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☆ A Smooth-Running Gallery Weekend Amid a Shaken Berlin Art Scene
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-29 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Berlin’s international reputation as a liberal, relaxed city that nurtures artists’ freedom to express whatever they want is under threat. The art scene here has been roiled by protests, cancellations and boycotts after the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel, and many artists now say that a climate of fear has replaced the city’s anything-goes vibe. But at the 20th edition of Gallery Weekend Berlin, the annual showcase for the city’s contemporary art dealerships that concluded Sunday, it was business as usual, with no sign of the clashes that have been shaking the cultural sector. “We need to react with intelligence, not emotion,” said Esther Schipper, one of the three dealers who founded Gallery Weekend 20 years ago. Otherwise, like other participating dealers, she declined to comment on the discord in Berlin’s art world.

Persons: —, “, ”, Esther Schipper Organizations: Weekend Locations: Israel

☆ Long-Lost Klimt Painting Sells for $37 Million at Auction
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,” an enigmatic, long-lost 1917 painting by Gustav Klimt, sold Wednesday for 35 million euros with fees, or about $37 million, at the auction house im Kinsky in Vienna. The unsigned and unfinished work was estimated to sell for between $32 million and $53 million, before the addition of fees. The winning bid was tendered in the room by Patti Wong, the founder of the Hong Kong-based art advisory company, Patti Wong Associates. The result was remarkable, given that there are questions surrounding this Klimt portrait. The auction house said in its sale catalog that it had “not been able to clarify the precise provenance of the painting” since 1925, and the identity of the seller has not been revealed.

Persons: Fräulein, Gustav Klimt, Patti Wong, Wong Organizations: Patti Wong Associates Locations: Vienna, Hong Kong, Austria

☆ For Sale: A Rare Klimt Portrait, Valued at $32 Million. But of Whom?
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-22 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

On Wednesday, an auction house in Europe will put a painting by Gustav Klimt up for sale, with a preauction estimate of at least 30 million euros (about $32 million). Whoever buys it will obtain a painting by an artist whose major works rarely come up for sale, but also a portrait whose subject, provenance and current ownership are either unknown, not public or the subject of debate. The auctioneer selling the painting is not an international heavyweight like Sotheby’s or Christie’s, but im Kinsky, a local house in Vienna whose biggest sale until now was in 2010: $6.1 million, for a painting by Egon Schiele. At a news conference in January announcing the sale of the mysterious Klimt work, Ernst Ploil, the co-chief executive of im Kinsky, said: “All is in the dark. Whenever there is an argument for something, counterarguments arise again and again.”

Persons: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Klimt, Ernst Ploil, ” Locations: Europe, Vienna

☆ At TEFAF Art Fair, Museums Make Up for Shrinking Private Sales
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-08 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“This would be a bold acquisition to make,” said Frederick Ilchman, the chair of European paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This extraordinary, long-lost portrait by Lavinia Fontana was an outstanding example of the many works by women artists on show Thursday at the bustling preview of the TEFAF Maastricht fair in the Netherlands. The Fontana portrait was priced at 4.5 million euros, about $5 million, on the booth of the Geneva-based dealership Rob Smeets. Ilchman has regularly traveled from Boston to TEFAF since 2007; in that time, the focus of his acquisitions has evolved. It seems like a useful task to amend this discrepancy,” he added, acknowledging that museums with large holdings of pre-20th art can seem disconnected from the 21st century’s cultural concerns.

Persons: ”, Frederick Ilchman, Antonietta Gonzales, Don Pietro, Duke of Parma, Lavinia Fontana, Rob Smeets, Gentileschi’s, Magdalene, Ilchman, ” Ilchman, “ Organizations: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Islands Locations: Maastricht, Netherlands, Geneva, ”, Boston, TEFAF

☆ Auctions in New York Reflect a Dip in the Market
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Scott Reyburn | More About Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

As is almost always the case now with auctions of major single-owner collections, Sotheby’s secured the Fisher Landau consignment by guaranteeing the sellers an overall minimum price. Picasso’s 1932 painting “Femme à la montre,” the star lot of the Fisher Landau collection, was one of 24 lots in the Nov. 9 evening sale backed by irrevocable bids. This was knocked down to one bid of $22.2 million, incurring Sotheby’s a substantial loss, but preserving the prestige of a 100 percent selling rate. (His Fine Art Group spent $4.8 million for a 1995 Agnes Martin painting at the Fisher Landau evening session.) The art adviser Josh Baer, reporting on the Fisher Landau auction in his Baer Faxt newsletter, said, “profitability for auction houses is not always going to happen.

