Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 10 (1910), via Fondation Beyeler

In terms of the various rejections of painterly convention that defined the early decades of the 20th Century, few schools of thought left the same lasting imprint on the act of painting as “Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider).  The internationally distributed group of artists, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc chief among them, were early entries in the varied schools of thought and practice that sought to change the aesthetic and political energies of their craft through a combination of dynamic invention in their craft, and iconoclastic, ideological fervor in their writing and organization.  Making the case for a practice divorced from rote representation, the pair of artists instead relied on color and line themselves, affording these essential elements a much broader range of expressive capacity and spiritual evocativeness that would ultimately pave the way for much of the century’s adventures into abstraction.

Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau—Obermarkt with Mountains (1908), via Fondation Beyeler

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Pablo Picasso, La Gommeuse (1901), all photos via Sotheby’s

The first week of sales is in the books in New York, as Sotheby’s concluded its Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale last night, following up on a somewhat lackluster sale the prior evening with a briskly paced sale and solid results that lost momentum in the late minutes of the event, ultimately selling 36 of 47 lots for a final tally of $306,712,000. (more…)

New York art dealers R. Scott Cook and his wife Sousanna A.E. Cook have been ordered to pay $17.96 million in damages to collector George Ball after allegedly fleeing the country with 11 of his works, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse.  Ball claims that the couple had agreed to sell his pieces at Christie’s on his behalf, but instead left the country for France without ever listing the works.

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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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Edgar Degas, Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, executed in wax c. 1879-1881 and cast later (est. $25-35 million), via Christies.com

The November sales will be inaugurated at Christie’s on Tuesday night with a 75-lot Impressionist & Modern auction at their Rockefeller Center location in New York. Seventy-one lots will be offered at Sotheby’s New York on Wednesday evening, and the two sales are expected to fetch close to $400 million. This round of auctions follows closely on the heels of the Frieze Art Fair and the concurrent and comparatively smaller sales of Contemporary art in mid-October. Little has changed between then and now to make buyer’s less anxious about the financial markets, but the auction houses managed to secure a handful of top-tier consignments that may bolster the results of their sales.

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Kazimir Malevich, Untitled (1916) Image via Guggenheim Museum

‘The Geometry of Kandinsky and Malevich” is currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. The show, which includes only seven paintings, features the works of Russian artists Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944). The small scale of the exhibition permits an intensely focused look at two of the pioneers of abstract art. Although all the work is presented in one room, the representative paintings of each artist are hung in distinctly separate areas. This spatial orientation refers to the fact that, although Kandinsky and Malevich were contemporaries, and explored similar formal concepts, they did so independently of one another.

Vasily Kandinsky, In the Black Square (June 1923) Image via Guggenheim Museum

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Jeune Arabe, Kees Van Dongen (1877) sold for $13.8 million – a new record for the artist

In contrast to the slim pickings made available to buyers at Christie’s Modern and Impressionist Evening sale on November 3, last night’s sale at Sotheby’s offered many iconic works that had bidders excited and which resulted in an auction that Simon Shaw, Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department in New York described as “a shot in the arm for the art market. A real vote of confidence.” The evening’s auctioneer Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art, commented that after all his time at Sotheby’s he had never seen such an active sale. And indeed it was, with a grand total of $181,760,000 over a high-end estimate of $163,600,000, this sale marked the first time since May 2006 that Sotheby’s in New York have exceeded their top estimate.

L’Homme qui Chavire, Alberto Giacometti – an instantly recognizable icon of the modern era cast in 1951. Sold for a remarkable $19,346,500.

More text, images, related links and video after the jump….

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TeÌ‚te de femme, Pablo Picasso (1943) estimated to sell for between $7,000,000 and $10,000,000 at Christie’s Modern and Impressionist evening sale tonight. via Christie’s

Christie’s Modern and Impressionist sale this evening, November 3, marks the beginning of the fall auction season in New York. Headlining tonight’s sale are works by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse. Tomorrow Sotheby’s will follow with their Modern and Impressionist evening sale which is highlighted by Alberto Giacometti’s bronze Falling Man, estimated to sell for $8 million – $12 million along with works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Giacometti’s fellow modern masters Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. The combined total of the evening and day sales from both auction houses is estimated at as much as $607 million, down from $1.7 billion just two years ago.

