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NEW YORK (REUTERS).- More than 120 works, including two huge canvases commissioned for the exhibition, are included in a retrospective of legendary American artist John Baldessari at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The show, “John “Baldessari: Pure Beauty” which opens on Tuesday, is the first for the Los Angeles-based artist in New York for 20 years and includes works dating back to 1962.

The two new 25-foot (8.2 meter) works “Brain/Cloud,” which features a giant cloud-like brain floating in a blue background, and “Palm Tree/Seascape,” a canvas showing a palm tree jutting up in front of an expanse of ocean, hang in the lobby of the museum, created specifically for the New York show.

“I don’t think they (visitors) need any preshow counseling,” the 79-year-old artist, who was dressed in all-black with a scraggly white beard, told reporters at a preview of the show.

Baldessari is often described as a conceptual artist. Critics regularly refer to Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp when describing his humorous, usually colorful creations packed with pop culture references.

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NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s autumn Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in New York on 2 November 2010 will present a superb offering of works across the period. From an early painting by Eugène Boudin from 1868 to a Pablo Picasso canvas from the 1970s, the sale features classic Impressionist paintings, key Modern works, tremendous sculpture and powerful German Expressionist canvases. Highlights will include important works by Modigliani, Matisse, Monet, Rodin and Picasso, among many others. Prior to the auction, works from both the Evening and Day Sales will be exhibited at Sotheby’s New York galleries beginning 29 October. Highlights will also be exhibited at Sotheby’s London from 11 –15 October.

The cover lot of the Evening Sale catalogue is Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine), the finest painting by Amedeo Modigliani to appear on the market in years (est. in excess of $40 million)*. The work belongs to the artist’s most important series of nudes, all painted in 1917. While Modigliani began painting nudes in 1908, it was not until he abandoned his pursuit of sculpture in 1914 that he developed the unique style exemplified by La Belle Romaine. Modigliani evokes a voluptuous sensuality through his palette of amber and crimson tones, the model’s pose and the intimate setting. The work and artist both have a distinguished history at Sotheby’s. La Belle Romaine last appeared on the market in 1999, when it sold at Sotheby’s New York for $16.8 million, a world record price for any work by Modigliani at the time. More recently, Sotheby’s set the current record for a painting by Modigliani in 2004 with our sale of Jeanne Hébuterne (devant une porte) for $31.4 million.
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NEW YORK— Last night assorted figures from the peaks of the art industry gathered to celebrate the launch of Adobe’s new virtual museum, a newfangled curiosity of an art institution that has been designed to meet real architectural requirements — i.e., its building could be erected in the real world — but exists exclusively on the Internet. As there was no physical gallery to tour, the event functioned as more of a product premiere, with figures from the museum and gallery communities mingling with sidecars and Prosecco in hand, tooling through the inaugural exhibition, Tony Oursler’s “Uncanny Valley,” on five computers stationed around the room. Adding to the feeling of the uncanny, Oursler — after being introduced by the museum’s curator, Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies director Tom Eccles — staged a conversation with a severed dummy head that played prerecorded responses via an iPod.

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NEW YORK—Stemming from Lehman Brothers’ massive 2008 bankruptcy, the auction  of contemporary artworks from the Neuberger Berman and Lehman Brothers Corporate Art Collection that Sotheby’s held on Saturday morning was, in effect, a liquidation. In contrast to the financial fate that led to the sale, however, the auction was a success: nailing the $12.3 million high estimate, Sotheby’s found buyers for all but 24 of the 142 lots for a 17 percent buy-in rate by lot and five percent by value. One work sold for over a million dollars and 17 artist records were set, according to the auction house.

The decision to schedule the sale early in the day — in part to cater to Sotheby’s expanding collector base in Asia — seemed to pay off, with work by Asian artists turning in strong numbers. Liu Ye’s large-scale 2005 figurative painting “The Long Way Home,” part children’s book fantasy and part biting commentary on China’s brutal Cultural Revolution, sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $962,500 on an estimate of $500-700,000.  Meanwhile, Fang Lijun’s 1997 “Untitled (Swimmer No. 1),” a painting mocking former leader Mao Zedong’s supposed Olympian swimming feats, sold to another telephone bidder for $374,500 against a $200-300,000 estimate. The work was acquired from the Max Protetch Gallery in 1998, when the artist’s primary market paintings were priced in the $10,000 to $20,000 range, according to one of the underbidders, who didn’t want to be identified.

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They’re so cute. Or are they positively evil? They stare out from the canvas, wearing mischievous grins on swollen potato heads. Sometimes they clutch knives. Hanging at the corner of innocence and menace, these are Yoshitomo Nara’s kids—and they’re coming to New York.

For the first time in its history, the Asia Society Museum will dedicate its entire exhibition space to a single contemporary artist. The retrospective “Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool” (from September 9 through January 2) features 100 works tracing the neo-Pop artist’s production over the last two decades. White Ghost, two 12-foot-high sculptures depicting dog-like creatures, will stand guard outside both the museum and the Park Avenue Armory.

Nara made his mark with a heady dose of rebellion. In the ’90s, he and Takashi Murakami created work that resonated throughout Japanese youth culture and established the pair as the country’s first art superstars. While Murakami’s appeal lay in catchy and colorful motifs and hyperrefined execution, Nara’s derived from his insouciant, smudgy, and raw drawings and paintings of impish kids.

