Sotheby’s will bolster its May 12th Contemporary Evening Auction in New York next month with a brilliant, 1954 Mark Rothko, the New York Times reports. Untitled (Yellow and Blue), which formerly sat in the collections of both Bunny Mellon and François Pinault, is estimated to achieve between $40 and $60 million. (more…)
Writer Louis Menand is in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, reviewing the recent restoration of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals using a specially designed lighting system, and the small crowd that gathers each day to watch as the murals’ lights are turned off. “You can still see the bones of the murals, the formal architecture—Rothko’s floating blocks, made to resemble portals in these pieces—but the glow is gone,” he writes. “As one observer put it, when the lights go off, comedy turns into tragedy.” (more…)
A Mark Rothko painting from 1958 will lead Christie’s Contemporary and Post-War Auction in New York this coming May, the New York Times reports. Estimated at $30 to $50 million, competition is expected to be fierce, and initial indications hint that the work may near the artist’s $87 Million record. “There’s a perception that these kinds of paintings come and they come regularly, but in reality they’re becoming more and more rare,” says Christie’s Contemporary and Post-War Chairman Brett Gorvy. “The year 1958 was probably Rothko’s all-time high as a recognized artist.” (more…)
The Economist reports on an ongoing restoration effort towards several Mark Rothko paintings previously on view at Harvard’s Holyoke Center. The paintings, badly damaged by sunlight, have undergone rigorous chemical analysis, using various samples to determine the reaction times and fading of color that would have brought the works to their current state. (more…)
A Dallas collector is suing Sotheby’s auction house over the disclosure of what was supposed to be the private sale of a Mark Rothko. Marguerite Hoffman, widow of soft-drinks bottling magnate Robert K. Hoffman, filed a lawsuit against the auction house when the work was resold several years later, and used her name heavily in the work’s marketing materials. (more…)
The accusations and investigations surrounding the Knoedler Gallery, and the arrest of dealer Glafira Rosales have taken a new turn, with the identification of the forger of at least 63 works attributed to Modernist masters like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Artist Pei-Shen Qian, is a Chinese painter living in Queens, who fled his country in the wake of the cultural revolution, and who has eked out a living selling forged works to Rosales for over 15 years. His payment for these works rarely exceeded several thousand dollars, even though some of the works sold for millions. “I didn’t know he had this kind of a good technique,” said Qian’s friend and fellow artist Zhang Hongtu. “He had some talent, but I don’t believe he can paint in the same style as a Jackson Pollock; it’s not easy to copy this kind of style.” (more…)
World renowned auctioneer Tobias Meyer during the sale of the Yves Klein sculpture, which ultimately sold for $22 Million
Sotheby’s hosted its contemporary evening auctions last night, with Principal Auctioneer and Head of Contemporary art Tobias Meyer coaxing the audience through the sales with high energy and style. The sale, which totaled at $293.6 million, trumps last year’s spring auction of $266.6 million, while falling short of the auction house’s record high of $375 million last November. (more…)
Daugavpils, the Latvian birthplace of artist Mark Rothko, opened a new museum dedicated to the artist yesterday. The Mark Rothko Arts Center is the first permanent collection of the artist’s work in Eastern Europe, and includes six works from the collection of the artist’s son and daughter. “This centre, I think, is going to become an important archive, an important resource for Rothko scholars to draw on, and also for Rothko’s public.” said Rothko’s son Christopher. (more…)
ArtInfo has posted a feature profiling the early professions of a number of high-profile artists, offering a look at how they made a living before becoming art world mainstays. The list includes Mark Rothko (delivery boy), Yves Klein (judo master), Matthew Barney (model), and James Turrell (cattle rancher), who famously said: ““I don’t know if it’s harder to make a living as an artist or a rancher.” (more…)
Since opening in 2011, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has faced criticism for its dearth of Post-War Contemporary Art. In response, the museum has gone on a spree of acquisitions to fill out its collection, including works by Andy Warhol, Donald Judd and Mark Rothko. “It’s fair to say that we are very actively seeking to shore up the 20th century, including early Modernism,” says museum president, Don Bacigalupi, “though not to the exclusion of other things.” (more…)
Image: A gallery worker walks past Seagram murals by Mark Rothko in London via Reuters
Following the incident of the Rothko painting that was defaced yesterday, the estate of Mark Rothko expressed its confidence in the Tate. Reuters spoke to the suspect, providing additional details on possible motive:
Image: Vladimir Umanets via The Times of London
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In auction news, Bloomberg reports on Christie’s 13% sales boost for this past half-year, aided by the sizable profit from various Rothko and Renoir sales. Chief executive officer, Steven P. Murphy says, “clients are driving this, the trend will continue.”
‪‬Christie’s International sales rise 9% in 2011 as market-weary investors turn to classic contemporary art, with biggest sellers Lichtenstein, Warhol, Rothko [AO Newslink]
Mark Rothko, Light Red Over Black (1957). Artwork courtesy of the Tate.
Rothko in Britain commemorates the 50th anniversary of Rothko’s inaugural British exhibition. 41 years after his passing, the Whitechapel Gallery has meticulously compiled a retrospection of images, letters, and reviews, all paired with a single work—Light Red Over Black (1957), on loan from the Tate. Light Red Over Black towers over the viewer, a single, saturated painting. The large form and accompanying material, sparsely arranged, were placed in a manner in which to overwhelm the viewer, or, in Rothko’s words, to encourage the feeling of being “enveloped within.” Walls were constructed specifically to show the work in such isolation, in hopes to evoke such intensity. The ‘less is more’ approach is discussed in Whitechapel’s video about the show, explaining the concept of an exhibition about a long closed exhibition.
Eight Elvises, which sold for $100 million in a private deal last year via TheEconomist
— The Economist has a downloadable special report on the art market, in it Sarah Thornton reports in an article on Warhol, in the wake of the sale of his work in the recent New York contemporary auctions for $43.8 million, that in August 2008 Andy Warhol’s singular “Eight Elvises” was sold privately to an unknown buyer for $100 million [Economist]
– Close to $100M of Russian art aims to be sold for Russian Art Week in London, where the vast growth of wealth in Russia allows for repatriation of that country’s works [Bloomberg] more on this here [WallStreetJournal]
A discerning look into some of the less disclosed but nevertheless driving forces and relationships behind various high profile exhibitions [Financial Times]
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