ArtObserved will be on site to cover the proceedings on twitter at the show and in a review tomorrow. We are set to continue our auction season coverage next week when the Contemporary sales kick-off on Tuesday, November 10, at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Company.

L’Homme Qui Chavire (Falling Man), Alberto Giacometti (1951) via Sotheby’s

Related Links:
Christie’s Homepage
Sotheby’s Homepage
Christie’s Impressionist/Modern Evening Sale – Tuesday, November 3, 2009 – E-Catalogue
Christie’s Impressionist/Modern Day Sale – Wednesday, November 4, 2009 – E-Catalogue
Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale – Wednesday, November 4, 2009- E-Catalogue
Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale -Thursday, November 5, 2009 – E-Catalogue
On The Block: Traditional Offerings, Bargain Prices [NYTimes]
New House, Taschen Risking Low Prices for Art at Fall Auctions [Bloomberg]
New York Sales Preview [ArtInfo]
Up For Auction [NYTimes]
The Art World Goes Local [WallStreetJournal]
Art World Watching Sales Starting Next Week for Hints of Market Recovery [Financial Post]
As Art Auctions Shrink, Big Houses Look to the Future [Reuters]
The Art Market: Distress Sales, Iron Curtain Art and France’s Turner Prize [Financial Times]

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Blue Mountain (1908-09) by Wassily Kandinsky, via The Guggenheim

Currently on view at the Guggenheim in New York is “Kandinsky”, a retrospective of the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky.  A visionary artist and theorist, Kandinsky was the pioneer of abstraction.  The first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in the United States since three surveys which were displayed by the Guggenheim in the 1980s, the exhibition presents around 100 of Kandinsky’s most important works from 1902 to 1942 drawn primarily from the three largest collections of the artist’s work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, and the Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau in Munich as well as also from significant private and public collections. The retrospective focuses on key events which shaped the artist’s life and oeuvre notably those of two world wars and the Russian Revolution. The retrospective also marks the Guggenheim’s 50th Anniversary celebration.

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Red Spot II (1921) by Wassily Kandinsky, via The Guggenheim

Press Release [The Guggenheim]
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The Angel in the Architecture [NY Times]
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Return of a Giant [WSJ]
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Kandinsky’s Influence on Painting Is Far-Reaching [Newsweek]
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Personal Photographs by Munter and Kandinsky Illuminate Guggenheim Retrospective [Artdaily]
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Falling Apart and Holding Together: Kandinsky’s Development [Artnet]
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Exhibition View, Chapman Brothers faux show Good News! at Orel Art. Via Times Online

British Art Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman’s fake identities, art movement, and exhibition as Russian artists is on view after a quiet opening [TimesUK]
Gallery owners reveal the difficulties of running their business in times of the economic crisis [Forbes], yet some of L.A.’s resilient galleries find opportunities in the crisis: such as reduced rent [Los Angeles Times]

Wassily Kandinsky’s ‘Dramatic and Mild,’ estimated to sell between $6-8 million at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Fall Auction via ArtDaily

Part of the Arthur Sackler Collection is to be auctioned this fall by Sotheby’s, including a rare Kandinsky painting [ArtDaily]
Christie’s sales fell 35% in the first half of the year, though the auction house accounts for 61% of all global auction sales [Bloomberg] and a breakdown of Christie’s first half results [Art Market Monitor]

Cindy Sherman’s self-portait for Vogue

Cindy Sherman takes a self-portrait for Vogue in couture, parodying the magazine’s many domestic fashion spreads [Vogue via Economist]

Basquiat Reeboks via Solediction

Reebok releases a line of high tops featuring the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat [Solediction]
A charity auction in September to raise funds for orphans in Africa will featureworks by prominent YBAs such as Tracey Emin and Antony Gormley, as well as David Bowie, while also including work by South African artists like Marlene Dumas as well as emerging artists [Independent]

The bike Damien Hirst designed for Lance Armstrong to ride in the last stage of the Tour de France via Daily Mail

