Jurassic Art

Artdaily.org reports that Christie's is to sell works from the collection of Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park. The collection includes a Flag from Jasper Johns and an impressive oil painting by Picasso.

2008

Artprice.com has just published Art market trends 2008. Last year, the top-10 artists in terms of turnover at auction were: Picasso, Bacon, Warhol, Hirst, Monet, Giacometti, Richter, Degas, Fontana, and Klein. The list shows how post-war art has become the most important section of the market. (Koons, Basquiat, Freud, Prince, and Rothko can all be found between places 11 and 20.)

Andy, Pablo and Francis

A couple of weeks ago, Artprice.com published its yearly overview of art market trends. It contains interesting insights in the "suicidal competition" in the art market and the remarkable rise of contemporary Chinese art (for example from Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun). Anyway, 2007 might have been the last year without Asian artists in the top-10 of artists based on the total revenue generated by public sales (2006 ranking between brackets):

1 (2) Andy Warhol [422 million USD]
2 (1) Pablo Picasso [320 million USD]
3 (19) Francis Bacon [245 million USD]

4 (79) Mark Rothko
5 (14) Claude Monet
6 (9) Henri Matisse
7 (37) Jean-Michel Basquiat
8 (26) Fernand Léger
9 (6) Marc Chagall
10 (17) Paul Cézanne

Have fallen out of the top-10 this year: Modigliani, De Kooning, Gauguin, Liechtenstein, Schiele and Klimt.

Autumn in New York

From Artinfo.com: "Two major works by Pablo Picasso, a bronze head of his muse Dora Maar and a 1931 canvas, La Lampe, will go under the hammer in New York on November 7, Sotheby's auction house said Tuesday. Sotheby's expects the painting, which comes directly from the artist's family, to fetch $25 million to $35 million, and the 31.5-inch high sculpture Picasso made in Paris in 1941 will bring $20 million to $30 million."

Yes, November is going to be an exciting month for the art world and for Sotheby's New York in particular.

Rather a nightmare

In 1932, Picasso made a portrait of his mistress. Nowadays, 'Le Rêve' is seen as one of his top-works. Steve Wynn, the owner of the painting, was to sell it a few weeks ago for $139 million. That was before he poked his elbow through the painting. His first reaction was, understandably, one of unbelief: "I can’t believe I just did that. Oh, shit. Oh, man." He told his guests: "Well, I’m glad I did it and not you."

A few hours later, Wynn was already in a cheerful mood: "My feeling was: It’s a picture, it’s my picture, we’ll fix it. Nobody got sick or died. It’s a picture. It took Picasso five hours to paint it."

(Source: The New Yorker)

The true value of art ?

In may 2004, 'Garçon à la Pipe' by Pablo Picasso was sold at Sotheby's New York for $104.1 million. The morning after the sale, a Picasso expert was quoted in The Washington Post: "I'm stunned, that a pleasant, minor painting could command a price appropriate to a real masterwork by Picasso. This just shows how much the marketplace is divorced from the true values of art."