Category: NY Observer

Charles Saatchi is the most influential collector of the past 25 years, and one of the most controversial. Notorious for never appearing at his own openings and for not granting interviews, the British former advertising magnate remains a mysterious figure who wields his influence through his Saatchi Gallery shows and the subsequent sale of the artworks in them; to this day he continues to influence the market for contemporary art… Read more

The annual summer art tour is finally over. It was bookended by the Venice Biennale and the mega-fair Art Basel and included a few stops in between. Basel was packed with collectors and dealers and was very successful, with art changing hands at the fastest pace we’ve seen since ’07. If the art market isn’t 90 percent back to the good old days it’s damn close.     But I… Read more

The Venice Biennale, which opened last week and runs through November, is titled “Illuminations,” but its Swiss curator, Parkett magazine founder Bice Curiger, might as well have called it “The Phoenix.” The event has risen from the ashes of the global financial crisis and soared to new heights—such extreme heights that it is now an entirely different animal from the last five Biennales I’ve attended.   Summing up the tenor… Read more

Last week the massive Hong Kong Exhibition Center hosted a triple header–the four-year-old art fair Art HK; a luxurious Christie’s auction preview; and a Christie’s-sponsored exhibition of new work by Chinese painter Zeng Fanzhi–that provided a window into the state of the art market in China.   The fair now draws a good portion of the world’s major galleries as well as many of its better small ones. It’s something… Read more

Last November, Andy Warhol’s 1962 painting “Men in Her Life” sold for over $60 million at Phillips de Pury & Co. It went for well over its high estimate, and became the second most expensive Warhol painting ever to sell at public auction. Because both the buyer and the under bidder were on the phone, the scenario was ripe for speculation. Some market observers and journalists wondered if there had… Read more

It wasn’t all that long ago that Richard Prince was an artist respected by curators and a few collectors who was largely overlooked by the art market. (He was best known for his 1983 Spiritual America, an unauthorized “re-photograph” of an nude, underage Brooke Shields.) A serious mid-career show at the Whitney in 1992 was filled with his great “Cowboy” and “Girlfriend” series of pictures and his photographs of… Read more

The sculptor John Chamberlain has been around since the early ’60s. He had a corrugated-steel piece sitting on the floor of Andy Warhol’s original Factory, and he had one prominently on display at Max’s Kansas City right through the heyday of the sex, drugs and music.   The artist recently surprised onlookers by leaving Pace, his gallery of 20 years, and moving to Gagosian–though he had done a show for… Read more

In 2003, artist David Hammons presented “Which Mike Would You Like to Be Like,” three vintage microphones standing alone in a room, representing three Michaels: Jackson, Tyson and Jordan. It was an ironic commentary on role models for African-Americans, a funny play on words, a great pun, all of the above; that’s the magic we’ve come to expect from David Hammons. He’s given us several memorable art moments: shoes slung… Read more

I was just in Paris, visiting a painting I had loaned to the wonderful Basquiat show at the Musee d’Art Moderne and marveling at the two-hour-long line to get into the show. The French love our American mythic pop figures–Elvis, Marilyn, James Dean–and you could feel how easily Jean-Michel, prodigy, addict and star, fit right in to their vision of America.   Basquiat sought fame and fortune from the very… Read more

Times like these can turn art buying into something akin to stamp collecting. What do I mean by that? The unfortunate consequence of our new economic reality is conservative and often myopic collector demand. All those tired and stultifying guidelines like “paintings resell better than sculptures” or “only buy works that can fit into a Park Avenue co-op” are put into practice. Such clichés inhibit ambitious acquisitions, and inhibit some… Read more