This week's Art Collecting and Investment News...

Sunday, 31^st August 2008

Who might buy the Titians? Meet the new collectors of the art world
UK - Britain is being urged to find £100m to prevent two Old Masters being sold abroad as a host of Russian oligarchs, hedge fund managers and Gulf states discover a new passion for art. The stately old world of collecting is swiftly being transformed by the new arrivals.
                                                                                                                     guardian.co.uk - UK

Tricky task of putting price on Titian
UK - The most that any Titian has ever fetched at auction is £7.48 million -- in 1991 for Venus and Adonis. The last time that a Titian came on the market was in 2005, when Portrait of A Lady and Her Daughter failed to reach the £5 million reserve price.
                                                                                                                       Times Online - UK

Renewed interest in lost Depression paintings
US - WPA work by Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko was left nearly on the trash heap. Their work was included in WPA art that was purchased, in bales of canvas, for four cents a pound at a federal warehouse in Flushing, N.Y.
                                                                                                      Boston Globe - United States

Saturday, 30^th August 2008

MOCA Continues to Spotlight its Permanent Collection with a Survey ...
US - Los Angeles: Building on the recent success of Collecting Collections: Highlights from the Permanent Collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2008), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) again gives center stage to works from its outstanding permanent collection.
                                                                                                                           Art Daily - USA


Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, 1871-1958 ...
US - The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College will host an exclusive exhibition, Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, 1871-1958, on view August 30 through December 7, 2008. It marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1958 death of the French Fauvist and Expressionist painter and printmaker.
                                                                                                                            Art Daily - USA

D-day for Damien: Is Hirst about to turn the art market on its ...
UK - London: The thinking on Bond Street is that the top pieces from Beautiful Inside My Head Forever will succeed that deal with the themes of death, decay and here today, gone tomorrow are the works museums want, the art by Hirst that is likely to last. The doubt lies elsewhere.
                                                                                             Independent - London,England,UK

Dealer Who Sold Portrait Joins Leonardo Debate
ITALY - Rome: An American dealer who in 1998 bought -- and later sold -- a mixed-media portrait of a young woman that some art and scientific experts now attribute to Leonardo da Vinci has come forward to say that she does not think it is by that Renaissance master.
                                                                                                  New York Times - United States
Eat the rich: The new City boys we love to hate
UK -  London: Number-crunching. 946 billionaires worldwide in 2007, up from 306 in 2000. £3.2m average pay of a FTSE100 CEO last year (£737,000 cash, remainder bonuses, pensions, share options). 37% pay increase for FTSE100 CEOs last year. 4% national average pay increase
                                                                                              Independent - London,England,UK

A Tarnished Jeff Koons
US - Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art is commemorating its 1988 first survey of the work of Jeff Koons with a retrospective of about 60 works (through Sept. 21).
                                                                                                            Wall Street Journal - USA

Friday, 29^th August 2008

Sigg Collection to Find Permanent Home in China?
CHINA - Hong Kong: For weeks rumors have been circulating that Uli Sigg, one of the world's most important patrons of contemporary Chinese art, would donate his extensive collection to the Shenzhen government.
                                                                                              ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Casual Photos That Yielded Portraits
US - The Elizabeth Peyton exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum sets out to prove that Ms. Peyton, renowned for her endearing, colorful little paintings of fellow artists, friends and 1980s pop icons, is more than just a jolly social portraitist.
                                                                                                New York Times - United States

Post-War and Contemporary Editions for Sal at Christie's South ...
UK - London: Christie's South Kensington's upcoming Prints sale offers a wide array of prints from contemporary artists, many of whom have become as iconic as the images they create. Including stunning works from the likes of Damien Hirst, Banksy, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Bridget Riley.
                                                                                                                          Art Daily - USA

Non-Indians grab contemporary Indian art
INDIA - "In our last auction," says Vazirani, "28 per cent of our bidders were non-Indians", and of the top five lots that were auctioned, "three were bought by non-Indians, including Subodh Gupta at $1.4 million".
                                                                         Business Standard - Mumbai,Maharashtra,India

The industrial revolution brought Titians and Renoirs to Scotland
UK - Art, celebrity and money: the three are never far apart. After a "prudent review" of his family assets, the Duke of Sutherland is offering to sell the gallery two paintings from a collection of old masters considered to be among the finest in the world.
                                                                                                                    guardian.co.uk - UK

