Untitled XIV, Willem de Kooning. Estimate: £2-3 million Price Realized: £4 million

Sotheby’s auction house worked its magic again last night at their London contemporary art evening sale that totaled £54.1 million – three times the total of the equivalent sale last year and comfortably higher than its pre-sale estimate of £32.2 – 45.1 million. Of the 77 lots on offer, fifteen sold for over a million pounds and only three failed to sell. Measured in financial numbers, this is the second most successful contemporary auction ever held at Sotheby’s. 21 new artist records were set, a large number but slightly dicieving given that nineteen of these were realized by Zero Group-era artists, many of whom have never appeared in the big evening auctions. Discussing the results, Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art Europe, said: “The outstanding sell-through rates, depth of bidding across the sale – particularly for Lenz – and strong prices we achieved this evening are a clear sign of renewed confidence in this market and build on the positive and strong results of our New York sale in November.

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Aaron Young, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, 2009. [Gagosian Gallery]

Aaron Young, the so-called “Hellraiser” (Christopher Mooney, ArtReview), shakes-up the Beverley Hills neighborhood with his uniquely American brand of biker-nihilism. With a proliferation of riotous and destructive objects, including life-size wrecking balls and battered iron barricades, casually littering the gallery floor one would initially interpret this exhibit as a punks advert for hard living. Yet the sadist exterior gives way to a masochistic interior: the wrecking ball is made of glass, bound for self-destruction if it ever fulfilled its function; similarly the razor-wire sculptures have a soft core, made from delicate Murano glass, and turned on its side to become sculptural; the barricades are made of plated gold not iron, they are precious rather ruined

Goner, 2009. [Gagosian Gallery]

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The Raising of Lazarus, 2007 (David Zwirner Gallery)

Chris Ofili’s familiar hits are brought together with his more mature recent works for the first time in a mid-career survey at the Tate Britain, London, through 16 May 2010. The collective effect of the show is a kaleidoscope of wild humor, brilliant color and raw energy. What is striking about the exhibition is its unique position within the growing contemporary canon: firstly, Ofili is unusual as a painter in a conceptual era, and, secondly, he is intensely concerned with the aesthetic. The paintings in this exhibition are richly ornamented; their surfaces are imaginatively constructed from such incongruous materials as elephant dung (Ofili’s signature), map pins and glitter. The paintings are structural and highly tactile, and the viewing experience is a sensory event. This perhaps most evident in The Upper Room, a collaboration with the architect David Adjaye to design an independent and enclosed viewing space. The audience is guided down a barely lit corridor into a dim, yet glittering chamber that enhances the spiritually of viewing paintings which reference both the Christian and Hindu faiths.

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Self-Portrait with a Black Eye, Lucian Freud. Estimate: Image via Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s auction house will kick off this week’s major round of contemporary sales in New York with an 80 lot sale that is expected to realize in excess of £32 million on Wednesday, February 10. Christie’s expect to fetch at least £26,290,000 from 52 lots at their evening sale on Thursday, February 11. In November, Sotheby’s Postwar and Contemporary Sale in New York marked a major turning point in art market history when Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills, sold for $43,762,500 over an estimate of $8-12million. The coming week could therefore be seen as an important one in establishing price-levels in a still relatively undetermined contemporary art market – the area most heavily effected by the global recession.  The many heavyweight pieces on offer this week undoubtedly reflect a confidence in sellers resulting from November’s impressive sale – the sales are spearheaded by important and rare works by Peter Doig, Yves Klein, Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, Chris Ofili, Neo Rauch and Martin Kippenberger. Contemporary week also falls in the wake of the incredible $104.3 million sale of Giacometti’s “L’homme qui marche I” (The Striding Man I) at Sotheby’s that set a new world record by becoming the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. This week overall, Sotheby’s and Christie’s expect to bring in at least $365.3 million combined, $144.6 million in 2009, up from $332.5 million in February 2008.

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Light installations by artist Rosaline de Thelin.

Currently on exhibit in London is the Kinetica Art Fair, the UK’s only fair dedicated to kinetic art, which mixes science and engineering  together in a modern mirage of moving and glowing artworks, some of which react to human movement and sound. The kinetic art exhibition, which includes wonders such as robots and holographic light beings, is designed to question the perceived boundaries between different disciplines through the use of light, robotics, sound and electronics. More than 150 artists are exhibiting at the event, which is organized by the Kinetica Museum. Over 30 galleries and other organizations are participating in the fair. Artists involved in the show include Paul Friedlander, Ivan Black, Paul Friedlander, Paul Beckett, Bálint Bolygó, Nik Ramage, Roseline de Thelin, Ben Parry, Rachel Garrard and many others.

