Christie’s is suing a Chinese competitor over a name that is so similar it is potentially infringing its Chinese trademark. Chritrs Group has held auctions in Singapore and Hong Kong this year, and its Chinese name is pronounced similarly to Christie’s Chinese brand name. The written form also shares one of the Chinese characters used in the translation of Christie’s. (more…)

Christie’s saleroom photo by ArtObserved

Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale broke the record for the highest ever grossing Contemporary Art auction in history, totaling over $412 million in sales. The auction came on the heels of Sotheby’s Postwar & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, which broke its own record for highest-grossing auction in Sotheby’s long history ($375 million). Christie’s achieved an astounding 92% sell by lot and 93% sell by value – of the 73 lots offered only 6 failed to sell.

Records at auction were broken for Richard Diebenkorn, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, Franz Kline, George Condo, Jean- Michel Basquiat, and Mark Grotjahn. Additionally, Jean Dubuffet, Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat set new records for their artworks on paper. A record was set for an Alexander Calder wire sculpture at auction with Policeman, which sold for $4.2 million.

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Gallerist Barbara Gladstone and Cindy Rachofsky

November 12th marked Dia Art Foundation’s Fall Gala. The annual event raises funds for Dia’s ongoing projects, such as its current relocation to Chelsea, after a few years’ hiatus.  Co-chair Nathalie de Gunzburg
 was in attendance with her husband Charles and daughter Laura. Other art world attendees included: Robert Longo,Rirkrit Tiravanija, Brice Marden, Marty Marguiles, Barbara Gladstone, Jim Cohan, David Maupin, Andrew Kreps, Gavin Brown, Arne Glimcher, Glenn Ligon, Fred Wilson, Kara Walker, and Lawrence Wiener.

Artist Glenn Ligon

All photos by C. Daleli for ArtObserved

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Joseph Beuys, I like America and America likes Me, 1974, courtesy MMOMA

Appeal for an Alternative is a manifesto of the late Joseph Beuys’ works and the first and thus far most comprehensive retrospective of his to be shown in Russia. It features excerpts from his Marx series, the collection fromThe Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, The Van der Grinten collection, the Joseph Beuys Archive and the Joseph Beuys Media Archive.  It has been curated by Eugen Blume, a major Joseph Beuys specialist and Head of the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof − Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin. The title for the show is based around his 1950s Western Man project, which incorporated elements of World War II in which Beuys himself was enlisted as a soldier.

Joseph Beuys, 1983, courtesy MMOMA

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Kilo Kish (Performance) - All photos for E. Damenia for ArtObserved

The annual RxArt Live and Silent Auction took place on November 12th, honoring Dan Colen and his installation for King’s County Hospital Pediatrics, Brooklyn. The event paid tribute to the artists and donors who have made projects in over 20 hospitals nationwide possible. RxArt aims to improve patients’ experience in hospitals with creativity and art.

RxArt live auction (more…)

Nate Lowman

All photos by E. Damenia for ArtObserved

This past Sunday, The Brant Foundation Art Study Center held the opening party and preview for Nate Lowman: I wanted to be an artist but all I got was this lousy career. The exhibition features recent and new work including paintings, collage and sculpture. Also on view on the foundation lawn was the actual White Ford Bronco from OJ Simpson’s June 17, 1994 car chase, and Gang Gang Dance performed. Artists such as Scott Campbell, Adam McEwen, Richard Prince, Kalup Linzy, Kaws and Aaron Young were in attendance, as well as dealers, collectors and museum directors such as Eli Broad, Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian and the Mugrabi family.

Gang Gang Dance performing

The OJ Simpson White Bronco brought in for the event from Los Angeles

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Sotheby’s has been accused of colluding with a 10th-century Cambodian statue’s current owner to hide information about provenance. Papers were filed in United States District Court in Manhattan by Federal prosecutors alleging that the work was stolen in 1972 and that Sotheby’s had knowledge of this prior to consigning it. Sotheby’s stated that The United States attorney’s office is trying “to tar Sotheby’s with a hodgepodge of other allegations designed to create the misimpression that Sotheby’s acted deceptively in selling the statue. That is simply not true.” (more…)

Bejing’s 798 Arts district, currently composed of warehouse spaces that have been repurposed into galleries and artist studios, will be developed into a high end arts and culture center, replete with skyscrapers. Designed by I.M. Pei’s son Li Chung Pei, the project is slated for 2013, and will include a “laser stage”, a “primitive art community”, luxury hotel and apartments, and facilities to “examine and trade art” as well as an aquatic theater. The project’s manager, Wang Jianjun, said that it “will be the biggest art center in China with the best service.” (more…)

Sotheby’s saleroom with Rothko, No 1 (Royal Red and Blue) photo by ArtObserved

Last night Sotheby’s held its highest grossing auction ever. The Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled over $375 million, just over the projected high estimate of $374 million. Auctioneer Tobias Meyer rejoiced stating “I can hardly express how thrilled we are.” According to Sotheby’s, it has experienced a record-breaking year in 2012, with Contemporary Art sales totaling over $1 billion.

Rothko, No 1 (Royal Red and Blue) Courtesy Sotheby’s
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Richard Prince, Installation View, 2012 courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Richard Prince’s Four Saturdays offers blackened, collaged six pack rings and text paintings that recall movie openings. The solid black of the text paintings on the simplistic white backdrop echoes the more simplistic atmosphere, contradicting his earlier, more colorful works that paradoxically seem to emphasize the glamour and allure of Hollywood.