PETA outraged over Damien Hirst’s use of dead butterfly wings on Lance Armstrong’s bike [Daily Mail]
Richard Prince buys a townhouse on the Upper East Side for $11.5 million [NY Observer]
The pop-up Lola Gallery opens in Southampton [Vanity Fair]

Bill Viola’s ‘Ocean Without a Shore,’ which premiered at the church of San Gallo at the 2007 Venice Biennale via FAD

Bill Viola has been commissioned to create two altarpieces for permanent display in St Paul’s Cathedralin London [FAD]
A new program offers a master’s degree in international art crime [NY Times]
Chelsea art dealers predict that the presence of the High Line will kill the art scene there [Artnet]

Billionaire art collector Eli Broad via Forbes

Forbes names the top ten billionaire art collectors, including François Pinault, Eli Broad, and David Geffen [Forbes]
In related, Vice Chairman of Forbes, Christopher “Kip” Forbes, selling 36 works through private transactions [Bloomberg]
In further related, a growing number of collectors prefer private transactions, the publicity can come after the deal is made [Bloomberg]

Carsten Höller at the Double Club, Via Guardian

Carsten Höller’s Double Club  “modern day Studio 54” moving to Paris from London [Guardian]
As visitors wait in line for up to 3 hours, the Banksy show in Bristol extends its visiting hours into the evening [Evening Standard]

Will Cotton’s studio via Whitewall

A look inside Will Cotton’s studio [Whitewall]
Tracey Emin tells in her interview the difficulties she had to face: from tapeworm to family troubles [Times Online]
An interview with Eric Fischl on 9/11 and bull fighting in his Soho studio [Artnet]
An almost conclusively thorough article on Dash Snow [NY Times]

Kandinsky’s “First Abstract Watercolor 1910” via abcgallery

After showing at Munich’s Städtische galerie im Lembachhaus and before moving to New York’s Guggenheim Museum (autumn 2009) the international retrospective of Wassily Kandinsky will spend the spring and summer months at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (8 April – 10 August 2009).  The exhibition, showcasing some hundred of Kandinsky’s paintings, will offer a comprehensive chronological survey of the Russian Artist’s contribution to modern art while investigating his formal and conceptual offerings to the course of 20th century abstraction.  Kandinsky is noted for striving to give painting the freedom from nature he felt in music.

Pompidou Offers Comprehensive Overview of the Work of Russian Artist Wassily Kandinsky [Art Daily]       
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“Kandinsky” at Centre Georges-Pompidou, April 8–August 10, 2009 [ArtInfo]
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Kandinsky’s Squiggles, Amoeba Delight in Paris Show: Review [Bloomberg]                                                                    
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Landmark Kandinsky Retrospective Planned for Guggenheim Museum’s 50th [Guggenheim]

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Improvisation 19 (1910) by Wassily Kandinsky, on display at Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany

The Lenbachhaus in Munich drawing on support from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York which have pooled their collectively large collections of works by Wassily Kandinsky to mount a major retrospective of the oft-overlooked artist’s oeuvre, re-examining his influence on subsequent generations of artists and aesthetic schools.  The retrospective features a total of 95 works from all periods of Kandinsky’s five decade career, focusing on the major, large scale pieces that were instrumental in Kandinsky’s own evolution as an artist.  Kandinsky was a founding pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, through his works as well as his theoretical treatises and writings.   His methodical approach to conveying abstraction through color, line and form demonstrates a very sharp intellect that also has the ability to create accessible works of art, an ability which has been successfully replicated by very few abstract painters since his death in 1944.

Those unable to make it to Munich before the end of the exhibition will be able to view it April 8th to August 10th, 2009 at the Pompidou in Paris, and from September 18th to January 10th, 2009 at the Guggenheim in New York.  Each leg of the exhibit will emphasize works in that particular museum’s Kandinsky collection: the artist’s Blue Rider period is strongly represented at the Lenbachhaus, while the Pompidou will exhibit numerous pieces from his time in Weimar Germany (heavily influenced by the Bauhaus movement of the time). The Guggenheim’s collection, in turn, heavily features pieces from Kandinsky’s Parisian sojourn. The three museums, which individually have the three largest Kandinsky collections, have pooled their resources to create an retrospective of unprecedented scale. Pieces from private collections and other museums in Russia, Switzerland, the United States and other countries were also added to the pool, offering spectators a unique opportunity to view multiple seminal works of art in one viewing.

