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…)

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…)

A French man has been arrested on charges of selling fake paintings by “The Picasso of India”, MF Husain. The man, identified as “Sofiane B”, was arrested when a Parisian art dealer said he bought two of the fakes for more than €100,000. Police believe he took advantage of Husain, who was 95 when he died last year, and convinced him to sign paintings done by others. They believe he has flooded the market with fakes since 2004. (more…)

John Cage – Dereau (#11) (1982), courtesy The National Academy Museum

Over the course of his lifetime, composer, writer and theorist John Cage made immense and lasting contributions to modernist and post-modernist avant-garde thought, challenging traditional conceptions of music, sound, noise and arrangement, and blazing a path for young composers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  However, the artist also was a prolific painter, creating a vast body of watercolors, prints and drawings, and ultimately influcing, and collaborating with, many artists in the 50s and 60s.  These works are the focus of a new exhibition at the National Academy Museum in New York City, celebrating what would be Cage’s 100th birthday.

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Artliner has partnered with Haunch of Venison to offer artwork for sale in Farnborough Airport. For £55,000 to £500,000, high net worth clients can purchase a Hirst spin or butterfly painting or work by Tracey Emin or Barber Osgerby (the designers of the Olympic torch). (more…)

Although Sotheby’s revenue increased, it has posted a loss for this quarter. Quarterly revenue rose 18% to $68.5 million. The company typically sees a small profit or loss in first and third quarters, as the largest sales happen during the second and fourth quarters. This year, the third-quarter loss increased by 10%, in an unfavorable comparison with an $11.6 million tax benefit in the third quarter of 2011. (more…)

Someone has stolen Rachel Whiteread’s Untitled (24 Switches) from a central London gallery. The theft of the panel of light switches made by the artist is valued at £24,000. The work would most likely not even be recognizable as art to the garden variety thief, and any reputable dealer could identify it based on the stamp on the back and track provenance, thus confounding the gallery and its insurers as to who might have stolen it. (more…)

Daniel Turner – Installation View (2012) courtesy Journal Gallery West

New York-based artist Daniel Turner creates installations at the nexus of the organic and synthetic, a quirky combination of elements that underlines the environmental interactions of man and nature, and resultant breakdowns in symbol and understanding which results from their increasing distance.  As part of the first show at The Journal Gallery’s new location in Brooklyn, Turner is exhibiting two recent works exploring the complex interactions of objects and environments created by man’s bizarre contemporary relationship to science, chemistry, consumption and natural processes.

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Gabriel Orozco is profiled in the Wall Street Journal, as his show, Asterisms, opens tonight at the Guggenheim. The show contains photographs and sculptural vignettes of thousands of pieces of debris collected by the artist from the wildlife reserve Isla Arena in Mexico and from Pier 40 in Manhattan. “It’s amazing how the nature, and the accident, and the sand, the elements make them look very—they’re very suggestive of things you know,” he said.

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Maria Gutierrez and Gabriel Orozco

All photos by C. Daleli for ArtObserved

The 2012 Guggenheim International Gala took place Thursday, November 8th in celebration of Picasso: Black and White organized by Carmen Giménez. Guests were able to view artworks for the upcoming benefit auction at Sotheby’s on November 13-14th with lots by Gabriel Orozco, Georg Baselitz, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Prince, and James Turrell, among others. Funds raised at the gala and auction are in support of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Atmosphere

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Sotheby’s saleroom

Last night Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern evening sale was consistent throughout, despite an overall lower sale total than Christie’s the previous night. Although there was no blizzard for the crowds to push through, the overall buyer interest and sell through rates similar: Sotheby’s achieved a total of $163 million, with a sell through rate of 68.7% and sell by value of 79.2%. Over the course of the day, Sotheby’s achieved a total of over $203 for both the day and evening sales of Impressionist and Modern Art. The first half of the sale was decidedly lively in bidding, whereas most of the unsold lots took place in the second half of the evening.

Pablo Picasso, Nature Morte Aux Tulipes (1932) Image courtesy of Sotheby’s (more…)

The Metropolitan Museum has acquired an early Jusepe de Ribera painting, a 1612-13 depiction of St. Peter praying on a rock, painted when the artist was in his early 20s. Paintings from this period rarely come on the market; about 10 years ago an Italian scholar named Gianni Papi reattributed several paintings to the young Ribera. This particular painting was only discovered last year and was offered through Madrid dealers Coll & Cortés. (more…)

Takashi Murakami is suing Marianne Boesky over the right to lend his limited edition wallpaper design to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The artist is demanding that Boesky return the digital master file and cease reproductions. The “Cosmos” wallpaper was an artwork which came with strict provisions regarding its reproduction: it could only be sold to 15 collectors. Boesky asserts that she and the artist had an oral agreement to loan the work to the Met. (more…)

The inaugural Untitled fair in Miami has announced its exhibitor list, among them Art in General, DODGE, Lu Magnus and The Hole, among others. Mostly from New York (and within that group, mostly from the Lower East Side), there are also a handful of international galleries. The fair will be curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud in a beachfront tent at 12th Street and Ocean Drive and runs from December 5-9. (more…)

John Baldessari, Eggs and Sausage (2012). All images courtesy Marian Goodman

On view through November 21st, 2012 at the Marian Goodman Gallery is Double Play, John Baldessari’s newest series of paintings that draws from art historical and popular culture resources to once again arrive at new meaning through the reconfiguration of disparate parts.

John Baldessari, Feelings (2012).

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A London borough in financial straits decided on Wednesday to sell a Henry Moore sculpture valued at up to £20 million despite opposition from the art community. Mayor Lutfur Rahman called it a “tough decision” to sell the 1957 sculpture, Draped Seated Woman, which is affectionately known by locals as “Old Flo”.
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In a deposition this week, Larry Gagosian stated that he frequently represents both parties – buyer and consignor – in sale transactions that he brokers. The case brought forth by Jan Cowles, who sued Gagosian for selling a work she owned without her consent, involves a painting that sold for below market value at $2 million, and whereby Gagosian earned an unusually high relative fee of $1 million.  Mrs. Cowles’s lawyer, David Baum, claims that representation of both parties without disclosure is “blatantly unlawful under New York agency law.” The gallery asserted that its “practices are fully consistent with both the law and the standards in the art world.” (more…)

Wassily Kandinsky, Studie für Improvisation 8 (1909)  which sold for a record breaking $23,042,500, image courtesy Christie’s

Despite a nor’easter last night in New York, Christie’s had a full house for its Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, which boasted a sale total of $204, 800,000 with just 48 of 69 lots sold.  The sales achieved were not always consistent but very high numbers were reached during many bids.  The value sold by lot was 80%, with most of the works that did sell achieving their high estimate or beyond.  Head of the Department, Brooke Lampley, declared it a “strong sale” in the post auction press conference.

Sale room at Christie’s, photo by ArtObserved

The major excitement of the sale came with the record-breaking price of $23 million for Kandinsky’s Studie für Improvisation 8  – the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by the artist. The painting is an early figurative example of the artist’s transition to abstraction. (more…)

Kees Van Dongen, Deux Nus Aux Ballons Courtesy Sotheby’s
LOT SOLD. 1,314,500 USD  (Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium)

Sotheby’s concluded its Impressionist  & Modern day sale today, with a sale total (including buyer’s premium) of $39,910,775. The auction house sold 73% of lots in the morning session and 62% in the afternoon session.

Pablo Picasso, Tête d’homme Courtesy Sotheby’s
LOT SOLD. 1,142,500 USD  (Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium) (more…)