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Eric Shiner, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, has been appointed curator of Armory Focus: USA. In Celebration of the Centennial of the 1913 Armory Show, The Fourth Edition of Armory Focus will exhibit the achievements of contemporary art in America.  Several museum cultural partners will host exhibitions relating to the 1913 Armory and the development of modernism. During the fair, the Museum of Modern Art will present Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925; The Metropolitan Museum of Art will exhibit African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde; The New-York Historical Society will host The Armory Show at 100, featuring such canonical works as Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, first viewed on American soil at The Armory Show of 1913. (more…)

Alex Israel, Thirty exhibition at Almine Rech (announcement)

Work by Los Angeles-based American artist Alex Israel is being showcased in the Almine Rech Gallery Paris this month in an exhibition entitled Thirty, harking back to his Berlin exhibition which occurred exactly one year ago at Peres Projects in Kreuzberg, Berlin, and also to his installation at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City this summer.

Alex Israel, Thirty & Property, courtesy Almine Rech
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Parsons School of Design will reestablish its Paris presence, opening on November 29th with a reception at the Palais de Tokyo. Frank Alvah Parsons initiated a Paris program in 1921 for the school (which was then New York School of Fine and Applied Art). The French program closed during World War II but reopened upon merging with The New School for Social Research in 1970 but has since become less connected. “We see this less as a satellite campus and more of a node and network system,” said Joel Towers, the school’s executive dean. (more…)

Christie’s sale today to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation achieved $17,017,050 for the Foundation’s endowment, with 91% of lots sold. Leading the sale of 354 works by Andy Warhol were Endangered Species: San Francisco Silverspot, which had an estimate of $1,000,000 – $1,500,000 and sold for $1,258,500; followed by Endangered Species: Bighorn Ram, estimated at $700,000 – $1,000,000 and achieving $842,500; and Jackie, which more than doubled its high estimate of $300,000, realizing $626,500. (more…)

Richard Armstrong announced that six of approximately 100 acquisitions that have been made for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi so far have come from the art fair, which opened last week. They include work by Jacques Villeglé, Rachid Koraïchi (Algeria), Monir Farmanfarmaian (Iran), Ai Weiwei; El Anatsui and Subodh Gupta. He stated that the acquisition’s general ratio of European to artists from other countries will be indicative of the museum’s overall focus. (more…)

Derek Eller, Printed Matter, Wallspace and Bortolami Gallery have received grants from the ADAA’s hurricane relief fund, which will help them recover economically from damage sustained during Hurricane Sandy. The fund began with $250,000 and continues to increase. Factors include catastrophic damage that prohibits gallery business, drastically impaired cash flow, and risk of permanent closure. (more…)

Five paintings worth a total of $2 million were stolen at gunpoint from the Pretoria Art Museum yesterday in what could be the biggest art theft in South African history. Over the past 5-10 years, work by South African artists has increased tenfold, experts say. The thieves are not believed to be professionals, as they left work by some of South Africa’s best-known artists, including work by William Kentridge, behind. The museum’s security cameras were not working at the time; Interpol is investigating. (more…)

Hong Kong’s Peddler building is home to several galleries, effectively having elevated the cities standing as an international arts center. The structure, a historic building in the center of the city was never demolished in order to develop a glass skyscraper, houses Gagosian Gallery, Ben Brown and others, and will soon be the home to Lehmann Maupin as well.  (more…)

Installation view: Bjarne Melgaard “A New Novel” at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. All images by Jennifer Lindblad for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

The door of Luxembourg & Dayan’s historic townhouse on Upper East Side—the second most narrow in New York City— opens to a visual assault: sequined dolls wearing Proenza Schouler-designed evening gowns and Pink Panther figurines perch atop neon-colored piles of books just narrow enough to snake through, violent sexual vignettes are played out by clay figures, and 1970s-style wallpaper and overlapping area rugs serves as a rough-and-tumble backdrop. All comprise Bjarne Melgaard’s twisted vision for “A New Novel.”

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Berenberg Bank has opened a €50 million art fund with a minimum €100,000 investment. The fund plans to offer an alternative investment vehicle in a time of global economic insecurity. The fund, which will rely on museums and collectors to advise on acquisitions, offers a tangible asset. “…Independently of classic investments like shares, bonds or even real estate, an art investment can complete every well-structured portfolio,” said Berenberg Art Advice’s manager. (more…)

Artist and urban planner Theaster Gates has been named as the recipient of its inaugural Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics by The New School. The $15,000 prize will be awarded to an artist every two years. The List Center was named for the philanthropist Vera List, who died in 2002. (more…)

New York banker and oil magnate Chris Keesee has opened a project space called Marfa Contemporary in the Texas town. He lent Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud City to the Met, and eventually wants to take it to Texas, but said: “it can’t be a permanent piece there—the last thing I want to see is it blowing away in a dust storm, tumbling across the desert”. Mr. Keesee is also the president of City Arts Center in Oklahoma City and serves as a trustee of other foundations focused on Arts and Arts Education. (more…)

Rudolf Stingel – Untitled (2012), courtesy The Gagosian Gallery

In 2007, as part of his mid-career retrospective shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Whitney Museum in New York, Italian artist Rudolf Stingel installed several massive sheets of aluminum-faced insulation material, inviting gallery-goers to inscribe their own messages, images and writings into the delicate face of the originally pristine walls.  The result was a long expanse of graffitied surfaces, a testament to the exhibition’s existence as much as it was a record of its visitors.

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Surfboard shaper Tim Bessell has created a series of Warhol-inspired designs for surfboards in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation. The first set were on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Each one retails between $5,600 and $8,000. (more…)