Persons: Sotheby’s, Fisher, ”, Fisher Landau, Rothko, ” Hoffman, Agnes Martin, Josh Baer, Baer Organizations: Sotheby’s, Art

☆ Queen Lyrics and Freddie Mercury’s Grand Piano Soar at Auction
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-06 | by ( Scott Reyburn | More About Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Then the competition exploded, with a half-dozen bidding paddles raised in the London salesroom, followed by a flurry of bids online and by phone. “The very piano on which ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was composed. The instrument,” the auctioneer Oliver Barker intoned as the bidding paused after spiraling into seven figures. Mercury composed many of Queen’s hits at the Yamaha. It was originally estimated to sell for at least $2.5 million in Sotheby’s 59-lot evening auction of the most desirable pieces from the collection offered by the singer’s lifelong friend Mary Austin.

Persons: ’, Oliver Barker intoned, Barker’s, Freddie Mercury’s, Mercury, Mary Austin Organizations: Yamaha Locations: London, British

☆ Klimt’s ‘Lady With a Fan’ Brings $108.4 Million, Auction Record for the Artist
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Post-Brexit London regained some credibility as the capital of Europe’s high-value art market on Tuesday when a radiant portrait by Gustav Klimt, “Lady With a Fan,” sold at Sotheby’s for 85.3 million pounds with fees, or about $108.4 million. The price was an auction high for the renowned Austrian artist and was the highest for a public sale in Europe, beating Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man I,” which sold for $104.3 million in 2010, also at Sotheby’s in London. The audience erupted into the sort of thunderous applause that hasn’t been heard at a London auction for some years. “The price was within our expectations,” said Wong, the former chair of Sotheby’s Asia, who added that she was buying for a Hong Kong collector. The final price topped Klimt’s previous auction high of $104.6 million, given in November for the 1903 landscape “Birch Forest,” at Christie’s, in New York.

Persons: Gustav Klimt, ”, Alberto Giacometti’s “, Patti Wong, hasn’t, Wong Locations: Europe’s, Austrian, Europe, Sotheby’s, London, Hong Kong, Asia, Birch, ”, Christie’s, New York

☆ Mixed Business at an Anxious Art Basel
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-16 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

After an underwhelming series of auctions in New York in May, dealers exhibiting at this year’s Art Basel fair in Switzerland — which opened to V.I.P.s on Tuesday and welcomes the general public from Friday onward — hoped to quell concerns about a dip in the art market. The 53rd annual edition of this bellwether Swiss event, featuring 284 international galleries specializing in 20th and 21st-century art, was the first under the watch of Art Basel’s new chief executive, Noah Horowitz. It is being held in a climate of geopolitical uncertainty, with high interest rates and inflation hampering consumer spending in many countries. “There’s quite a lot of anxiety around,” said Paul Gray, the director of Gray gallery, based in Chicago and New York. But in his 40-year experience, he added, the art market suffered from few major downturns.

Persons: —, Basel’s, Noah Horowitz, ”, Paul Gray, Gray Organizations: Basel Locations: New York, Switzerland, V.I.P.s, Chicago

☆ Art Basel’s New Chief Is All About the Brand
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“People are ever more driven by experience, and people are ever more driven by brand,” said Horowitz. “They buy at a major auction house, but they also buy from Art Basel galleries because we’re a brand.”Horowitz’s appointment, announced in October, came as a surprise. He replaces the formidable Marc Spiegler, who oversaw the growth of the fair brand for 15 years and was widely regarded as one of the art world’s most influential figures. Horowitz returned to Art Basel from Sotheby’s, where he had a 13-month spell as the head of gallery and private dealer services; before that, he spent six years as Art Basel’s director of the Americas, in charge of the Miami Beach fair. “When I left Art Basel two years ago, one of the difficult things was not knowing what impact James and his partners would have as stakeholders,” said Horowitz.

Persons: ”, Horowitz, “, Marc Spiegler, James, Murdoch Organizations: Art, Art Basel, Miami Beach, Prix, Basel Locations: Art Basel, Sotheby’s, Americas

☆ In Samuel Fosso’s Photos, ‘You Can See Evil, You Can See God’
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Scott Reyburn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“They sent me the negatives. It cost me a lot,” said Fosso, 60, in an interview at the Galerie Christophe Person in Paris, which is holding the first major solo show of the artist’s work in a commercial gallery, through June 17. “In Paris, I had depression,” said Fosso, referring to the effect of learning that his studio, if not most of his archive, had been destroyed. “The Chief” was one of the “Tati” series of 11 color photographs Fosso made in 1997 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a discount store located in the Barbès neighborhood of Paris. Much loved by immigrant communities in the city, Tati closed in 2020, a casualty of the Covid pandemic.

Persons: “, ”, Fosso, Galerie Christophe Person, ” Fosso, Tati Organizations: Galerie, “, London Locations: Paris, Düsseldorf, Tokyo, Barbès

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