Roving Eye: The Rolling Eye

Last week the Roving Eye once again rolled through Chelsea in search of fresh ideas and interesting points of view. These days I start my tour with shows of the tried and true, and hope not to find it tired and blue.   My first stop was, of course, the Picasso show at Gagosian on 21st Street, even though I’m feeling totally Picasso-ed out. The recent (and tedious) “Picasso: Guitars… Read more

Roving Eye: A Hunger for New Minimalists

Jacob Kassay, Untitled (detail), 2009
There was plenty to see and think about this past auction week.   The week’s most popular gallery show was the Nate Lowman blockbuster spread across Michele Maccarone’s and Gavin Brown’s galleries. I was told it sold out within hours of the opening. Even if that’s just the gallery spiel, I’m sure it will all sell soon enough.         Lowman’s show was certainly his best yet, even… Read more

Regulate the Art Market? Don’t Even Think About It

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

Roving Eye: Why I Like the Big Bear with the Light on Its Head

Seagram Plaza
Urs Fischer’s monumental bronze Untitled (Lamp/Bear) (2005–2006), will be offered for sale at Christie’s New York on May 11, estimated to sell for about $10 million. The work is installed in the plaza in front of the Seagram Building until September.
It’s a funny thing, outdoor sculpture—makes me think of kitschy Henry Moore bronzes, garish Calders rusting at the corners, a Mark di Suvero abandoned in a field; perhaps… Read more

THE ARTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE: IS ART IS A GOOD INVESTMENT? DEBATING THE SCULL SALE OF 1973

  Is contemporary art a good investment, or a dangerous risk? That’s the question for Adam Lindemann and Amalia Dayan, a collector-dealer couple who’ve bought Warhol, Koons, Schnabel, Murakami, Hirst and others. Could they be today’s Robert and Ethel Scull, the iconic art-loving couple of the 1960s? Can they – can YOU – generate the 16% unlevered annual return over nearly 40 years that the Sculls’ collection is worth? Lindemann… Read more

My Artwork Formerly Known as Prince

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

When Scotty Beamed Me Up

from MODERN, Spring 2011 COLLECTOR AND AUTHOR ADAM LINDEMANN DESCRIBES HIS FORAY INTO DESIGN, AND COMMENTS ON THE STATE OF THE MARKET   I BUMPED INTO COLLECTING DESIGN in a rather unglamorous way. I was shopping in the vintage furnishings section of the Manhattan store ABC Carpet & Home about eight years ago when I came across mirror-fronted furniture by the 1970s designer Paul Evans. It was really crazy… Read more