Art Observed video coverage featuring artists, in order, Rachel Garrard, Vincent Leclerc, Interactive Agents, Rosaline de Thelin, Andras Mengyan, Vyacheslav Koleychuk, Lilyan Lin, Peter Logan, Paul Friedlander, Tom Wilkinson, Balint Bolygo and Squid Soup.

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Auctioneer Henry Wyndam sells L’Homme qui marche I by Alberto Giacometti. Estimate: £8-12 million Price Realized: $104,327,006. Image via Associated Press

A bronze sculpture, entitled L’Homme qui marche I, by Alberto Giacometti became the most expensive work ever sold at auction this evening when it realized $104,327,006 at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in London. In an interesting turn of events, Giacometti’s sculpture represents the recession from beginning to end – it was being auctioned as an asset of the failed bank Dresdner Bank and the remarkable price undoubtedly signals a resurgence in the art market. In total, the 39-lot sale realised $233,622,228.37 – the highest total ever reached for a sale in London. While 8 lots went unsold, an impressive 17 pieces sailed past the £1 million mark including three works that individually realized more than £10 million – in reflection of these enormous sales Melanie Clore, Co-Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, Sotheby’s Worldwide, stated: “We are thrilled to have sold these great works this evening and that they have been recognized for the masterpieces that they are.  The competition which generated these exceptional results demonstrates the continued quest for quality that compels today’s collectors.”

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L’Homme qui marche I, Alberto Giacometti. Estimate: £8-12 million Price Realized: $104,327,006 via Sotheby’s

Tonight, Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme qui marche I fetched $104,327,006 at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale in London – making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. The bronze sculpture exceeded the previous record of $104.1 million that was set at Sotheby’s in May 2004 by Pablo Picasso’s Garçon à la Pipe.  10 bidders, mostly on telephone, fought a fast and furious battle over a period of eight minutes – the eventual winner was an anonymous client on the telephone with Philip Hook, Senior European Director of Impressionist & Modern Art at the auction house. Sotheby’s had expected the sculpture to bring-in between $19.2 million and $28.8 million. The work was being sold by Dresdner Bank in Germany, which acquired it in 1980.

The sale is still in progress – more details will follow shortly.

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Tête de femme (Jacqueline), Pablo Picasso. Estimate $4,845,000 – $6,460,000 Price Realized:$12,887,348. Image via Christie’s

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale and the auction of Art of the Surreal took place last night in London and fetched $122,167,093, over a pre-sale estimate of $87 – $124million.  The sale illustrated a buoyant market in reflection of last year’s equivalent sale that raised $101 million as buyers and sellers held back in the financial crisis. Another observation is the continuing appetite for important works of art – most specifically large, colorful works fresh to the market from long-established private collections. Competitive bidding for 4 works by important artists Picasso, Kees van Dongen and Natalia Gontcharova pushed prices over £5 million – in total 21 lots realize over £1 million, compared to 26 at both last year’s major London sales combined. Despite recent musings on buyers in China’s ascendant economy who are displaying a new appetite for 20th Century Art, Thomas Seydoux, Christie’s international head of Impressionist and modern art, was most surprised by the amount of bidding from Russian and former Eastern Bloc buyers who dominated the action on the telephone – only 2% of lots were sold to Asian buyers in relation to 25% UK, 48% Europe and 25% Americas.

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Kirche in Cassone (Church in Cassone), Gustav Klimt via Sotheby’s

Masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt and Henri Matisse that have been unseen for decades will go under the hammer this week at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London at the first major European auctions of 2010. The appearance of many top-quality, ‘lost’ works marks a distinct change in the attitude of sellers who have been encouraged to put their prized works on the market by the recent success of Impressionist and Modern Art sales – most notable is Sotheby’s November Impressionist and Modern sale in New York that exceeded all expectations when it realized $182m over a high-end estimate of $163m. The sales kick-off with Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale on February 2 that will offer 86 lots with a total pre-sale value of £56,505,000 to £80,805,000. The sale is led by works by Kees van Dongen, Natalia Goncharova, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on Wednesday, February 3 is smaller with only 39 lots but the target of £102million is considerably higher. This high estimate is excelled by three works from Gustave Klimt, Alberto Giacometti and Paul Cézanne that are individually estimated to realize more than £10 million – the auction house sold three works for that price across all categories all last year.

