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Founded in 1902, ARTnews is the oldest and most widely circulated art magazine in the world. Its readership of 180,000 in 124 countries includes collectors, dealers, historians, artists, museum directors, curators, connoisseurs, and enthusiasts. Published in print four times a year, it reports on the art, people, issues, trends, and events shaping the international art world.Auction Previews & News
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PeopleCollector Julia Stoschek Offers Free Online Archive of Video and Digital Art
Screenshot from the video project Double Strength by Barbara Hammer. Numerous pieces from digital art collector Julia Stoschek's archive are now available for free through the Julia Stoschek Collection website. Offerings include experimental video and digital projects from the 1960s to the present. This online transition was planned before the COVID-19 pandemic began, with an initial publicized release date of fall 2019. Given the unforeseen circumstances of 2020, the freely-accessible archive could fill a void in the international art community. Among the highlights of the collection is Barbara Hammer's 1978 video project Double Strength. The project documents Hammer’s relationship with trapeze artist and choreographer Terry Sendgraff. Viewers should be aware that the work is graphic and does not shy away from sexuality. Screenshot from the video project Double Strength by Barbara Hammer. Double Strength shows the trajectory of a developing relationship from early flirtations to lust to the disagreements and arguing of a long-term partnership. "You develop a much richer and deeper and profounder and more interesting relationship than you can ever have from a succession of relationships," the video's narrators theorize, "where you're always more or less starting in the same place and ending when the important things begin." Viewers can also watch Christian Jankowski's short film Hollywoodschnee (2004). In the project, several professionals in the film industry describe the ideal movie scene. Jankowski shoots these scenes in a documentary-esque style and later adds elements from other genres such as action or horror to emphasize the power movies have to shift tone and meaning. In one scene, film producer Alfred Holighaus pulls his car into an old shipyard. The producer’s location seems unusual, but Jankowski directs it as a normal part of a daily routine. "Well, God, you're wrong," says Holighaus once he emerges from his car. "In the beginning was not the word, but the image. One sees before one reads." As Holighaus makes this declaration, he is seen shot in the chest. He continues speaking, but the viewer's eye is drawn to the growing bloodstain, a reminder of imagery's power over words. Screenshot from the video project…
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DealersLast-Minute U.K. Law to Stop Money Laundering Frustrates British Art Dealers
British pounds being exchanged. A new European Union directive is forcing the art industry to change sales practices across the continent, leaving some dealers and auction house officials unsure of how the new rules will affect them. EU nations were supposed to adopt the Fifth Money Laundering Directive by January 10, while the United Kingdom, which has the largest art market on the continent, according to the 2019 edition of the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, has enacted a stricter set of regulations at the last minute. Through the new law, officials at galleries, auction houses, and freeports operating in the U.K. must record and potentially report who the identities of their customers. The rule is aimed at eliminating intermediaries and other practices that have been used obscure the true owners of artworks. Art sellers in the U.K. are required to “carry out customer due diligence under anti-money laundering regulations,” the British government said in a summary of the changes. The art market was estimated to be worth $67 billion at the end of 2018, and the underground industry is reportedly worth some $6 billion per year. The British art market accounts for 21 percent of worldwide art sales, according to the Art Basel and UBS report. While the British regulation was long planned, the specific rules were only finalized on December 24, 2019, leaving many in the British art-community frustrated at the last-minute change. “I am nervous that not everyone will understand precisely what they have to do. This is guidance that is running to well over 100 pages and its quite a lot to get their heads around,” said Christopher Battiscombe, the Director General of the Society of London Art Dealers. “There are quite a lot of obligations to members, the form that needs to be drawn up; report suspicious transactions, and you have got to get all these details right. The thing has been a little bit rushed through in a sense.” “Sellers might not be aware of the new changes,” said Kenneth Mullen, an intellectual property lawyer for the London-based firm Withersworldwide. “Everyone was…