KANDINSKY: ABSOLUTE. ABSTRACT.
Stadtische Museum, Lenbachhaus,
Munich, Bavaria, Germany
through February 22nd, 2009

Museum Website: Lenbachhaus
Exhibition Page: Kandinsky: Absolute. Abstract.
Treatise by Artist: ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’
Kandinsky Gallery at the Guggenheim Musem
The overlooked great in the history of modern art: an artist who found new levels of meaning [GuardianUK]

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“Livre, pipe et verres” (1915) by Juan Gris, Christie’s, via Artnet

CHRISTIE’S IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART, New York, Thursday November 6th

Total Lots Offered: 82
Total Lots Sold: 46
Total Sales Value: $146.7 million
Total Sales Pre-Auction Estimate: $240.7 million

This is the first of five articles that will summarize in parts the auction results following AO’s last covered Wednesday November 5th Christies Auction covered by AO here. Following a day where the Dow Jones industrial average dropped over 400 points, overall, Christie’s Impressionist and Modern art auction, the second evening sale of the week, was perhaps successful versus others in the week. Though overall sales were poor, the six guaranteed works sold. In total, 44% of the lots failed to sell, or rather, of the 82 pieces offered 36 works were brought in (37% by value). Auctioneer Christopher Burge quoted to Bloomberg after the sale: “Obviously, prices have changed, we’d be foolish not to recognize that.”

The auction totaled $146.715 million against a pre-sale estimate of $240.7 million to $337.2 million. Marquee works from Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, and Wassily Kandinsky brought high prices but works by Claude Monet and Henri Matisse met little to no interest. New world auction records were set for Cubist master Juan Gris, Henri Laurens, American artist Alice Neel and for Seurat and Magritte for works on paper. 27 of the 46 works that did sell earned in excess of $1 million. 61% of buyers were Americans, 26% Europeans and 11% (other) with 2% going to Middle Eastern buyers.

Gris Sets Record in Slow Christie’s Auction [New York Times]
World Record For Juan Gris at Christie’s New York – “20.8 Million For Livre, pipe et verre” [Art Daily]
Christie’s Impressionist Sale Falls Short; 44% Fails to Sell [Bloomberg]
Some Gloom, Some Records at Up-And-Down Night at Christie’s [ArtInfo

more detail and pictures after the jump…

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Kazimir Malevich’s 1916 painting Suprematist Composition sold for $60 million via International Herald Tribune.

The results of the Sotheby’s New York Impressionist and Modern Art auction Monday night were overall dissapointing, despite some noteworthy lot results of works by Malevich, Degas and Munch. Fears of an art-market meltdown have been fueled by recent lukewarm results at London’s Frieze art fair and the abrupt pulling from the auction of the 1909 Picasso that was expected to sell for over $30 million. While the Sotheby’s evening total on Monday stood at 45 works sold for $223.8 million, it was well below its initial estimates of $337 million to $476 million, which were set over the summer before the financial crisis. The sale was the lowest for an Impressionist evening sale at Sotheby’s since May 2001. David Norman, an executive vice-president at Sotheby’s was quoted by the Guardian as saying “Anyone would expect people to be more circumspect in this environment. We’re selling in a very uncertain world.”

Auction Season Opens With Little Enthusiasm [NY Times]
Art Market `Corrects’ as Lots Go Unsold at Sotheby’s [Bloomberg]
Three Big Lots Pace Respectable Showing at Sotheby’s [ArtInfo]
New York sales hit record highs amid signs that the art market is dropping [Guardian UK]
Work by Kazimir Malevich sold for record $60 million [International Herald Tribune]
Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition Sets Record at Sotheby’s Sale [Art Daily]
Opening of Fall Art-Auction Season Marked by Crappy Sales, Great Deals [NYMag]
Flat result at NY season’s first art auction [Reuters]
Munch artwork fetches record $38m [BBC]

more results and pictures after the jump…

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