798 District Blog

LONDON.- This evening, Sotheby’s Sales of 20th Century Italian Art and Contemporary Art, brought a combined total of £30.4 million/$48.8 million (Est. £22.3-30.5 million*) – substantially more than in the equivalent sales last year (£20 million).

Commenting on the 20th Century Italian Art Sale results, Claudia Dwek, Co Chairman Sotheby’s Italy, said: “We are delighted with the results of this evening’s sale. The auction achieved the above-estimate sum of £17 million representing the highest ever total for a sale in this field staged by Sotheby’s. While the majority of lots were acquired by Italian collectors, the sale saw activity from clients across the globe, including from the Far East. These strong results and healthy sell-through rates testify to Sotheby’s leadership in this field.”

Discussing today’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale, Alex Branczik, Director, Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s, said: “The Frieze Art Fair and the London Art Scene brought the whole collecting community here this week. With this sale, our vision was to showcase, alongside the more established names, the most interesting works by new and cutting-edge artists to satisfy the desires of collectors in this field in London during Frieze week. The energy generated in the sale room for the first two lots of the sale – by Ged Quinn and Ahmed Alsoudani – validated our strategy.”
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LONDON.- The Frieze Art Fair has now opened to the public and features 173 of the world’s most exciting contemporary art galleries.

Visitors can also take part in Frieze Projects, the fair’s unique programme of artist commissions, which this year features nine new works that all explore ideas of performativity. Frieze Film is being shown in a specially constructed cinema outside the fair’s entrance and is free to the public.

Frieze Art Fair Stand Prize Winner
The Frieze Art Fair Stand Prize sponsored by Champagne Pommery has been awarded to Sadie Coles.

The judges agreed unanimously that Sadie Coles stand articulated a long-term commitment to and understanding of the artists represented. Sadie Coles’ booth can be found at Frieze Art Fair stand C15 and features work by Sarah Lucas, Elizabeth Peyton and Ugo Rondinone.

The Frieze Art Fair Stand Prize was judged by Beatrix Ruf, Stuart Comer and Jerry Saltz.
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LONDON— Less than a week after opening, oft-arrested Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall has been closed to the public — and not for political reasons. Apparently noxious ceramic dust wafting off the 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds carpeting the large exhibition space is to blame, the Guardian reports.

A Tate representative first told the British newspaper that the closure was simply to allow a crew to enter in order to tidy up the popular installation, which needed some “putting back in shape” after crowds streamed over the work. The museum has yet to release an official statement concerning potential health risks.

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LONDON.- This autumn, to coincide with the Sainsbury Wing exhibition Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals, the National Gallery has invited contemporary artists Clive Head and Ben Johnson to display their work in two consecutive exhibitions in Room 1. Both artists paint the city, but for very different reasons, and with very different outcomes. The displays will reveal their motivations and working processes – and their fascination with the legacy of Canaletto. In the second of these two displays, Ben Johnson will be completing one of his paintings in public.

Following the example of Canaletto, both artists combine and manipulate different views to make paintings that are completely convincing. Along with large-scale cityscapes including depictions of London landmarks Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, preparatory drawings and photographs will be shown that will demonstrate how these two artists produce such apparently realistic paintings with differing techniques and tools.

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LONDON— Just inside the entrance to the eighth edition of the Frieze Art Fair, London’s largest commercial event devoted to contemporary art, the Copenhagen gallery Nicolai Wallner has installed a new life-size sculpture by artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset of a boy standing tentatively at the end of a diving board, looking fearful of taking the jump. The piece, called “Catch Me Should I Fall,” and priced at a cool €140,000 ($195,000), hardly captures the mood at this year’s fair, where VIP collectors did not seem at all scared to take the plunge.

Storming the gate at the 11 a.m. opening bell were California’s Norah and Norman Stone, New York’s Susan and Michael Hort, London’s own Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, the London-based Russian Dasha Zhukova, Chicago’s Stefan Edlis, and even the elusive Connecticut hedge-fund honcho Steve Cohen, who by most accounts has never made an appearance at Frieze. Just underneath Elmgreen and Dragset’s diving board, a paparazzo could be seen snapping shots of painter Julian Schnabel’s son Vito, now an art dealer, who was chatting away on his cell phone. The art world had come to London in force.

If the mood at Frieze serves as any indicator — and it invariably has — the market for new art is not just healthy, it’s downright exuberant. “It feels like 2007,” says dealer Thaddeus Ropac, giddily referring to the height of the last market boom. Some 50 museum groups from the world over made the trip to the fair this year, and museum machers like newly promoted New Museum curator Massimiliano Gioni, Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector, and Walker Art Center director Olga Viso could be seen making the rounds of booths.

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LONDON— This week, the Louise Blouin Foundation in London is opening a major survey of contemporary Chinese painting. Curated by professor Lü Peng from Hangzhou’s China Art Academy, “Pure Views: New Painting From China” gathers more than 80 pieces by both established and emerging artists from the country. All the works are available for sale and a percentage of the profit will be donated to the Louise Blouin Foundation to contribute to the foundation’s promotion of cultural dialogue. Just off the plane, Peng spoke with ARTINFO UK about recent developments in Chinese art, as well as the importance of global exchange.

The exhibition borrows its title from an artwork by painter Xia Gui. What is this piece about and how does it encapsulate some of the artistic concerns or tendencies present in the show?