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ArtistsAsk a Curator: Francesco Bonami on Difficult Artists, the Decade’s Biggest Art Flops, and More
A self-portrait by Franesco Bonami. Francesco Bonami, whose curatorial credits include the 2003 Venice Biennale and the 2010 Whitney Biennial, has returned for the third edition of his column, “Ask a Curator,” in which he addresses the books every curator should read, why Italians are the fussiest art audience, and the often-underappreciated aspects of a show that the public should admire. He can be found on Instagram at @thebonamist. If you have queries for him for a future column, please write to [email protected].—The Editors of ARTnews Which books should be required reading for curators? Books from which you can get quotes and ideas that are difficult to track down. I use to read Ivan Illich’s books. He was a social philosopher who had nothing to do with contemporary art, and actually, I think he would have despised it, but for me, his ideas could be in some way be used to create exhibitions’ concepts and titles. What are some details that a curator might notice about an exhibition—one of their own or someone else’s—that an audience might not?The selection of the artists or the selection of the works. These are not just details, and yet a general audience can very rarely grasp what led to those selections, other than the general idea of the show. Also, shipping and insurance costs, pleasing a particular dealer or collector, refused loans, etc. What are some compromises a curator should never make under increased budget for a show? To go below a certain quality and below the dignity of the exhibition. Believe it or not, shows have their own dignity. Better to cancel a show than do something pathetic because there is no budget. I always suggest opening the parachute when you are very close to the land, meaning: Look for the budget until the end. You usually find it. I learned from my first exhibition with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Venice at the “Campo 5” show in 1995. A week before the opening, I had a lot of debt on the credit card I used to ship the works, and I still had to pay…
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Auction IndustryBritish Court: Consignor of Disputed $10.8 M. Frans Hals Painting Owes Sotheby’s Repayment
The allegedly fake Frans Hals painting at the center of the Sotheby's lawsuit.COURTESY SOTHEBY'S After several years of litigation, a British court ruled today that Sotheby’s is owed repayment from the consignor of a disputed Frans Hals, which the auction house sold privately for more than $10.8 million. Five years after that 2011 sale, Sotheby’s declared the work—billed as Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Gentleman—to be a forgery, and repaid its buyer; since then, it has been seeking reimbursement from those who offered it. The High Court of Justice in the Business and Commercial Courts of England and Wales in London decided on Tuesday that Sotheby’s had acted properly in seeking reimbursement from the London-based parties, dealer Mark Weiss, who had already reached a settlement with the house while admitting no fault, and the company Fairlight Art Ventures. “Essentially the events that happened give rise to liability on the part of Fairlight,” the presiding judge, Robin Knowles, wrote. He added that Sotheby’s and the company “may be capable of agreement,” and that payment would be a “matter of discussion.” No exact dollar value has yet been awarded. “We were glad to see our position completely vindicated by the court,” a representative for Sotheby’s said. “Sotheby’s was successful on every front and Fairlight is liable to Sotheby’s for failing to return the full purchase price of the painting, and has been ordered to pay costs and interest, subject only to an adjustment to reflect an early settlement reached with Mark Weiss.” The judge did not weigh in on whether the painting is a true Hals, but wrote, “In my judgement, Sotheby’s simply dealt with the matter in accordance with the contractual framework between the various parties.” He added that the house investigated whether the work was authentic in “a perfectly proper way.” “Fairlight Art Ventures felt that the facts of the complex case and the relevant law argued against its legal liability, and is disappointed that the judge did not recognize the merits of its case,” Fairlight said in a statement. Sotheby’s decided to reimburse the work’s buyer, the Seattle-based collector Richard Hedreen,…