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An exhibition of work by British-born artist Anthony McCall is currently being exhibited at both the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York through January 30th, 2010 and Gallery Thomas Zander in Koln, Germany through February 20th, 2010.  Entitled ‘Leaving (with Two-minute Silence),’ McCall’s new work of  ‘solid light’ presentations are comprised of digital videos of carefully choreographed, intersecting lines and curves. The collections of intersecting shapes are projected in dark, haze-filled rooms and result in three-dimensional forms, constructed purely from light. The exhibition is interactive, and as the viewers move in and out of the projected light beams,  they must reconcile their perceived sense of fixed, three dimensional objects with the actual mutable properties that light possesses.

McCall’s work emphasizes the sculptural qualities of beams of light.

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Diana and Callisto, Gaetano Gandolfi. Estimate: $800,000 – $1,200,000. Price Realized: $4,114,500

After the success of London’s ‘Old Master Week’ that took place in December 2009, expectations were high for the Old Master auctions that took place this week at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York. While perhaps not as rousing as the sales in London, the Old Master auctions in New York marked the first opportunity to verify suspicions that buyers were returning to the art market with confidence. Christie’s two days of sales included the two-part auction of Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolors on Wednesday and a special private collection sale, A Cabinet of Curiosities: Selections from the Peter Tillou Collections on Thursday, achieved a combined total of $40,858,500. While these auctions were successful, the auction that led the week was Thursday’s sale of Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture at Sotheby’s, which brought $61,599,250 – twelve lots sold for more than $1 million, and almost 60% of the works sold brought prices above the high estimate.

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End of an Era (2009) by Damien Hirst, via the Gagosian Gallery

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue are new sculptures and paintings by Damien Hirst.  The exhibition takes its title, “End of an Era,” from the central sculpture of the exhibition: a severed bull’s head with golden horns and a solid gold circular disc cast in formaldehyde and encased in a gold vitrine on a marble pedestal.  Hirst’s September 2008 monumental Sotheby’s London auction, where he famously circumvented his dealers, is widely recognized as marking the top of the recent art market rise. In this this auction the centerpiece was the “The Golden Calf” which sold for £10,345,250 with buyer’s premium and was cited as a reference to Hirst’s representation of cultural excess, worshipping false idols and likely Hirst’s own myth making.  The current exhibition title, and the decapitated head of basically the same artistic work, certainly has Hirst again presenting self-referential messages in light of his work’s current cultural and economic context.

Painful Memories/ Forgotten Tears (2008) by Damien Hirst, via Gagosian Gallery

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The first Art Los Angeles Contemporary annual international contemporary art fair kicked off last night at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California. Open through January 31^st,  the fair presents 55+ galleries from around the world, with an emphasis on leading Los Angeles based galleries. The fair’s opening reception presented a playground for art patrons, designers, musicians, actors and architects alike in an appropriate closing to Los Angeles’ January Arts Month. While some Angelenos remain skeptical of another Art Fair, a critique set off in domino effect by the LA Times’ announcement of the fair, Curator Helen Varola arranged a diverse series of speakers and panels, in addition to securing an eclectic group of galleries and artists from around the world. Highlights included Los Angeles galleries such as David Kordansky, Kim Light / Light Box, Blum & Poe and Honor Frasier, as well as spaces with international arms, such as Peres Projects, and Crisp, and New York favorite Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.

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La Belle Ferronni̬re, Follower of Leonardo da Vinci Рprobably before 1750

Dubbed as “an historic event for the art market,” Christie’s Old Master & 19th Century Art sale in London in December realized £68,380,250 – the highest ever total for an Old Masters auction. Following this ground- breaking success, expectations are high as Christie’s kick-off ‘Old Master Week’ in New York today, January 27, with their two-part sale of Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors. This sale will present over 320 works from Lucas Cranach the Elder, Jan Brueghel II, Thomas Gainsborough, Gaetano Gandolfi, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, and Samuel Palmer, among others. Total sales are expected to achieve in excess of $48 million. Sotheby’s “Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture” auction will take place on Thursday, January 28 and is dominated by a Rembrandt portrait of a young woman from 1632 estimated at $8m-$12m, along with the controversial painting linked to Leonardo da Vinci – ‘La Belle Ferronnière.’