I borrowed the title “Pure Views” from an artwork by Song Dynasty painter Xia Gui to suggest that Chinese contemporary art should pay more attention to Chinese traditional civilization. In the past three decades, when the use of Chinese history and traditional resources needed to be balanced, we witnessed a new phenomenon among many Chinese artists. While Western modernism inspired those born in the 1980s, and Western postmodernism inspired those born in the 1990s, there appeared artists who favored the traditional Chinese art concepts and styles. After the turn of the new millennium, we could accept this transitional period as a time marked by artists starting to master their historical resources. We gradually became aware that a new contemporary Chinese art was coming about through the combination of resources extracted from traditional art and the artists’ perceptions of contemporary society.

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LONDON.- Christie’s will host an exciting series of public exhibitions, events and auctions from today until 18 October in London coinciding with the Frieze Art Fair. The leading highlights of the public exhibition are celebrated masterpieces by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Gerhard Richter, none of which has been seen before in the UK. These works will be offered at the evening auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art in New York on 10 November 2010 and have a combined value in excess of $80 million.

The Post-War & Contemporary Evening Auction and The Italian Sale on 14 October at 6.30pm will offer 51 and 45 lots accordingly and will include an extremely strong section of photography, and the most important work by Damien Hirst to be offered at auction since September 2008 (estimate: £2.5 million to £3.5 million).

Francis Outred, Head of Post-War & Contemporary art, Christie’s Europe : “This week in London is one of the most important and vibrant in the global art calendar. We will be showing a truly exceptional public exhibition at Christie’s which includes three hugely important works never before seen in this country; Andy Warhol’s ‘Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable)’; Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Ohhh…Alright…’; and Gerhard Richter’s ‘Zwei Kerzen‘, together with the auction preview for Thursday’s auction. We look forward to opening our doors and welcoming art lovers to Christie’s in London.”

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LONDON.- Tate and Unilever today presented Chinese artist Ai Weiwei´s commission in The Unilever Series for the Turbine Hall at (12 October 2010 – 25 April 2011). He is the first artist living and working in the Asia-Pacific region to be commissioned for the series.

Born in Beijing in 1957, Ai Weiwei is one of the most prominent and influential figures in Chinese art today. In his many roles as conceptual artist, curator, critic, designer and architect, his work encompasses a wide range of challenging and often provocative activity. Ai has played a key role in the development of contemporary Chinese art over the last two decades, from his role in the radical avant-garde ‘Stars Group’ in 1979, to his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron in designing the national ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

After living in the United States from 1981 to 1993, Ai returned to his native Beijing and created the seminal work Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn 1995. This photo-triptych depicted the artist dropping an ancient ceramic vase, which smashed on the floor at his feet. This work not only began the artist’s continuing reuse of antique readymade objects, it also demonstrated his questioning attitude towards cultural values and social history. For Fairytale 2007 Ai invited 1001 Chinese citizens to ‘colonise’ Kassel in Germany for the Documenta 12 exhibition and distributed 1001 Qing and Ming Dynasty chairs in venues across the city. For Template 2007 he used more ancient readymades, in the form of 1001 wooden doors and windows from destroyed Chinese buildings. These were installed as a huge sculpture that collapsed in a storm soon after completion, creating a twisted, crumpled structure that the artist chose to preserve.

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LONDON (AP).- The Tate Britain museum is to exhibit works being considered for this year’s Turner Prize.

Four artists are competing for Britain’s best known contemporary art prize, which in the past has often been controversial.

The exhibit will open Tuesday, with the winner to be announced at the museum in early December.

The four artists on the shortlist include painter Dexter Dalwood, painter and sculptor Angela de la Cruz, sound artist Susan Philipsz, and the artist-led collective The Otolith Group.

The competition is open to artists under 50 who were born, living or working in Britain. It carries a 25,000 pound ($39,600) prize.

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LONDON.- The continuing international appeal of Asian Art was further illustrated in the September sales in New York which realised $70.7 million; re-confirming Christie’s continued position as market leader for the category with 72 % market share. This autumn, Christie’s London Asian Art Week will run from 9 – 12 November 2010, featuring important, rare and beautiful examples with excellent provenance. The sales include: Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art on 9 November at King Street; Interiors – Juxtaposing Eastern and Western Styles on 9 November at South Kensington; Japanese Art & Design on 10 November at South Kensington and Chinese Ceramics, Works of Art and Textiles on 12 November at South Kensington.

Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art: 9 November at 10.30am, Christie’s King Street
Christie’s Asian Art Week London commences with a remarkable array of porcelains, metal work, furniture, and organic materials such as jade, ivory and rhinoceros horn, offered in the Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art sale on Tuesday 9 November 2010. Featuring over 350 lots, dating from the Shang Dynasty (1600c – 1100c BC) to the Republic Period (1912-49), estimates range from £2,000 up to £1.2 million. The sale is expected to realise in excess of £8million.

The star lot of the whole sale is ceramic: an important and very rare small guanyao baluster vase, Hu southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), 13th century (estimate upon request) which is offered from the Ronald Longsdorf Collection. This exquisitely delicate rich greyish-blue glazed vase has extensive, highly attractive crackle and is of beautiful proportions, measuring just 5.1/8 in. (13 cm.) tall. The bulbous lower body is supported on a tall slightly splayed foot, with a tapering neck which ends with a flaring dished rim.
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