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Art IndustryRare Gauguin Sells for $10.5 M. at Auction in Paris
Te Bourao II, Paul Gauguin (1897)COURTESY OF ARTCURIAL A canvas by French Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin created during his Tahitian period sold for €9.5 million (about $10.5 million) at the Paris auction house Artcurial on Tuesday. The painting fetched nearly twice the house’s estimate of €5 million to €7 million (about $5.6 million to $7.76 million). According to Artcurial, the 1897 painting, Te Bourao II—”tree” in the Tahitian language—was first acquired by Gauguin’s French dealer, Ambroise Vollard, whose descendants held it until 1985, when it was acquired by Tuesday’s seller. It had been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for 10 years. The buyer has been identified by the house only as an “international collector.” Te Bourao II is one of the few paintings from the artist’s Polynesian period still in private hands, and the first Tahitian painting to enter the French auction market in 22 years. It is one of a series of nine works painted by Gauguin while he worked on the larger piece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, currently held in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The other eight are currently held in public collections worldwide. Gauguin’s L’homme à la hache (1891) holds the artist’s auction record, having sold for $40 million at Christie’s in 2006. His 1892 Nafea Faa Ipoipo? (When Will You Marry?) reportedly sold privately for over $200 million in 2015 to a Qatari buyer, though that transaction remains unconfirmed. Tuesday’s sale comes amid reassessments of Gauguin’s legacy in light of his relationships with the Tahitian people depicted in his paintings. The “Gauguin Portraits” exhibition at the National Gallery in London, which runs through Jan. 26, focuses on the young girls the artist lived and fathered children with during his decade in Polynesia. Visitors to the show are greeted by wall text reading, “Gauguin undoubtedly exploited his position as a privileged Westerner to make the most of the sexual freedoms available to him.”
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Auction Industry$19.6 M. Magritte Tops Steady, Subdued $191.9 M. Imp-Mod Sale at Christie’s New York
Christie’s season-opening evening sale of Impressionist and modern art in New York on Monday night proved to be smooth and comfortably steady, with a respectable and workmanlike $191.9 million result. That tally, including buyer’s premium, came close to the high end of presale expectations pegged at $138 million to $203.1 million. Estimates do not include premiums, and the overall hammer price came in at $162 million—a solid result, smack in the middle of expectations. However, the $191.9 million total result paled next to last November’s $279.3 million tally across the 52 lots that sold. Only six of the 58 lots offered went unsold, for a svelte buy-in rate by lot of 10 percent. Tonight, 41 of the 52 lots that sold made over a million dollars and of those, four topped $10 million. One artist record was set. A dozen lots were backed by so-called third-party guarantees, meaning that an anonymous party assured a minimum sale price before the auction and received a financing fee. In addition, Christie’s guaranteed three lots. (Unless noted, all prices reported include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the hammer up to and including $300,000; 20 percent on anything above that, up to and including $4 million; and 13.5 percent on figures beyond that.) The sale got off to a zippy start with fresh-to-market works from the long-held trove of Chicago collectors James and Marilynn Alsdorf, including Pablo Picasso’s conté crayon-on-canvas composition Guitare pendue au mur (1927), which sold to a telephone bidder for about $1.22 million (est. $1 million–$2 million), while an otherworldly Surrealist composition by Yves Tanguy, Sans Titre, from the same year brought a tepid $1.76 million (est. $2 million–$3 million). Brussels dealer Willem Vedovi was the underbidder on the Tanguy, which last sold at auction at Sotheby’s London in June 1997 for £480,000. Surrealism was a strong evening player, with four Magritte offerings, including Le Sabbat, an oil on canvas from 1959 depicting an upside-down still life of apples, a jug, and a wine glass hanging from an easel, with a crescent moon and a cloud-filled sky background to confound the senses. It sold…
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Press Release2019 Frieze London Cheat Sheet