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Installation of Sol Lewitt’s ”Wall Drawing #422” (November 1984) via Magasin 3

Currently on view at Magasin 3 Konsthall is “Seven Wall Drawings” by Sol Lewitt.  The exhibition, spanning the artists’ prolific career, takes the line as its theme. It is a motif to which Lewitt constantly returned, working, according to the exhibition’s curator Elisabeth Melqvist, “with exceptional consequence.”

Installation View: Sol Lewitt, ”Wall Drawing #51” (June 1970)

Ten thousand lines, measuring a total of 22 meters, cover the gallery’s walls from floor to ceiling. These lines truly reflect the creativity that can exist within a simple restriction. ”The descriptions and instructions sound bone dry but the result is startling,” shares Mellqvist. “It is beautiful, chaotic and overwhelming.” In addition to his investigation of possible line combinations, Lewitt also expanded his formal language in later years to encompass geometric shapes and color.

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A Pablo Picasso painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was damaged last Friday, Janauary 22, when a woman attending an adult education class lost her balance and fell into the piece. “The Actor” (1904-5) incurred an irregular vertical tear 6 inches in length in the lower right-hand corner.

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Untitled (Newspaper on Ground, Grass, California) (2000) by William Eggleston, via Cheim & Read Gallery

Currently on view at Cheim & Read Gallery in New York are two concurrent photography exhibitions featuring rarely shown photographs by Diane Arbus and William Eggleston.  The works by Diane Arbus are grouped under the “In the Absence of Others” and feature empty rooms  and artificial rooms taken during the 1960s. The exhibition of Eggleston’s works is entitled “21st Century” and highlights his most recent works.

An Empty Movie Theater (1971), by Diane Arbus, via T Magazine

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Exhibition View, by Frank Stella, via L & M Gallery

Currently on view at L & M Gallery in New York is Frank Stella’s “Exotic Birds.” The exhibition features work the artist executed in 1975  in the form of twenty-eight graph paper drawings which he then converted into Foamcore maquettes.  In 1976, he transformed the maquettes into a series of large-scale aluminum reliefs known as “Exotic Birds.” According to renowned curator William Rubin, the series signaled a transition in Stella’s work, “that was radical on the levels of both method and pictorial language.”

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Omer Fast’s Nostalgia III, 2009 – production still super 16mm film transferred to HD video running time: 32:48 minutes via Whitney Museum of American Art

Now on view at Postmasters Gallery and Whitney Museum of American Art are concurrent exhibitions by the iconoclastic video artist Omer Fast, known for his non-sequential cut ups of tragedy and humanity. Splicing disjunctive narratives of traumatized subjects – actual, staged or imitated – Fast’s dystopian imaginings shun aesthetic formality and evoke what truth lies in the ambiguity of storytelling. As highly interpretive mash ups collapsing space and time, his films recall the intimacy of reality and fantasy through mingling documentary and fictional styles.

Omer Fast’s Take a Deep Breath, 2008 – production still two channel HD video running time: 27:07 minutes

Chronicling the plight of the refugee, Omer Fast’s Nostalgia, showing at Whitney Museum of American Art, pinpoints feelings of longing and dislocation in a labyrinthian network of disparate ethnic voices. Tracing themes of displacement, war and loss through the recurrent motif of an animal trap, jumbled bits of dialogue and streams of overlaid images, Fast explores different permutations of cross-cultural encounters.

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Artur Zmijewski, “Powtorzenie” (Repetition), DVD, master DV, 2005 via Culture PL.

Currently on view at X Initiative as part of Phase 3 is a comprehensive solo exhibition of work by the controversial artist Artur Zmijewski.  It is easy to misunderstand and disprove of Zmijewski’s intentions, and easier to feel uncomfortable and conflicted by his video propositions.  This conclusive installation in a year-long experimental non-profit space marks a culmination of its mission to “inspire and challenge us to think about new possibilities for experiencing and producing contemporary art.“  Mr. Zmijewski reminds us that the experience of art can be as challenging as its production. The subject matter he explores is often heavy, the manner of delivery – raw, frank, often unedited – documentary.  The videos resemble an archive of a continuous social experiment where social situations, belief systems, reality and memory are test-driven for their endurance.

“80064”, DVD, master DV, 9’20”, 2004 via NY Times and Culture PL.