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NEW YORK, NY.- On 16 September 2010 Sotheby’s will offer South Asian Art as one of the Asia week series of auctions. The sale presents 112 works dating from 18th century miniatures to paintings and sculpture from some of the leading names in Indian modern and contemporary art. Among the highlights is Cinq Sens (Five Senses), by MF Husain which was previously in the collection of Roberto Rossellini; it is the leading painting in an exceptional group of 16 works by the artist. The sale also includes a strong group of works by artists from Pakistan such as Sadequain, important paintings by the leading Modern Indian painters such as FN Souza, SH Raza, Akbar Padamsee, and Tyeb Mehta and a number of works by contemporary artists. Overall the auction is expected to fetch $6/8.8 million.

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Benrimon Contemporary presents its first annual Younger than Moses group show, a collection of artistic explorations featuring 22 contemporary artists younger than 120 years old, the age at which Moses died. Curated by TS+ Projects, Younger than Moses: Idle Worship consists of contemporary painting, sculpture, performance, film, photography, and collage. The combination of artistic facets creates a dynamic gallery space, where the viewer is encouraged to interact with each work.

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Collectors spent big money at Christie’s postwar and contemporary art auction on Tuesday, led by Jasper Johns’ pop art painting “Flag” from a collection that had belonged to best-selling author Michael Crichton, which sold for a record $28.64 million.

The $232 million total from the auction, including commission, marked the third consecutive night at which Christie’s and rival Sotheby’s met or exceeded pre-sale estimates for the annual spring sales. Of the 79 lots on offer, only five failed to sell.

Crichton’s collection, one of the season’s star estate sales, soared to $93.3 million — half again the pre-sale estimate — and achieved the highest ever total for a post-war collection, officials said.

While foreign buying has helped drive the market’s recovery, nearly three-quarters of the buyers were American, as expected for what Christie’s described as “a quintessentially American sale.”

Amy Cappellazzo, Christie’s international co-head of post-war and contemporary art, said the market, seemingly well on its way to recovery, now seemed “more sober.”

“There’s not this irrational exuberance,” she said, comparing it to the late years of the boom before the economic crash in 2008. “It’s strong, but selective.”

Well-heeled collectors showed enthusiasm, and readiness to pay, for rare works like Johns’ “Flag” and Andy Warhol’s “Silver Liz,” which fetched more than $18 million.

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LONDON. Christie’s sale of International Modern and Contemporary Art held in Dubai on 27 April proved a success, leapfrogging three times over its low estimate to total over $15m (presale $4.8m-$6.6m). This was a sharply improved result compared to last year’s sale, which made just $4.8m.

The strongest bidding in this year’s sale was for 25 modern Egyptian artworks consigned by a respected Saudi collector, Dr Mohammed Farsi. This was expected to make $1.2m-$1.7m, but racked up $8.7m, with all the lots sold.

The collection was said by trade sources to have been offered to Qatar—whose Museum of Modern Arab Art is due to be inaugurated in a temporary space this December—but finally went to auction at Christie’s.

Prominent among Christie’s staffers taking telephone bids at the sale was Isabelle de la Bruyère, glamorous director for the Middle East, who was previously Dr Farsi’s daughter-in-law. She snaffled a number of lots including the evening’s prize, the Egyptian artist Mahmoud Said’s “Les Chadoufs”, 1934, which sold for a startling $2.4m, almost ten times its high estimate (est $150,000-$200,000). Trade sources said that it was destined for Qatar.

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Picasso’s 1932 ‘Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust’ is seen at Christie’s auction house in New York.

Related Link: Collectors and Auctioneers See Signs that Art Market is on the Verge of Solid Recovery

A 1932 Pablo Picasso painting of his mistress has sold for $106.5 million, a world record price for any work of art at auction.

“Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” which had a pre-sale estimate of between $70 million and $90 million, was sold at Christie’s auction house on Tuesday evening to an unidentified telephone bidder.

There were nine minutes of bidding involving eight clients in the sale room and on the phone, Christie’s said. At $88 million, two bidders remained. The final bid was $95 million, but the buyer’s premium took the sale price to $106.5 million.

Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art for Christie’s New York, said he was “ecstatic with the results.”

“Tonight’s spectacular results showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works,” he said.

The striking work of Picasso’s muse and mistress Marie-Therese Walter has been exhibited in the United States only once, in 1961 in Los Angeles to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Picasso’s birth. The painting, which measures more than 5 feet by 4 feet, shows a reclining nude figure with an image of Picasso in the background looking over her.

The painting had belonged to the late California art patron Frances Lasker Brody, who bought it in the 1950s. It had been kept in her family since then.

Part of the sale proceeds will benefit the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif., where Brody was on the board.

The previous record for a work of art at auction was $104.3 million for “Walking Man I,” a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti sold on Feb. 3 at Sotheby’s in London.
The previous high price for a Picasso work was $104.2 million for “Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice),” attained in 2004 at Sotheby’s New York.
On Wednesday, another rarely seen Picasso is slated to sell at Sotheby’s auction house. “Woman in a Hat, Bust” is a 1965 work inspired by Jacqueline Roque, the last love of Picasso’s life.
It is estimated to sell for $8 million to $12 million.

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