Gerhard Richter, Kerze (Candle), 1982 (est. $9.3-13.9 million, realized $16.5 million). All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art sale on Friday evening in London ended the week’s auction blitz with a bang. The sale followed Phillips and Sotheby’s auctions in the same category that both failed to beat low presale estimates. The Christie’s sale was comprised of 47 lots that brought in $60 million, just shy of the $62 million high estimate. Top honors went to the evening’s cover lot- Gerhard Richter‘s Kerze – which was expected to bring in as much as $13.9 million. The artist made headlines earlier this month when he characterized the art market as “impossible to understand” and “daft” during the press launch of his retrospective currently on view at Tate Modern. If anything, his comments seemed to have whet the already healthy appetite for his work, as Kerze sold for $16.5 million and set a record for the artist at auction. The candle paintings, in which the artist depicts lighted candles in his signature photorealistic style, are the most sought after works in the painter’s oeuvre.

Christie’s Jussi Pylkkanen at the rostrum.

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Yves Klein all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

This year marked the 2nd iteration of the House of the Nobleman, a privately sponsored exhibition which took place at the Boswall House, 15,000sqft  mansion at 2 Cornwall Terrace, overlooking Regent’s Park and the Frieze 2011 Art Fair.  Art Observed was on site for the private viewing.  On view were works by Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Peter Paul Rubens, Edgar Degas, Max Ernst,  Damien Hirst, Marlene Dumas, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Sigmar Polke, Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor, Nick Hornby, Matthew Day Jackson, Cecily Brown, Lucian Freud, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Longo, Alexander Calder, Eugenia Emets, Francesco Clemente, Salvador Dali,  Peter Doig,  Olafur Eliasson, George Condo, Takashi Murakami,  Hiroshi Sugimoto and Gerhard Richter.

Monet, Claude “ Chemin dans le brouillard”, (1879)

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Trailer released for Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen’s latest film, Shame [AO Newslink]

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John Baldessari, Double Feature: Sudden Fear (2011). Via Sprueth Magers.

Eighty-year old John Baldessari opens Berlin’s Sprueth Magers fall season with new works in a show titled Double Feature. Baldessari continues his image appropriation, for which he is well-known, with this series of works giving the audience a complex set of collages to view. Baldessari is a pioneer in hybrid art forms, mixing photographic collages, paint, billboards, and performance, remaining outside the confines of a neat categorization.

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Artist Shepard Fairey designs poster for tomorrow’s Occupation Party protest in Times Square [AO Newslink]

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LA MOCA announces Deborah Harry as headliner for its November 12th gala, which is being developed by Marina Abramovic [AO Newslink]

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Alberto Burri, Combustione Legno, 1957 (est. $1.2-1.9 million, realized $5 million), via Sothebys.com

Sotheby’s London hosted a pair of auctions on Thursday evening that raised a combined total of $62 million. The 20th Century Italian Art sale, comprised of 58 lots, was followed by a 47-lot Contemporary Art sale. The $34 million achieved for the Italian auction was the highest total for an auction in this category, while the Contemporary sale fell just short of its $30 million low estimate. The mixed results suggest that there is money to be spent on the most desirable lots and that buyers are not willing to shell out for anything less. The sales progressed amid demonstrations outside the auction house by protestors of the company’s months-long battle with their art handlers in New York.

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Doug Aitken, Now (2011) at 303 Gallery NY. All photos for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

AO is on site in London for this week’s Frieze Art Fair. With 173 galleries selling an estimated $350 million worth of art, a level of anxiety pervades as the week’s results will be indicative of the overall international contemporary art market. Works like Christian Jankowski’s droll The Finest Art on Water and Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine directly comment on the world economic state, while the overall demeanor remains upbeat, with art world moguls and A-list celebrities enjoying the festivities.

Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine (2011), Thomas Dane Gallery

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‪‬Ai Weiwei shoots Rikers Island photoset for W Magazine remotely via Skype from China [AO Newslink]

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‪‪‬Tracey Emin traces family genealogy in BBC show ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ [AO Newslink]

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‪‬MoMA collaborates with Uniqlo for ‘Message Art Now!’ artist-designed T-shirt series [AO Newslink]

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Ai Weiwei named ‘most powerful’ artist of 2011 according to annual ‘Art Review 100’ [AO Newslink]

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Sarah Jessica Parker, Simone de Pury, Jerry Saltz, Bill Powers and the like returned for the Season 2 opener of Bravo’s Work of Art this evening [AO Newslink]

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Andy Warhol & Jean-Michel Basquiat, Thin Lips, 1984-85 (est. $1.1-1.6 million, bought in), via Phillipsdepury.com

The week’s Contemporary art sales in London got off to a lukewarm start on Wednesday at Phillips de Pury. The evening sale realized $12.9 million against estimates of $15.6-22.7 million, and 12 of the 35 lots offered failed to find buyers. The auction’s featured lot – Jeff Koons‘s rendition of stacked trash cans punctuated by inflatable toys – sold for $3.3 million against a low estimate of $3.1 million (prices realized include the buyer’s premium, estimates do not). A collaborative work by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat that was expected to fetch at least $1.1 million was bought in, as were works by George Condo, Lucio Fontana, Cindy Sherman, and Paula Rego.

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‪‬Tate Collection acquires three new works on first day of Frieze Art Fair 2011 [AO Newslink]

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Lucian Freud, Boy’s Head, 1952 (est. $4.6-6.2 million), via Sothebys.com

Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips de Pury are hosting Contemporary art sales this week in conjunction with the Frieze Art Fair, which officially begins on Thursday in London. Capitalizing on the flood of art afficionados in town for the fair,  the auction houses are hoping to move about $88 million worth of art during their evening sales. Dealers and buyers have been reassured of the art market’s strength following huge boom-like sums achieved during the past few auction cycles, but this round of sales comes at a moment of increased anxiety about the global economy. These sales may set the tone of the major auctions next month in New York, when Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips will offer several hundred million dollars worth of Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art.

Jeff Koons, Seal Walrus Trashcans, 2003-09 (est. $3.1-4.6 million), via Phillipsdepury.com

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‪‬Art Below turns ad space into art space beneath Regents Park (site of Frieze) Tube station in London, with works by 20 Saatchi Gallery New Sensations Prize finalists [AO Newslink]

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Still from PST video with John Baldessari and Jason Schwartzman. Via CalArts.

Began by the Getty Foundation nearly ten years ago, the Pacific Standard Time (PST) initiative has done well, to say the least, with the most recent issue of Artforum almost completely devoted to art in L.A. While PST-related programming began in early September, the weekend of October 1st was the highly anticipated official “opening weekend,” with sixteen exhibitions opening across the city.

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‪‬Carsten Höller installs 102 foot slide, “a happiness-producing machine,” through the floors of the New Museum for his upcoming retrospective [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Tacita Dean unveils ‘Film,’ a 35 mm film on a 13 meter tall screen as the 2011 Unilever series commission at the Tate Modern [AO Newslink]

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Suspect may have panicked and trashed 5 stolen masterworks following “one of the biggest art heists ever” in Paris last May. The works stolen from the Musée d’Art Moderne were Dove with Green Peas by Pablo Picasso, Pastoral by Henri Matisse, Olive Tree near l’Estaque by Georges Braque, Still Life with Candlestick by Fernand Leger and Woman with Fan by Amedeo Modigliani. [AO Newslink]

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Carter, Throughout (2011). All images courtesy of Marc Jancou Contemporary

On view now at Marc Jancou Contemporary is Forthcoming, an exhibition of new work by the Swiss artist Carter. Open through November 12^th—now extended through December 23rd—Forthcoming is the inaugural show at Mr. Jancou’s new Geneva gallery, simply called Jancou. Carter is known for using a variety of media, and although this is an exhibition of works on paper, each was made using a combination of materials and techniques. His work often explores the idea of the self and the shifting concept of identity, with Forthcoming examining the idea of anonymity in particular.

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Two oil paintings by Pablo Picasso, “Tete de cheval” (1962) and “Verre et pichet” (1944), both stolen from Pfaeffikon, near Zurich, in 2008, and loaned by the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany have reportedly been found in Serbia [AO Newslink]

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Artist to give birth in Bushwick, Brooklyn gallery as part of a performance art work [AO Newslink]

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