Robert Indiana, ONE through ZERO, 1980–2002, presented by Waddington Custot as part of Frieze’s sculpture program. Below is a concise guide to eight fairs coinciding with Frieze London this week. From 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair to Sunday, an event focused on emerging artists, a range of art events will be taking place across the British capital. The following listings include only public dates and times. FriezeRegent’s Park, October 4-6The 17th edition of Frieze London will bring together over 160 international exhibitors, including blue-chip galleries like David Zwirner, Pace, Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian, and White Cube. A new section called “Woven” will foreground artists working in textiles, weaving, and tapestry, with solo presentations by Pacita Abad, Monika Correa, Chitra Ganesh, and others. Single-day entry costs £38.70 (about $48). Note that combined one-day admission to Frieze and Frieze Masters is £64.50 ($79.50).Hours and tickets Frieze MastersGloucester Green, Regent’s Park, October 4-6Featuring works from ancient times to the 20th century, Frieze Masters will include presentations from returning galleries Acquavella, Marlborough, Skarstedt, and others. A few of the newcomers to the fair this year are Galerie Perrotin, Lisson Gallery, and Agnews. Solo booths in the “Spotlight” section, which is curated by Laura Hoptman, executive director of the Drawing Center in New York, will focus on Ming Smith, Gordon Parks, Howardena Pindell, and more artists. Single-day admission is £38.70 (about $48).Hours and tickets 1-54 Contemporary African Art FairSomerset House, October 3-6Forty-five international galleries, including Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, James Cohan, and Guns & Rain, will assemble for 1-54’s seventh presentation at Somerset House. Ethiopian artist Leikun Nahusenay will stage a performance every day of the fair as part of its special projects, and a number of artist talks and screenings are on the schedule for the 1-54 Forum. Day tickets are £25 (about $31).Hours and tickets PADBerkeley Square W1, October 2-6Taking place in Mayfair is PAD, a fair primarily geared towards 20th-century art, design, and decoration. At this event you’ll find everything from ceramics and glass works to jewelry and sculpture. Yana Peel, who in June resigned from her post as CEO of London’s Serpentine Galleries amid allegations of ties to a controversial Israeli tech firm, is a co-president of the 2019 jury for the PAD Prize for…
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Art IndustryHenie Onstad Kunstsenter Museum in Norway Establishes $100,000 Artist Award
The Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, a museum located in Høvikodden, Norway, about 20 minutes west of Oslo, has established a $100,000 artist prize. The Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme will be given out every two years, and it comes with an exhibition and accompanying programming at the museum, a catalogue, and the possibility for work to be acquired for the institution’s permanent collection. Lise Wilhelmsen in 1960.COURTESY HENIE ONSTAD KUNSTSENTER The first awardee, a mid-career painter or sculptor, will be named this fall, with the winner’s solo show set to follow at the museum in 2020. While the award will be international in scope, it will “remain rooted in Norway,” per a press release. The award, which is fully funded for its first 16 iterations, was established by Arne Wilhelmsen and his family in memory of his late wife Lise Wilhelmsen, who died earlier this year. Arne Wilhelmsen is the chairman of the Norwegian industrial investment company Anders Wilhelmsen & Co. AS, which established the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in 1968. During her lifetime, Lise was instrumental in acquiring art for the company’s various ships with the intention of benefiting the crew as well as the passengers. Arne’s father, Anders, was close friends with Sonja Henie and Niels Onstad, the founders of the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. “It is important for us to create a program that is in keeping with Lise Wilhelmsen’s appreciation and support of mid-career artists with an international standing,” Paulina Rider Wilhelmsen said in a statement on behalf of the family. “There are many art prizes for young, up-and-coming artists today, but we want to recognize artists who have been working for some time. The award is based on Lise Wilhelmsen’s wish for future generations to benefit from her many years of commitment to painting and sculpture.” The jury for the inaugural edition includes María Inés Rodríguez, editor of Tropical Papers and curator at large at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Michelle Kuo, a curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of the Showroom in London; Paulina Rider Wilhelmsen,…