Zmijewski’s work is politically oriented as much as it is emotionally moving and complex. He acts as an activating agent by creating scenarios and situations in which initially passive and apathetic participants are galvanized and stirred, their actions documented and on view.

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Emily Prince in front of her installation at the Saatchi Gallery, via the Guardian

An installation by Emily Prince, featuring graphite pencil miniature portraits of slain U.S. soldiers, is drawing additional attention to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 additional troops to bolster the mission in Central Asia. The installation, titled American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (But Not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis, nor the Afghans, features almost 5,300 sketched portraits and is on display at the Saatchi Gallery in London through May 7th.

The 28 year old artist, only a few years out of Stanford and UC Berkeley but who already has participated in a Venice Biennale, was motivated to draw the portraits by her frustration following George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004. “I was feeling hopeless and frustrated, and I think I somehow needed to channel that energy,” Ms Prince expressed via Bloomberg. She was also quoted by the Daily Telegraph, saying that “I am disturbed about how easy it is to be disassociated from the war if like me you don’t have a relative who is involved.”  Based in San Francisco, she will continue to produce the drawings until the conflicts come to an end.

Andre D Tyson Riverside, CA Date of Death: April 22, 2007 by Emily Prince, via Saatchi Gallery, via Saatchi Gallery

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New MOCA Director, Jeffrey Deitch. Via LATimes

More on  MOCA’s new director, Jeffrey Deitch, who brings his more business-oriented background to the Museum in LA: [Bloomberg] Deitch’s contract with the museum has certain safeguards against conflicts of interest that might arise from his foot in the business world– among the new rules, Deitch must notify the museum’s board of anything he adds to or sells from his collection. [LATimes]

Eli Broad and his Broad Art Foundation reveal that they are considering 3 different Westside locations on which to build and endow a museum for his art collection. The third site was recently revealed as being a ten-acre parcel on the campus of West LA College in Culver City.  [LA Times]

Works by Picasso and Henri Rousseau have been stolen from a private villa in the South of France, marking the country’s second major art robbery in that week– (work by impressionist painter Edgar Degas was stolen from the Cantini Museum in Marseilles only days before). [FT]

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An installation view of Kusama’s ‘I want to Live Forever’ exhibit in Milan

Currently showing at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan is an exhibition by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, entitled ‘I Want to Live Forever.’  The show focuses on the artist’ s figurative paintings, large-scale sculpture and installations from the last decade, along with more formative drawings from the 50’s and 60’s.  Also on show is ‘Narcissus Garden,’  a sculptural installation consisting of an interactive environment of 1,500 mirror balls mounted in a field.  The work was first exhibited at the 33rd Biennale di Venezia in 1966– breaking away  from the usual ‘covert commercial aspects’ of the Biennale, Kusama, (known for her talent in merchandising), dressed in a traditional Japanese Kimono and sold each mirror ball for 1,200 lire on the lawns of the Italian Pavilion. More than forty years later, the installation piece now comes to Milan for the first time. Qualities of Kusama’s work are driven by a mental illness (hallucinations and obsessive thoughts) that the artist has struggled with since childhood. Her art often reveals an obsession  for filling spaces with repetitive, identical patterns. Early on in her career, she began covering surfaces with the polka-dots that would eventually become the trademark of her work. These fields of polka-dots, or ‘infinity nets,’ were drawn directly from her hallucinations. “These strange, uncanny things…drove me half into madness for many years,” the artist has said. “The only way to free myself from them was to control them myself–by reproducing them on paper…”

Kusama’s interactive ‘Narcissus Garden,’ consists of 1500 mirror balls. 2009, Via Design Boom

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View of the exhibition “Considering Henry” (2010)

Now showing at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris is a look at the Miami-based artist Hernan Bas, unprecedented in France. The exhibition, entitled “Considering Henry,” is on view through March 13, 2010 and borrows new works from major collections belonging to the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, MOCA (both Los Angeles and Miami), The Rubell Family Collection, The Saatchi Collection, SFMOMA and the Hirshhorn. Tracing prevalent themes of solitude and reflection in Bas’s romantically-inflected oeuvre, the exhibition follows the artist’s steadfast inspiration in nineteenth-century literature and painting.

Hernan Bas’s The landmark (or the laser point) 2009
Acrylic and airbrush on linen over panel
4 x 5 feet / 122 x 152,5 cm

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