Fund”) on Wooster street in Soho, New York [NYTimes]

Richard Serra via TigerofSweden

With his show on at Gagosian London, [AO] a lookback at the soon-to-be-70 iconoclast Richard Serra [Guardian UK]
New York gallery sues Ex-Enron official Jeff Shankman regarding his attempted extortion of six figure sums lest he “go public” that works sold to him were fake [Bloomberg]
Irish group begins futures market trading based on famous Mei-Moss art price index [Financial Times]
Controversially Christie’s-owned Haunch of Venison gallery moving to landmark, Victorian, David Chipperfield-renovated building owned by the Royal Academy [ArtInfo]
Arab and Iranian art on the rise, the sales of which grew from £1 million in 2006 to £17 million (thus far) in 2008 with 260% price increases in that time [TelegraphUK]
In related, Sotheby’s announces intentions to open branch in Doha, Qatar [ArtDaily]

Artist Richard Serra poses for photographers beside one of his works entitled ‘Fernando Pessoa’ during the unveiling of his new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in London October 3, 2008 via Reuters

Richard Serra, widely regarded as the ‘greatest living sculpture’ has a two concurrent exhibitions at the Gagosian Galleries on Britannia Street and Davies Street in London. Simply titled, ‘Sculpture’, the Brittania Street exhibit displays three new large-scale steel installations and four smaller wall hanging pieces, while the Davies Street gallery houses new works on paper. This is the first time that Richard Serra has exhibited in London since Weight and Measure at Tate Gallery in 1992. The 70 year-old artist has not slowed down in the recent years with a critically acclaimed installation at the Grand Palais in Paris this summer, a “40 Years” retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2007, and the widely recognized “Matter of Time” installation at the Guggenheim Bilboa in 2005. The sculptures at the current Gagosian show weigh over 300 tons and will occupy the gallery space until December 20, 2008.

Interview with Richard Serra, Man of steel [GuardianUK]
Serra Recalls 9/11, Shipyard as Steel Labyrinth Opens in London [Bloomberg]
Richard Serra shows off his rings of steel [Economist]
Serra brings giant steel sculptures to London [Reuters]
Super slabs and steely nerves and Heavy metal: Richard Serra exhibition for London [GuardianUK]
Richard Serra: Sculpture [Gagosian Gallery]

Previously:
Go See: Richard Serra - Thinking on Your Feet [ArtObserved]

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Work Comes Out of Work, Richard Serra at Kunsthaus Bregenz via ArtDaily

Kunsthaus Bregenz will be showing more than 60 large-format drawings by the major American artist, Richard Serra. It is the first such showing of the artist’s graphic ouevre in Europe since 1992. The exhibition will include six work-series, spanning two decades of Serra’s career. Arranged on four levels, the included pieces are the large-format “Diptychs,” 1989, the series “Weight and Measure,” 1994, “Rounds,” 1996/97, “Out-of-rounds,” 1999, and the most recent works “Solids,” 2007/08, and “Forged Drawing,” 2008. Works on display have been selected with the artist from important private collections and museums in Europe and the US, as well as new pieces produced by Richard Serra especially for the exhibition in Bregenz.

Drawings: Work Comes Out Of Work [Kunsthaus Bregenz]
Richard Serra at Kunsthaus Bregenz [Art21]
PhotoGallery / Richard Serra at Kunsthaus Bregenz [ArtDaily]
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Richard Serra via Art Inf

A documentary, Thinking on Your Feet, directed by Maria Anna Tappeiner on the contemporary sculpting giant Richard Serra is on screen at Film Forum in New York until September 2nd.  Screening of the movie created hype among the Serra enthusiasts well before its premiere yesterday, drawing attention from media. The documentary enables spectators to follow the production process of the artist’s major grand scale sculpture ‘The Matter of Time,’ which was commissioned by Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain for $20 million. In the film, a breathtaking scene where 40 ton solid steel plates are put together manually was included to highlight the on going dynamic tension between human labor, mathematics, and gravity that Serra persistently communicates through his sculptural works. It is the tale of a contemporary sculptural legend condensed into 94 minutes that Serra fans should not miss.

Richard Serra, Man of Steel [The Sun]
Watching as Richard Serra Thinks Big and Does Big [NYT]
Richard Serra at Film Forum [Art 21]
Man of Steel [Art Info]
Richard Serra: Thinking On Your Feet [Film Forum]
Listen to a podcast by Lynne Cook [Film Forum]

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Larry Gagosian at the opening of Center of Contemporary Culture Moscow (CCCM) via Style.com

Moscow is anticipating a worthy contemporary art scene brought by Larry Gagosian. Building upon the strong review from last year’s first show, Gagosian Gallery is making its presence in Russia. “For what you are about to receive” is Gagosian’s a second exhibition will be held at Red October Chocolate Factory, opening on September 18th until Ocober 25th. Artist Aaron Young will be presenting a motorcycle performance Arc Light for the opening of the show (AO has exclusive video from Aaron Young’s motorcycle show in New York here). This show will exhibit works by well-known contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Willen de Kooning, Richard Serra and Takashi Murakami. Curated to explore the conceptual relationship between commercial production and artistic abstraction, the show is intended to engage the viewers with modern materialism.

Gagosian Gallery in Moscow [Artnet News]
Gagosian Gallery
Read more about the exhibition at the Russian art blog IZO here and here.

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Cai Guo-Qiang “I want to believe” via I Love This World

Cai Guo-Qiang has “I Want To Believe” at Beijing’s National Art Museum for the Olympics [Artdaily]
and the artist was also behind the pyrotechnics at the opening ceremony [art 21]
Electronic band Underworld produces an art exhibition [NYSun]
In the tail of an embezzlement inquiry, Guggenheim Bilbao admits to a $6.17M loss due to the purchase of Richard Serra works in dollars versus euros [The Art Newspaper]
In Bern, Switzerland Paul McCarthy’s work ‘Complex Shit’ - a massive, inflatable depiction of dog feces - breaks from its moorings and knocks out a power line and some windows before crashing into a children’s home [GuardianUK] more here [The Independent]

Lee Bontecou, Composition (1965) via Hauser & Wirth Gallery

The collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs, one of Europe’s most important private collections of 20th century post war art, will be on exhibit at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Zürich through July 26. The focus of the Lauff’s collection was new and ground breaking contemporary art.  Their collection contains key American and European artistic currents in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Selections from the Collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs [ArtNet]
Selections from the Collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs [re-title.com]
VIDEO: Selections from the Collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs/Hauser&Wirth, Zurich [Vernissage]

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Colossal Promenade via Telegraph.co.uk

Richard Serra’s ambitious installation in Paris [Telegraph.co.uk]
‘Obey’ artist Shepard Fairey faces diabetic blindness [Animal NY]
How famed critics Greenberg, Rosenberg impacted markets of De Kooning and Pollack [Financial Times]
British artist trial set for manslaughter [NY Times]
American Embassy in Beijing to feature major contemporary works [Art Info]

Running June 3 - September 10, The Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective exhibit of the work of Richard Serra brings forty years worth of sculpture, often gigantic, to the museum’s forefront. On Tuesday night, LVMH hosted a dinner in honor of the new MoMA’s most ambitious sculpture exhibition to date. The opening of Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years drew over 500 guests to the midtown museum. Among them were painters Brice Marden, Frank Stella, and Chuck Close and a clutch of connoisseurs in the form of Larry Gagosian, Veronica Hearst, and Lily Safra. Beginning at the inception of the artist’s career in the late 1960s, the exhibit features his work with nontraditional materials like neon, rubber and lead, and moves chronologically through the many phases of Serra’s sculpting. (more…)