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Press ReleaseDavid Hockney Double Portrait Earns $49.5 M. at $104.6 M. Christie’s London Contemporary Sale
David Hockney, Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott, 1969, sold for $49.5 million.CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2019 After a strong night at Sotheby’s on Tuesday, the London contemporary sales continued this week with a £79.3 million ($104.6 million) evening sale at Christie’s that saw 38 of 41 lots sell, for a taut sell-through rate of about 93 percent. The most anticipated lot of the sale was David Hockney’s Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969), picturing the famed Metropolitan Museum of Art curator seated on a pink sofa, by which his then boyfriend stands in a trench coat, which made £37.6 million ($49.5 million) with buyer’s premium. Gerhard Richter, A B, Tower, 1987, sold for $4.12 million. Bidding began at £27 million and steadily rose by £1 million increments as a handful of bidders competed for the piece. It hammered without too much drama at £33 million, and earned some light applause from the room. The work had carried an on-request estimate that was said to be above £30 million (about $39.5 million). The seller was the estate of the late collector Barney A. Ebsworth, whose formidable collection, predominantly of American modernism, has been handled by Christie’s over the past few months. (Last November, it hosted a special evening sale that saw a new $91.9 million record for Edward Hopper, in addition to 12 other artist records.) Ebsworth acquired the Hockney in 1997 from New York dealership Mitchell-Innes & Nash, according to the sale’s catalogue. In 1992, the work sold at Sotheby’s New York for just $1.1 million with premium, to megacollector David Geffen. A climb of more than $48 million over about a quarter-century: not too bad. The Hockney result comes just months after one of the artist’s key works, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, sold for $90.3 million at Christie’s New York, making the 81-year-old Brit the record holder for the most expensive work of art by a living artist ever sold at auction. (Unless noted, all prices include buyer’s premium, which is 25 percent of the hammer price up to and including £225,000, about $254,500; 20 percent on the next increment up to and including £3 million,…
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Press Release$10.8 M. Basquiat Leads Robust $122.9 M. Sotheby’s Contemporary Sale in London
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Apex, 1986, sold for about $10.8 million. Tonight, at Sotheby’s London, the auction house sold £93.3 million (about $122.9 million) worth of contemporary art in an auction that saw 60 of 66 lots sell, yielding a robust 91 percent sell-through rate. Three auction records were set, for artists Rebecca Warren, Adam Pendleton, and Toyin Ojih Odutola. The priciest work of the night was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Apex (1986), which hammered to a phone bidder at £7.5 million after about four minutes of competition. With premium, its price was £8.23 million ($10.8 million). The work had been guaranteed to sell, with the auction house obtaining a so-called irrevocable bid from an interested buyer for the work, and it had carried an on-request estimate said to be around £5 million to £7 million ($6.56 million–$9.18 million). Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild, 2009, sold for $9.12 million. All sales prices include buyer’s premium, except where noted: 25 percent of the hammer price up to and including £300,000 ($394,000); 20 percent for the segment running up to and including £3 million ($3.94 million); and 13.9 percent for any sum above £3 million. The Basquiat was being offered by a collector who acquired it in 1995 from dealer Gian Enzo Sperone in Rome, according to its listing in the auction catalogue. Earlier in its journey through various collections, the piece had sold for £16,000 at hammer ($28,190) at Christie’s London in June 1988, a little more than a month before the artist’s death at the age of 27. It’s a big moment for Basquiat right now, with a blockbuster survey inaugurating the Brant Foundation’s new location in Manhattan’s East Village and another exhibition on deck at the Guggenheim Museum in New York later this year. The solid auction performance came days after Sotheby’s posted a profit for the fourth quarter of 2018 that was up 12 percent over its 2017 results during the same period. The auction house also reported that its overall sales were up 16 percent in 2018 versus the year prior. Jenny Saville’s Juncture, 1994, sold for $7.17 million. Other top lots included Gerhard Richter’s yellow and red Abstraktes Bild (2009), measuring about 70 inches…