The Week That Was (August 22 - 29, 2008)
MOSCOW--Yuri Samodurov, director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum, has announced that he is stepping down. Samodurov was charged in May with inciting religious hatred because of an exhibition he helped organize at the museum, "Forbidden Art -- 2006."
                                                                                                    ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Exhibition from Collection of Francois Pinault Comes to Moscow
RUSSIA - Paintings and art objects from collection of Francois Pinault, owner of the Christie's auctioning house and one of the most influential people in the realm of modern art will be shown in Moscow in February 2009.
                                                                                            Russia-InfoCenter - Moscow,Russia

Menzies' plan of auction
AUSTRALIA - The auction house owner Rod Menzies has chosen a Warhol work as the show stopper at his next sale. Following recent attacks from his critics and competitors, Menzies wants people to look again: at him, his business and his commitment to the Australian art market.
                                                                                               The Australian - Sydney,Australia

Francis Bacon claims his place at the top of the market
UK - London: As Tate Britain opens a major travelling retrospective, we examine the factors underpinning the meteoric rise in prices for the artist's work and reveal the identity of his biggest collectors.
                                                                                                                    Art Newspaper - UK

Art Exhibit That Provides Eighth Avenue's Daily Dose of Color ...
UK - New York: Announced extension of the popular public art project by New York artist Tattfoo Tan, part of the ongoing transformation of 8th Avenue and the 42nd Street area. The display will remain through October, reminding New York residents and visitors alike to eat their "daily dose of color."
                                                                                                                          Art Daily - USA

Thursday, 28^th August 2008

Art for the masses
THAILAND - Back in 1997, the year of the Tom Yum Kung crisis, a group of art advocates began campaigning for Bangkok to have its own world-class art centre. Eventually, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) opened its doors last month with Mah Boonkrong Centre, Siam Square and Siam Discovery Centre as its neighbours.
                                                                                                            Bangkok Post - Thailand

Oligarch's Girlfriend Takes the Art World by Storm
RUSSIA - Here is one reason Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich seems to have developed an art fetish: his girlfriend, Dasha Zhukova, is making a bid to become the Charles Saatchi or Larry Gagosian of the Russian art world.
                                                                           Wall Street Journal Blogs - New York,NY,USA

Pope angry over crucified green frog sculpture
ITALY - Kippenberger's work has been shown at the Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Venice Biennale, and retrospectives are planned in Los Angeles and New York.
                                                                                            Independent - London,England,UK

An Early Love of Art and SoHo Pays Off
US - New York: Mr. Sosnick, the founder and president of Anthony for Men, which owns and markets three men's grooming brands, was introduced to art and the SoHo neighborhood at an early age.
                                                                                                   New York Sun - United States

The Color of Money
BOOK REVIEW - Green is good. But is it a good investment? Economist Don Thompson answers this and other questions about the art market in his much buzzed-about new book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, which hits U.S. stores next month. What follows is a sneak peek at Thompson's colorful commentary.
                                                                                                   ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

The Art World Embraces the Wow Factor
US - Mr. Eliasson (b. 1967) knows how to get our attention. (This was evident at his recent two-venue retrospective at P.S.1 and MoMA.). The sticking point of his art, however, is that it fails to hold our attention.
                                                                                                     New York Sun - United States

Wednesday, 27^th August 2008

MOCA Organizes First Major US Retrospective of Influential German ...
US - Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), presents Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, the first major retrospective exhibition to be mounted in the United States of the work of Martin Kippenberger (1953-97).
                                                                                                                           Art Daily - USA

A treasure house of art in a sand dune
MIDDLE EAST - Doha: Qatar has taken a major step toward becoming the cultural hub of the Middle East with Rafael Vinoly Architects being commissioned to design the Museum of Modern Arab Art. Speculation about the project started when the London-based The Art Newspaper revealed that Qatar had bought some expensive pieces of modern art recently.                      
                                                                                                            Peninsula On-line - Qatar

Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery Seeks New Building for Modern Art
RUSSIA - The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow's largest collection of Russian art, said it has begun talks with the city government to build a new space for its modern and contemporary art collection.
                                                                                                                        Bloomberg - USA

Ancient Art, Served on a Present-Day Platter
UK - Los Angeles: The Latin American collection of the LACMA is back on view after three years' absence. And the reinstallation opens with a piquant flourish in a display of ancient pre-Columbian art that doubles as a solo show for a contemporary artist, and looks like a nightclub interior. The Cuban artist, Jorge Pardo, is well known for blurring the lines between art, architecture and design.
                                                                                                  New York Times - United States

A masterwork goes missing
US - A prized 1921 painting by the French cubist Fernand Leger has been lost - perhaps unintentionally thrown out - by Wellesley College's Davis Museum and Cultural Center. That would be a costly mistake. Last year, the average Leger painting sold for $2.8 million.
                                                                                                      Boston Globe - United States