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Press ReleaseRediscovered Painting Attributed to Caravaggio Estimated to Sell for $171 M., Could Shatter Records
Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes (1607) being revealed at a press conference in London.ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK At a press conference on Thursday held at London’s Colnaghi gallery, French dealer Marc Labarbe said he will auction off the recently rediscovered painting Judith and Holofernes (ca. 1607). CNN, which first reported the news, said that the canvas has been given a €150 million (about $171 million) estimate. According to Labarbe, the artist who made the work is the Italian painter Caravaggio, though some experts have cast doubt on the attribution. If the painting sells for anything close to its estimate at the sale, which is scheduled for June 27 at Labarbe’s auction gallery in Toulouse, France, it will blow past Caravaggio’s auction record of $145,000, which was set at a Sotheby’s New York sale in 1998. Caravaggio’s painting Boy Peeling a Fruit, which some have said may have been the artist’s first canvas, was originally expected to shatter that record in 2015, when it was given a $5 million estimate at Christie’s Old Masters auction, but it failed to find a buyer. Judith and Holofernes was rediscovered in 2014, in an attic in the Toulouse home of one of Labarbe’s friends. Some have said the work is the second version of one of Caravaggio’s masterpieces, a scene showing the Biblical tale of Judith decapitating the Assyrian general Holofernes, which is now owned by the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Rome. A few historians have regarded the work’s attribution with suspicion. In 2016 the French culture ministry said the work was “a very important Caravaggio marker, whose history and attribution are to be fully investigated.” The country’s government decided not to acquire the work and lifted a ban that allowed it to travel beyond France in 2016. That same year, two experts told the New York Times that it was possible the painting was a copy by Louis Finson, a Flemish artist who was known as a Caravaggisti because his art took its cues from the Italian painter. In a statement, Eric Turquin, a consultant who works with Marc Labarbe, said, “Forgotten in the loft of a house in the Toulouse area, probably for more than 150…
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Press Release
$36.4 M. Monet, $14.2 M. Schiele Lead Solid Sotheby’s Imp-Mod and Surrealist Sales in London
Claude Monet, Le Palais Ducal, 1908, sold for $36.4 million.COURTESY SOTHEBY’S At its salesroom on Tuesday evening in London, Sotheby’s sold £87.7 million (about $116.3 million) worth of art in a doubleheader: an Impressionist-modern sale that flowed into one of Surrealism. The auctions offered the first major chance to assess the state of the art market in 2019, and the results were generally positive, with 32 of 39 lots selling, for a healthy sell-through rate of about 82 percent by lot. The top-performing lot of the evening (and also the top-estimated) was Claude Monet’s Le Palais Ducal(1908), which sold for £27.5 million ($36.4 million), solidly within its estimate of £20 million to £30 million ($26.5 million to $39.8 million) with buyer’s premium. The work—a radiant view of the Palazzo Ducale from the water in Venice—had carried an irrevocable bid, so it was guaranteed to sell. Following the sale, Sotheby’s trumpeted the result as the most ever paid at auction for a Venetian scene by the artist: the more you know. (Unless noted, all sales prices include buyer’s premium, which is 25 percent of the hammer price up to and including £300,000, which is about $398,000; then 20 percent for the next segment up to and including £3 million, about $3.98 million; and 13.9 percent for everything above £3 million.) Also finishing strong was an Egon Schiele sea scene, Triestiner Fischerboot (Trieste Fishing Boat), 1912, which went for £10.7 million ($14.2 million), over a top estimate of £8 million ($10.6 million). That work, too, carried an irrevocable bid. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Mädchen auf dem Diwan (Girl on a Divan), 1906, sold for $5.08 million. Also notable in the sale: a brushy, brightly colored picture by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that was deaccessioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which made £3.84 million ($5.08 million), just edging out its high estimate of £3.8 million ($5.04 million) once premium was added. In keeping with industry practice, MoMA will use proceeds from the sale to fund new acquisitions. The two passes in the Imp-mod portion of the evening were a 1911 Schiele gouache and pencil on paper, which had…