UK National Galleries Seek 50 Million Pounds for Titian Work
UNITED KINGDOM - London's National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland seek to buy a Titian painting for 50 million pounds ($92 million) as part of a plan that would allow the U.K. to continue showing the most important private collection of Old Masters on loan to the nation.
                                                                                                                        Bloomberg - USA

A first for India: A museum of contemporary art
INDIA - The birth of the Devi Art Foundation signals a sort of turning point in the Indian art scene. The Poddars are known in the art world here for their daring eye, for seeking out artists before they start fetching high prices or become recognizable names at fashionable Delhi dinner parties.
                                                                                          International Herald Tribune - France

Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman, modern art collector, dies at age 94
US - Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman, 94, the doyenne of Chicago modern art collectors and one of the most cosmopolitan figures on the scene, died of natural causes on Friday, Aug. 22, in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
                                                                                                 Chicago Tribune - United States

Hirst's Dealer Denies `Mountain' of Unsold Works Before Auction
UK - London: Damien Hirst's London dealer White Cube has denied it has a ``mountain'' of unsold works before a Sotheby's sale which previews today in the Hamptons and New Delhi. White Cube, said in an e-mailed statement that its stock level for Hirst was normal.
                                                                                                                       Bloomberg - USA

No sale: art market going to Brack and ruin
AUSTRALIA - Last year, a significant John Brack, even a challenging one such as The Boucher Nude, would have effortlessly broken through the million-dollar barrier at auction. But not last night. Bidding on the painting did not even reach the $1.4 million reserve, stalling at $1.3 million.
                                                                                       The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia

Stock Slide Curbs Sotheby's Australian Art Sale With 50% Unsold
AUSTRALIA - Half the lots offered at Sotheby's auction of Australian paintings were unsold as the nation's stock market slide quelled demand for art, the company said. Sotheby's sold 114 of 228 items offered in Melbourne over two days, tallying A$6.7 million ($5.8 million).
                                                                                                                        Bloomberg - USA

On the Rise
GLOBAL - Today a significant number of Chinese-born artists live and work abroad. The phenomenon raises a question: what is the collective identity of Chinese art when it is stripped off Chinese political ideologies and ethnic/geographic boundaries?
                                                                                     NY Arts Magazine - New York,NY,USA

Vettriano's One-Hour Sketch Fetches $73120 in Scottish Auction
UK- A sketch by Jack Vettriano of the ``Singing Butler'' sold last night for 39,650 pounds ($73,120), almost double the high estimate, at Sotheby's annual sale of Scottish pictures at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.
                                                                                                                      Bloomberg - USA

Drysdale Farmer Portrait Fetches Record A$1.89 Million at Sale
AUSTRALIA - Russell Drysdale's 1962/63 portrait of farmer ``Rocky McCormack'' sold for an artist auction record of A$1.89 million ($1.62 million) in Melbourne last night. The work was among A$5.8 million of art sold by New York-based Sotheby's. Other works sold included Charles Conder's 1888 ``The Fatal Colors'' for A$702,000 and Brett Whiteley's 1974 ``Glimpse of Eden'' for A$456,000.
                                                                                                                        Bloomberg - USA

Scribbles behind the wardrobe
US - Though the pair didn't find one neatly-formed work behind the walls, the art they did uncover was perhaps of greater significance: a floor-to-ceiling hash of tags, throw-ups and burners belonging to such old school graffiti writers as Fab 5 Freddy, Futura 2000, Nesto, Ramellzee, as well as Basquiat.
                                                                                                                   guardian.co.uk - UK

Damien Hirst's butterfly series set to shock art lovers in India
INDIA New Delhi: The works of Damien Hirst, leading British contemporary artist and one of the most expensive, are set to be unveiled here on August 27. These may come as shock to Indian art lovers, who are just waking up to the aesthetics of contemporary and installation art. The highlights of the two-day show are three of his signature butterfly paintings -- using dead butterflies.
                                                                               Economic Times - Gurgaon,Haryana,India

Tuesday, 26^th August 2008

Hirst's Diamond Skull to Go on Show at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum
NETHERLANDS - Damien Hirst has chosen the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to start a world tour of the U.K. artist's $100 million diamond skull. ``The theme of the skull is the aversion of death in art,'' said Elles Kamphuis, Rijksmuseum spokeswoman in a telephone interview today.
                                                                                                                                       

Records, but art market still twitchy
AUSTRALIA - Art market jitters continued last night with more than half of the works on auction at Bonhams and Goodman in Prahran failing to sell. But buyer interest in quality remained high, with Bonhams setting records for six artists.
                                                                                       The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia

Monday, 25^th August 2008